天下制覇

 

In a world where it never stopped being 1984…

Amagi’s broadcast was pre-empted by volleyball. Yes, volleyball. Its first episode will be airing on Monday the 6th at around 4am Japan time. Yes, that’s late even for late night anime. Episodes after that will be back to Thursdays (in theory). This was also delayed by an hour due to volleyball, which just goes to show where Japan’s priorities lie.

Impressions:

Boy, when Sunrise tries to package nostalgia, it’s go big or go home. I wouldn’t be surprised if they scraped together the music and sound effects from the cutting room of various 80s Gundam things. Which does kind of fall apart a bit when they zoom up along the corny CGI space elevator. It does beg the question of what’s supposed to appeal to a being like me, who feels no nostalgia for Gundam or the 80s whatsoever. I’ve been there. It’s filthy. Is it supposed to be the cheerleaders? The lectures where they explicitly say that they’re just reciting things, thus not only reciting facts without context, but in fact making the recitation of facts without context take even longer? Or is it the big CGI tentacle jutting up like a great, big, mechanical, spiked dick?

I think most disappointing was their dedication to just how retro they wanted this to look (giant phalluses aside). To wit, the action looked like it had come from the early 80s as well. It… wasn’t impressive, and at one point devolved into just a series of speedlines, random teleportations into nebulae, and speedlines inexplicably decorated with sparklies. Which is all really weird since while the art style is obviously shooting for rougher and sketchier to match the oldness (aside from everyone’s bouncy and flowing locks of hair), it’s pretty well animated as long as giant robots aren’t involved. I’d have thought giant robots were the attraction here, but apparently I was mistaken.

I guess with Amagi off today, I might as well just go on ahead to episode 2 of the hour premiere and save overall thoughts for when I’m overall done with today. Tally ho!