天下制覇

Basketball and vampires? This show has it all.

Apparently the first episode had a special webcast today! Like I have any idea what’s going on. Its first episode doesn’t air for realsies until next Thursday.

Impressions:

That was a little… underwhelming. It does look good, quite good, although it bleeds Clamp from every oriface. There was one hilarious animation goofup that stood out. Saya fakes left, fakes right, then swishes the basketball from half court like a bullet. Production IG temporarily forgot how perspective works, I guess. The fight scene at the end was also quite well done, even if it looked a bit silly to have a bowling pin mantis trotting around. IG also couldn’t quite decide on its method of locomotion. First it just jetted around, then it walked on claws, then it I think it scampered. Those are minor quibbles with the production though. It looked and sounded solid.

My main problem with it though is, like many similar shows, it’s not cohesive. I could have cared less about the first 17 or so minutes, but it would have taken significant effort on my part. It was just mindnumbingly dull bits of Saya wandering around, talking to her classmates, having tea, yawn and groan. Not to wax philosophic here, but a story should have all its parts working together to form a beautiful tapestry. I should not be able to literally see where the director hit the pause button and said "crap, we need to put some action into this episode to hook the audience, drop everything and fight a statue in a lake."

Unfortunately, aside from admiring the nice background and Clampishly long appendages, the three minutes of fighting was the only time the episode was engaging to me. Shows don’t need to start with nonstop explosions, but they should start with something more than some bad CG and 15 minutes of Saya’s Boring Daily Life, with all past indications being that it’ll eventually become 20 minutes of Saya’s Melancholic Life. I’ll give it another looksie or two (in two weeks when episode 2 airs!), but it’s going to have to be a whole lot more engaging than this episode was with the glut of other Thursday shows.