天下制覇

Why didn’t he have a sign?

Impressions:

I believe I’ve mentioned my dislike for the anime antihook that it seems to love so dearly. Not that I’m saying every show needs to begin with a knock down, drag out, heart pounding gun battle, but it probably couldn’t hurt. If we use what the show flaunts in its opening minutes to try to hook the audience, then this one is proud as hell of A.) its backgrounds and B.) having CGI water effects. I feel like the rest of this post really kind of writes itself from there. That said, the backgrounds and water effects are nice, although they do stand out against the thick lined art as usual and I’ve never liked being able to see individual blades of grass fifty feet in the background while the foreground art is "fill with white paint bucket."

Production is pretty solid as GoHands always does for first episodes. I do rather like the sparse use of music for most of the episode to help sell the desolate wasteland they’re exploring. Eeeexcept that about fourteen minutes in, someone finds the synth and piano and after that, it kind of feels like an RPG. Where they fight a dog. After about four straight minutes of talking heads, CGI copters, and scenery shots. The dog fighting being about the only thing that happens in the episode is also a major issue with the episode. Even that’s pushing it as far as "things happening" are concerned. It was a very boring and uneventful episode all around. Even when the dog did attack, it was extraordinarily overanimated and kind of nausea inducing for the way the camera swung about through that brief 5 second affair. Japan also needs to get over its doll fetish. Yes. Dolls are creepy. The jarring stinger and rambling about them has already been done by everybody and their goddamned dog though and is really just lazy at this point.

Not a good start then unless "girls wandering around" is your notion of a compelling show. Even then, they hardly gave any real reason to care about them wandering around. I guess they sort of have personalities, but they’re difficult to tell apart at a glance (character design sin #01) and with nothing going on, they’re not really actors within their world, so could disappear next week without any effect. Anywho, ‘nice’ backgrounds and water effects aren’t enough to carry a show.

Next Episode:

More of the same apparently.