World Destruction
Short Synopsis: Our lead characters form an organization to destroy the world.
Highlights: Nice ideas, but flawed (see below)
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
This series has a lot to like, and at the same time a lot to hate. It’s probably the first time where humans are actually the oppressed race in a fantasy-series, especially if they’re oppressed by a bunch of cats. The different races that walk around the world are full of imagination, and the idea of a bunch of humans (and a bear, okay), joining together to destroy the world has some definite potential for the second half of this short series. The animation is really messy at times, but it looks excellent. Yoshihiro Ike, one of my favourite composers is behind the background music, and he delivers as usual, though perhaps it’s not his best work. Agh, if only the messages of this series weren’t so blatantly obvious! The lead characters themselves are fine, but it’s the way how they’re presented that gets me. This is one of those nationalistic anime that tries to shoves the message “humans rock, the rest sucks” down your throat, and the rest of the episode really need to work to develop the other races in this series. It would be interesting if through this series, the lead characters will actually be portrayed as the bad guys who will in fact destroy the world, but for that to happen, the cats need to stay away from stereotypes. Right now they’re funny, but I can already see this series go south in a couple of episodes if it doesn’t try to develop them.
Natsume Yuujin-chou
Short Synopsis: Our lead characters can see spirits and has a book of names of these spirits.
Highlights: Low budget, but very solid scriptwriting.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
The first thing that came to my mind when I started watching this is: is this really Brains Base? This really has to be their series with the lowest production-values to date, and things actually look pretty normal, and really different from their usual vivid animation style. Still, their sense of storytelling didn’t degrade one bit, and the director of Baccano and Jigoku Shoujo shows that he still knows how to tell a great story. This episode was nothing sensational or spectacular, but it was a very solid introduction for a series about spirits and ayakashi. This first episode already shows what the ayakashi in this series are made off, and like most of them, they act because of their grudge that was caused by something, and aren’t purely evil for the sake of being evil. I guess that that’s why I like stories about ayakashi so much.
Mission-E
Short Synopsis: Our lead character… has changed a lot since the first season.
Highlights: The huge character-development….; same fun climaxes as in the first season.
Overall Enjoyment Value:8/10
Holy crap! This actually takes place years after the first season! The lead characters have set up an organization to deal with the Type-E users, in order to protect them from the guys we saw in episode 11 and 12. Now here’s a twist you don’t usually see, and I’m really enthusiastic about how it was carried out. The interesting thing is that there seemed to have been no adult to guide them when they set up that organization, and it seems that they had to figure out everything by themselves. They also found a new girl to work with them in the meantime. In any case, before I start rambling, it was awesome to see how every character has changed during the absence of this series. The action-scenes were exaggerated, but they were fun and I can’t wait to see the rest of this series!
Can I watch Mission-E if I never watched Code-E? The premise sounds intriguing, but I don’t want to sit through an entire first series that apparently wasn’t that good.
Can’t wait to watch Yuujin Chou, it looks good.
And World Destruction was a fairly unimpressive and generic RPG adaptation. It had its fun parts, but otherwise it’s not going to be more than a vaguely entertaining Saturday morning Cartoon. Good, but not great – could have been far worse.
And I agree with your comments on the image side of things. It would be a shame to introduce this concept of the protagonists wanting to do a typically BADGUY thing and then its potential getting ruined by stupid cliches.
Overall, Fall is looking set to be a solid season with a good variety of shows. I’m pleased.
…I mean “SUMMER is looking set to be a solid season”. Silly mistake.
I have been spending too much time looking at Fall shows. By the way, psgels, do you want me to send my list to you? it might be helpful for your next Season Preview.
Well, I’ve been thinking of trying something new for the upcoming fall-season, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to post a preview. My idea was to just not look at any promo-material for the shows that are scheduled for the fall-season, and just watch all of them when they air, without any positive or negative bias.
In any case, I guess that I’m one of the few people who liked Code E. It was a fun though predictable show with likable characters. I guess that you can watch Mission E just fine, as long as you know that a person with Type E can disturb machines that work on electricity, and that the bad guys are out to use these powers.
Okay, cool. Kind of a shame though, your season previews were really interesting and useful.
And Mission-E I might check out then. If the general concept is the same, it should be good.
I’d have to agree with World Destruction. It had some fun bits, some fairly decent character designs (the main character and her bat’leth sword thing, in particular), and the premise seems to have some potential (the main character wants to destroy the world, not very heroic of her), but it just seems a bit generic in execution.
The bad guy Napoleon cats and faceless gun-toting assassins aren’t very fleshed out, even if the cats are good for a laugh. The cute bear character with the deep voice just made me go, wtf? And the less said about the weak and utterly useless male protagonist being dragged along by the heroine, the better.
The OP and ED sound like generic J-pop, though some of the background themes are alright. Decent production values for a first ep, but doubt the quality will hold up for long. The fact the show is tied to a video game makes me even more dubious.
This isn’t the first time that an anime has presented humans as a oppressed race (Gurren Lagann did it too; they too had animal-furries as the bad guys – coincidence?). Both shows are fantasy in as far as the far-fetched premise goes (granted Gurren Lagann is a mecha show), though I don’t know if you can call it traditional fantasy since WD features automatic rifles and modern-looking sailing ships.
Cats? Please tell me these are giant (elephant size giant) man-eating cats like out of that Sandman side story. That would be so awesome I don’t think I’d mind being oppressed. 😀
Auto Monster, the cats are less than half the height of the heroine. I don’t think we’ll see much of them again, though. They don’t seem to control the entirety of the world.
World Destruction may turn out fine, as long as they don’t resort to the protagonists deciding not to destroy the world because of the power of love or some shit. That would just be too pathetically obvious of a path, but unfortunately, that’s what the trailer was waxing.
Still waiting on subs for the other two.
i really looked forward to Natsume Yuujin-chou and i can say it disappoints only the animation could have been better but anyway for me it is one of the most promising anime of the season