天下制覇

What is it with Japan and killing girls from trees?

Impressions:

I’m not really sure how to come at this show. There’s so much melodrama, and to its credit, it does outright reveal that the girl’s dead by the end of the episode, but getting there… well… let’s review the clues and see if you can solve this before GOSICK would. Nobody can see, hear, or touch her except Jinta, Jinta calls her the source of his trauma, Jinta has flashbacks and goes catatonic whenever she trips or falls… especially when it comes to trees. It’s not exactly much of a mystery, although in GOSICK’s case, I imagine that the conclusion would be that she choked to death trying to eat her shoe. That just leaves a bunch of angsty teenagers that an emotionally stunted ghost girl is trying to make get along with each other again. Oh, and the episode ends with two of them running into each other and discovering that the least angsty of the lot (so far) is using their old hideout to stash his porn… and assumably do other things.

Like all A-1 first episodes, the show’s production looks fine and the music is quite good, especially the ED theme. The characters though… eh. They’re so transparently trying to pull at the heartstrings that it doesn’t work. It’s just melodrama for melodrama’s sake without actually building up any of these characters first. Cross Game, or even Shigofumi, did a much better job introducing its characters before killing one off. This basically started by saying that a character was dead and expecting the audience to care. So I guess the draw is supposed to be a bunch of angsty teens overcoming Menma’s death and becoming friends again… except that they’re all jerks, or chronic masturbators. I’m not sure why were’s supposed to care about any of them.

Regardless of all else, melodrama and I don’t along so I doubt I’ll be giving this a second look. I’m not sure whether I like that they got the reveal that Menma was dead out of the way so quickly, or am annoyed that they dropped so many clues about it before the reveal that even a nearsighted bat could have seen the light. As usual, writing is not exactly A-1’s strong point and I highly doubt it will improve enough to turn the angst into something emotionally touching instead of blatant puppeteering.

And one last quote:

<Moogy> man, it would be great if it were all a big practical joke they were playing on him the entire time

I wish.