Premiere Impressions – Zombieland Saga

This show is crazy and it absolutely wants you to know that.

I mean, for goodness’ sake, it’s a show about death metal zombie idols where the manager is a necromancer actively refusing not to explain anything; I’ve certainly never seen anything like it. (By the way, just to clear something up, the “Saga” doesn’t necessarily refer to an epic story; the story takes place in Saga Prefecture.)

Just watch it; the less you know going in, the better your reaction here will be to the sheer insanity on display. I loved every second of this premiere.

Final Thoughts – Devilman Crybaby

I know I couldn’t possibly be more late here, but I couldn’t let the year end without talking about the big Netflix shows we got early on. This is the first.

This is one where, like Planet With, I don’t quite agree with a lot of the majority. I believe this show is great, sure, but the ending just carries absolutely no satisfaction, and I’m going to spoil it here. Given that I’m the last otaku on the planet to watch it, I don’t think that’ll be too controversial, but here’s your warning.

Devilman Crybaby is a 9/10. The missing point there is entirely because of the final episode. See, the pacing through the rest of the show is great – in nine episodes it got me emotionally invested in a lot of its characters with very smart, economical storytelling, and I was honestly impressed at how much weight the deaths in episode 9 had for having spent so relatively little time with these characters.

The show looks great, with a distinctive and undeniable style to it that could only have come from a project with the power and funding of Netflix and complete creative control. Modernizing Go Nagai’s work is turning out not to be incredibly easy (just look at the disastrous Cutie Honey Universe) and a commendable job is done here updating the story in the age of the smartphone.

But I can’t deny that episode 10 broke the spell for me. It contains a lot of major story jumps that should really have been spread out just a bit more so they had time to digest, but the problem with that is that the majority of the deaths needed to happen close to the end in order to have the proper weight (if, for example, Taro and his parents had died only halfway in, it would naturally carry less narrative importance because it was closer to the middle than to the climax).

That’s to say nothing of the ending. Just being likely intended to not be satisfying doesn’t make it less noticeable that in the sudden rush to the finish line, not only does every single character lose (and die), but we come away with what is either a Genesis story as the planet starts over (conflicting with the fact that the Genesis already happened at the beginning of the show – the birth of the devilman) or an extinction story (in which case, as the show implies there are literally no survivors, the story leading up to it and all the emotional investment feel wasted because there’s nothing to hope for). It’s like a weird, last-second shark jump that I understand was in the source material, but for all the modern changes made to the story, I wish Yuasa and Nagai could have collaborated on a better way to end the story.

That being said, I can’t deny that nine episodes of one of the most unique works in the medium are to be missed, so, like I said, I’m giving it that many points. Because I said so and I don’t want to die young.

9/10.

Final Thoughts – Lupin III Part 5

Look, I don’t know what else to tell you. Lupin is damn fantastic, it has been for years now, and this is the best iteration yet. Team Lupin are such absurdly good characters that you don’t mind their flaws, you just feel like you’ve known them for years.

And it helps to have perfect pacing and even a lot of unexpected societal commentary, which Part 5 has in spades. The major underlying theme is the effect technology has on the world, whether it’s the sudden, feverish obsession of Pokemon Go, the government-encroaching, terrifying might of Facebook, or the power held by people like Elon Musk who promise to make the world better and damn the actual consequences of their methods. All of it is handled expertly well, and framed around relevant character development and new recurring characters that integrate into the gang perfectly.

The show also still looks astounding, with incredibly fluid animation and hand-painted backgrounds. Every time TMS brings Lupin out of hiding, they make him look phenomenal, and deliver an awesome updated soundtrack full of Layton-esque horns and very clear shout-outs to his Western contemporaries.

I don’t know how many different ways to say that everyone of any taste should watch this show, so I’ll just conclude with the best one I can think of. Lupin III is Japan’s Bond, and it’s his world. We’re just living in it.

10/10.

Premiere Impressions – Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

CloverWorks has a lot to prove here. The studio only just officially split from A-1 Pictures, but not before having its name all over the disastrous second half of Darling in the FRANXX, and the mediocre Persona 5 the Animation. So, this is their first project (along with the yet-to-be-aired DAKAICHI) after the big split, and…it’s just OreGairu.

No, seriously, it’s the story of a class loner getting involved with an abrasive girl with long, dark hair who he won’t admit he’s attracted to, with a running commentary in his head about philosophy and the state of humanity, where the two of them engage in conversations about similar things that run circles around what they actually want to talk about, and the title is overly long. (It’s also got a lot of Monogatari in its bones, for the record.)

I’m certainly not saying I dislike it, in fact this is an impressive production for a relatively inexperienced studio, with about as many well-animated crowd shots as distractingly computer-generated ones, some nice lighting and color direction, and an aesthetic that doesn’t drive me insane by just slightly differentiating itself from the A-1 Look.

Let’s see where this interesting fusion goes.

Final Thoughts – Between the Sky and Sea

A-1 Pictures didn’t make this, but you’d be forgiven for immediately thinking so.

Seriously, I don’t know why but TMS Entertainment have copied A-1′s trademark polish and stupid face template to a ‘t’ here, and it results in a show that looks much better than it is. Mother’s Basement was tweeting the other night about moe bingo, and it took me about ten seconds to realize that this was the show he was talking about.

Everything here is generic to a fault, meaning that the character designs are fine, but absolutely not anything even remotely original, up to and including a perky girl dressed as a gothic lolita for no apparent reason. There’s no subtlety to be found here.

And I don’t usually like to single out staff members that aren’t the director (everyone else is just trying to do their job), but Karin Takahashi, voice actress for the main character Haru, is just not ready for the big leagues. I never bothered to watch any of Black Clover, but I have a pretty similar impression of this girl’s voice as most people do to Asta’s. She either shrieks or goes irritatingly monotone all the time, and it makes me hate a character who isn’t even necessarily that bad.

I should at least mention that the concept is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard and I’m fairly sure that they’ll never bother to explain it, and I do not know why space fishing seemed like such a good idea that they threw this much weight behind it, but based on the fact that it already has a MAL score of 5/10, it seems that the community has already realized that this one is a junker out of the gate.

3/10.

Premiere Impressions – Girl in the Twilight

Didn’t I already watch this? No, that was Phantom in the Twilight? Whatever, this is way better.

From an original concept by the author of Punch Line (one of my favorite people in the industry), we have an inverse-isekai story, where a girl from our world meets her badass alternate-universe counterpart. It’s not as crazy as Punch Line or Zero Escape, but it’s an interesting idea filled with mystery, as the audience pieces together exactly what happened in Asuka and alt-Asuka’s past.

I’m pretty excited for this one, all things considered. It looks quite nice (I really like the costume design so far) and even though we have certainly seen this girl group before, they are distinctive enough and act like a proper group of random friends. It doesn’t take much to get me not to drop a show after one episode, you know?

Premiere Impressions – Run with the Wind

If I can’t have more Haikyu! yet, I’ll take this for sure.

I feel like it’s been forever since we’ve had a Production I.G. TV series, but they always come busting in with crazy good animation to make everyone else look bad. This first episode just looks amazing, and if we’re to see a lot of running in the near future, hopefully it looks better than Prince of Stride Alternative (dunno how Madhouse managed to screw that up!).

We have a pretty typical but still funny setup – in his desire to form a track team, a university student has convinced nine other boys of similar age to move into a strangely convenient apartment building where two meals are served and the rent is only $300…because it’s actually the dorm for the Kansai University track team, and their rental agreements are also club commitments, and he wants very badly to run again.

Our cast is already shaping up nicely, with ten distinct pretty boys and a lot (a lot) of shipping potential. The first episode just lets each of them run with one personality trait each, and with such a big introduction, that’s fine for now, and we can safely assume they’ll each be getting a spotlight in future episodes. (Hey, it’ll be easier to deal with than iDOLM@STER Side M, where there were almost twice as many characters as there were episodes.) I’m really looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

My one worry, though, is the director, who has a long history of working as Episode Director and Storyboarder as is common, but whose most recent television director gig was Joker Game.

Basically, please, don’t let this be Joker Game.

Final Thoughts – Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary

Pretty, yet boring.

Seriously, the aesthetic of this show is very cool, with Chinese influence all over the place and wooden automatons crawling through canyons, but I found it very difficult to pay attention. Xuan Yuan is the best-looking Chinese co-production yet, but it has sort of the opposite problem of Phantom in the Twilight.

I just don’t have very much to say here, other than that you can safely skip this one.

Premiere Impressions – That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime

This one has me worried.

Not about its quality, mind you, at least not yet. This first episode was excellent. But, having read the manga, I also know that it’s going somewhere much less interesting than where it started, so for now, I’m not gonna talk about the story.

I’d rather discuss the presentation, which was phenomenal. The mixed media method the show uses to display Rimuru’s limited senses is pretty ingenious, and the visual effect used for “Great Sage” is cool as hell, reminding me a little of the opening for Parasyte. Even the prologue is animated exceptionally well, with human!Satoru walking very lackadaisically and immediately showing a lot of personality.

The animation in general is great, especially the scenes of Rimuru speeding around the cavern and eating everything in sight. I’ve certainly had issues with Studio 8bit in the past (see: Comet Lucifer, Knight’s & Magic) but this is some damn creative work.

This show has already been announced as a double-cour, so unless I drop it at some point you shouldn’t expect to hear about it again from me until next year, but I very much hope the team can keep up this level of quality when the story starts its decline. I am at least more hopeful for this than for Sword Art Online Alicization.