天下制覇

How is this not a fighting game?

Impressions:

The character designs really make this show hard to take seriously. They’re like the bad crossbreed of something out of Jump mashed up with some kind of particularly strange fighting game. I mean, come on, there’s a naked incubus, a ninja in a baseball cap, and an Indian guru waving around a plate of curry.  How am I supposed to take this seriously? Am I supposed to take this seriously? And then there’s the breasts. Hoo boy, the breasts. Censored for even a grope at them despite this airing at 3am on a Saturday night. What could be happening under that bright light? I know they were grabbed, and I know they’re moving… but what could be going on! You’re a strange station, MBS. Even without that though, the lack of artistic consistency between the designs (not to mention the CG mechs too) is a little disconcerting and also leads to a lot of particularly janky shots where people’s mouths aren’t exactly positioned correctly on their faces.

That aside, very similar first episode to Majikoi’s (or to be more exact, Nanoha StrikerS), although judging by the OP, the main characters barely appeared in it. There were fewer (none, really) stills, but a fair bit more random exposition about the school and world in general than Majikoi’s, but the massive cast was characterized by how they fight and how they went after the teacher instead of having Useless Male Lead simply narrate it all out. The most let-down that I was by the action was a cut when they finally had her cornered to all the students laid out. That does leave not a whole ton of direction for the show at the moment besides Touri showing up and giving his fairly corny speech at the end about love and porn and peace, but that’s fine for a first episode. Not that I’m nursing a grudge against anything in particular, but it was exciting and fun, not minutes upon minutes of monotone voices against a postcard image. If it can add meaning, story, and dramatization to what it’s already shown by developing everything further, then fan-bloody-tastic.

I do have to admit that I’m a little underwhelmed by Touri. Given how smug he looks and how he just walked up to the teacher and groped her, I was assuming he was going to trick her into losing her cool and showing her up, but instead he just got kicked through a building like a chump after a particularly corny speech. Most of the rest of the middle was very well done though. The fighting was well-animated along with some clever writing accompanying it that explained what she did without getting overly drawn out. So I’d say that it was a very good start for Horizon. The art could use some tuning and the character designs definitely are… bizarre at best, and I can easily see them as jarring, but like Majikoi, it was an action packed episode that was plenty of fun to sit and watch. Hopefully the story and main characters won’t drag it down from here.