DRRR! #01 — Yada Yada Yada…

January 6th, 2010

 

Less yapping, more dullahans.

First Episode Disclaimer:

Since this blog is a known affiliate of OFFICIAL SERIOUS BUSINESS ANIME INC, all opinions expressed herein are absolute and not to be argued with under pain of death.

Wait, what? Where’d this episode come from? This is a Thursday show. Hell, it’s -still- not even listed on the major broadcast schedules.
Edit: Ah, Bandai Channel had a special ‘limited’ (ha) screening online of the first episode. Limited… on the internet? Dream on.

Impressions:

Well, this certainly could have started a little bit stronger. In a show about gangsters, dullahans, and lord only knows what else, the first fifteen minutes or so felt juuuuuust a tad slow and draggy. I perked up a little bit at the kidnapping, but then it was back to listening to teenagers ramble onward with a brief interlude to watch the titular dullahan one-shot a few punks. I’m willing to forgive the cheap and kind of slackerish IM sequences because the episode was a tad longer than usual, but I still rolled my eyes a bit at them. The action was also nowhere near up to Baccano’s standards at all, so that was a bit of a letdown.

Production for the most part was pretty good, and the music was definitely one of the show’s strongest points. Art was decent enough, but it has the same problem that a lot of shows seem to be developing lately; lush backgrounds where you can count the number of hairs on the head of a person 20 feet away from the camera, while the characters in the foreground get maybe 5% of the same attention. The biggest complaint I have right now with this is that I find watching the main characters about as entertaining as watching paint dry, and honestly, that’s pretty much a deal breaker for me, especially when 90% of the episode is spent listening to them aimlessly ramble on like they escaped from some bad coming of age story. Aaaand it’s got relatively stiff competition for Thursdays considering I’ve already got Kiddy Girl and Hidamari Sketch on my plate, and given this episode, I’d rather watch either of those over this.

I’ll probably give it at least one more episode for now, but after this episode, my general instinct is to wait on this one and maybe come back to it if final reviews are favorable. At least as far as this episode went, it lacked the charm, action, and characters of Baccano, which doesn’t leave it with too much to work with for me.

OP should be fixed now.
Edit: Or not. Bah. Grab it here if you want.

Preview:

On to school?

Posted in Anime | 11 Comments »

11 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Ties says:

    Is that some Holo in DRRR!?
    Was already on my watch list but it gets an automatic watch now XD

  • zwei says:

    that cutout looks like the wolf girl from spice and wolf? anyway there arent as many interesting anime this season compared to the previous so im gonna watch this.

  • AfroSquirrel says:

    I think that the Holo cutout is the only thing in this episode that anybody is going to care about… >_>

  • Anonymous says:

    Sadly the OP didn’t encode correctly. Guess well have to wait a few more hours.

  • lubczyk says:

    Wow. I thought I was the only one who noticed. Character designs over the last 2 decades have been getting more bare-bones as time goes on.

    Facial shading is pretty much non-existent in many shows and people have no nose to speak of.

    These “characters” barely look like humans anymore. The art feels so shoddy at times that it seems that their nothing more than anthropomorphic blobs.

    Oh, and the opening episode has failed to hook me. This is a none-starter for me.

  • tachi says:

    DRR DRR DRR

  • Rawr says:

    I’ve noticed how Japan has been seeking to find a fine balance between art and budget. I’ve also noticed how the answer lies in outsourcing the animation to countries with cheaper labour and a untrained workforce. NOT THE FUCKING ANSWER. Just my 2cents.

    The art wasn’t too bad imo. Sure, it didn’t try all that fucking hard, but it didn’t mess up anything too major.

  • tokki says:

    I watched this epi RAW and I loved it.I had no clue what they were saying but I still loved it. Plus I could kinda guess what they were talking about due to their actions. I’ll admit that there were some scenes that made the characters look like they had no noses.But I loved it and I cant wait for the subbed epi to come out and the 2nd one. Shizuo wasnt seen though. : ( Talked about.But he’s in the next epi. ; }

  • chad001 says:

    Hey look! That’s what Ryuuji would look like if he was as manly as his delinquent-look…

  • The Phantom says:

    Holo was the only thing I noticed in this episode, the male lead (what was his name again?) was as half assed as I was expecting and probably more. unless something radical changes on next episode I am autodropping this.

  • Albedo says:

    there’s a male lead?

    anyway… I just hope the Yandere character shows up soon and sticks around longer than she does in the manga…

    Yandere = win