Dangan Ronpa #01 — “Your Couch is Dead!”

July 4th, 2013

 

Monobear makes my head hurt.

Impressions:

Starting off with killing someone would impress me more if it wasn’t just blatant fanservice for people who played the game, but there’s already been far worse attempts to suck off the audience this season, so I suppose it gets a pass. It wasn’t too bad a start, but these Kishi-directed game adaptations rarely are. It introduced the massive cast with only one direct hammer blow to the face before letting actual character interactions take over for that. Art and animation looked pretty good too, or at least consistent and in the same overstylized… uh… style the whole way through without any particularly cheap moments standing out too badly, but my standards could also be shot right now. I can’t say that I’m a fan of the musical direction though. The wall of sound electric guitar thing about halfway through made my head hurt, especially with Monobear squeaking over top of it.

It still wasn’t a particularly exciting or hooking start though. They laid out the premise and… uh… introduced some characters? That’s really about it. Not that every show needs to being with a knock down, drag out fight, but they could have began in medias res or flashed forward to the first murder or something to make it a little more (or at all) thrilling. Spending the episode repeating the advertising blurb with showing a shredded couch being the dramatic stinger of the episode, sending the protagonist into traumatic paroxysms isn’t going to cut it.

I’m not sold on it yet, and it’s partly because my head still kind of hurts from the middle. I’ve been down this road with Kishi before and it never ends all that well. It was probably the strongest of the three shows I’ve watched so far today (I’m getting to Rozen Maiden’s recap episode in a minute), but it still wasn’t a very engaging or exciting episode that leaves me wanting more.

Posted in Anime | 15 Comments »

15 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Anonymous says:
    July 4, 2013 at 12:04 pm

    Ever heard of build up

  • WL says:
    July 4, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    These character designs are shit yo. The brat looks like a Digimon MC except without goggles.

  • Bocam says:
    July 4, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    They sure covered a lot less than I thought they would

  • slicendice says:
    July 4, 2013 at 12:41 pm

    Good lord does this blog give anything a good review?

    • Afrosquirrel says:
      July 4, 2013 at 12:55 pm

      Yes.

      It gave Seitokai no Ichizon S1 one! And several other series as well.

      • slicendice says:
        July 4, 2013 at 1:03 pm

        The blogger must have very particular tastes. I Couldn’t even remember what Seitokai no Ichizon was about.

    • ZakuAbumi says:
      July 4, 2013 at 1:25 pm

      Among the more serious shows, he did seem to have a thing or two for Casshern Sins and Shigofumi.

      • Aroduc says:
        July 4, 2013 at 2:09 pm

        Eh. Casshern had a strong opening and a fantastic ending, but most of the middle was pretentious twaddle. I do still adore Mushi Uta though. It is true that I don’t like more serious shows in general, and particularly not Japanese ones. It’s like they’re afraid that if anybody smiles, then they’ll stop being taken seriously. Japanese culture isn’t big on mixing dark humor and sarcasm into those kinds of stories to make the characters human instead of a bunch that’s simply depressing to watch.

        Also, there’s the whole issue of their fear of ever upsetting the status quo once established, yet dramatizing over bloody everything like it’s the end of the world. Combine that with the traditional laborious pacing of Japanese media and… feh. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

        • algorithm says:
          July 4, 2013 at 2:54 pm

          All I remember from Casshern ending was that they waited for the very last moment to pull the audience out of a ten episodes long coma only to put half of the cast into coffins to make sure the thing was done for good.

    • algorithm says:
      July 4, 2013 at 2:58 pm

      Usually things that burn half their budget on the first episode. But that usually don’t go beyond the first episode.

    • Anonymous says:
      July 4, 2013 at 4:48 pm

      I don’t think he actually likes those shows though. He watches them because they’re easy to make fun of and usually air on slow days.

  • slicendice says:
    July 4, 2013 at 3:38 pm

    Come for the psychotic teddy bear, stay for the murder.

  • The Phantom says:
    July 4, 2013 at 9:35 pm

    I don’t know what this is all about but I have nothing else to watch and this looks decent enough, so definitely following this one.

  • Ashlotte says:
    July 5, 2013 at 9:33 pm

    To be fair it was a pretty nice couch!

    Yea that whole revelation felt pretty flat…Maybe if the bear showed his family hanging over a pit of lava like a proper villain I could understand the MC freaking out.

  • The Phantom says:
    July 5, 2013 at 11:48 pm

    This vaguely reminded me of 999, which automatically changes it to awesome in my book! in that order of ideas the childhood friend will be the culprit!