天下制覇

The latest in SHAFT’s series of wacky classroom humor shows… sort of. Impressions:

Well… SHAFT and Shinbo continues to epitomize style, but honestly, a lot of this episode didn’t click with me. Thankfully, things picked up quite a bit once Itoshiki escaped from the philosophical ranting and made it to the classroom, but I got the sense that SHAFT has lost control of themselves with this one. There were a couple moments that made me laugh, like the sock touchup, but this may be the first SHAFT show that is just entirely too off kilter for my tastes. It’s one thing to be surreal in a surreal setting, like PPD or Negima!?, but it’s another thing altogether to create a surreal atmosphere in a much more mundane setting.

Production values are fine. It’s nearly impossible to differentiate between the style choices and the normal art anyway. It uses that same textureless technique a lot of the time that Gankutsuou used and makes my eyes swim. The music is pretty decent, but it’s extremely obtrusive, so that’ll depend on your tastes. I wasn’t a fan of it much though. I have no idea what was up with the OP either, and the ED seems to be the show’s actual OP, but… gah. SHAFT confuses me. I guess in conclusion, I have to honestly say that my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to sufficiently be able to follow what’s going on with all the blackboard jokes and whatnot. It’s a very different presentation and tone from SHAFT’s previous offerings, and while there are numerous similarites, I’m not certain that previous fans will find the same charm in Zetsubou as the others offered. There’s just less energy, less substance, and a lot more style. I guess we’ll see how it develops now that we have the intro out of the way, but like Itoshiki, I’m not overly optimistic about the future here.