Argevollen #01 — Newbie

July 3rd, 2014

  

Yeah, I get it. He’s new. Please stop telling me that. Please?

Impressions:

Stuff happens here, although it’s not really all that compelling about it and I think I’ve already forgotten everything that happened in the first half, although I’m pretty sure it was just “war.” But it’s especially bad when they’re all sitting around, calmly drinking their coffee with the bird singing, laughing at each other, teasing one for thinking he’s a hero and telling him to go whack off because he’s not adult like them, and remarking on how war everything is. If it was trying to go for a tense life or death feeling, or desperation, or… well… anything really, it didn’t hit the mark. It probably didn’t help that almost every line to or about the protagonist was “That guy is so new.” Even him talking about himself. That is his personality. He’s new. Granted, “has a ridiculous perm” is the personality of most of the females, so he’s not in last place, but not by much.

I really think they were going for a Front Mission kind of feel with the tons of characters and plodding mechs, they even look like the things and parts explode off them when they take damage. Then they add Magic Gundam Robot on top because our brash new teenager needs something special. However, there’s too much time spent where there’s just absolutely nothing going on at all. They could have skipped all of the crap of them stomping around camp being new and it would have lost nothing at all. Hell, they probably could have started at the last four minutes of the episode and I would have gotten the same out of it. The thumpy mechs also don’t make for particularly exciting action, even leaving aside that everything is CGI that meshes with the landscape just as well as the PSX era with its pre-rendered backgrounds and that about twice the time was spent on the log in and boot up sequence as there was on anything actually being at war with anything else.

And he didn’t even transform into a body stealing vampire rapist.

Yet.

Next Episode:

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Posted in Anime | 9 Comments »

9 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Gil says:
    July 3, 2014 at 3:26 pm

    You said “please”, twice.

  • frog212 says:
    July 3, 2014 at 4:48 pm

    I think Valvrave has made everything else seem slow n boring. O shit i feel my interest in anime start to wane again.

    • Atmo says:
      July 3, 2014 at 5:46 pm

      I didn’t wacth Valvrararve and this is slow and boring. And teen as hell, what more they will throw at this kid?

    • algorithm says:
      July 4, 2014 at 12:13 am

      Rest assured, Valvrave even made itself slow and boring very fast.

  • The Phantom says:
    July 3, 2014 at 8:27 pm

    Front mission also came to my mind when I started to watch this, but it did indeed started to remind me valvrave (absurd plot) and Linebarrels (extremely annoying MC) waayy to soon, and that is a terrible omen.

  • FlameStrike says:
    July 3, 2014 at 9:34 pm

    >< wow those mechs are slow, even the MC commented on it. Slow plodding mechs aren't always bad… but there's a way to do it and way not to do it. Look at Break Blade. It has slow plodding mechs powered by MAGIC and SIMPLE MACHINES, but it still has exciting combat. In this one a teenage guy and girl can have a super long leisure conversation for 5 minutes before a fight between mechs finishes. Well, unless you're NEW. Then you just explode horribly.

    Lucky for Mr.NEW supah special gundam mech is powered by BRAIN WAVES or some shit like that so he can become the top leet pilot without needing good piloting skills. Still, he did at least go to mecha school, so it's a lot more believable then gaining piloting skills by being turned into a magic vampire rapist XD.

    Overall a mediocre start, but at least it's watchable. I'll check it out next week since I'm a fan of mecha.

    • Aroduc says:
      July 3, 2014 at 10:38 pm

      I remember thinking those actually seemed heavy and powerful as well, not like action figures tramping about.

  • Flip Porter says:
    July 6, 2014 at 8:12 pm

    Saddest part of this is I don’t even feel that NEW guy is the protag. He just gives the feeling of some side character doomed to die in an episode or two for feels and so the true protag can step up being awesome with EMOTIONAL POWER UP.