天下制覇

Delicious chibi quasi-sprites.

First Episode Disclaimer:

I watch the first episodes of almost everything. Premises mean nothing, it’s all in the execution, and there’s no substitute for checking that out for yourself. This does mean that I watch a rather lot of first episodes that I don’t particularly like. Feel free to share your own opinion if you disagree.

Impressions:

Wow. Is this really Silver Link? I suppose my prediction of it being more Shaftish (by the staff… the nice and Shinbo-free Shaft) was more dead on than I thought. This show looks great. It’s very well animated all around, I’m really liking the art style (although it does remind me a lot of JCStaff’s watercolors), and while the battles are a little 16-bit RPGish, my unnatural obsession with chibi sprites is well documented, so I’m certainly not complaining. They’ve got cash to throw around here and it shows. There’s barely a dull moment, or lame pan over faces, or any of the horrible cheap animation tricks that seem to plague series these days. Hell, the foregrounds even look better than the backgrounds for once. It’s… almost shocking.

The episode did feel like it lost a lot of momentum in the middle of the whole battle against the other class. The comedy all but disappeared for a few minutes and the reveal of genius Himeji Pinky was waaaaay too drawn out, but overall, they managed to keep all the exposition relatively interesting… and there was a rather lot of it, so it deserves a lot of credit for that. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when you actually give visual representations of stuff instead of just droning on about it. I’m not really sold on the characters yet though. Himeji Pinky’s a tad annoying and sounds like she’s been heavily medicated, and Yoshii’s cut out of the same cloth as eighty thousand other protagonists. I rather like Yuuji so far, and Minami Kitehead’s not bad either. Ponytail tomboys are probably also a weakness… and chibi sprite ponytailed tomboys… swoon.

Pretty much like I said for Himari though, there’s not a whole ton to watch on Wednesdays to begin with, but this is a nice little light comedy that I would have definitely picked up anyway and I’m expecting it to be quite fun to follow. It’s just hard to believe that the same studio that made Tayutama put this together. The difference is like night and day.

Youtube’s blocking the OP. You can pick it up here if you want to watch it.