Rental Magica #02 — Forcing the Fansub Karaoke Community to Work

October 14th, 2007

Scrolling and drifting text. Fun!

I’m still waffling between whether I want to pick up this or Jyushin Enbu to accompany the erstwhile Prism Ark on Sundays. I had envisioned an easy time with PA since I know the source well, but… apparently not. For today though, I’ve driven 5 hours, and there’s an OVA about maid robots or something also on my plate… and speaking of plates, I haven’t eaten dinner, so just quickie thoughts here and an excuse to post the OP.

Impressions:

This was quite a bit better as an introductory episode as we see Honami and Itsuki’s past together and when Adi first came to their school. Itsuki and Honami were wandering around an old mansion when they were attacked by a demon. Itsuki pushed Honami out of the way and the monster attacked him instead, ending up as his demonic eye. We also get to see Adi be even more of a bitch by attempting to physically force Itsuki into signing over Astral to her.

Animation and action was down significantly this episode, though the art remained decent enough. I do like the text scrolling at strange angles in the OP and ED, though I pity the fansubbers who get stuck typesetting that. I guess that the main thing that’s keeping me from really enjoying the show is that I really don’t like Itsuki at all. The “nice guy/coward who becomes a fierce warrior in the corner thereby seducing all nearby producers of estrogen” has been done so many times over in everything from Trigun to Kodocha. He really doesn’t bring much… if anything… to the table.

Still, the OP does hint that he’ll have a rival with a dragon or something at some point and it’d be neat to see an actual antagonist… at least moreso than watching Adi and Honami continue to spit venom at the other. The OP also has some kind of fighting priest that has yet to be introduced and all action is good action.

Rental Magica OP

Posted in Rental Magica | 5 Comments »

5 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Sniper says:
    October 14, 2007 at 8:45 pm

    Its all flash back huh. Too Boring

  • Lana says:
    October 14, 2007 at 9:13 pm

    Aren’t the words that scroll on screen in the opening the song lyrics? I’d say the fansubbers’ life just got easier since they can now know for sure what the song is saying.

  • Aroduc says:
    October 14, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    I started watching the words go by… then noticed that the letter at the nexus of the two lines would sometimes change or disappear as they scrolled through it and gave up trying to follow what was being written entirely. My ability to quickly read Japanese is pretty abysmal anyway.

  • Anonymous says:
    October 15, 2007 at 10:11 am

    Think its really interesting when they show what some parts of the anime truly means as they give some sort of summary of the stuff that comes out so its really quite interesting really

  • Raiden Kitsune says:
    October 19, 2007 at 12:02 am

    Hmm. Still too soon to judge Itsuki too harshly, I think. He doesn’t seem like a great character yet, but I’ve seen more than one anime start with boring, shallow characters and turn them into so much more by the end. Mai-Hime and Kiddy Grade definitely come to mind, and I’m -very- glad I didn’t give up on either of those after the first few episodes.

    So far, RM has it’s share of flaws, but it still has a lot of promise too. It’s going to take a few more episodes to see if it has a chance of going anywhere.

    Of course, I’ll love it anyway, just for putting Kana Ueda in a lead role.