Canaan #01 — Recycled

July 4th, 2009

 

Gee. A lead character with magic eyes. I’ve never seen that from Type-Moon before.

New Season Disclaimer:

I try to watch at least the first episode of every new show in a season. However, do not expect anything I say to be fair or balanced. I value my own entertainment above all else and there are some genres or methods of presentation that I just plain do not like and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’ll attempt to at least make a cursory explaination of what did and did not please me about each show, but it’s just a simple fact of life that my tastes are mine alone. Feel free to express your own opinions in the comments, just keep it under control. This is just television after all.

Impressions:

I can’t deny that it looks rather good. Production’s solid, music’s good, and the festival really felt like a bustling celebration. One does have to wonder how many corpses or men running around shooting automatic weapons it takes to create a panic though. A few shots going unnoticed is perfectly acceptable. A squadron of men running around with assault rifles exploding in a shower of blood in the middle of a crowd and nobody noticing… not so much of a realistic festival. Not to mention the men having seizures, throwing up blood, and then children wandering over and playing in it. Grisly, sure, but seizures are how you tell somebody knows how to party hard, and throwing up blood just means more liquid for the kiddies to play in.

My main problem is that it did an absolutely terrible job of convincing me that I should care about any of these characters. An awesome and likeable cast can make any number of faults forgiveable. Inversely, characters you don’t care about can turn the rest of a show into gruel, regardless of the quality. Perhaps if it didn’t spastically jump from one character to the next every four minutes, they would have been able to put together more than just a generic character sketch for each. The fact that there were approaching nearly 10 characters, almost all of which got equal screen time certainly didn’t help that either. The general plot was also pretty unfocused, with almost equal parts EVIL PLOTTING, running around shooting things, people with animal heads having seizures, and soldiers roaming around, but the four are related to each other only by geographic proximity thus far.

Honestly, I’m content to just leave this to other people to cover and somehow just have to find a way to carry on with a minimum of SZS for Saturdays. I’m convinced it’ll develop the characters more than it did this episode, but it could take the better part of a month if it keeps bouncing around as much as it did this episode. It wasn’t bad by any means, it just needs at least another week or two to turn this into something other than a bunch of cardboard cutouts… with magic eyes. If you find a totally obfuscated story hopping merrily around every couple minutes is intriguing instead of frustrating, then by all means, go ahead.

Canaan OP

Preview:

Big boobs and old men.

Posted in Anime | 23 Comments »

23 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Fiend20 says:

    Contrapositively is not a word.

    • Jakajaka says:

      LOL ^^

      well, i really liked the show.
      I think this is the best animated show ive seen in a while, definitely.

    • Aroduc says:

      You clearly don’t hang out with enough mathematicians.

      I meant inversely anyway. [/mathnerdery]

  • Malkuth says:

    I am curious when you will post without whining ;)

  • hashi says:

    I get what you’re saying, but I thought this first ep was excellent. The animation and backgrounds were stellar, the action exciting, the voice-acting good. It’s true we didn’t really get to know anybody, and the situation is pretty opaque right at the moment, but I’m willing to let that come. You can’t do everything in one episode, especially with so many characters. This one was to get our attention, lol. It got mine.

  • Chen says:

    I have no clue what’s going on in the OP, but it looks fantastic. Will give it a shot.

  • Alt Eisen Riese says:

    Actually, near the end the people realised all the killing but where paying a blind eye to it. You know, a mafia thing. Don´t look, don´t tell and you´l be safe.

    • Aroduc says:

      They’re still spraying gunfire into the crowd. There are more than a few levels of difference between averting your eyes to something unpleasant and completely ignoring something that just almost killed you. And it was the children frolicking in the blood that really pushed the blood vomitting stuff over the top.

  • kadian1364 says:

    Seems to be the show with the biggest buzz this season, but Type-Moon stuff always rubs me the wrong way, so I’ll just wait and see ’til it’s done and watch it if others overwhelmingly recommend it (which I realistically don’t expect to happen).

  • karasu says:

    They do explain somewhat why no one’s fucking FREAKING OUT OH SHIT GUNS AND DEAD PEOPLE, so maybe you just missed that plotpoint. I do agree that there’s nothing making me like any of the the characters, though. Watching it for the cool action =V

  • Honoo says:

    Gee. A lead character with magic eyes. I’ve never seen that from Type-Moon before.

    I conclude that you want Tsukihime anime to be made by an awesome source.

    By the way, the screenshots look too interesting that I almost demanded the Internets to have a subbed version of this episode ready as soon as it’s said.

  • MADAO says:

    Goddamnshit, need moar Liang Qi !!!! The show lost its awsomeness whenever she’s not around. She’s so radiating that Canaan & the rest are not even worth looking at. Otherwise, good show & sincerely hope the journalist girl STFU or get her ass kicked soon.

  • The Phantom says:

    This one looks pretty good too, I am overloaded with work so I cant watch this but it looks quite good using skip/fastforward.

    I am in for anything that does not have loli/magic girls/yuri/yaoi/fanservice, and on top of that this one looks entertaining enough.

    • MADAO says:

      Sorry to crush your hope, while the show in fact doesnt have ” loli/magic girls/yuri/yaoi/fanservice”, it does have a certain annoying brat,or maybe 2 in next ep among the awesome cast. Guess who ? Cookie for you if you guess it right.

  • chounokoe says:

    Maybe I’m just really sensitive towards shows with good presentation, but I really liked this episode, if only for the total mystification of nearly everything that went on.

    And I really ask myself why people always whine about not getting everything served on a silver tablet right from the start.
    I really like the first episode to confuse me a bit and rise up questions, rather for it to be a total borefest.

  • Lero says:

    Saber-sama has returned *-*…. not really, btw The first ep. was very good.

  • GF202020 says:

    …so we’re in China, AND NO ONE HAS OX HORNS/ODANGO?

    I DEMAND SOME.

  • Lord Ryo says:

    Loved this episode! You only get one chance at a first impression. I’ve been turn off by a lot of animes that were lacking too much in the first episode. But after this, it leaves you wanting, no demanding more! They gave you enough to satisfy your curiosity and keep you involved until the next episode. I plan on keeping up with this series until the end. This’ll probably be the best thing since R2. And Maria, the camera girl is just too kawaii for words, I totally LOVE her! It’s odd too since I’ve never been a fan of Type-Moon in the past.