天下制覇

This is a whole ‘nother level though.

Impressions:

One man can only take so much pan flute before he begins pondering the unthinkable. I actually welcomed the Disney Violins during the fishing scene just because it meant no more pan flute for a while. On the upside though, the visual direction is much stronger here. The way the world is visually presented in general does mesh well with the lyrical and airy music to create a cohesive lighthearted world that keeps the protagonist’s hangups just on the side of comical instead of melodramatic. The art does tend to be fairly rough, but especially with the character art, it does a good job of complimenting the atmosphere and it’s… and I hate myself for using this word… quite evocative of the characters themselves. You c

On the other hand, it’s the exact same noitaminA antisocial-X-meets-wacky-Y-who-will-teach-him-to-be-true-to-himself thing as half the noitaminA shows seem to be. This MC is particularly annoying thanks to social anxiety that flares up whenever the writing deems it most convenient. He successfully introduces himself to the entire class with little more issues than an awkward monlogue at the end of it where everybody just stares at each other for 20 seconds waiting for the voices in his head to shut up. Then a girl smiles at him which freaks him out so much that he jumps out of his desk and cowers against the wall while hallucinating that he’s drowning. The visuals do help a little bit, and the drowning imagery did work a lot better in the other places, but there was just going from bad cliche to worse weirdness.