天下制覇

Squall Does Tokyo.

Impressions:

I cannot take this show seriously. Keisuke is the worst offender, but the music’s pretty out there as well. It sounds like they took it straight from the VN (not that I’d know). It’s very atmospheric and all, but a lot of it is closer to jungle beats while the visuals are primarily Akira looked alternatively bored or tormented. It’s like he can barely contain his raw unbridled sexuality from pouring out of him and spilling over everything. Speaking of which, Keisuke… good lord. The first time we see him, he has this crap-eating grin plastered over his face from just being near Akira. Then he spends the entire night huddled outside Akira’s door, wrapped around Akira’s jacket and sobs when Akira’s carted off to the death games. That’s not the end of it, no siree. At the end, Bishie A stares into Bishie B’s eyes while holding B at swordpoint, then, upon seeing his reflection, says "You have interesting eyes" and disappears in a flutter of a trenchcoat. I bet this is like crack for some people.

Production was mostly decent, although there was some weird shading and coloring at times. The fights were nicely choreographed, but direction was overall pretty poor. I already mentioned the music, but there are tons of weird shots that linger on the strangest thing for slightly too long… like this puddle. It’s a puddle. Nobody’s talking. Why am I looking at it? Why did I just watch a minute and a half of Akira walking through an empty city as animal magnetism pours off of him? Did I just answer my own question? There is a pretty major quibble to be had over censoring. I cannot even begin to guess what this is supposed to be a shot of. Akira unfortunately has absolutely no personality. Hell, I’m not sure that he even broke double digits for lines in this episode. At least he beats people up. That makes him more useful than most other protagonists. That does rather annoyingly leave this episode with just Angsty Bishie, Quiet Bishie, and Dark Bishie. Not exactly a new or compelling group of stereotypes.

I’m thinking that if you were looking forward to this for its unrestrained testasterone, you’ll be pleased. It wasn’t bad even from an outsider’s perspective though. Extremely vacuous and none of the characters have a shred of personality, but it’s fun to laugh at it. Of course, A-1’s modus operandi lately is collapse after the first episode or two. My own amusement over things like this tends to expire pretty quickly as well. We’ll see though. There’s a lot going on for Thursdays and precious little of it has me particularly excited. Maybe making fun of Bishies for a season could be exciting?

Preview:

Dammit, Keisuke.