天下制覇

Welcome back, JC Staff. I missed you too.

Impressions:

Wow, is that OP irritating. The first of the three JC Staff shows this season, and it really is pretty impressive in its own right. JC Staff is generally known for being a pretty solid studio, but the introductory sequence was really nice for even them and the production values stay high throughout. It was a little disconcerting to see some reuse of animation, but that was for all of about two seconds, and shown as part of series action growth anyway. Hopefully it’s not a sign that Zero No Tsukaima won’t be getting a budget, but we’ll find out soon enough. Music was decent throughout, but nothing really grabbed or annoyed me.

The thing that will turn people off to the series though, is still the premise; adolescent girls in exo-suits. These aren’t mechs, mechs don’t frighten the shit out of me, and these things look like horrible parasite monsters strapped to little girls. Thankfully, there’s nowhere near the amount of fanservice as there was in the OVA, but there’s still a little bit of scuba diving and the like. The first episode was just the gathering of the forces, but since it had the action packed OVA predating it, I’m tentatively hopeful for the rest, especially since it really did a good job on Otoha’s background for this one.

All that said, I’m not sure I’ll blog it since I did enjoy Mushi-Uta’s first episode a bit more and I only have so much time in the day. It may come down to what the other raw watchers end up covering, but I’m really happy JC Staff’s action team is back in the fray after finishing up the Shana movie.

Opening Video