天下制覇

Backgrounds are too expensive to draw.

FYI, this is an ‘OVA’ episode released with a volume of the source for an upcoming TV series in Spring.

Impressions:

I feel like Kyoto Animation isn’t even trying anymore. They’ve found their niche adapting these generic pre-packaged four panel comics and it seems to be making them a profit, so now they’re just lowering the bar one step at a time until they reach maximum profitability. Insert another four panel comic about girls doing absolutely nothing with half the jokes being one saying something slightly unusual and the other making a face, cut the budget in half again, and here we are. This looks like some interns made it in Flash over the weekend, and when they were feeling up to it, added in some stock Movie Maker effects or Photoshop gradiated backgrounds to give it pizazz.

Besides its painful production deficiencies, it suffers the same thing as almost four panel adaptations do, not just KyoAni’s, zero flow, poor pacing of the humor, and no soul whatsoever. These are not insurmountable problems. Shaft got around those issues with Hidamari by being Shaft, AIC got around them with GA Art Class by adding energy to the whole thing, HAL added flow and cohesion with B-Cup. All KyoAni adds is color and backgrounds. And not even that all the time. Hell, they don’t even bother to always draw backgrounds. I can’t wait for somebody to claim that it’s "brilliantly minimalistic" and an homage to Azumanga because they colored Chiyo’s hair blue. You may as well watch a slideshow of the comic with a couple friends speaking the lines. That was you can at least add alcohol and make it entertaining.

In short, it’s a completely unambitious adaptation that adds little more than color to an already apparently extremely weak source. I’m sure it’ll make KyoAni millions.