All posts by draggle

Blood C — First Impression

Impressions,

In this episode, Saya goes to school, fawns over her father, and kills a flying statue in the middle of a puddle.

Everything about this show screams Clamp. Yukiko runs a cafe next door, Doumeki, Maru and Moro are in Saya’s class, everyone has skinny wobbly legs, and the main character is a goody-two-shoes with a daddy complex. I kind of wish  Clamp would try something new, especially in regards to the characters.

I haven’t watched anything else from the Blood franchise, so that may be part of the reason, but I had no idea why Saya was fighting that crustacean statue. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. Still, this battle scene was the best part of the episode. The animation was excellent, and the statue thing actually used its claws in interesting ways. It felt like a battle against a lobster instead of a battle against a human in a lobster suit. The battle might not have made the most sense: Saya’s head definitely should have come off, and at first her sword just bounced off the statue’s shell, but later it cut right through it. But all in all an entertaining fight.

My biggest problem with this show (aside from my aversion to Clamp) is Saya. She helps old ladies, picks up trash in the street, is clumsy, and in love with her dad (and probably with Doumeki too). The most popular guy in the school is hitting on her. She’s just… boring. Ok, she goes and kills monsters with a katana in the middle of the night, but her day life is going to need some more spice if it’s going to keep my interest.

Now for some blog news: I’m going to be out of the country for the next week and a half. Unfortunately, this coincides with the start of the new season, and I won’t have a good enough internet connection (or the time) to download and watch any new shows. So there won’t be any of these first impressions posts while I’m gone. I’m planning to do an aggregate first impressions post of everything when I get back. I’ve also queued up a few reviews and other posts to publish while I’m away, so the site won’t be completely empty during this time.

Ro-Kyu-Bu! — First Impressions

Impressions,

The above shot pretty much sums it all up. A high school boy is blackmailed into coaching an elementary school girl’s basketball team after his own team is suspended for a year following the team captain’s elopement with an elementary schooler. This doesn’t seem like the best plan to recover the team’s good standing.

The coach’s new team tries to win him over by dressing up as maids, calling him onii-chan, and showing him their undergarments. There are long shower scenes. The girls all conspire to raise their coach’s “affection level”.

The story actually looks like it might have some potential. The girls seem to have some sort of conflict with the boys at their school, and need to win the prefectural tournament in a month for some reason. The short basketball segments weren’t bad. And the coach’s family and classmates seem interesting. Of course, this is all assuming you can get past the rampant pedophilia. I wasn’t able to, and don’t plan on continuing with Ro-Kyu-Bu.

Hidan no Aria 11 + 12 — Gurgling Vampiric Minotaur

Hidan no Aria,

Seriously, what was up with that final boss? Was that supposed to be a laugh or a roar? It sounded like he was gurgling water, although I’m fairly certain that wasn’t the intention…

The eleventh episode consisted of Kinji and Aria infiltrating a mansion and stealing Riko’s rosary. It was mainly an excuse for meido fanservice.

In the final episode, after receiving the rosary on the top of a skyscraper, Riko reveals that she will betray Kinji and Aria and kill them. Then Riko gets stabbed in the back and stomped on by her teacher. Who proceeds to transform into a gurgling vampiric minotaur. Kinji falls off the roof, and Riko jumps off as well to save him with her strip-parachute. Everyone combines their powers to shoot all of the monster’s four weak points at once. Kinji pulls a William Tell and bounces his bullet off Aria’s in midair to hit the right points. Riko jumps off the roof in her underwear and flies off with her parachute. Aria beats up Kinji some more. The End.

This episode was so bad it was funny. I’ve already mentioned the final boss, which was the “best” part. We also have Kinji’s miraculous marksmanship: he can bounce bullets off of each other in mid-flight, and he has already mastered Reki’s wolf-paralysis technique after seeing it once (and he can even do two wolves simultaneously!).  Then we have Riko’s strip-parachute, which either has some hidden rocket boosters or defies all laws of physics by carrying her from near ground level to well above a skyscraper. And Aria knows that the gurgling vampiric minotaur is Count Dracula because… well, it’s obvious, right?

So clearly, this show didn’t cover all of the original source material… but they still didn’t do too well at making it all come together in the end. There was no Shirayuki in the final arc. Reki and Jean d’Arc never mattered at all. The last episode introduced Kinji’s ex-girlfriend (?) for no apparent reason. The final bad guy was their teacher, but I’m not even sure we ever knew his name. All in all, it seemed like the creators were just making stuff up as they went along.

Steins; Gate 13 — Time’s Up

Steins; Gate,

Wow. In my eyes, this episode managed to even surpass the previous one. Okabe kept going back in time to save Mayushii, and failed a total of three times. For the first time, she was shot by Moeka, as we saw in the previous episode. The second time she is run over by Moeka’s car after Okabe forgets the bomb threats. The final time, she is pushed into the path of the subway train by Mr. Braun’s daughter.

Okabe needs to slow down and think. For all the time he spent telling everyone to trust him, he could have just told them what was actually happening and gotten some help. And for goodness sake, why doesn’t he talk to part-time warrior? Especially since he now knows that she’s actually a warrior. She probably knows more about what’s going on than he does. I think he’ll probably gain his sense soon enough though.

I mentioned a while ago that Mayushii seemed to be one of the weakest characters, but this is no longer the case. The relationship between her and Okabe is excellent, seeing how she’s willing to follow Okabe around with no idea of what’s happening. The flashback about how Okabe took Mayushii hostage was very well done.

This episode seemed to lend credence to my theory that there’s something special about Mayushii. She mentioned earlier to Okabe that he didn’t needed her anymore, and something certainly seems determined to keep her away from him. Okabe seeing her in the alleyway reaching towards the star was suggestive as well.

I still think that CERN may be more interested in killing Mayushii than in capturing the others— when Mayushii was killed, Moeka placed a call to tell someone of her death. Also, Moeka shot Christina. If CERN’s goal was to get information about the time machine from them, this wouldn’t be a very smart move. Although given the situation, they might have had to prioritize preventing Okabe from switching timelines.

But my biggest question is why Mayushii died the final time in the subway. Her death that time didn’t seem to have anything to do with CERN. There’s the possibility it’s merely a coincidence, but I doubt it. There may be a deeper reason that Mayushii keeps dying than CERN’s involvement. Something to do with her watch stopping, perhaps, unless that’s only some overly obvious symbolism. It could be fate, but I’m hoping for a more interesting reason.

One thing doesn’t fit for me in this whole ordeal: why does Okabe even need Christina’s new memory transfer invention? Didn’t he keep all his memories from the old parallel universes when they sent the cellphone messages because of his seeing Steiner ability? He even mentioned that it felt different since he didn’t get a cellphone message. But didn’t he keep his memories before too? So why doesn’t he send a message to more than three hours in the past to have more time to escape?

The World God Only Knows II Review — 6.5 / 10.0

Reviews,

I really like The World God Only Knows’ manga, but the animated adaptation has fallen flat for me. One of the reasons, I feel, is that a lot of the humor has been lost in the transition to television. The creators of the TV show seem to think that capturing the girls is actually important: in the manga, it comes across more as simply a device (and a stupid one at that) to make fun of Keima and galges, at least until the latter chapters which this series hasn’t gotten to. I don’t care about the girls Keima is capturing, I want to see what idiotic things Keima will do. How is it even possible to take luring out loose souls to stuff it into a giant vacuum bottle seriously? The only part of this season that I found funny was the last episode, especially the Gundam parody.

The second issue I see with the anime is the pacing. It just feels like they could tell the entire story in half the time. Do they really need three episodes for every single girl, especially when they aren’t using the time to make me laugh about Katsuragi? They seem to feel the need to dedicate at least one episode to each girl’s internal monologue about her problems. This is said so often I’ll risk sounding trite, but “show, don’t tell.”

Lastly, the characterizations of Keima and Elsie seem off to me. Particularly Elsie: in the manga she is a complete joke whose only valuable functions are holding the capturing bottle and drooling over fire trucks. Here, again, the creators seem to want to take her seriously. Part of the problem is that she’s even more annoying when she actually has a voice. For Keima, again, they try to take him too seriously, but another issue is his casting. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but his voice just doesn’t fit my image of him.

Whining about how the manga is better aside, the biggest problems are that the show just isn’t all that funny, drags on and on, and in terms of a plot, nothing really happens that isn’t reset within three episodes. There are some good points to the series, just don’t set your expectations too high. The second season was better than the first, if only for the addition of Haqua. If it’s an option, I’d recommend reading the manga over watching the anime.

  • Plot / Script – 6 / 10 – Too slow and not funny enough.
  • Characters – 7 / 10 – God is not extreme enough, Elsie is annoying, all the supporting characters get a few episodes and get ditched.
  • Production – 6 / 10 – Very underwhelming.
  • Overall – 6.5 / 10

Recommendations – Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Welcome to the NHK