天下制覇

This just makes me wonder what JCStaff is going to do with its yaoi show…

Impressions:

Thus begins the delicate dance where I attempt to covertly say that I didn’t really enjoy the episode at all, but still think that it was pretty well made.

Wait a minute………. crap.

Let’s start with the worst part then; the music. Good lord, the ED was awful and that tune at the start through all the exposition made me feel like I should turn off my laptop and go play some Harvest Moon. Or maybe kill some goblins. The jury’s still out on that. The show is also an absolutely massive ball of girly cliches. There’s nothing inherantly wrong with cliches since they become standards for a reason, and I’m far from an expert on shows like this, so I’m sure there are nuances and differences here that I’m wholly unqualified to comment on, but at least as far as I’m concerned, every character completely slots themself into the standard girly girl romance archetypes, the independant woman swept off her feet by the tortured bishie amongst her cheering friends already damp in the panties. Or maybe the ED and showing Usui laying around in a dress shirt is sending me off in the wrong direction. In any case, very little feels different at all from any number of shows I’ve seen before.

Aside from that though, it was definitely very well made, especially for shows like this. I’m not really qualified to comment on whether or not it stayed close to the source, but it certainly felt like a lot of shots were pulled directly from pieces of paper with the bishie bubbles or girl flowers just colored in. Take that as a good or bad thing as you desire depending on how hot and bothered about adaptation decay. JCStaff also uses its now signature watercolors for the background artwork throughout.

After this episode, I feel mostly ambivilent with a side of genre mismatch. This really isn’t the kind of show or the characters that I generally like and it did very little that I could see to differentiate itself from a number of other similar things. I’m sure people more into these kinds of romances will have different opinions and probably more (if any) insight here. I certainly don’t feel any real animosity towards it, but I found next to nothing here that interested me either.

Edit:
I’m just giving a pass on the baseball sequel show that premieres today too. I tried watching it, but after 4 minutes of having no idea who anybody was or what was up with the super soccer teamwork, I gave up.

Preview:

LOUD NOISES! BIG FACES!