Quick First Impressions – Spring 2018

Alright! Now that I’ve seen every single premiere I cared to (it only took me three weeks…), let’s wrap up the QFI for the season, starting with the short shows.

I only watched two of them (slim pickings here), but Crossing Time was pretty cute, and I like the idea of exploring the Seinfeldian interactions people have while waiting for the train to go by. It’s a pretty common scene setting in other shows, but three and a half minutes is the perfect length for a plausible yet funny interaction, and it looks like we’ll be getting new people each week. It won’t be anything amazing, but I would still say it’ll be worth the time.

Space Battleship Tiramisu, however, is absolutely hilarious from the get-go. Taking one element of every mech show – in this case, the protagonist’s cockpit – and exploiting it for crazy, on-point comedy makes it a blast to watch, and the just-keep-throwing-jokes-out style means you’re laughing pretty much the entire time. Definitely a highlight.

The other thing I wanted to talk about, though, is that out of the 26 shows I sampled for this season, I only dropped 2 after the first episode, and we still have Food Wars and DARLING in the FRANXX to finish. That’s insane, and given that I have a day job, I don’t have time to watch everything this season, so some of it is gonna have to wait until Summer, which I can’t see being nearly as busy.

First of all, I’m dropping Cute High Earth Defense Club HAPPY KISS!, because the first episode wasn’t exactly astounding and I’m having trouble getting through the second. I really feel like this series needed a lot more deviation than just refreshing the cast, and if I hear amazing things about it later, I’ll come back to it, but that’s pretty doubtful.

Second, I’m saving Real Girl, Devil’s Line, Golden Kamuy, Persona 5 the Animation and Magical Girl Site for next season. That still leaves me with a pretty crazy number of shows, but I know that putting off more than that will just leave me with no time come Summer.

Third, I’m finally starting production on videos again. I think I’ve nailed down what I want to do, it’s just a matter of getting it started. Look forward to it!

Quick First Impressions – Comic Girls

It took me way too long to get to it, but I’m glad I did.

I like the premise of this one, it’s a more comedic, relaxed version of Bakuman. A high school girl failing to get a manga serialized is sent to immerse herself in other artists in a dorm for young female mangaka, and hilarity ensues. It’s simple, but it’s already working.

I really like the dynamic the main four have going for them. They immediately bond over their work and the second half of the episode is largely spent with three of them acting as assistants to help their roommate meet a deadline. I think this was a great decision to get things moving right away, and you totally can’t tell that this is based on a 4koma most of the time.

And it looks great for a slice of life show. The animation is fluid even though the characters are fairly detailed, and the color palette and lighting work wonders. It’s pretty incredible for a studio that’s been totally dormant for three years (seriously, Nexus hasn’t done anything since helping out with Chivalry of a Failed Knight in 2015, and this is their first solo TV project). Hopefully they can keep it up?

Quick Final Thoughts – Libra of Nil Admirari

I could tell from just the episode screenshot on VRV that this was a visual novel adaptation. Not saying that’s instantly bad, but it reminded me right away of Code:Realize.

My problem with that is that the aesthetic of some of these shows drives me up the wall with how oddly flat everything is, and one look at the studio tells me that I shouldn’t expect things to get better, because both of the Zero-G productions I’ve seen (Battery the Animation and DIVE!) were unimpressive to look at and I dropped both of them halfway through (though the production wasn’t the reason in either case, at least).

And it’s not the only reason I won’t be watching through this one. No, that’s because it’s kinda dumb. The idea of a series about hot guys whose job is to retrieve books sounds appealing to me for pretty obvious reasons, but in execution it’s pretty silly. Seeing people get shocked because A BOOK can cause people to do bad things is unintentionally narmy.

But the art doesn’t help. While I kind of like the watercolor-gradient aesthetic choice, it’s weird that it’s only applied to hair, and the color palette is boring as dirt and everything is super washed out so that eighty percent of the screen is usually somewhere between brown and eggshell. This might be a holdover from the source game, but that doesn’t give it a pass.

Terrible. 3/10

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online – Episode 3

We come back around this week with the conclusion of the prologue. I’m a little disappointed that the show doesn’t want to cop to its incredibly obvious twist (the identity of Pito) ahead of time when it’s still pretty forced, but we’re still moving along pretty steadily. The better pacing here puts the original Phantom Bullet arc to complete shame.

I think a lot of us could have done without the insertion of author Keiichi Sigsawa into the story, but apparently he’s the sponsor of the Squad Jam (they don’t name him but it’s pretty obvious whom the character is meant to be), but on the other hand, this episode demonstrates that we’ve fixed the stupid scrolling menu inventory system that never made sense to begin with, as LLENN is able to summon items from her inventory just by thinking about them, which is way more practical in a game that reads your thoughts.

Hopefully I’ll start having more to say next week, since we’ll definitively be moving on from the part of the source material I’m familiar with (which I am aware is a light novel, but said novel was never licensed for release here in the States).

Score so far: 7/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Dances With the Dragons

Ever wonder what LoveChuuni’s Rikka watches?

Yeah, it’s stuff like this.

And it’s not the worst thing, at least it wasn’t terminally boring, but it was painfully generic. The world, the main characters, the titular dragons, none of them are anything remotely original, and it all just blended together into one big pile of “meh”. 

The dynamic between our main duo is just boring as hell and makes one of them come across as terminally stupid, but the show takes him very seriously as he basically racks up credit card debt and has zero intention of ever paying for anything because he “works hard”. Oh, and this is also the guy who uses the big Final Fantasy greatsword which is simultaneously a buster sword AND a gunblade. Very original.

Our actual protagonist’s only notable attribute is that he already has a girlfriend, which is a little surprising for a show like this, but they’re both pretty much cardboard. His most major trait is that he gets annoyed at his partner, and hers is that she’s a bad cook.

Yeah, unless you really liked Blue Exorcist, I can’t see this being particularly noteworthy to anyone. I’m already struggling to remember it. 4/10

Quick First Impressions – Uma Musume Pretty Derby

It occurs to me that I totally forgot to write a post for this one, and now I’m three episodes in, so consider this a review of more than just the premiere.

We have two mobile game adaptations this season (Last Period is the other), and between the two of them, this is the one that plays it straight. Very straight, in fact. It’s basically KanColle again, though I’ll give that it’s slightly better characterized.

That being said, it’s also cringey as hell, because if the idea of horse girls doesn’t already sound ridiculous, they’re also supposed to put on idol performances if they win, for absolutely no discernable reason, which makes less sense the more you think about it.

It’s basically just anime comfort food, you know it isn’t good for you, and it’s pandering as hell, but it’s just north of watchable.

Quick First Impressions – Caligula

Already shaping up to be a great Megaten impression.

The idea of Truman-show style reality bending is always fascinating to explore, and if you can get through the slow first half, you’ll probably find yourself drawn into this total mind-trip of a premiere, featuring teenagers becoming monsters.

The only problem is that most of it looks terrible.

It’s not quite as bad as Libra, but the color palette here is boring and samey, and the artists seem to have no clue how to proportion characters if they aren’t facing the camera. Seriously, check out the group shot at the 4:00 mark and you’ll see what I mean, with two of the girls in the shot having the builds of tall bodybuilders under their uniforms, and it doesn’t seem intentional.

But honestly, the plot is cool enough that I might be able to look past it. I was bored to tears for the first ten minutes or so, but once the static noises started, I was pretty instantly hooked.

Quick First Impressions – Hinamatsuri

What a weird, fascinating little show.

This immediately reminds me of Punch Line with a first episode setting up a strange premise but with tons of interesting information lying under the surface. Basically, a girl with unlimited psychokinetic power falls out of the sky and into a yakuza mobster’s apartment, and the dynamic the two of them gain is charming and neat already. I love the artwork of the show too, as it reminds me of a more grown-up Doga Kobo show. That makes sense, since this is a feel. production just like Tsukigakirei last summer, and they’ve really been on a roll in recent years.

Interestingly, according to MyAnimeList, this shares a director with Umamusume Pretty Derby, despite them being from two different studios, so I’m curious if that’s just an error or not, but this is yet another show to keep your eye on if you like your anime off the beaten path.

Quick First Impressions – Wotakoi: Love is Hard For An Otaku

It’s like never finding out that Recovery of an MMO Junkie was directed by an actual Nazi!

At this point, I think I might have to admit that I just have a bias towards shows about adult characters. Maybe I’ll write an op-ed about it sometime, but for now, we have a pretty impressive one on our hands right now.

I’m loving the concept of finding brethren at your workplace and having people come out of their shells. In a country like Japan where individuality is usually frowned upon, there’s something appealing about the idea of the few people with unusual interests at this company finding each other and becoming friends, even if that’s not quite the point of the show. We basically have the usual setup of a girl and her childhood friend whom she’s definitely going to end up with, but I love the energy that goes into this one, because the OP alone is a boatload of fun. The characters are all fun and relatable, and we’ve got clear motivations from the beginning, which is always a plus.

My only negative is that the animation is a little choppy, but in this case I think it’s really a case of the studio choosing a good project for their resource level, unlike the studio behind Golden Kamuy, because the polish elsewhere is pretty evident.

There’s too many good shows to watch this season, and I’ve only dropped two thus far…

Quick First Impressions – Magical Girl Site

So I want to address something here besides the fact that everyone already knows what this show is about. Bullying of this type does happen in Japan, and it does largely go unchecked in the name of maintaining the status quo, because that’s simply what you’re supposed to do. The Japanese culture mostly values people who don’t rock the boat. It certainly doesn’t usually get let’s-get-this-girl-raped bad, but it does happen, and last season’s March comes in like a lion had a pretty solid arc demonstrating how schoolaged bullies in Japan usually operate.

That being said, what the fuck?

The score for the whole first part of the episode as our main character gets viciously assaulted and bullied is just a soft piano piece that doesn’t go with the events onscreen even slightly, not even as dissonant theming because it simply lies to the audience about what’s happening onscreen.

However, if you can wade through the sea of razor-blade-and-Hot-Topic edge, there is something pretty interesting to be found here. While it’s certainly another story trying to emulate everyone’s favorite deconstruction, the idea of a story totally dropping the pretense that magical girls are even forces for good at all does strike me as something I haven’t seen before. In a season where we got this, Cutie Honey Universe, Magical Girl Ore, AND CHEDC Happy Kiss (as well as the ever-airing Pretty Cure), this one might be the one with the highest ambition.