Bug Squad #01 — Girls Have Boobs
April 8th, 2013
In case you forgot.
Impressions:
I get the feeling I’m too old for this one. The direction was just really terrible and kept breaking up the flow of the episode. There was some flashy animation when the A Team showed up, but the main character barely ever evolved above stills and speedlines. Pacing was where the badness stood out the most though. The fight technically began about 7 minutes into the episode and there weren’t any actual events interrupting it, but it ended up stretched out all the way to the end of the episode because it kept getting distracted by mostly flashbacks. Flashbacks narrated to another character mind you. Seriously, he’s thrown back by a giant spider who just killed two people, so he and Murdock decide to turn their back on the spider and ignore it to have a three minute conversation/flashback about his father while it goes crawling off to kidnap the girl he was with a moment ago. And in case why you forgot who she was already, there’s a flashback for that too, and then more in the middle of the fight and then more at the end. That’s not even taking into account the completely ridiculous directing choices like when he runs into an alley, shouts "What happened!?" and gasps baffled over a dead guy, before the camera zooms back and he finally realizes that there’s a 30 foot large spider in its alley-covering web still chewing on someone a few steps away from him. I’m pretty sure that would have answered the question. Also have been a more defining trait of the alley than one dessicated corpse.
It probably also didn’t help that the flashbacks were escalating and led to, well… Maybe it’s a cultural disconnect here, or just part of the presentation, but what happened is the lord’s son pissed himself when attacked by a 30 foot bear-eating spider, so his father cut off his foot for HONOR with the lord cackling next to him. And they tried to play this off completely unironically not as those people being crazy or evil or whathaveyou, but totally Jinbei’s fault because SAMURAI. It also didn’t help that they started (nicely) subtle with it which I kind of liked, not counting following doom and gloom with "HOLY CRAP, GUYS! BIG TITS!" before changing the whole thing to a sledgehammer to the face. Honestly, it probably would have been much better if they just left it unexplained altogether. Kind of like skipping the one guy who showed up to a disco blast of art deco and Jinbei girling out over how wonderful he was.
Anyway, The characters are less annoying than I expected, but that’s not an endorsement of them either. It’s aiming pretty low in terms of that and story, but even taking that into account, the pacing was still pretty awful and the animation wasn’t good enough to make it worth watching for the fighting either. It’s boringly competent in a lot of ways otherwise, but not remarkable in any.
Next Episode:
Boobs again.
Posted in Anime | 7 Comments »
http://tenka.seiha.org/images2013/bug1/12.jpg
No.
http://tenka.seiha.org/images2013/bug1/84.jpg
NO.