天下制覇

Tamura Yukari makes an annoying Kugimiya Rie.

Niconico’s stream apparently decided to crap out at 65%, likely from the site getting hammered, so as I wait for it to download at a stunning 15 kb/s. I have already watched it though (yet more of nothing happened, Kariya gets wormed, everyone summons their Servants), so in the meantime, here’s this.

Impressions:

Oh hey, some visuals with a little life, although it is about what I expect from Silver Link. Although I question just how every single piece of exposed skin can be that shiny. Are these people all coated with a thin sheen of oil?  Probably, yes. Japan is a strange place. Unlike Fat Zorro, I’ve got no complaints with the visual here. It does abuse a lot of the same tricks as Bakatest did, such as random closeups with a patterened pastel overlay, but compared to… well… nothing, it’s a vast improvement. The music is also… interesting, though it does stand out at times, which is never something you want.

Still though, most of the episode wasn’t that great. It was mostly just an introduction to Fear, which is fine, but she was trying my patience at times and neither Haruaki nor Konoha had much of a personality. It wasn’t until Fear started trying to clean up by ravaging the hom ethat it actually got pretty fun. Most of the first 15 minutes or so was extremely generic with Silver Link’s visuals being all that stood out. Random naked girlfriend, jealous childhood friend, put-upon main character who if you squint, could be mistaken for Bakatest’s Yoshii. He does have a little more of a spine and general self-awareness than most leads, but not much. They also only barely touched on the darker/adventure side that one of the promos showed after the ED played too.

So all in all, it was an okay first episode. I was more engaged with it than with Fate’s, but I can’t say that it blew me away or that I’ve got any burning urge right now to see the next one. Too much of it was just very very generic with the characters being more annoying than likeable. Fear did have a few moments when she wasn’t just yelling her catchphrase, but not enough of them. It really strikes me a lot as if Silver Link had taken over Dragon Crisis given the general similarities of the world and setup. Perhaps we’ll see how well they can incorporate the serious side of the story next week.