High School DxD #01 — Operatic Deaths

January 5th, 2012

 

Good god. Shut up already and die.

Aah, good ol’ ATX evening broadcasts. When will they show up on the internet? Who knows! Also, Milky Holmes’s new episode did air today, but was identical to the pre-airing except that it included an actual preview for the next episode. Oh, Twenty…

Impressions:

First off, just because I know this is a burning question in small minds, since it’s an AT-X broadcast, it’s not censored much. I just choose my caps tactfully. There was at least one random sunbeam over a crotch though. That was a little bizarre.

On a more unfortunate note, the primary thing this episode did was engender hatred for every single male character, even the angel trying to stab Issei in the back repeatedly. Nobody will ever shut the hell up. Even when stabbed and bleeding to death, he keeps ranting and ranting and ranting, narrating every single thing that’s happening right in front of his eyes. About the only time he stops is when he’s unconscious, at which point every other character begins narrating. Show, goddamn it, stop telling. If you want to get across the brutality of a visceral act like a sucking gut wound, the way to go about it is to not have the recipient literally spend two entire minutes lying on the ground talking about it. That’s almost the entire length of one Recorder & Satchel episode.

Everything otherwise is unimpressive as well. Mediocre to poor animation, even for what you could charitably call the fights, and exactly the kind of direction you’d expect from shows of this ilk. There’s also a somewhat strange preponderance of violins, as I believe groups of violins are called. I chuckled at the closeup of a nipple that basically filled the entire screen at least, wondering what the other stations were going to do about censoring that, but that’s about it. The action was nonexistent and the characters that had any significant screentime pretty much all irritated me. The draw, I’m sure, is supposed to be the girls anyway, which makes this episode’s focus on Issei’s craphole friends all the more mystifying. 

Given the timeslot, I’ll give it another week, but next time, I’m making sure to hit the wine first. This was a pretty horrible start for what should have been a very braindead, but formulaic show. Pulling focus away from the one potential draw it might have had to listen to losers whine and/or narrate what’s happening right in front of them was not the way to successfully slot itself into that formula.

Preview:

Issei yells.

Posted in High School DxD | 10 Comments »

10 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Benigmatica says:

    So what you’re saying that there’s no exposed tits on this series?

  • Nanaya says:

    Bloody HELL are they padding this plotline out. A quick morbidly curious look at its novel shows that everything up to screencap 81 took place in a 5ish paragraph prologue. And they may have made up everything before screen 65 to fill time, unless I somehow missed entire pages. Screens 82+ were about 5 lines into the next chapter. Which apparently had a lot of overreactive shouting.

    So, pacing does not bode well, even for this type of series where the standards are already so, so high. It’s amazing how you can almost physically feel your interest in something curl up and go back to sleep.

  • ToshiroNoRonin says:

    Is it just me, or does one of Issei’s loser friends look an awful lot like former US President George W. Bush (see Screencap 7)? And was that a conscious decision?

  • animedemon says:

    o.o this going to be shown on AT-X right

  • MR.KLAC says:

    well after watching yea all we need is now a morrigan aensland expy on it.

    give really might stick with it for now.

  • Anonymous says:

    You missed a spot right here:

    http://tenka.seiha.org/images3/dxd1/18.jpg

  • ark noir says:

    are they finding more contrived money spinning ways of enteraining the R+V fans

  • Pata says:

    IT’S LIKE WATCHING A 2003 LOW BUDGET HAREM ANIME, how nostalgic.

    It’s only been the first episode and they’re all jerky, atleast their breast bounces and have detailed nipples. Half the budget to do that and totally worth it.

  • The Phantom says:

    The uncensored blood was ok, so long they keep the violence up I will follow this, the story settings are lame though and no space to improve either, may drop it depending on next episode.