Chaika #06 — Master Trackers

May 14th, 2014

  

Could the side characters in this show be any more terrible at their jobs?

Impressions:

Once again, I feel like we must remember, animators, it’s probably not a great idea to show characters sleeping through sections of your show. At least the “random stuff miles away with no direct relationship to anything” was kept to only 3-4 minutes this week. Still, it’s almost impressive the lengths they’re going to in order to make the persistent antagonists completely incompetent. “A dragon started throwing boulders around and they boarded a small tank. There’s no way to track them now. You win again!” I’m also not thrilled by the ultra-dragon as the Get Out of Jail Free card they kept using her as through the whole episode. At least they didn’t feel the need to explain the shapeshifting trick though. With how all the other LN adaptations have gotten lately, it’s nice for someone to assume that the audience has the thinking ability of a 5 year old instead of a lobotomized tortoise.

A lot of this episode could have had a lot more impact if the direction had been a bit better. The animation was there and aside from what was mentioned above, it moved along at a reasonable clip, but the directorial and story importance oomph to give it meaning and purpose weren’t, and it’s still not eyecandy enough to stand on its own. The start in particular seems like the cliffhanger should have been one of the cockatrice’s going through someone’s shoulder in an explosion of jam or something instead of fun times at the shooting gallery while they all shouted out about how much danger they were in.

Similarly with the supposed ‘conflict’ over which color to join. I think there was more time and effort spent on the dragon alone going “pretty tempting!” than there was any effort on actually making it tempting, which just amounted to “You’d get to fight.” There’s been no shortage of that on Team White Power so far, nor has money ever come into basically anything, so… Her supposed crush on him equally existed only in dialogue and not even convincingly there leading to a very obligatory kung-fu fight at the end that was an unsatisfying tagline to the whole affair.

Next Episode:

The return of Captain Contrivance.

Posted in Chaika | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Dave Baranyi says:
    May 14, 2014 at 8:19 pm

    A second season has now been announced for the fall, so we can expect things to slow down a bit for the second half of this season.

    But I’ll give the writers points for not having Busty Chaika actually join Toru’s harem this early in the game. (I expect her to eventually get there unless she is sacrificed as a “tragic heroine” somewhere later on…)

  • FlameStrike says:
    May 15, 2014 at 12:09 am

    The way they’re handling the Dragoon is really bad. Either she’s a get out of jail free card in inconvenient situations, or she’s just not there. It’s been established that she likes to fight, so why didn’t she help out when Spear Man and Red Chaika stopped their tank? Of course, it’s because if she did there wouldn’t even be a fight, just a stomp. However they didn’t even bother to make an excuse for it. Some effort please!

    • Dave Baranyi says:
      May 15, 2014 at 10:43 am

      I think it is because she is a cat who can turn into a dragon, instead of the reverse. And, of course, we all know that cats never do anything useful, particularly when they are actually needed… (LOL)