天下制覇

Lowercase ‘i’ means that it’s hardcore.

Season Premier Disclaimer:

I like to check almost every new show out. The value of a show is in its execution, not its premise. That said, my tastes are mine and mine alone. Some things bother me, some things don’t. I will attempt to be as cogent as possible as to my complaints or compliments for each show, but be aware that my views skew heavily towards the center. Nothing is perfect, nothing is irredeemable. That said, my tastes and my opinions are mine and mine alone and should not be construed as fact or, god help us, some kind of erudite critical analysis of the entire series based on the show’s first 20 minutes. Feel free to leave your own thoughts on the show if you’d like, but invective and similar will be mocked or deleted depending on which amuses me more at the time.

Bloody lovely. I could connect to the university’s network from my classroom, but now it’s rejecting my laptop connection. Luckily, I ran the capper and uploaded while I was supposed to be learning about t-tests for the third time. Ha HA! Unless the connection gets better very soon though, Kampfer will be delayed until after my 3 hour class ends. I’m so not downloading that onto a library computer.

Impressions:

Well, I’ve got to hand it to gimik. They managed to go an entire episode without a single panty shot… possibly for the first time ever. Only technically though, as much of the show was still centered on Ascoeur’s crotch. And you have to exclude bloomers from the panty subcategory as well or the entire thing is moot. But hey… it’s a step in the right direction for them. Ascoeur herself is a little overly cheery, but otherwise pretty tolerable. There are a few cameos as well (remains to be seen if they’ll be major characters this time around), even outside of the bit at the start of Eclair and Lumiere seemingly sacrificing themselves.

Production was rather good all around, but with all the other interesting teleporters we’ve had over the past couple years, Ascoeur was pretty disappointing. It also followed almost the exact same formula as the first episode of Kiddy Grade, which was kind of disappointing. It is a decent enough introduction to the world/setup if you haven’t watched KG1 though. Just this time we have somewhat older girls working as waitresses instead of receptionists and a swiss army comb instead of a lipstick whip.

The direction, however, could use some work. Aside from the directorial black hole that was Ascouer’s crotch sucking in all the camera shots, the music and sound effects were often not terribly well chosen. GIANT METAL DRAGON… BOING! Or the slapstick that started up when a smoke bomb went off in the middle of an attempted terrorist assassination. I’ve had enough slapstick terrorists for a lifetime, thank you very much Princess Lover.

A decent enough start though, and I approve of gimmik finally finding something else to focus on than cotton undergarments. Maybe they’ll be upstanding citizens by the end of the decade after all. Assuming that the next couple episodes aren’t terrible (and Trapeze doesn’t blow me away) and it starts putting together something approaching a plot, I’ll probably pick this up alongside Kampfer for Thursdays. I save at -8 vs super powered girls anyway.

Preview:

A real mission for the team.