Gunslinger Stratos #01 — Big Bang Age

April 4th, 2015

  

Well, at least a third of it.

I did glance as HS DxD’s new season. It began with a pan over naked breasts and screaming “breasts!”, the action was all speedlines and blurry half-animation which ended with everyone in the bath for about five minutes, and the ED was every single character stripping and climbing on top of him with orgasmic flushes covering their faces. Moving on.

Impressions:

Boy, this did not start well. Melancholic dream about shooting your alternate self followed by melancholic breakfast, then the OP. After that, CG floor pan and then a still pan over walking to class. Thus passed the first 20% of the episode. There would be more CG floors to come even before they got to the ridiculous teacher who was dressed like some kind of Okoberfest waitress and the true infodumping about the setting began, making me want to bludgeon my head against a table. And then they played paintball. With lightsabers. At least at that point, someone seemed to be taking some joy in what they were doing. Too bad the animators mostly weren’t. There were a few moments of actual animation in there, but they were buried under cheap looped flurries and speedlines.

Things picked up quite a bit in the last third once they stumbled into the other world, which is full of mechs, ninjas, casual mass murder of passerbys, etc, which I’d hope should come as no surprise after 15 minutes in Boringland. The problem though, is that we seem to be stuck with the crappy protagonists, who (supposedly) could be super amazing awesome-o if he ever tried. Which he doesn’t. And both are about as interesting as wet sponges. The female’s maybe slightly better than the male, but she’s a hanger-on to him, so she’s tainted by association if nothing else. It’s a shame too, because this could have been really cool if the protagonist wasn’t such a bore. They even showed some passable tactics with the fake fall at the end and didn’t feel the need to explain the obvious.

I guess given the dismal state of affairs, it earns an easy bye into the next round, but everything about the Daibanchou world (which they’re thankfully currently in at the moment) is better than the boring, awful, boring first world, even the Not-Rouga alternate protagonist. There are the pieces here, and nobody’s woefully incompetent, which helps, but the lead is such a dull piece of crap that it fatigues me watching him shamble around for half the episode without any ambition or purpose besides moping over his ghost sister. If they can pick that up and get the animation/action a little more consistent, it might be an okayish action show though. Maybe.

Next Episode:

 

Ugh, that guy screams “more exposition.”

Posted in Gunslinger Stratos | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Chipp says:

    Pretty sure that this show is about the development of the protagonist so…

  • jingoi says:

    looks like Hagure Yuusha but much more boring. At least the Ms.pink-hair here looks like she can defend herself.

  • The Phantom says:

    Yea I liked how everyone here is ready to fight and the action kept going so it was decent, male lead needs to hook up pink haired girl so this does not become a harem, other than that was very decent.