天下制覇

Good god.

Season Premier Disclaimer:

I like to check almost every new show out. The value of a show is in its execution, not its premise. That said, my tastes are mine and mine alone. Some things bother me, some things don’t. I will attempt to be as cogent as possible as to my complaints or compliments for each show, but be aware that my views skew heavily towards the center. Nothing is perfect, nothing is irredeemable. That said, my tastes and my opinions are mine and mine alone and should not be construed as fact or, god help us, some kind of erudite critical analysis of the entire series based on the show’s first 20 minutes. Feel free to leave your own thoughts on the show if you’d like, but invective and similar will be mocked or deleted depending on which amuses me more at the time.

Impressions:

I guess I’ll start with the good. This is easily AIC ASTA’s best produced show to date. The art looks good, the backgrounds are lush, and the animation is easily sufficient enough for the story they’re telling. That’s where I’m going to stop complimenting the show though, because everything else ranged from average to painful. Let’s begin with the worst offender, the audio. The music isn’t very good, but that doesn’t stop it from being REALLY LOUD, and is only matched by Hoshi, who almost never speaks at anything below EAR BLASTING SCREAMS. "OH MY BLOODY GOD!? AN ANGEL!! THIS IS THE WACKEST CRAP EVER!!!!!!!!!!" The entire direction is rather suspect as well. While the dramatic music is playing and death is falling from the skies… how about a wacky little chibi scene?

Hoshi and the rest of the cast are all as cookie cutter as they come and nothing is presented with even the slightest trace of irony. You have the weird otaku club guy, the violent female friend, the servile magical girl, and the SHRIEKING PERVERT who is fine sexually harassing everybody but the other main characters. Mix and match whichever godawful harem romance comedies you’d like in order to put those archetypes together. Girls Bravo can give you most of them with Kemeko or DearS rounding out the rest. None of them are likeable in the least, much less entertaining in any way. About the only joke that made me even smile was the chain getting caught in the bathroom door at the very end. Although that may have been residual happiness from the end credits finally rolling.

So it looks pretty, but just about everything else is a haphazard mishmash of some of the least amusing cliches imaginable. Yuck.