Rozen Maiden
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to be the servant of a doll.
The big question for Rozen Maiden was how on earth it was supposed to fix the way that the original series left it behind, seeing as how that seemd to go into complete anime original material. Well, don’t ask me how, but they somehow nailed it with this first episode: for people new to Rozen Maiden it provided a good overview of everything important that happened in the first few volumes of the manga, thus making it accessible for people who haven’t seen it. On the other hand it is worth watching for the people who already watched the first anime because the events are totally in different order, a new character suddenly shows up and while some things are similar to how they happened, others are completely different. Seriously, the creators managed to do A LOT in just one episode, and while it was obviously rushed, it was coherent, it was engaging and you can follow what was going on. It’s great for giving a taste of what Rozen Maiden is about. Also, Suiseiseiki made her annoying “desu”-trademark far more bearable, and the animation is really good, and actually quite experimental with how it combines CG with its regular animation. And the music is awesome as well.
OP: ALI-Project again, but there was no way for them not to do something here. And this OP does look really nice.
ED: The art here is amazing. Great direction.
Potential: 95%
Servant X Service
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a civil servant.
Colour me surprised: Servant X Service is actually good. I really was expecting this to be just another Working, or another show with bad jokes that really wasn’t about anything. Guess what? The comedy is actually good. What we have here is finally another slice of life series that doesn’t take place in high school, doesn’t have terrible jokes, isn’t completely pointless, doesn’t have characters that are just copied and pasted from other series and that doesn’t just desperately try to fill its time. This was actually a very charming look at the other side of the desks of the civil service that we usually just take for granted as this annoying bureaucratic institute. This show deals with the ups and downs, and the weird people that undoubtedly show up once in a while. What I especially liked was how this show portrayed all of the different people that came by. That rang home so much, and that was done so believably. The big problem with the cast is that every character just is one-dimensional and depends a bit too much on a collection of two or three quirks (that has the potential to be really annoying fast when handled poorly) and the biggest challenge for this series will be to remain interesting for an entire season. But this was good!
OP: This is actually a very good opening. I really like how it combines live action with drawings and how it explodes everything
ED: By all means not a meaningless opening. Also candy!
Potential: 80%
Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku
Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins a club at schol.
Kitakubu is a show that has a lot of stuff that just ticks me off. It’s not like there is incest or fanservice or anything. Instead, all my prolems here can be summarized by one word: laziness. The setting? A bunch of girls in a club that doesn’t really do anything. The characters? Various stereotypes from other shows. The humour? Either really lame jokes, parodies that don’t really parody anything and jokes that were copied from other series. The content of this episode? Completely random and pointless. Voice acting? Lame. Animation? Nothing special. The only good thing I have to say about this series is that for some reason or the other the creators here really like animals. The best animation here is that of a pigeon walking around. Heck, the animals in this series looked much more interesting than the actual characters. Why don’t you make a show with THEM in the lead?
OP: Badly sung and lame.
ED: Breaking the fourth wall is so funny, har har.
Potential: 0%
Servant x Service is probably the only thing I’ve enjoyed so far. Seems good but yeah, I always worry about the plot of these sorts of shows. I don’t mind this type of series but I like things to actually go somewhere.
I really liked Servant X Service. It reminds me a lot of a comedy that was running in the 1980’s in New Zealand called ‘Gliding On’ which was all about office politics in the civil service and became a classic. I’m not sure how well it will do with Otaku as it really doesn’t pander (well apart from a few visual boob jokes) but I really hope it does well.
Being famliar with the manga I can tell you this is no reboot. Additionally I worry for it because it looks like they’ve skipped the part where suigintou meets Rozen and his identity is revealed.
After you hyped up Rozen Maiden in the summer preview, I had to check it out. As expected of a show from that time period, it was good, but felt like it had a ton of untapped potential. Something a remake could really take advantage of.
I know you didn’t like Kanon, but its 02 vs 06 version is a good example. The characters were kinda annoying in the original (and I LIKED the 06 ones! o.o ), the atmosphere was pretty generic, and everything was kinda spelled out instead of giving you time to think before secrets were revealed. The remake fixed just about everything, along with some amazing art. Hopefully Rozen Maiden will be just as good, if not better, because I liked the original better than Kanon 02. 🙂
Rozen Maiden does have superb art but… I felt really silly taking time to watch it.
I haven’t watched the original Rozen series. I have all three seasons sitting in my HDD but really haven’t got time to watch them. I think I’ll start with this remake instead.
you’ll be disappointed then, it’s not a remake, not sure why everyone thinks that, the first episode was just a recap/alternate reality of how things happened, you miss out on a lot of character development if you skip the first 2 seasons and the ova.
Speaking as someone who’d never seen or read anything in the Rozen Maiden series before, I didn’t find the first episode of the remake accessible at all. Sure, I know the general idea of what’s going on, but the ridiculous pacing leaves me with no connection to any of these characters and no frame of reference for why a lot of these events are happening beyond the idea of this “Alice Game.” I feel like I just watched a clip show.
Production values were definitely top-notch though.
Forgot to mention that I might follow it if it sticks with a permanent alternate timeline change from here on out. Then it’s just a quick (albeit a little to quick) summary that will allow for actual character building in the alternate time line.
If that’s the case, then I could see myself following it.
*Very minor spoilers for the next episode*
The original manga ends very abruptly (I mean, very, it just ends). It’s not clear why, but it more or less ended much earlier than the mangaka planned. The first episode of this series, more or less summed up the 1st manga (40something chapters).
After some time, a sequel manga started. There is a timeskip and it’s more or less an alternate reality. This is what this anime is going to adapt. They could’ve skipped this first episode, really.
With regards to previous history, I came in on the same boat as you, but I didn’t find it too off-putting. That said, there’s not anything really about your assessment that I disagree with, so it’s probably more of a matter of preference than interpretation.
I wonder if a better approach would have been to make the pace even faster or otherwise show even more scenes. If they’re going to be disjointed anyway, might as well go all the way and make a point of it. Or show them in backwards or some other chronological order (though it seems to some extent that they already did that). Episode 1 didn’t exactly have a hyperactive pace throughout the scenes; it just cut to the chase in most all of them and tended to leave out transition scenes.
watch the last 2 seasons then.
As someone who’s worked with people and worked in an office, there was a lot to like/relate to in Servant x Service. My roommate pretty much KNOWS the third-gen civil servant who’s just gliding through life, barely using his ample talents.
We didn’t look at Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku…KKK? Ugh, THAT’S not good…
Although I loved the Working! series, I really disliked Servant x Service for some reason. I’m pretty sure psgels will also get bored of it soon enough. The OP animation was gorgeous though, the best I have seen in a long, long time.
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