天下制覇

You are hurting my ears.

Impressions:

Japan, I know you like to use recorders in music to evoke elementary school, youth, innocence, whatever, but you gotta stop. They are discordant monstrosities that should not exist, in school, in music, in the world. This didn't make the best first impression by quietly announcing "So there's a girl," then launching straight into the screaming JPop opening, and from there, into the morose protagonist narrating everything while being drowned out by deafening, shrill recorders and a piano score barely fit for elevator music. What is it about today that wants to spit in the face of the concept of music? At least stay in tune. The same thing happens when the awful ED kicks in. At least level out your volume.

I guess at least there's not much shouting-as-humor, though the music more than makes up for paining my ears. It's still all over the place, trying to split the difference between ridiculous gag slapstick and touching down to earth dramedy. There's no depth to the characters though, just the usual "I want to be friends, but I have a social tic, which is stopping me but not actually in any way," so the drama is superficial at most, and a lot of the jokes are essentially non sequiturs. Which isn't to say there aren't a few decent ones here and there, mainly the more understated sight gags like being bombarded with thrown notes in the bathroom, but so much of it is very formulaic and transparent setup, joke has been made with silly sound effect, smash cut to next bit. Some overall structure or the barest minimum of a sitcom storyline would have done this a whole lot of good, but so would have firing whoever was in charge of the music out of a cannon.