天下制覇

 

Show’s over. Everyone go home.

Wouldn’t be a new season without someone an episode or two accidentally being leaked early. I’ve started to miss that what with China lately being the traditional leak source and me being at work during those more minor leaking periods. Oh well! Frees me up from having to turn on Cartoon Network on Saturday night.

Impressions:

Come on, Japan. Would it really kill you to try to start things off at least a little exciting? Yeah, yeah. The initial “Here’s our premise” quick exposition dump did have the air of “In 1972, a crack commando unit stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator, like sands in the hourglass, you can win Ben Stein’s Money!” series introductory schtick, but that doesn’t excuse the 5-6 minutes afterward which can basically be summed up as 50% straight up info dumping and 50% mediocre boobies standup comedy between a guy and his robot. It gains a couple points for having multiple people in the conversation instead of it all taking place inside the protagonists’s head, and maybe a couple more for being a little witty at times, but ye lords was it not a hook in any way.

About the last quarter is when things seemed to finally kick in, right at the corny explosion thing, which created this weird flow of the animation getting less and less before… that… and then all of a sudden every yen they had thrown at the animators for the next few minutes. If only the rest of the episode looked like the last few minutes did (or the part right before the CM break to a slightly lesser/short extent), although I probably would have been more impressed if I hadn’t already seen most of that in the promos. There were a few moments here and there otherwise, and the direction especially is certainly a step or eight over most shows, but far too much of the episode can be summarized as “Dandy shoots the crap with robot/alien.” That’s supposed to be the soggy paste that should be holding the wacky adventures/Space Hooters tour together, not the main course itself.

It was all right, I guess. Direction and comedy are better than most, and Bones did flex their animation muscles a few times, but it badly needs at least the barest structure to give things at least a sense of purpose which this episode almost completely lacked. I’d definitely rather watch a second episode of this than either of the other two Sunday shows that have pre-aired so far, but it’s not the exciting, wacky, nonstop space adventure the promos were pimping out either.

Next Episode:

Space ramen.