Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas
Short Synopsis: Our lead character has huge powers for no particular reason and gets to become a saint.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way)
Okay, so I’m pretty much a Saint Seiya noob: I’ve never watched anything of the franchise, despite how it seems to be churning out an OVA every year. So yeah, this felt like a good opportunity to check out and see what this franchise was all about. Well, if the rest of the installments are anything like this first episode, then it’s a franchise full of hopelessly bad acting and stereotypes. Seriously, this episode starts with a bunch of generic bullies nearly killing a dog, only for one of the lead characters to act like a flower-child and protect it. The other lead character is your typical hot-blooded teen-aged lead, only exaggerated even more than usual. The episode was full of inconsistencies or things that just didn’t make any bloody sense; my favourite of this has to be the point where a river was blocked by a bunch of rocks from a landslide. So what does our main character do? HE TRIES TO PUNCH HIS WAY THROUGH THE ROCKS. Granted though, the animation looked really nice and the backgrounds looked pretty. But pretty pictures aren’t going to excuse the disaster that is the cast of characters.
Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-Chan!
Short Synopsis: Our lead character hasn’t been toilet-trained properly and Deus ex Machinas depressions away.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way)
It’s stupid, clichéd, full of fanservice and stereotyped. But still I have to admit that it made me laugh at times. This is basically another shounen mahou shoujo, but for once the chemistry between the male and female lead was enjoyable, rather than annoying. The problem with this series however, is that that’s just about the only thing that I liked. The visuals look horrible, the background music is generic voice-less J-Pop. The drama is incredibly shallow: it’s built up poorly and simply solved because the lead character has the power make depressions go completely away. It just screams laziness to me. The fanservice also was abysmal at times. Fully unneeded, especially in the ED, and you know a character is bad when she still pees in her pants.
Umi Monogatari
Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives under water.
Chance of me Blogging: 40% (If the rest of the season is mediocre)
Another series with lots of moe, but it’s actually pretty interesting. Umi Monogatari tells the story of a tribe of people who live underwater and use strange rings to move to the shore. It’s got an ambient atmosphere with lots of quiet piano background songs. The pacing is also quiet yet at the end o the episode there were definitely some dark pasts. A major theme of this episode also was cultural differences, which can become quite interesting as well if the series develops it properly. My one gripe with this episode was the comedy, though; it just felt forced, so that’s a potential problem for the future of this series. I know that ZEXCS isn’t the best company out there, and the animation and visuals really are nothing special, but if they can make this series as solid as they did with Wagaya no Oinarisama, then I’m in.
Looking at the calendar in anidb, this season looks so empty…
Even if ZEXCS is the studio there’s quite a few staff from the “aria” franchise (director,screenplay,chara design…) so it’s not your typical ZEXCS production
Oh and this is really peronal but the music is made by the guy who did the ost of sketchbook full color’s (i know,i’m probably the only one who loved that show lol) I listen to that ost nearly everyday,so i really want to hear more quiet piano songs from him.
As for Saint saya,this is just speculation,but it could just be a case where a series has been copied so much over the years that it may look like some random typical shounen but it was one of the first out there.
Season is indeed pretty empty but there’s quite a few shows from last season that should keep on going,so if psgels wants to keep blogging the same amount of shows it looks likes there’s only going to be 2 or 3 slots open anyway.
Haven’t seen Lost Canvas yet (honestly, didn’t even know it was released), but the first chapters of the manga are kind of blah. The anime probably will get better during the second or third episode.
but…but it’s saint seiya….
I loved Aria so I am looking forward to Umi Monogatari. The staff certainly had the magic touch to make Aria something special and hopefully they do the same here.
Also highly anticipating Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Been playing the visual novels this past month in preparation and they have been absolutely fantastic. Currently playing through Episode 3 and I hope Studio Deen has some animation budget to back this one up, unlike Higurashi.
Saint Seya… my memories of the original series are quite fuzzy plot-wise, but the character design (made by Miki Himeno who had taken care of the Rose of Versailles anime 😉 ) looked pretty, especially the eyes and especially if compared to the manga source. The Italian dubbing was impressive too: lots of editing, but most of it was done for the sake of provoding some epic-poetry flavour XD (they even added Homer references and such XD). This new series (both manga and anime) has rounder facial features, it’s a bit odd frankly XD. I was mildly curious to check it out, but your review is not really tempting me to try.
Ah, well…there are four series and some movies I’m waiting for your opinion about ( hopefully ): -Bakemonogatari, Tokyo Magnitude, Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Canaan
-movies: Eureka 7 Pocketful of Rainbow (DVD should be released very soon, rips and fansubs should follow suit?), Summer Wars .
—
No comments on the pants peeing =_= .
Thanks for braving through it XD
P.S.: ah, missed a piece of comment ^^;;. Basically, to get the idea of chara design change… Casshern Sins featured basically a revamped ‘Saint Seya of old’ chara design 😉 .
Here’s my list:
Tokyo Magnitude
Needless
Bakemonogatari
Canaan
Umi Monogatari
Umineko no Naku Koro ni
You should check those shows, I’m sure you’ll like something.
Can’t believe no one mentioned Spice & Wolf II yet, did no one watch it? It’s one of the few guaranteed great anime this season.
Another one would be Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei – unlike the blogger I’ve loved the crazy adventures of the suicidal teacher and his students all the way through the first season, second season and the OVA was great as well.
Bakemonogatari and Tokyo Magnitude look good. Other than that, there are lots of “maybes”: Canaan, GA, Umineko, Kanamemo, Needless, Aoi Hana…
No offense, but Spice and Wolf kinda disappointed me. The opening practically screamed “emotionally epic adventure” but what we get is a story about cute wolf and travelling a merchant.
The story went nowhere, the ending leave me screaming “THAT IT?”. So now I realise its going to have a season 2. Maybe this season will actually have a point to the story. But I don’t feel good about it. The first season left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
It wasn’t a bad anime by any measure, but it wasn’t a very memorable one either. Last, I am curious how Death Note manage to get 84, but Spice and Wolf manage to get 85! Spice and Wolf strikes me as the kinda of anime no one talks about after 5 years, but Death Note is clearly an influential series and an anime that will still get recommended to people.
S&W2 is being handled by a different studio. Let’s see if it can surpass Imagin’s. Saint Seiya, meh. Fight Ippatsu, meh. Umi Monogotari, looks interesting but i’ll most probably pass.
As for Summer 2009, very few look promising, and most of you said it already: the quantity of anime produced was way too few. There could still be a few more to add that we are yet to hear from. But man, I counted the upcoming series at ANN and there were about 20 plus of em. Hmm…is this the effect of what we call, global recession. I really hope not. Let’s just see if the quality over quantity would be this season’s motif.
Aren’t there always less new series in the summer and winter?
Umi Monogatari’s first episode was fantastic IMO.
The first half reminisced me of Aria, plus extra moé-moé and the “forced comedy” you mentioned (that was quite fine by me). The second half was completely different and wasn’t something I was expecting, due to this being quite moeblob-ish. High hopes for this show.
I’ll watch Umi Monogatari for the music if nothing else. Ken Muramatsu fans must watch first episode.
you say the main character has a huge power for no particular reason? you clearly haven’t watched that anime because it clearly states that every human being has a “cosmos” or power, and tenma -the main character- subconsciously awoke that cosmos trying to protect his friends i give your review a 2/10 cause it looks like you didn’t even watched the first episode