天下制覇

I couldn’t resist.

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.

Impressions:

I’m pretty sure AIC thought that they were onto gold here when they found a show that didn’t require them to animate mouths for half or more of the characters. That’s probably a little bit unfair. There weren’t any really terribly embarrassing production moments that I can remember (outside of the awful CG cat god), but it’s still certainly well below average in art and animation. AIC set the bar pretty low, but at least they cleared it without falling on their faces. It also kept things moving along at a decent even clip so I never started desperately rooting around for a clock.

What it really boils down to though, is that for a comedy, I barely cracked a smile a couple times through the entire episode. I can forgive a lot if I’m entertained, and this didn’t do that at all. The show covers absolutely no new ground nor does it tell any joke that I haven’t already seen dozens of times before. None of the characters even try to be particularly creative or charming either. Captain Generic’s a bit of a whiner and a halfwit, and Mizuno is just a halfwit. The cats are just your stereotypical low calibur anime bullies, only cats. The story is also looking like it’s going to be little more than "cat problem of the week" while doofus collects women along with his pussies.

So, while I don’t feel any real overwhelming hatred for this show, I really don’t have anything particularly positive to say at this point either.  I kind of want to compare this to a saltine cracker. Just really painfully bland. It certainly didn’t pull me in or make me interested in the story, I dislike both of the main characters, and very little of the comedy worked for me. I really doubt that I’ll stick with this one although I may check out at least the first few minutes of next week’s episode to see if it improves at all. I’m not holding my breath though.