Rental Magica
Okay, so this one turned into the shounen-version of Ghost Hunt, with slightly less-impressive production-values. Unfortunately, this one screwed up in a lot of areas, and the characters are nowhere as interesting as with Ghost Hunt. For starters, the director likes action way too much, and the action-scenes themselves aren’t impressive at all: it’s just the characters who launch their powers at the enemy until it goes down. Second of all, this series takes up too little time to build up. It’s like, five minutes of backstory until the action starts again, and the case for this episode was resolved a tad too easy for my tastes. To continue, this may not be a harem, but it’s got way too many harem-elements, and the main character does get surrounded by a bunch of cute and strong girls, among which are a few stereotypes like the energetic sister and the blonde American (seriously, since when are all Americans blond?). He himself takes up all the glory during the fights, and ends up fainting afterwards like the hero he is. I mean, I like the premise, but the execution feels rather meh to me. I doubt whether I’ll continue watching this one.
Minami-ke
After Mokke, this is the second slice-of-life series that focuses on sisters living together this season. So far, I’m more impressed at the former, but that doesn’t mean that Minami-ke is bad. This episode started out with a nice enough first episode, with some interesting banter between the different characters, even though you can probably guess their personalities by just looking at them on the promo-art. The animation is quite good for this series, and there are some interesting camera-angles used in this episode. I think that the success of this series will depend on whether it can remain fresh for thirteen episodes (I assume that that’s going to be the length, don’t take my word on it), and the characters will grow a bit instead of repeating their quirks infinitely.
Prism Arc
I’m a fan of fantasy-series, and Seirei no Moribito showed me that the more one of these series makes its setting believable, the better of a chance it has to become really good. While this is rather subjective for everyone, I do have to say that magic SHOULD NOT BE used to give a bunch of teenagers a cheap excuse to become stronger than any other adult with years more of experience. Seriously, this flaw can’t become more apparent in Prism Ark: the entire cast of strongest fighters in the country consists out of sexy females with a few males here and there, all around the ages of twelve to fifteen. Also, when the map of the world this show is set in is show: pay attention: it’s basically a very screwed up map of Europe, with the names of a few countries altered. This leads to hilarious names as the “Untied Kingdom”, “Russiasn”, “Speen” and “Poleland”. I have no idea whether this was intentional or not, but the fact remains that it’s not looking good for this series. ^^;]]>
Some quick first impressions: Rental Magica, Minami-ke and Prism Ark
Actually, I’ve seen a map kinda like that before, in the Ys series:
http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ys/chart_e.jpg
From the sound of it, though, Ys did a much better job, as they very intentionally based the game series off of Europe, but also made certain it took place in its own fantasy world — sort of like an alternate reality or something.
-Tom
My Japanese is extremely weak so I can’t really judge Rental Magica at the moment. I think it all depends on whatever assignment they get and how they can pull it off. I don’t think the production values are bad though. I just think the RAW quality sucks. I liked the BGM a lot.
I’ll watch the sub before judging this. But I am a little disappointed too. And “shounen Ghost Hunt” is the perfect way to phrase it.
It’s true, all Americans are blonde, just like all Chinese people wear traditional Chinese cheongsam. This is something I learned from watching anime.
That map sounds awesome, btw.
Minami-ke looks kind of nice but i am still waiting for better,Genshiken SII and Ghost Hound,the two anime that i really want to see are still to be released and i expect a lot from them anyway i would have liked to see some serious anime series,with a more mature theme but but i don’t think i will find one this season
Wyrdwad: that map indeed looks a bit more interesting than the one shown in Prism Ark, and it actually seems that there was some effort put into it.
kiseki gurl: the animation indeed isn’t bad, just less impressive when compared to Ghost Hunt. 😉 One thing I am hoping for is that the stories will very soon stretch into 2-4 episoded arcs, because one episode is just too short.
Archer: have you checked out Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji? That’s a serious-themed series about gambling.
yes, not all americans are blonde and americans are usually depicted stereotypically in anime but hollywood isn’t actually innocent when it comes to stereotypes of other ethnic groups. for example, chinese and japanese people are usually depicted as martial artists and nothing else, black people are depicted as basketball players and hiphoppers and italians are usually depicted as mafia groups.
it’s just that we usually categorize people but i believe that we should always think outside of the box. think of other people as complex people. people need to get to know other people more to not think of them as stereotypes.
but thankfully anime such as baccano don’t suffer from stereotypes. anyway, after reading your post i just might try watching minami-ke. i will still also give rental magica a try.
About Rental Magica: Where did you hear that Adelicia was american? She’s most likely an English lady ( from an aristocratic background, that’s for sure) after all, she studied spells and magic in a prestigious english school (where Honami also enrolled) ,I have no doubt she’s from England, which isn’t quite the same. I don’t quite agree with this “It’s like, five minutes of backstory until the action starts again”, because if you keep on watching after the second arc, the characters’ build up ( their past and all) will be clearly developped and explained , I really liked this series too much to find some flaws in it!!!