天下制覇

 

I refuse to write out “Goshusousama.”
…
Dammit!

Sorry again for the delay. I was out being social and the raw that was downloaded had some crazy visual distortions going on so I had to redownload it once I got home. 

Impressions:

*sigh* Ninomiya, Ninomiya, Ninomiya… where to start. The easy comparison to make would be to Girls Bravo, but that would be a really poor comparison because the similarities between the two shows is skin deep at best. Pink haired busty girl with magical abilities, fanservice and somebody is afraid of the opposite sex. That’s where it starts and ends. Girls Bravo had far more energy, humor, slapstick, wit, and possibly most importantly, budget. On the other hand, nuking Yukinari and replacing him with somebody who fights polar bears and is willing to dislocate his shoulder in order to escape school girls who have tied him up can be nothing but an improvement.

Still, therein lies the problem with Ninomiya. The show just isn’t particularly well done or put together competently. The animation is functional at best, and the art runs the gamut from nice looking to really awful. Mayu’s figure simply just loses definition in some shots. It’s like the animators just ran out of time to finish drawing her. Add to this the kind of background track that makes my years in symphonies and orchestras weep, and I’m really not sure I want to talk about the production values too much longer. I think I’d simply be happy if they shot the bassoon player and never used it every again.

It’s not -all- bad. Like I said, the actual character of Ninomiya Shungo is pretty likeable. It’s hard to hate somebody who jumpkicks a polar bear in the opening scene. He (and his sister) are both very rough and ready people and even though he’s picked on by the combined forces of the entirety of the school, it’s nice to see a male romance lead who is actually a confident and competent guy. He even goes for the kiss on his woman in the first episode.

Mayu though… I really don’t like. Her main reason for existing in the episode is to attract other guys and force Ninomiya to pick her up and run off. I realize that she’s supposed to be a succubus, but all she does is stand around in an apron (maybe it’s supposed to be a summer dress… that looks suspiciously like an apron) and squeal in what I can only assume is supposed to be an attractive fashion. I know that this can’t be all that there is to the show though, but I’m not certain the relatively low production values otherwise are worth finding out what direction they’re going to take this in.

Still, we come back to the question of “what else is there to pay attention to on Wednesdays?” and for the moment, it’s between this and Dragonaut. Ugh, talk about a lose-lose situation. Still, here’s to hoping Ninomiya improves a bit when more than one main character is actually contributing to the episode. We’ll see how it looks next week I guess.

No summaries for the first episodes. I write as I watch, and I don’t know if I’ll care about a show until after the first episode.

Ninomiya OP