Campione! #13 — The Transformation Boogaloo

September 28th, 2012

 

Thankfully, she didn’t have a super ultimate true form.

Impressions:

Well, it wasn’t a split version or whatever of Athena, just Metis. Master of the red ridiculous hat. I expected a little more than that. And she had multiple more forms to transform through as the episode went. Plus there was also Godou’s requisite "Kiss everybody in turn" scene to defeat her which made the climax of the fighting far less impressive than Godou struggling to get his powers back in check earlier. Well, I guess that’s nothing terribly new since his ultimate abilities rely on exposition and CG swords, but still. After she transformed once, she literally stopped attacking entirely. And still had another transformation to go. Metis literally just floated there the entire time she was in her second ‘undefeatable’ true form and watched them all kiss him, gasping with each new power upgrade until Athena was spat back out of her thanks to being pierced repeatedly and she went Super Goddess II or whatever that was. She didn’t do anything there either. Also note that Mariya wasn’t even good enough to get his erection swords up. Lily turned them blue. I’m not sure what to read into that.

So yeah, it was a tad nonsensical/rushed and aside from the flash-back laden affair last week, really not particularly different from any of the previous arcs, and nobody really did anything of particularly note. It could have certainly been a worse ending and there was some nice action in it here and there, but the big climactic moment was an ugly speedline mess against a character who had spent literally the last five minutes and multiple transformations being a bystander in her own fight.

 

Final Thoughts:

After a fairly poor opening episode, this ended up being a surprisingly decent action show. It could be improved in nearly every way, mind you. Uneven budgeting, excessive exposition, characters not developed all that well, mediocre direction, and Mariya’s entire arc was fairly poor, and the list goes on. At the same time though, it kept things light enough and moving quickly enough to pass over a lot of that. The characters were shallow but (mostly) easy enough to watch because nobody ever got melodramatic, (seriously) insecure, or angsty over anything. The action usually didn’t quite get there for the big moments at the ends of arcs, but was usually fairly solid for the incidental scenes leading up to it. Etc. While it didn’t do much greatly, it kept itself from doing more really badly. That is assuming that all the overtly corny ‘kissing’/sex scenes were on purpose though, something that I’m not entirely confident in saying.

Much like Nobuna then, I wouldn’t have minded if this kept going on for a while longer, even though there aren’t really any big moments in it that I can look back on and point to as great moments in the show. As far as the magical fighting girlfriend shows go, it’s solidly in the upper echelon. Granted, the billions of those in existence make that a somewhat vacuous statement, but it’s not a bad action show in its own right, especially in a genre where ‘action’ often means "two men staring at each other for 8 minutes while explaining each other’s powers and motivations then some speedlines and stills."

Posted in Campione | 11 Comments »

11 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Dante says:

    Oh, it ended, I guess this will be the last time seeing a male character actually kissing girls from his harem.

    Not bad series, Arcana familia was an utter failure and Dakara H was god damn awful, I wonder if you actually watched it or just skipped each episode to make it less painful, Aroduc.

    I don’t mind if this show gets a sequel, since the characters introductions are done(albeit, rushed) the studio won’t be in need to rush things anyomore and I saw a character with a helmet from the novels.

    Rating: 7.5/10

  • ShadowWolfZR says:

    They Need to Make Season 2 the Ending still not Clear they still have more character who not show up until now

  • Kadi says:

    Ep 13:
    I liked they implemented Erica’s and Liliana’s combos from… 8 volumes later and that they actually made something up to explain Metis. The rest was as in the decent earlier episodes. Erica got some nice action(!), Godou gets lots of talking and CGs. Mehhh. The giant scythe with the accompanying charge was especially bad. You’re not supposed to laugh at that, are you?

    Series:
    As an adaption, it fails. It portrays none of the elements that allow Campione to become the best action-harem LN I know of. It doesn’t find any other elements to replace it but generic-ness and fan service.
    That said, including the messy original end it’s just what I expected when I first heard about the adaption. The whole business with the sword and the constant fine moments of character development for the whole freaking cast don’t lend themselves to be adapted decently by an average team. I’m still wondering what the crew behind Horizon would have done with this but alas, I guess we’ll never know. Better writing and direction would’ve been nice though…

    To end this on a positive note (my doctor says that is important): The VAs mostly did a good job. Erica, Godou and Lily were nice to listen to. Yuri/HanaKana… fails. Hard. I assume she wouldn’t have been as annoying with a different VA, one that doesn’t fall to pieces when shouting. And then there’s the narrator… let’s not mention the narrator (Lily’s VA did such a good job for the Drama CD, too, why not let her do it?)

  • SquirrelFarm says:

    A butchered adaptation it may be, but it was still an interesting adaptation overall. Not great, but not terrible either. Enough to warrant anyone’s time.

    With that said, YuiKaori is my OTP.

  • DE-KLAC-GRASSI says:

    well give watching all of it fine series of sorts give leave door open for s2 if happen.

    overall sure give if get dub why i go feeling yea dub make more hmm to see.

  • The Phantom says:

    I now believe that Campione! outperformed everything else and was the best show of the season.

  • Adam says:

    That episode was hilarious.
    I was kind of disappointed that, after slowly ramping up the kiss/sex with no sex scenes over the whole series into the absolutely ridiculous, they didn’t just go completely over the top for the final episode and have rockets and explosions going of in the background ultimately culminating in a tsunami.

  • Hero of the End says:

    Awesome! My only disappointment is Godou didn’t get Ame no Murakumo