天下制覇

Japan teaches me strange things.

This is another in the Young Animator projects like Death Billiards and Ryo, the latter of which put me to sleep and so was not even worth a sarcastic mention. IE, traditionally 95% arthouse schlock.

Impressions:

This is somewhat interesting and worth a watch though, even if it’s quite a bit childish. Not that that’s a bad thing necessarily, aside from all the screaming that seems to accompany everything Japanese and child-related, but I can’t say that I didn’t sigh when the know-it-all rich genius girl showed up with disdain for the protagonist and her wacky asocial friends and everyone slotted themselves into roles and a story so well traveled that the grooves in the road are by now ditches. I know it’s only 20 minutes and that’s not enough to explore the full range of human pathos, but after the flashy start, they really didn’t need to showcase that stuff. Hell, they probably could’ve jumped straight to the brooms and dodged it entirely. Also, while I’m already in curmudgeon-mode, I should also note that my eye was drawn to a girl in the background of one scene who was taking the world’s longest sip of tea. It was a little disquieting, to say the least.

Almost everything else it did though was quite well-done. The kind of animation that’s reserved mostly for high end theatrical stuff, amusing enough (although again, it’s aimed a little low, dissolving minotaurs into bubbling puddles of blood and entrails aside), a very strong score, and good lord a magical setting where nobody felt the need to prattle on for three quarters of the time about how magical magic is, or some BS nonsense about how it all works. I ask for so little these days and I so rarely get it from anime. It’s easily worth watching for the animation alone through the whole thing. I will admit that the art could have probably used a little finer detail in a lot of places, but it’s energetic, expressive, and fits the fairy tale setting excellently. Everything you really want from animation.

So yeah, it’s neat enough to be worth your time and depressingly remind you what animation can be just before jumping into the new season and it trying to pass off pans, stills, and pictures of walls as animation.