Medaka Box Abnnormal
Short Synopsis: Our lead character fights a bunch of strong characters.
Hmm, I just realized a very big danger for Medaka Box with this episode. I mean, the reason why I liked the first season was that it went from a perfectly normal school series to over 9000. In this season, though, I fear that it’s just going to be nothing but these over the top fight with nothing to contrast it with. Especially because this episode introduced your typical cliched gang of rivals that Medaka probably all has to fight at some point, and they all probably have some kind of gimmick. The problem with that is that it grows old after a while. Will the creators be able to keep all these fights interesting? How will this show avoid that formulaic path that it’s dangerously close to now? Will there be more to this than just fighting? Take for example the girl that was shown in this episode: the way in which she talked in numbers was nice and all… but that also was her entire gimmick. Beyond that the fight wasn’t really that interesting.
OP: Generic opening with the upcoming characters.
Potential: 70%
Jormungand Perfect Order
Short Synopsis: Our lead character sells weapons.
Jormungand’s biggest challenge will be managing its characters. The plot is bound to be interesting: this episode showed that with the central focus being weapon dealing. However, that will be a big waste if the characters just all look the same. This episode made a good start by finally showing Koko as an interesting character, but there still is a lot to do for this show, because the side-characters nearly all have the same personalities. On top of that this episode finally introduced a major villain (or at least it looked that way), and her personality is like all the other female characters, only more extreme. This lack of variety really bugged me in the first season, and I really hope that it will be handled better in the sequel. The best thing would be to just have a select bunch of snarky characters, while making the rest set themselves apart in completely different ways.
OP: I don’t really like the vocalist in this song, but it does serve as a rather strong opening for each episode.
ED: Bit of a random use of a piano, but the effect is nice.
Potential: 75%
Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to take care of a cute girl.
Well, there you have it. There is a lot of bad stuff in this premise. The show is riddled with fanservice. There are lots of cliched characters. The characters are not ashamed to be annoying, especially when it comes to fanservice… and it is really well delivered. I mean, it really shows that there are talented people working behind this. The direction was far from what you’d expect with these kinds of romance series: the characters were really well portrayed: they were full of energy and the direction is full of these small details that bring the characters to life. Think of the subtle movements of the various cats in this series. All the characters in this show have presence, and even though the nudity gets incredibly forced at times (I mean, this is a premise about a guy who lives together in a mansion with two girls who have no sense of shame), but the way it’s delivered is something else, and makesimpact. Also, I feel that JC Staff are currently quite underrated. Sure, they make some crap, but there are some very good animators among them. They really showed that with this episode where with the right director, they can really breathe life to characters in ways that most other shounen romance fail with their too restricted movement. In a way, this reminds me of Denpa-Onna to Seishun Otoko, but better and actually much less annoying.
ED: Very nice artistic direction. Shame for the dull song.
Potential: 80%
So Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo gets JCstaff’s animator A team where as the Key adaption Little busters gets stuck with the B team?
This logic seems to show where they put their priorities.
@Aidan:It comes as little surprise to me, JCstaff has always leaned towards fanservice titles. I didn’t think the animation or voice acting in little busters first episode was all that good.
I don’t know about this show, I don’t like shameless/whore-y female characters for the most part.
The title kind of puts me off, though that might be my mind going places.
Schedule affects the quality of a show.
By all indications, the Little Busters project started very late (like early 2012 – that’s a nine month lead up when most anime contracts are signed 1.5 to 2 years in advance) since Key wanted an anime by autumn come hell or high water. It’s a tough job for any studio, and you won’t get A-List directors or animators on board since they’re either booked on different projects already or are unwilling to work under those conditions.
J.C. Staff was a natural choice for the job since they have a vast animation pipeline and are set up to cope with tight situations (so there’s less chance of a Negima or Persona 4 situation happening here – not even AIC ASTA could handle what Aniplex and Index/Atlus demanded, so they outsourced half the episodes to random studios and earned notoriority for harassing animators). Their system is highly parallelized, but without adequate time and talent, there’s only so much they can do.
If Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo is better off, it’s because the production committee established better conditions in terms of budgeting and scheduling. J.C. Staff didn’t invest in Sakurasou, so they have little reason to favor the show. They aren’t entitled to potential profits.
@Yerld, thanks. That’s a better explanation for this than I expected.
This anime was soo good
The lead character reactions to fanservice are so annoying that spoiled this show completely.
Just watched. Not my type of show, so I can’t see “80% potential” here.
I’ll give points for that “left it in my dad’s testicles” line the teacher used, though.
Aside from that, this was even more annoying than that Chuuniwhatever anime. That one only had one or two annoying characters. This one is overflowing with them.
This show has better art and animation than Little Busters! hand down.
Even Bakuman 3 has better art and animation than LB! too.
I don’t understand what is JC Staff thinking.
Isn’t their priority totally backwards?
For a fanservice anime, Mashiro’s naked body is not visible much…
I was looking forward to watch it, but after reading a few reviews about this, might as well stick with Queen’s Blade 2 for the fanservice..
Am I missing something? I see all these whiney comments about Little Busters! like it’s something incredible that deserves the very best in the business working on it and it’s far from that. I found the first episode to be very generic/mediocre. Is it just me?
Then again, it is a Key show. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
Going to say that Medaka Box has a habit of subverting what you think. In may drag a bit around the middle here (Though it did not in the manga in my opinion but for some others it did.) but it’s worth it for the payoff.
I would definitely recommend sticking with medaka box. There is a lot of fights now but medaka is rarely the one fighting and the creativity involved in all of the characters quirks and abilities is what really sets it apart.
Like Clinton said, Medaka Box has a lot of subversions (its Nisio after all), but the subversions in this arc aren’t as in your face as they will be in upcoming arcs. There’s going to be a lot of fights, but they’re pretty varied so depending on how the production team handles them, they could be good or bad. This arc is better imo than the first arc, but its overshadowed by the arcs after it, which have much more of Nisio’s trademark fingerprints.
I agree that gimmicks can get old. But medaka box’s gimmicks are slightly different. it’s more relevant (to viewers/readers) than ninjutsu or magic and all that, it’s almost always some personality trait or human trait or stereotype that is brought to super-extreme levels, which makes it that much more interesting, for me anyways.
For many reasons, the art in Sakurasou looks a bit like the art in Yumekui Merry — with the “surrealism” and inventive camera angles toned down a few notches.
Yumekui was really JC Staff’s animation team at its finest. Such a damn shame about the poor original ending to that series. I do think it’s the best animation JC Staff has ever pulled off–and by a long shot.
Every time I see these characters (same designer?), I can’t help but think back to the gorgeous visual feast that was Yumekui and shake my head fondly.
You don’t have to worry about Medaka Box being normal. It gets so meta-crazy and breaks the fourth wall so much that I often take breaks from reading it because its *ab*normalities.
So I just screwed up but I just wanted to say that I like Sakurasou. Reminds me of another dorm anime I used to love a long time ago. And…DAMMIT THOSE CATS ARE MOE!!!! XD
Yeah, Medaka Box from here on out it keeps getting crazier without stopping. It uses a more “shounen-like” formula, but at the same time, it keeps trying to subvert all the cliches. Although you should also expect a lot of gimmicks (like the girl talking in numbers), some work better than others. And as someone else said, it gets waaaay too meta from a point on. So yeah, while it does become “formulaic” it does introduce things to subvert things. I think being “formulaic” on the surface is intentional.
I normally run a mile from shows like Sakurasou and the first few minutes I was v. skeptical, but I loved the energy from the character intros, the setting of an art school with the main characters being animators and script writers etc is an attraction for me. I enjoyed the bit where the animator and script writer started really getting into talking about the screen test of an animation.
and i did kinda like the shock reactions of everyone around the wacky characters.