天下制覇

Great Englishing, KyoAni.

Impressions:

In what is sure to be the shock of the century, the episode that everybody who viewed it at the early screening called a very very introductory episode, ended up being… a very dull introductory episode. Creating a hook doesn’t require some massive directorial gimmick or immediately beginning with explosions or even people dying right off the bat (although many of those things don’t hurt), but good god, sitting down and having a lecture about the entire premise of the show is just painful. I’d also like to point out that none of this bloody "LOOK AT HOW MUCH WE UNDERSTAND YOUR NEW INTERNET BUZZWORD" IS EVEN GODDAMNED NECCESSARY. Putting a label on things specifically so that you can then clobber the audience over the head with them repeatedly is just obnoxious. Do you think Cougar Town began with an entire minute explaining what a cougar is and then spent the entire episode going cougar-this and cougar-that? Actually, I have no idea, but I’d like to think not.

*ahem* It’s about what you’d expect from KyoAni lately otherwise. They’re trying far too hard to make the lead female be cute to actually make her cute, the lead male is the only possible person that can take care of her and complains about it the entire time, the animation is quite good, and everybody has variable-sized sausages for fingers. Unfortunately, almost all of the humor in the episode relies on bludgeoning the audience with how ‘zany’ their girl is. The show would be served a lot better by either reeling it in a little bit and making her an actual character instead of a transparent cloying machine, or taking the concept and running with it. I’d much rather see the two of them fight imaginary battles against vending machines with cardboard swords then watch one of them fight imaginary battles against vending machines while the other complains. That probably would’ve given the two of them a lot better chemistry instead of this fairly worn-out dynamic (especially for KyoAni).