Ushio & Tora #01 — MORE SPEEDLINES

July 3rd, 2015

  

You can never have enough.

Gate airs about 90 minutes after this, and Classroom Crisis/Symphogear 90 minutes after that, so while I have the day off to provide quick coverage, I’m going to be running errands in between them, so coverage may be a little slow(er than expected) if I get distracted or meet an especially cute golden retriever.

Impressions:

Oh boy… We began with about 30 seconds of exposition, then picked up our story in progress, which was more exposition, before the hilarious joke, “YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO MY EXPOSITION!” Then it got weird by not deciding whether it was going to half-ass its little fist fight or animate it, so they split the difference, starting and ending with stills, and everything they bothered to animate involving them being sucked into a world where there exists nothing but speedlines. And then we go right into the screaming metal OP, which is more fitting of the episode’s content. It sells itself on volume. All the humor is screaming, and giving the classification for ‘joke’ a real run for its money. The ‘dramatic’ moments are delivered in deafening shouts. ‘Action’ is all delivered to 10+ seconds of grunting and/or explosions of speedlines. Wear earplugs.

Unfortunately, that early scene would be by and large the end of the effort put into the action. And drama. The ending scene was… not good. Even before we get into the off-the-shelf CGI centipedes which didn’t anything more than hover and throb. Which was kind of weird more than anything since it’s not full of budget saving pans across ceilings or the like. It’s just that all the budget seems to have been allocated for “screaming,” leaving 95% of the moments involving even the slightest quick motion on anybody’s part, no matter how trivial, to just get a still and speedlines. It almost makes me think that this episode was woefully unfinished. Also, the middle school stuff was utterly unnecessary, and nothing excites me more than wasted time in the very first episode. This isn’t exactly a premise that needs a ton of setup, and this was about as boringly textbook an episode for this kind of premise as you can possibly imagine, and not even done well since it really half-assed the horde of CGI centipedes that was the impetus for what can only charitably be called the episode’s big moment.

So no. A slow, painfully cliche (and not even cliches I can tolerate) opening episode that spent most of its time screaming at me, and decided to allocate the budget in the weirdest ways, with not a whole lot going to what you’d expect would be the series draw. Not happening.

  

Posted in Anime | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Blas says:

    Mappa you are a hopeless case.

  • Dave Baranyi says:

    Ah, some nice retro fun. The old OAVs were just as loud and stupid – that’s the “charm” of this sort of thing.

    This is a fine summer show: put your feet up, turn off your brain, slug back a beer, and eat some popcorn.

  • MOS says:

    Arguably Ushio and Tora is the best manga I have ever read. It’s arguable. While as you say the opening is cliched, it’s so because this series kinda started or popularised a lot of cliches in 1990. If you don’t enjoy it, no worries really but personally without spoilers, this show should become extremely deep and highly emotional in no short order. do not turn off your brain for it, if you do it will punish you for it. this story gets heavy and a lot more horror genre.