MAJOR 2nd
Short Synopsis: A kid who loves baseball is frustrated when he realizes he can never match his famous father.
Aidan’s review
I am still with the kid on this. He tried baseball but found he didn’t have the talent for it. He worked hard and it still didn’t get him anywhere. Even if he keep it on for fun he would be constantly compared to his father. So yeah why can’t he just take a different path from his father? When his sister started getting on his case about not “meeting his parents expectations” I honestly think she was way out of line. True the kid needs a new hobby to motivate him and he ain’t got to to meet his parents expectations. If anything they are the reason for his pain in the first place considering they literally groomed their children for baseball. And from the look of things people are gonna push him into baseball whether he likes it or not. Not sure what else to say here. It’s a mediocre sports series hampered by myself having no interest whatsoever in baseball. Nothing groundbreaking but some might get some enjoyment out of it.
Potential: 10%
Mario’s review
Major 2nd certainly feels old-school here. Not only the settings, or its being a spin-off of the popular franchise Major, but also in its storytelling. The main storyline is fairly predictable and straight-forward. The kid realizes that he can’t never be as good as his father so he quits sports altogether. But to its credit, that simple story is told well with confident beat. We have time to see his fire-up to come to baseball team for the first time, his disappointment and then his frustration towards the poor results and then we see how this experience shapes the way he is 2 years later. Apart from the narrative though, the production is unremarkable with little animation and bland character designs. Major 2nd also strucks me that they use the same universe and reuses many characters from its original series, down to the fact that the new kid comes at the end turn out to be the son of Daigo’s best teammate. Okay, it’s Boruto all over again here. Its notch from the original is too apparent that I wonder if this show has what it takes to stand on its own, let alone being a better version compare to its original.
Potential: 20%
Devil’s Line
Short Synopsis: A girl gets romantically involved with a vampire half breed.
Aidan’s review
There is something uncanny about the faces of the background characters in this. Especially the main characters friend, that girl has seen some shit. Indeed there are odd animation choices here, such as jacking up the frame rate to show super speed which just looks oh so very wrong. Well my general opinion of the source still stands here, it’s a show about vampires that does nothing new and just rethreads old territory. We got a vampire romance that pretty much starts with sexual assault and the setting is basically tokyo ghoul except with Vampires. The main character is boring and I hate the male lead for being an emo hipster. Nothing really to see here.
Potential: 0%
Mario’s review
What’s up with the ridiculous frame rate during the vampire’s action sequences? I can understand why they do that but it looks cheap and amateurish in practice. And it makes no sense whatsoever when the police’s scenes have such quick frame, too. I don’t buy this vampire’s version at all. Not only the concept of vampire amongst the human have been done to death before, this one also adds a sexual desire from vampire to human’s blood, which again makes very little sense. The show interprets the word “bloodlust’ quite literally here, but they mention the killer vampire leaves his semen to the crime scenes, I was seriously confused. So is that nutrition or is that reproduction you were aiming for, mister killer vampire? Story-wise, it isn’t good either. This episode focuses on the relationship between two characters who we literally just spend few minutes knowing them, neither of them I care about. The flashback doesn’t do anything either. If they have spent like 4 episode worth of content between the two, then this flashback can have some impact. As of this, the only thing I know about this unfortunate dude is that he’s a creep and he kills girls randomly, thus it’s only natural that I feel taken aback towards its conclusion. I can’t relate to the new formed relationship between the girl and our main guy, in addition. If your best friend that you know for a certain period of time turned out like that, how the hell could you trust this new vampire guy? Devils’ Line offers me absolutely nothing as a result.
Potential: 0%
PERSONA5 the Animation
Short Synopsis: A kid inherits the blood of a super-thief
Aidan’s review
Unlike Mario below I was able to follow the goings on of this episode though that was likely helped by my familiarity with the series. For someone with no experience I can certainly see how this anime could be rather confusing. There is a definitely a sense that the pacing is moving too fast and we are given little time to warm up to the characters before being tossed into one of Persona’s levels. The main character has the problem of being a blank stale for the player and I would hope they at least give him the level of snark Persona 4’s protag had in his aadaption. Overall I am reminded of Persona 4 the animation where it felt it was making compromises in order to make the story work as a anime. I am curious to the story and this odd phantom thief motive but I plan on experiencing those through the game so this isn’t on my watch list. For fans of the game I would say it could be a decent watch but for those unfamiliar with it I would say the game is a much better alternative.
Potential: 30%
Mario’s review
What an incoherent mess this episode was. The narrative is all over the place that even the first episode focuses on one character, I still can’t figure out the timelines this character is in. I know it’s a video game adaptation and so it’s hard to translate the game format to the more straightforward narrative such as anime, but jumping up and down through multiple timelines like this make it extremely hard for first-time viewers (like myself) to care. And I don’t have any reason to care, either, given the main protagonist is as bland as unseasoned chicken, moreover his personality is pretty inconsistent during this first episode. The visual style is admittedly strong and stylish. You can see its strong grasp of visual execution during its first five minutes and this version of “The Velvet Room” has a lot of personality there (the Velvet Room has been a motif of the Persona Game franchise, but this particular version reminds me a lot to David Lynch’s universe – “This is a girl” I heard someone whispered faintly). In general, these stylish visuals couldn’t save this show from its confusing story and weak characters. Another skip for me.
Potential: 10%
Persona 5 is following the game’s presentation and timeline pretty closely, with a few minor tweaks here and there. The normally silent protagonist has quite a few lines. I think he’s a blank slate here because there are a few ways you can play him, depending on your dialog choices, ranging from honor student to indifferently anti-social. Probably no story effect. He also has to be a type that flies under the radar that no one would ordinarily suspect to be a theatrical thief. It’s definitely rushed. I wish they had done a bit more to differentiate the transition between flashbacks and the interrogation scene, although it works beautifully in the game. There is a very unique violin theme that plays during the transitions so consider that a cue.
Hm..I wonder if they decided to rush it because they felt it’s target audience would already be very familiar with the source material. It took me about a week to finish but I got really involved in the “side” quests. Brilliant, involving, “I want to know what happens next!!” type mini dramas. The kind that gets you hooked on tv soap operas.
The producers of these Anime that are based on games with a player stand in main character should never really adapt directly. They really should make up a personality for the main character and follow through with it. Otherwise, the main character will always be bland as unseasoned chicken.