天下制覇

Good lord is that title irritating to write.

Impressions:

This is basically what I feared A-1 would do with this show. Well, besides turning it into another Xenoglossia. It’s just so completely soulless. They’re going for a kind of Office-like presentation, complete with unvoiced pseudo-protagonist cameraman talking to them constantly, but that just makes it feel even even more like they just took lines straight out of the game, doing little more than replacing the CG with animation. There are hardly any attempts at humor, drama, or anything. It’s just the characters talking about themselves. Way to… uh… sell the brand? This reminded me of one of an awful cash-in OVA that’s just a quick flash over every single character doing their signature line or catchphrase before moving on to the next so the fans can clap their hands and squeal.

Perhaps most disappointing is how poorly music is used here. Or perhaps it’s better to say, how music is hardly used at all. Come on, A-1, it’s Im@s. There’s just… almost nothing at all. Not even BGM. This is the one show that begs for insert songs everywhere and they wouldn’t be obtrusively out of place, so of course, nothing. Just endless wide open silence. It’s competently made, but that’s a far cry from being visually interesting. At least Uta Pri had some style and character to it. Style and character that I could not help but make fun of, but substance provides character while this is just… time-consuming space.

Maybe it’ll get better now that it’s done with the character introductions, but Thursdays are a busy day and there was nothing here that indicated to me that it was going to suddenly develop… well… anything besides just the characters talking to the camera about themselves. You may as well dig up some gameplay clips from the game itself. There’s already hours of that stuff out and you’ll probably get to actually hear some music too.

Preview:

Suddenly… nothing!