天下制覇

Gah! Ichigo Marshmallow opening flashbacks… or Azumanga… take your pick.

Impressions:

Man, the music in this show is awful. It’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear while on hold… or in elevators… or played by an elderly cowboy in front of a campfire. Other than that though, it was pretty decent, though the art was a bit on the low side with the occasional protruding cheekbone showing that the artists weren’t really sure how to deal with the perspective. The mouths also occasionally totally lost their shading and texture, which had something of a disquieting effect. It’s a bit creepy to see someone talking and having teeth, then 2 seconds later, the person talks and their mouth is a completely pink oval. It did have some impressive use of computer aided effects in parts similar to what Kyoani likes to do with the rotations around a point, so there is that. The actual artists just lost to the computers in this case.

The actual content is humorous enough, though the music really got in the way of the delivery of a lot of the jokes. It’s hard to take a “high energy idiot” joke presentation seriously while a twanging guitar is putting me to sleep at the same time. Or laugh as somebody is being chased around to elevator music. It’s also very VERY clear that it’s trying to be the next Azumanga Daioh. The ED even begins with the dumb one trying to push the Title circle out of the way. Where have I seen that before? Hmm hmm hmm?

I guess my final impressions are that, damn, the musical direction for the series blows ass and it’s about as animation from cut to cut is more volatile than the port-o-potty at the All-State Wings and Chilli Buffet Festival. Minami-ke just needs to fire their musical director… out of a cannon… into space. Beyond that, it’s pretty quality, but I’ve already got potentially two other shows on my probable schedule for Sundays, so I doubt I’ll be covering it. Hopefully Omni or Totali will pick it up… *hint hint*

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.

Minami-ke OP