天下制覇

Just blow them up.

Impressions:

I have kind of mixed feelings about this one. It shares a lot of similaritites to Noein in its use of CG which is a particular style that I really hate. Some things get rendered in CG, others are drawn, and both move at the same time, which makes the visuals occasionally really disjointed. They also sometimes create all sorts of perspective issues. There’s one point that Birdy’s running up a wall, but the camera’s swinging around her. However, her movement doesn’t reflect that, only the background moves, so it just looks off. So long as the camera stays fixed, it’s usually okay, but whenever it starts moving, things just get awkward.

That doesn’t change the fact that when this show is on, it’s freakin’ on. Birdy herself is a pretty quality character, ready to blow anybody and everything up at a moment’s notice. Hell, she punches a robot so hard that nothing’s left but an arm and then kicks the second one in half. That’s the kind of action I can get behind. The animation and choreography for her fights is excellent (barring the issues mentioned above) and they didn’t resort to any cheap tricks, stills, or speedlines even once. I have to admit that I’m curious where the wind is coming from though. Birdy’s hair is always blowing. She transformed from her human disguise, and suddenly a stiff wind kicked up around her that lasted even when she was indoors. Maybe she just farts a lot when fighting.

Unfortunately, Senkawa, the boy that she smirks while blowing up (good work, Birdy) is absolutely tortuous to watch. He’s a ball of every single bad cliche you can think of. He has pervert friends, a feisty tomboy that follows him around, parents that leave on an extended whatever the very moment the show starts, and a crush on the idol at school. Most unfortunately, his portions make up about half the episode. If not for him, this show would have been pretty awesome all around, but he’s just boring as sin.

The final thing though, is that it’s not like there’s anything else to watch on Fridays except for Penguin Girl, which still only lasts 10 minutes… often less. It’s well worth watching just for the Birdy segments, so I’ll almost certainly stick with it. I don’t know if you should count on me for particularly detailed writeups though since I really did flip on Minesweeper while Senkawa was droning on and on. Man, that kid sucks. I was cheering when Birdy went "the hell are you throwing at me" and blew him up with a smirk on her face. Then she had to ruin it by bringing him back to life. Oh well, I knew it was coming at least.

Oh yeah, and it amuses me that Birdy’s robot buddy turns into an effeminate goth wannabe.

The OP and ED are both pretty awful. One’s an incessant JPop drone and the other’s bad Japanese rap. Ew.

Preview:

Senkawa figures out what he’s gotten into and Birdy gets tentacled.