Some quick first impressions: The Skull Man, Devil May Cry and Wangan Midnight

The Skull Man You know, this one started out well. Okay, it wasn’t as interesting as some of the other series that have appeared in the spring-season, but it was definitely a solid start, in which a journalist is investigating the murders by a guy, calling himself “the skeleton man” and runs into a girl who has ran away from home or something similar. The concept definitely had potential. That is, until the creators decided that it was a good moment for a friggin’ naked shower-scene. That really took a lot of credibility away from this series. Anyway, apart from this, the series is off to a good start, and it’s different from what I expected it to be. I imagined this being a dark and gritty show, but for the most part, most of its scenes were light-hearted. The characters introduced so far have potential, especially the side-characters. We’ll see where this one will bring us. Devil May Cry Now this one turned out interesting! Finally another actually good action-series appears that contains a great balance between action and dialogue. The action-scenes look terrific, and I absolutely loved the fight in the theatre. Another remarkable feature was that about 50% of the dialogue happens off-screen. While I can imagine some people getting turned off by this, it actually felt very refreshing and interesting to me. Anyway, Devil May Cry features Dante, a half-demon/half-human or something similar who acts as a bodyguard to protect people from ferocious demons… with his favourite food being a Strawberry Sundae. Nice touch. Overall, the animation is excellent, and the soundtrack features some interesting tunes. Okay, it will never match itself to the great names with its format, but for its genre, it’s doing a very fine job. Wangan Midnight Wangan Midnight, an anime about a guy who likes to speed-race on the highway. I can appreciate how he didn’t just find out about his passion for cars in this episode, like so many other anime of its kind do. What we’ve got here is just a guy who likes being reckless, gets defeated and runs into a really fast but dangerous blue car on the scrapheap. After watching this first episode, I realized that the action-scenes are mostly for the car-lovers out there, as they didn’t do anything to me. There were too many close-ups and too little real action. What did interest me, though, were the human aspects in the episode, most notably the main character’s recklessness. A lot of people are worrying about him, and I do hope that this anime will be realistic enough to show what happens if this continues. Another notable aspect is the really diverse soundtrack. It’s got anything: hip-hop, rock, j-pop. All it misses is some German folklore.]]>