天下制覇

I miss Galaxy Angel.

Impressions:

You know, I should be counting how many shows begin with CG. At least in this case it was kind of fancy CG with a brief action scene containing no exposition. That lasted barely more than a minute before it was talking heads time. You’d also think with such well worn ground as "band of misfits becomes elite team," they’d know how to handle it a little more gracefully, like maybe, I don’t know… not relying on primarily exposition for selling that point instead of one mistake by one of them followed by three or four time as much effort on explaining how they’re all completely incompetent. I mean, the whole situation practically writes itself. I have no idea why you’d forego it for exposition. Or maybe have some kind of team catharsis, growth moment, or anything instead of being stood up in a line and asked their dream. That’s literally it before they’re sent out in their brand new shiny toys and instantly become the invincible heroes that as far as the narrative is concerned, they never really weren’t. Especially when the one that caused their loss earlier does the exact same thing that screwed things up at the start, but this time is in a super mech, so it works out fine. I feel like you’ve missed an important point here, Dogakobo.

There are also a number of tone issues, not the least of which are all the characters tossed into the episode to go "Here I am! I’m a cliche!" and then disappeared again. The biggest offender by far is the clumsy wacky girl tossed in I suspect mainly because they felt they had an obligation to half-ass some slapstick. She sticks out of the entire show like a swollen thumb, especially when ‘humorously’ barreling through swarms of enemies. The non-CG parts are also pretty aggressively mediocre. The CG fights are slick, no doubt, and the music’s solid, but the rest is by and large talking heads and staring at video screens. It’s clear where the budget went.

So it has issues. I don’t think they’ll be severe enough to deter most people, but it did a pretty poor job with what should have been a pretty by the numbers premise and there’s not really much else impressive here past the space CG, so I have trouble feeling particularly enthusiastic.

Next Episode:

More CG.