Girls und Panzer
Short Synopsis: Our lead character rides a tank.
Girls und Panzer: why? Just why? Why did you make all these decisions for your direction? I mean, you’re a series about a bunch of girls that ride a tank. Shouldn’t it be obvious what to focus on? Your director is Tsutomu Mizushima, a guy who excels at being over the top. This could easily have been this really over the top series with a lot of brainless fun and action. So why on earth are you taking yourself seriously? No really, there was no comedic moment in this episode whatsoever. They rode tanks for like three minutes, after which they switched over to some school. Add a lot of different characters to that… and yeah. This is Strike Witches without the fanservice!
ED: Montage ED with boring song.
Potential: 20%
Teekyuu
Short Synopsis: Our lead character plays tennis.
What the HELL was that?! I mean, you know Studio Mappa, right? The studio that was just founded from former Madhouse employees and did Sakamichi no Apollon past spring. Well, their next act is a 2-minute series with a complete lack of any kind of inbetween animation about two girls playing tennis. I mean, this was just bizarre: the characters talked incredibly fast and hyperactively. The jokes were like a shotgun: some kindof worked, and some didn’t work at all. It’s very hit or miss. The animation was… interesting. The episode was full of different drawings thatlooked dynamic, but lacked movement. Yes, the effect is really weird with the incredibly hyperactive pacing of this show. I’m not really sure what Mappa was going for here..
OP: Super-deformed and crazy.
Potential: 30%
Ixion Saga
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets transported into a game.
You know, there is one thing that I did not know about Ixion Saga in advance: it’s a parody. I was fully expecting this to be this really cheesy fantasy show that should be passed up immediately, and this really looked to be the case at the start of this episode. And then… it just stopped taking itself seriously. Now, that alone is not immediately a good thing. Anime has so many terrible comedies out there, so this could have made this show even worse. But this brings me to the director, who previously worked on the first 100 episodes of Gintama. And yes, this was funny. This episode definitely had some parts that were bad, but for all of those moment it also had parts that were so bad that they turned good, and it had quite a few well delivered and actually hilarious jokes in its arsenal. The question now is to see whether or not they can keep this up. Shows like this generally can manage first opening episodes, but to keep up this quality for an entire series is quite difficult. Let me get beck on this one next week.
OP: DT! DT! DT! DT! DT! <- who the hell found that a good idea?
Potential: 75%
That was so damn campy! Already we have lolis, traps and the big bad guy getting kicked in the balls!
Good to know this is a parody series, cause I was wondering if this was being serious, or if it was being funny that it would be a one-time thing. Luckily, neither are true. I think this one may be more under-rated than Shinsekai Yori in the long run (now that SSY has been getting ton of exposure)
I wasn’t going to watch this show but had a crack and I must say that this is the funniest first episode of any show so far. I was almost wetting myself at how he defeated the ‘ultimate move’ plus the whole scene where he was flirting with the avatar ingame was awesome.
I think with the popularity of SAO that the timing of this show is pretty good so as long as they keep up the parody and don’t take themselves seriously it could do pretty well.
About tekyuu, well, if i remember well, maruyama said that he wanted to try to do something cheap and silly, but the fans shouldn,t worry because that was only for fun. He can be prety crazy sometimes, do you remembre that madhouse did some series about stich ,was for this: http://pics.lockerz.com/s/184209854
About Ixion Saga’s OP – you weren’t paying attention to the lyrics, were you? 😛 It’s hilarious.
What’s DT?
DouTei = virgin
Ixion Saga was a series that I was going to ignore until I saw the amazing (minus 2 seiyuu) cast lineup! And it turns out that it’s so damn funny! XD
Ah, I thought it was some abbreviation for a band or something, since PSgels mentioned under OP.
From what I can tell from the screencaps, this is Sword Art Online done right, or hilariously wrong. Guess I’ll give it a watch.
The reason I did that will become clear once you see the OP.
Oh, and DT also stands for Dimensional Transfer.
Just finished watching. Pretty funny if you turn your brain off.
Dude’s got some swanky footwear, I gotta say.
tekyuu was crazy.
Like Ixion Saga a lot so far. There’s something kinda familiar about the retro art style and setting. Reminds me of stuff like Bastard! or City Hunter. And this protagonist: Didn’t we just see him in Nobuna? What’s he doing in a fantasy world now? XD
Man, I had lots of guffaws and unearthly laughter after watching Ixion Saga’s first op. I was actually not going to watch it until I’ve seen you’ve given it a 75% potential rating. I think I’ll stick with this. Now that Sket Dance ended, this’ll probably replace my comedy of the week (I have yet to watch Gintama).
While I don’t really have high standards for Girls und Panzer, I’m just going to keep on watching it because it’s really the world that I just find absolutely intriguing. Every anime world has its quirks, and this one happens to be that high school education involving the martial arts of tanks. And I just find things like that just absolutely interesting.
I don’t know much about the director, but I’m sure you’ll find your over-the-top brainless fun in the later episodes. I mean, think about the scenario that it’s in right now: it’s the return of a long-time-offered-but-then-discontinued class elective, there are a whole bunch of noobies who have no clue what they’re doing, and the one vet is still a miserably mopey scatterbrain who has to help coordinate everyone. THERE’S BOUND TO HAVE SOMETHING BRAINLESS HAPPEN IN THERE.
But girls and panzers is over the top. The giant town ships, and then a british city ship. The Russians have a fucking city submarine!