Phantom World #09 — The Play’s the Thing

March 2nd, 2016

 

…Have I ever seen anime put on Hamlet?

Impressions:

Well, I guess they animated a little bit more than they have for the past couple episodes, so that's… something. But on the other hand, this episode was half preparing to put on a play, then putting on a play. The blindingly obvious way to improve this episode would have been to just pretend like it was actually a story in the Edo period the entire way and only reveal that it was a play at the very end. At least that way, they could've preserved the (non) mystery of what was going on instead of boring us all right from the very start. Oh, and the usual issues of no struggle, no catharsis/epiphany, no triumph, resulting in a flat monotone of emotion in the episode from start to end with only a small blip when it came time to punch some magic ninja mooks.

Anyway, the crippling problem this show has of its characters being personalityless set dressing is only brought into even sharper focus when you have bland characters attempting to play bland characters and the whole thing collapses from there. Well, and also that the characters are bland and have no personality, so the tried and true method of shaking things up, even if just for an episode, by thrusting them into a different scenario and against different things doesn't work since they still all act in the same nonexistent ways. Well, and that this is like the fourth time they've suddenly found themselves 'trapped' in a different world, except this time, it's more pretend than ever.

Posted in Phantom World | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • dark says:

    the loli & his bear seen out of place there, it was quite boring <,<

  • LUNI_TUNZ says:

    I greatly prefer when the show goes to weird locations. If you’re not going to give me interesting stories for your characters, or ignore whatever convoluted stories you did set-up (Useless Green-Hair’s obsessive parents or whatever)at least make the settings as interesting as possible.

  • algorithm says:

    It’s getting more and more obvious that this is a project that only exists as an excuse for Kyoani animators to have fun.