天下制覇

That’s a no-no place.

The first two episodes were broadcast on Niconico this evening. Actual broadcasts are on Fridays.

Impressions:

Since there are two episodes and the first one left an overall decent impression, I’ll probably be brief here and save my overall thoughts for after the second. Firstly, the production here is quite good. There are long, fairly monotonous parts of Haru having things explained to him while he shufles his pig hooves sadly and he’s at least two or three levels of sob story beyond what should be acceptable, even if you are going for a hard luck loser trying to escape bullying. Almost everything out of his mouth was basically "woe is me!"

Thankfully though, the show also knows how to shut the hell up for long periods and do its talking with its presentation. Its music especially was mostly spot on until the end when it crossed the line into excessively melodramatic, not doing Haru’s whining any good either. The intro to the ‘normal’ virtual world was quite good all around and that may be the best animated solo-squash-played-by-a-pig sequence that I’ve ever seen. Might. Things did get worse towards the end, especially when they left the school and suddenly every single thing without moving parts became really obnoxious CG. Like I’ve said before, I have no idea why Japan refuses to draw a car. Or an elevator. Maybe there’s something in the union laws.

On to episode #2. More thoughts then.