天下制覇

Why does it feel like my ears were violated?

I was hedging my bets, not sure if Campanella was meant to refer to either bells (the translation) or the Paganini-niinii violin song. Apparently it’s both by the proliferation of bells and violins. Well… whatever.

Impressions:

Let’s start off with the bad. This show is so sickeningly cute that I think I now have type II diabetes. Everybody’s so cheerful and upbeat that it makes me wonder if they’re all not in the midst of post traumatic stress disorder or absurdly high. It doesn’t help at all that every voice actor has decided to use their most shrieking voice possible. Carina, Leicester, and the deadpan Chip sister are about the only three that did not give me the sensation that a humming bird was trying to burrow into my skull with a power drill. I can still hear the ringing in my ears from Agnes’ interminable white noise.

That out of the way, this show clearly knows what it is and what it’s doing… which is rather nice given how many things I’ve watched lately that have been bumbling around with absolutely no clue whatsoever. It’s a light hearted comedy from start to finish. There are no overtures of drama and all the romance stuff is just played off for laughs. Not all the jokes are great, mind you, but there are enough decent ones, particularly when Frito Lay and Pringles are involved. The entire cast arguing over who Gouda’s proper wife was also extremely silly, but at least it was fun. They kept the jokes firing on all cylinders through that part to forgive a few horrible ones. The production’s solid and the music’s good, but like every other audio part of the show, could really stand to be toned down an octave or two. Shrieking violins just made the shrill voices stand on edge even more. The OP as an insert at the end was rather nice too.

I suspect that this show would be a lot less amusing to write about if half the characters weren’t named after food, but whatever. I’ll take whatever I can get. If you don’t like low key comedies or have an aversion to shrieky Japanese girls, steer far clear. This isn’t going to even threaten to change your mind. If you do like them, this looks like a perfectly servicable little show. Not great, mind you, maybe not even all that noteworthy, but I chuckled a few times through it and other than the voices, it never really did much to get the bile going. That counts as a plus as far as I’m concerned. I’ll give it another episode or two, mostly because apparently they fight a dragon next week. After this episode, about the only thing I trust Cheddar to do for me is give me advice on earrings, but hey… maybe the cast will surprise me.

The OP played as an insert over the end of the episode. Otherwise, no OP/ED this week.

Preview:

Little girls, dragons, and breasts… oh my.