天下制覇

Yo, guys. Tone it down a little.

Pre-air special on Nico. Actual broadcast doesn’t begin until Saturday, the 6th, ie episode 2 airs on the 13th.

Impressions:

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the everpresent bloom. Maybe God left because the entire world has been irradiated and is now somewhat painful to look at. It is quite a pretty show besides that, although it was absolutely better directed than animated. For as pretty/bloomy as all the set pieces are, it’s not usually particularly impressive in motion. It works for the most part, just don’t expect any impressive gunslinging or shovel fighting despite the posing and such. It’s mostly quite well put together all around, especially through the first half where the exposition was the highest. It mixed very well with the ethereal music and Ai going about her business to do a much better job creating a mystical world than most shows can handle by throwing handfuls of elves or demons at the screen.

And if you noticed the "mostly" qualifier on the direction above, then gold star for you. There are definitely some tone issues. It’s got the whole indy gamer trend thing of a large-headed innocent child in a seemingly friendly but actually cruel world, stripping away their innocence… except for the random fanservice, be it burying heads in breasts or just plain naked little girls splashing water over themselves. It’s not frequent, but it does stick out like a sore thumb compared to… well, literally everything else in the episode. The exposition in the second half with Hamham was also handled much more poorly and getting closer to tediously than Ai’s in the first, although that could also just be my allergy to a grown Japanese woman trying rather unconvincingly to sound like a melodramatic giant headed child, wailing of her lost innocence to the big, scary world.

I’ll call it a good start though. Despite the bloom, the artistic direction’s quite evocative on both the art and music side, and for a while, it did a good job balancing the info dumping with the visuals. It wasn’t the most exciting first episode I’ve ever seen nor am I chomping at the bit for the next one (yes, yes, a rarity to begin with), but it wasn’t boring either, which earns it at least a couple more episodes in my eyes. Hopefully we can tone down the bloom a bit.