Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is pretty and gets invited to join the club of pretty people (no, seriously)
Chance of me Blogging: -30% (…)
This season I again avoided all the previews out there. I quite like this strategy, but the only downside is that I have absolutely no idea which series is which, and so I end up watching virtually everything… including the crap that nobody would want to watch in the first place. With a title as Mecha Mote Iinchou, I was expecting something with giant robots or something. What I got was a very cheesy shoujo series. And oh my god, this series truly shows the utter horrors of CG abuse. While if used well, you can get some nice effects, but the characters here are cell shaded 75% of the bloody time! Not only does the contrast with their regular drawings sting with the pain of a thousand needles, the creators also lack the budget to make them look good. The result is that people look more like strange marionettes than people: the way they move is just creepy. In the story-department, this show also sucks beyond belief: the lead female tries to reform a bunch of rebellious youths (and of course falling in love with one of them who had a tragic accident in his past that makes him all emo right now) and she tries to fight the super elite club in the school in which only pretty people can join. Even when compared to your average shoujo, this series is the epitome of blatant stupidity.
Isekai no Seikichi Monogatari
Short Synopsis: Our lead character attacks a very short-staffed flying island with his mecha.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No)
If I had to use one word to characterize this OVA, then it’d be ‘shallow’. Here we yet again have a generic fantasy OVA that doesn’t stand out at any part whatsoever, not to mention the amount of time it tests the viewer’s suspense of disbelief. The lead character is only a teenager, and yet he can knock a small army of armed soldiers unconscious in less than a minute, and the special treatment he receives from all of the cute girls on the flying island makes no sense whatsoever. If this were a series, it might have grown into something interesting over time, but what can an OVA really add to this with its limited amount of time?
Shin Mazinger Shougenki! Z-Hen
Short Synopsis: Our lead character pilots a giant robot.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (Depends on the rest of the season, really)
Remakes of ancient Sci-fi shows can be extremely different, depending on what they decide to focus on. Shows as Toward the Terra and Casshern Sins showed how good the genre can be. The new Mazinger clearly goes for the homage route, and it clearly wants to start the series with an as big of a bang as possible. What I really liked was the GAR-ness of just about every single scene of this episode. the manly passion really flowed continuously through the screen. And so what if it’s a cheesy save the world plot: it worked at least in this episode. My question is going to be: what are the creators planning for the rest of the show: this episode definitely was interesting and had a really fast pacing, but it also assumed that the viewers knew lots of the established characters already (which in my case wasn’t the case). Can it remain interesting, or fall down horribly in just a random string of monsters that have to be defeated each episode?
Shin Mazinger’s debut was impressive, but you know as well as I do that this won’t have deep characters or an intricate plot, even after things settle down and are explained in a more rational manner.
I suppose there will be some monsters of the week, that’s typical to the Super Robot genre, but this first episode looks like a flash forward, so to speak, which means the details making that situation possible should gradually build up as well. Unless they run into production problems, this should be pretty good.
Btw, have you seen Giant Robo?
I don’t get your “chances of me blogging” system. Seems way too random to me : 10% and 20% equally mean “if the rest of the season is really bad”, but to me, this would be 50% since there aren’t any other choices than “the rest of the season is bad” and “the rest of the season is good”. Or is it that this new Mazinger had more chances of being blogged than other shows with 10% of blogging chance, if the rest of the season is bad ?
I don’t get it, sorry…
Windspirit: I wouldn’t take those chances that seriously if I were you. They’re just some quick indications of the likelyhood that I’m going to end up blogging them. With series of about 10%, it’s very unlikely that I do end up blogging them, but if there are no better series out there (since I have no idea what the rest of the season looks like and I have 12 slots open for series to blog), I’m going to have to settle with those. 20% also means a small chance, but please don’t think that it’s going to be a 100% exact thing or something. My biggest issue here is that especially in the beginning of the season, I have no idea how many good shows are going to air in the end.
Camario: seen the OVA of Giant Robo and the first few episodes of the TV-series. Good stuff.
Hmm while the first episode was awesome and hotblooded, it reminded me of being a 10 year old again, it certainly didn’t have any coherency. They could either be showing us key scenes from the end of the series or just be throwing us some “what ifs” at us, possibly like the beginning of the 1st episode of Gurren Lagann, except this time they spent an entire episode on it.
An interesting not, while I was watching the live stream, there was an ad that showed a young boy in the 1970s, then it flash forwards to 2009 and him being a grown man looking at a Mazinger Z model, it made me think this episode might have been made to cater to those fans, to remind them of what old school Mazinger was like: full of all the awesome action then begin the series for real next week. As this episode had very little content of what the trailers have been showing us.
Definitively going to watch mazinger. I dunno about the rest of you but if you’ve played the super robot wars games you would probably be interested in these old robo cartoons to get some background on the mechs and such.
I find these ratings very accurate
Mecha Mote has the ugliest art I’ve seen this season… ick.
Mazinger’s episode made little sense, but it was very entertaining. At the very least, as a first ep it was different from most mecha series’ beginnings.
@psgels
Not that I’m asking you to blog Seikishi Monogatari, but concerning what you said about its limited amount of time: this is to be a 13 ep OVA series, 45 min per ep, so it’s the equivalent of a regular 26 ep TV anime. I suppose there’s a chance though that it’ll get cut short if the sales aren’t good. Otherwise it should have a new ep each month, or thereabouts.
Oh, and the lead character is supposed to be half-brother of Tenchi, who as you may know turned out to be a rather special being in his universe (from which this guy was summoned), so it’s not that surprising that he can kick some ass. At the very least he’d have Juraian blood and quite a bit of martial arts/swords training. I’m guessing from your reaction (haven’t seen to ep yet) that this background hasn’t been introduced (yet?), but it’s pretty well known among Tenchi fans at least. As for his popularity with girls, well, Masaki Kajishima‘s universe postulates anomalous people, some of whom have great pull like that. 🙂 (I know what you mean, though.)
edit to previous:
– OVA series
+ PPV/OVA series.
“Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou” reminds me of “Kirarin Revolution”( the second season made also in 3D) somehow. But I kinda liked it, just a feeling.