天下制覇

 Don’t throw stones.

Impressions:

Well, I wasn’t expecting much and I didn’t get much. At least Soul Eater has a competitor in the "terrible voice acting" competition. I didn’t think it was possible to put together such a collection of nasally high pitched whining voices all in one show, but somehow Crystal Blaze managed to do it. On the upside, the music is pretty soothing. Not good perse… but compared to the vocals, it was the wind of a summer’s breeze. I’m being a little unfair here really. They did do a pretty good job on the background music, but I also have a weak spot for jazz in general.

The main problem I had with the episode was that it spent easily about half the time on the two girl assistants who are more annoying than an entire pack of baying chiuhuahuas. The story is little to write home about either. Some mysterious woman with strange powers who is being hunted falls into the hands of a familial detective group with such unique characters as techie-girl, spunky-girl, cooking-boy, rough-and-tumble-boy, and of course, crossdressing-older-man. Let’s also not mention that every single person in the world is a crack shot and even in the dark from a dozen meters away can shoot the pistols out of other peoples’ hands easily. The show is just chock full of cliche after cliche.

Art and animation were certainly competent, though little to write home about. The best things I have to say for the show is still the music. The story didn’t draw me in, the characters irritated the living hell out of me, and the premise is pretty meh at best. More serious intrigue shows really aren’t my preference anyway. Maybe someone else will find things to be excited about here, but for me, it just didn’t do anything. I might be interested in the soundtrack at some point to toss into my easy listening stuff though.

Crystal Blaze OP

Preview:

I wonder if they’ll take her in despite the mystery and danger.