Tokyo Ravens #20 — Popping the Zit

February 25th, 2014

 

All those flashbacks and still not saving enough money to animate the action well.

Impressions:

You know, one of the dangers of stretching crap out for six months is that the weight of previously (sort of) important things is vastly diluted, and no number of flashbacks, recaps, or awful insert song montages are going to reset the clock on that. The entire first half did a pretty good job of getting my bile churning, although my guts start rumbling anyway any time I hear “awakening” in Japanese. Well, that, flashbacks, exposition, and CGI, three other things this episode certainly didn’t lack for either.

I guess it could have been an okay episode if not for mediocre at best execution, particularly the pacing. Stopping to remind and reiterate probably did more to kill any tension or excitement than just ignoring it could have done to damage things in other ways. It was pretty rushed regardless, with all the feeeelings stuff flowing into the CGI Mecha Crowsuit like a pickup might flow into the backseat of a volkswagen beetle. Well, and the budget ran out too, which went hilariously awful for Ogreboy. At least the main characters were actually involved in events again in some capacity besides “cheerleader” or “designated gasper from the sidelines.” Luckily, Natsume had a long… long time to think about things to make sure everyone knew exactly how the traditional “tongue down the throat” cure-all was going to go. There’s literally just a minute straight of her doing nothing but explaining her feelings. In the middle of getting shot at. Bad anime! Bad!

Posted in Tokyo Ravens | 10 Comments »

10 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Dave Baranyi says:

    Wouldn’t it be great if they left her dead? But there’s no chance that will happen, particularly now that the hero now has God Powers.

    And now Loli General has got to be a bit worried because every other girl who has kissed the hero has died…

    Oh well, In guess that we’ll have to put up with an angst-and-guilt episode next.

  • FlameStrike says:

    Blargh one of the things I really don’t like about this show’s action scenes is all the STANDING AROUND they do. Well I can tolerate long ass magic chants since that’s par for course in Omyou magic things. However, shouldn’t Natsume have done SOMETHING during the time Hokuto was keeping Green Coat Hobo busy and Harutora was spouting golden sparks like a fireworks for 5 minutes? Also there was the aforementioned thinking and contemplation time while getting shot at by kill crow danmaku. At least they should do some token dogging animation while she’s thinking.

    Eh don’t get me wrong, I like this show and think it’s very entertaining, but real issues are real issues. Tokyo Ravens has always had a problem pacing it’s action sequences. x.x What’s left is that super innocent omfg diabities inducing sugary relationship full of blushes that Bakatora and Natsume have going. >.<

  • electra_doll says:

    It just that the manga is bad, so it turned out into a bad anime. Whoa, what a shock…

    • asano says:

      this is based on a light novel.
      the manga adaptation is actually doing the best it could … not to mention it’s still far behind ( right before the CG spiders attack at school )

  • asano says:

    man , the animation of the half ogre getting thrown by mutobe made me LOL so hard I can’t believe we’re in 2014 XD

  • holy crap says:

    Btw guys, Natsume is actually dead… not gonna come back next episode

    • asano says:

      It’s anime, anything is possible :D.
      However, you sound like you read the novels.
      If you didn’t I apologize in advance, but if you did, please tell me: what is it that makes you feel the urge to spoil?

  • Rayz says:

    do you know the theme song of flashback scene in eps 20?
    anyway thanks :)