天下制覇

How do you sleep with stuffed animals like that?

Impressions:

This was significantly better than I expected, particularly since I’m pretty sure that I fell asleep during the 10 minute OVA, but since I am a contrary soul, let’s start with what it did not do well. The art is a good place to begin. It certainly can’t be mistaken for a high budget show, and it’s particularly bad at long-distance shots. The art has a tendency to… how to put it… devolve. And the character art isn’t exactly that great to begin with, especially compared to the background. That’s an old complaint of mine, but I feel like I haven’t said it much lately. When I can distinguish invidivual leaves on a tree, but a character’s skirt has turned into a formless blob around their waste, there are some artistical consistency issues.

If you do like these kinds of shows, or the already released OVA, I think you’ll really enjoy this. The music is very well done and fits the tone of the show excellently, and the OP in particular is quite nice, and even with the weak art, the characters are all expressive (not that I’m still grinding an axe or anything), especially Kou. Fuu could stand to cut down on the self-narration, but I realize that’s part and parcel with these kinds of slice of life shows. This iteration of it also has a little more depth than the OVA too, although this episode was just about Fuu moving with most of the rest of the cast not really seen.

So anyway, it’s still not my kind of show, so I doubt I’ll follow it past this and I don’t think it’s worth checking out if you don’t normally like these kinds of shows, but from my vast experience of watching the first episode of a ton of them, I think it was definitely one of the better first episodes. That probably doesn’t really mean much of anything though. I still prefer things with at least a little bit more humor and actual story to them, but this didn’t get itself inappropriately bogged down in its melodrama, plus the music did a great job creating the exact kind of atmosphere that the director and writer were going for.