天下制覇

Please stop screaming at me.

Impressions:

So, I seem to remember being impressed by slick animation and action sequences in the trailers. Apparently all they could muster for the first episode was some horse riding and spiderman swinging through trees for about twenty seconds before the OP even played. After that? Our old friends, shaky cam and speedlines! Good god. Old woman wailing in the street? Shaky cam and speedlines. Titans breaking down a wall? Shaky cam and speedlines. Mother geting eaten? Shaky cam and slow mo. And you know what would have also been nice? If almost every single character wasn’t screaming the entire time. The lead was the worst by far. Good god. It was just Yuuki Kaiji using his most petulant voice possible. Sure, the wailing opera in the background toward the end probably didn’t help things be any less excessively dramatic, but my ears hurt after this was over. Just a little contrast would be nice. When you’re using the exact same direction, screaming, and aghast looks on their faces for everything from childhood bullies to pissy sons arguing with their parents to random street anguish to two-story tall devouring monsters you should be rethinking things.

So, uh, yeah. Color me extremely disappointed. None of the action promised was present, the first half was slow as snot, the characters just made my ears ring, and even when things finally kicked in toward the last third, it still didn’t do much impressive. Unless you count a lot of disturbingly defined CG anatomy model asses as impressive. They didn’t even nail the drama either, so far overshooting it that it became a joke at times. A visceral jarring scene would be his mother’s head suddenly chewed off or something similar. A ridiculous scene is a 30 second slow motion affair complete with "Nooooooooooooooooo!" Or my favorite, when the big hero goes running up to fight one. Gets one look at it, a pan over it as it stands there rock still, blanches, turns tail and runs. It’s like the scene was straight out of a gag comedy, but we’re instead supposed to take it as him witnessing the horror and futility of… something. I don’t know. That would have been a good time for him or someone to be viciously eaten to actually make that convincing. Not be horrified by its terrifying ability to stand there.

Next Episode:

Titans and flashbacks.