天下制覇

Oi, one of these.

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.

I actually watched this at home, and am now typing this up in my (useless) stats class.

Impressions:

Ahhhh, watching things at 7am. No, wait, watching girly things at 7am and then writing them up an hour later while ‘learning’ that the probability of a coin flip is 50%. Now that’s an experience to relish.

Regardless of my pre-fully-awake sarcasm, this was a pretty good and a very very cute episode. Outside of the corny cherry blossom shower, the art was all very good, the shifts into the more humorous styles were cute, and while it’s certainly not going to win any accolades for animation, it was definitely servicable enough. The music was all nicely done enough as well, although they really probably should have picked a song that didn’t have high notes for Kana Hanazawa to completely miss. Ouch. I could have also done without listening to that wailing baby for a couple straight minutes. Ugh. You made your point. The thing is irritating as hell. Stop antagonizing your audience, please.

My biggest complaint with the show, and this is very close to a deal breaker, is that I really don’t like the character of Kobato at all. I’ve never really liked the idiot characters that bumble around and psychologically heal other characters, and she’s even worse than the likes of Tohru Honda or Onizuka. She’s far far faaaaaaar past cute clumsiness to me and well into impossibly mentally handicapped. A lot of it could be solved by some small changes in direction, like not exaggerating her clumsiness to impossible levels, but who knows if they’ll actually do that. I also rolled my eyes a bit when they began the show by sitting down and having the characters flat out state the entire premise for Kobato’s little magical healing journey.

I’ll probably give it another episode or two to see if Kobato grows on me at all, but I’m not really holding my breath. If you like those kinds of characters and stories though, I’m certainly not going to make fun of you for liking this. It’s a very solid production and I don’t think anybody that was looking forward to this will be disappointed.