天下制覇

All bloggers to keyboards and… HYPE!

New Season Disclaimer:

I’ll make a post for almost all new series (barring sequels) with a wrap-up and bullet point opinion of each once the premier week is over. Remember that these are just my kneejerk reactions to the first 20 minutes of shows, many of which in genres that I don’t even particularly like, but I do believe in giving every new series at least an episode to interest me.

Impressions: 

Don’t expect much in the way of blind slobbering praise from me for this one. I thought this opening was far weaker than the first season’s, and now that the stories are split over relatively far past and present, along with convulsing flashbacks apparently bridging the two, it doesn’t look like the stories are going to weave themselves together quite so seamlessly. Most of my dislike comes from the opening 5 minutes or so, which were rather boring. They even had to throw up some blatant boobs to make sure people were paying attention at the end of it. I’m also not sure I like the characters quite as much here yet. Mizuki seems designed to do little else so far but bounce around like she has severe ADHD while giving Kuze all manner of totally important foreshadowing flashback induced seizures.

Like the previous (and most Shaft productions for that matter), it has a better director than it has production team, with copious reuse of camera angles and the like. Sure, the art is pretty, but after 60 seconds of staring at that dining room table, I’m ready to look at something else. Shinbo is Shinbo though, lots of unique imagery that may or may not eventually make sense in the big picture. I did really like the splash effect while Yuu and Yuuko were at the beach. The water drops hung in the air all pretty and nice during the big reveal, and foreshadowing Yuu dropping the hammer on Yuuko a moment later, they collapsed. I also swear that the tune they used at breakfast was stolen from Secret of Mana’s moogle village.

Anyway, like I said, I’m sure the hyperbole machine is already cranking out at full tilt and everybody aside from like… Hinano and JP (who seem to despise Shinbo in the same way that I despise Gonzo) is scrambling to add their voice to a cacophonous wailing basically amounting to "Holy crap, they used silhouettes again! SO DEEP!" Bitter? Me? Naaaaaaaaaaaah. I couldn’t really stand watching the first one week to week anyway, and I doubt this’ll be too different. Too many disparate things all running parallel that you have to dredge up every week from dusty memory for my tastes and better consumed over a few days than a few months. I’m sure there will be no shortage of people covering it though, so really… no big loss for anybody if I do not. If you were in love with the first one, I’m sure you’ll find a lot to enjoy here as well. If you hated the first, then I would steer far far clear of this one as well. *shrug*

ef OP