天下制覇

Whammo!

New Season Disclaimer:

I’ll make a post for almost all new series (barring sequels) with a wrap-up and bullet point opinion of each once the premier week is over. Remember that these are just my kneejerk reactions to the first 20 minutes of shows, many of which in genres that I don’t even particularly like, but I do believe in giving every new series at least an episode to interest me.

Another surprise to me, this one was streamed on the Bandai Channel. No OP, but it had an ED and a 90 promo at the end of it.

Impressions:

Hmm… where to begin… I already despise Keita, and I’m not really a huge fan of Kuro either. Keita spends about 98% of this episode standing around sadly in various places, from movie theaters to subway stations agonizing over his dead mother. She’s been dead for years. He shows actual emotion all of twice, when he yells at the guy with the bat in anger, and yells off a bridge at the ‘death’ of his friend, Risa. The rest of the time, he had the exact same frown on his face through the entire bloody episode. Kuro’s not nearly as bad, but the cutesy dachshund is totally unnecesary. What annoyed me the most about her was the random exposition out of absolutely nowhere. She just sits down in rags for some ramen, and starts telling people about blah blah blah monster doppelgangers eating your brains etc etc. Sane people would grab their coats and run. The music is also a mixed bag. The start of the action BGM was painful. Very painful, but as long as the singers shut up, it was pretty enjoyable. It reminds me of Persona’s BGM… only with more shrieking.

Now on to the good. The action sequence was nothing short of spectacular. Well animated, directed, choreographed, the works. It’s a shame they couldn’t have cut "Keita is sad in a movie theater" or "Keita is sad at the music store" for a few precious extra seconds of fighting. The art and animation was excellent throughout the episode, as you’d expect from Sunrise, although Punipuni did seem a little bit stylistically off from the rest. While I don’t really like Kuro or Keita yet, and the random exposition was clunky, I do think Sunrise did an overall pretty good job with the writing and direction. The kid’s ‘death’ at the end was especially well done and maybe it’s because I expect child violence to be relatively censored, but… man… that truck. WHAMMO. Seeya next week, kid. There will probably be a lot of comparisons made to Ga-rei since this one also starts out with a protagonist bleeding profusely and ends with a couple jarring deaths, but really, since we know Keita’s not dead and everybody else who was ‘killed’ is hanging out in the next ep preview… plus there’s the whole doppelganger thing as well… so I’m hoping we get to see characters ‘die’ many many times before they’re really finally dead.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with this first episode so far. I’m hoping Kuro grows on me a bit (or maybe just punts the dachshund) and Keita develops some other personality trait aside from "is sad about his dead mother." Assuming Sunrise can manage to fulfill those expectations, it should be a fun ride. There’s enough here to love that I think most people will like this, although I certainly wouldn’t begrudge anybody for waiting another episode or two to see whether or not Keita stops sucking like a singularity.

And yes, Sunrise somehow managed to fit in a closeup of boobs out of absolutely nowhere. *sigh* Sunrise…

Oh yeah, and a reminder, if you live in one of the 9 places in the US that get iaTV (channel 560 in NYC, baby!) and for some inane reason have whatever premium/cable service that would let you watch it, it’ll be airing there on Thursdays 8 hours or so after the Japanese broadcast. Let’s see… the closest one to me is 650 miles away. Aw, so close and yet, so far.

Kuro and Lil’ Slugger

Preview:

Send in the clones.