So, once again we analyze this week's worth of Spring Anime Series. Looking at all these shows now, I've just realized that what I've said in past analyses has been very judgmental because some of these shows have gone from being dull or fundamentally offensive to enjoyable shows with enjoyable characters, whereas others have gone vice versa. Enjoy!
My Opinion of the Week (28th April to 4th of May, 2014)
The first bit of news I have this week is that I have dropped the Studio Zexcs show "The Comic Artist and His Assistants: The Animation" (Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to). There is really one fundamental reason for this: there was not enough content in each episode for me to warrant it as good. The comedy can be funny and I find the concept of following a manga artist's daily life and work hilarious but unfortunately therein lies the problem of the show: it's a comedy. This unfortunately leads to 13 minute episodes of short stories about 2-5 minutes each in length. Even Daimidaler (TNK Studios), for all its sexist jokes and slapstick-based humor, has this down: each episode is the standard 22 minutes. Daimidaler has also come to grips with actually giving us a semi-concrete story, whereas this seems to just be a rambling of quick funny shorts to fill in ten minutes of your time.
Speaking of Daimidaler, the show has actually exceeded expectations. True, Kouichi is a sexist shit stain, like all the male characters, and all the female characters are way too sexed-up, but there have been some genuine moments of (dare I say it) drama. Especially in this last episode, which has a supposed character death that was genuinely quite shocking. Dare I say it, I might actually be starting to like this show and it's made by the people who created an anime abomination. Plus the opening Speed Metal song is just killer.
Mekakucity Actors (Studio Shaft) is following a very good formula for a show. It's used it's first three episodes for character introduction and now hopefully a main story can begin. The animation is stylistically stunning and reminds me of Summer Wars or pretty much anything by Mamoru Hosoda. The powers are all quite call for different reasons: the ability to conceal yourself hobbit-style is my favourite.
Soul Eater Not! (Studio Bones) has been really suffering though: it has been submitted to the "moe" treatment. What's that? Well, it's when a show starts out pretty cool with excellent battle scenes but eventually just becomes about teenage girls in high school. The last episode in particular was dire. The cameo by Maka and Soul was cool, sure, but the rest just sucked the big one.
Overall, another twisting week for anime. Eventually, it will come down to five shows of preference that I like, but for now, it's been pretty awesome!
Top Five Ranking
1. No Game No Life (Studio Madhouse): Wow, this exceeds all expectations I had before it's airing. My initial opinion was that it was gonna be a stereotypical SAO copyist, but it's actually a really good anime! As mentioned before, Sora is yet another Lelouch Lamprouge: witty, clever and absolutely merciless in his execution of plans. Shiro, his sister, is also a very good character but Sora is just awesome!
2. Black Bullet (Studio Kinema Citrus): Black Bullet is just good. The story, the characters, the setting... it's just good! True, SNK-inspired, but still excellent in its execution.
3. Knights of Sidonia (Sidonia no Kishi) (Polygon Pictures): This show just keeps getting better and better. Is it the relentless awesomeness of that opening, the fight scenes and Nagate? I don't know, but, like Black Bullet, it's just good.
4. Captain Earth (Studio Bones): Although massively let down by Soul Eater Not!, Captain Earth redeems it in every aspect where Soul Eater is failing. The animation is great, story is cool and character development is just killer!
5. Mekakucity Actors (Studio Shaft): A new entry to the top five, everything I like about this show is listed above. So read that.
Thanks for reading. Sayonara!
No comments:
Post a Comment