There’s a lot to like, but a lot not to as well. First of all, the setting seems pretty cool. Political conspiracies, wars, and Napoleonic dress-up games. But we don’t have to reach too far back in our memories for another series Bones produced with a good setting. Furthermore, note that the purple haired transvestite’s Geass emits purple butterflies. What is it with Bones, noitaminA and butterflies? Recall that the first episode of No. 6 was pretty exciting and had a cool setting, but then they forgot about all that until the ending. I’m concerned that Bones will do the same thing once again, and focus on this purple haired kid instead of the setting.
UN-GO is also reminiscent of another Bones series with a detective duo. UN-GO does serve much better as a mystery than Gosick: it isn’t completely obvious from the get-go who the murderer is. And unlike Phi-Brain, where the puzzles require solutions that are impossible to find with the information given, UN-GO does a good job at information control. The viewer is able to solve the mystery with the information given, but it requires a bit of thought, and becomes increasingly clear as the sleuthing continues.
The biggest problems, though, are that I’m not sold on the characters and am also not entirely sure what’s going on. I think the latter problem will fade away as the series progresses, so I’m more worried about the characters. The pink haired kid, especially, seems annoying (in both forms). The lead female seems fairly useless. The two detectives look promising though.
As for blogging this, we’ll see how the next episode goes. I’m not too keen on blogging three series on Thursday, so I may not pick this one up depending on the second episode.
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I’m not sure what I think about this show, but it isn’t a net positive. Like you said I appreciate the information control, but I felt like there wasn’t enough time devoted to the mystery to make it compelling. Also, I doubt that they’ll be able to make better mysteries if they focus on Inga and her special skill at all, though I can at least appreciate the show for getting its crazy supernatural shenanigans out in the beginning instead of at the very end like… well, No. 6. I do think that we could have a prime trainwreck on our hands if things do go south, though!
I think I’ll keep watching for now, though I’m pretty underwhelmed for this being noitaminA.
Agreed, it seems to detract from the mystery when they do all this thinking to solve the mystery, and end up solving it with magic powers. Kind of defeats the purpose.
Hopefully this won’t fail quite as badly as No. 6. It seems more episodic in nature, so it will hopefully more difficult to make this a complete disaster.
I agree on the mystery. After reading QED, I sort of find this one … bland. Then we also have this problem with regards to mysteries and Anime: There isn’t enough time to develop the story in just one episode. It would had been better if they stetch it for 2 episodes to make at least an impact. I’m not sold on this aswell.
I think that problem should get better, if it isn’t solve entirely. In the first episode they have to introduce all of the characters, but in the latter episodes they won’t have to spend time on that. So there should be more time for the mystery.
Pretty awesome start…its probably too fast, but that is better than dragging. Compared to Gosick, Milky Holmes, Dantalian, and Kamisama no Memochou, this looks impressive so far. I like Aki Toyosaki as Inga…she was great in Yuru Yuri and Manyu Hikenchou
I’m not sure I’d say it compares to Milky Holmes. 🙂 But it’s definitely off to a better start than all the others you mentioned.
Oh, crap, she’s the same voice actor as Chitose. It fits haha. The voice is great, but I’m not sure about the character him/herself.