Spring Season: INSTANT REVIEWS 2
In this post, I continue watching and instantly dismissing new series!
The Really Good Shows
Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann – so good we fansubbed it! More on that later.
Hayate the Combat Butler
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
The Probably Good Shows
Bokurano
Steel Jeeg
OverDrive
Lucky Star
To Terra
Touka Gettan
Seirei no Moribito
Gegege no Kitarou
Not Good Shows
Gigantic Formula
IDOLM@STER Xenoglossia
Blue Dragon
Nagasarete Airantou
Seto no Hanayome
Horrible Shows
Kamichama Karin
Polyphonica
Shining Tears X Wind
Now that I’m done offending everyone, actual reviews!
- GeGeGe no Kitarou (2007)
Kids’ show about a boy named Kitarou and a bunch of his friends fighting other ghosts because they’re jerks (the other ghosts, that is). The characters all have excellent names like “Catgirl” and “Rat Guy”, and one of them is apparently anthropomorphic toilet paper.
This makes it a total winner.The opening song is a nice remix of the same song they always use. Nekomusume is pretty moé.
Production quality: not really relevant
Audience: Japanese children - Kamichama Karin
Koge-Donbo‘s cute show about a retarded magical girl. I deleted the episode, but I clearly remember that it sucked. The scene arrangement is complete nonsense for the first half of the episode and nothing about the genre appeals. Maybe I’m not the person to go to on this sort of thing?Production quality: lame
Audience: NegativeZero, people that like Koge Donbo - Polyphonica
There’s like, this red-haired girl, and this guy? They have stupid trivial small talk for most of the episode, then some disaster happens? The girl transforms into a fairy and saves someone?Who the hell cares. This show is awful in every way. Don’t watch it.
If you liked the scene with the transforming bike and synthesizer concert, there’s a much better anime about transforming bikes and synthesizer concerts. You should watch it instead.Production quality: Awful
Audience: Nobody - Kishin Taisen Gigantic Formula
Realistic version of G Gundam, which removes the interesting part of G Gundam.
However, I’m pretty sure the first episode killed too many of the characters for it to stick to its official plot, so it may be alright.The robots are done in 3D CG, as well as, for some reason, everyone’s faces. This results in occasional strange animation errors.
Production quality: acceptable
Audience: limited - IDOLM@STER Xenoglossia
Sunrise show; takes the famous pop idol raising game and makes them all giant robot pilots. First episode featured them eating corndogs and a good city-block-transforming-into-runway scene. Could be okay, but will probably take a while to get anywhere. High probability of moé detected.
Production quality: Sunrise-class
Audience: People who don’t mind moe in their giant robots. - Steel Jeeg
Remake of a very old and sort of bad giant robot show. This one looks kind of good.
Fanservice and a JAM Project, uh, rap.Production quality: Good, sharp and bright colors.
Audience: Giant robot fans only. - To Terra
I’m told that this is an excellent shoujo-styled science fiction manga back in the day. Therefore, I’m not really worried that the first episode was somewhat uninteresting, but it is somewhat of a problem.Keep an eye on it, but it didn’t quite pass the one episode test.
Production quality: meh
Audience: somewhat general - Bokura no
I liked this manga (from Mohiro Kitoh, the author of Narutaru and a guy who really hates kids), so I’ve somewhat been anticipating this.The promotion has been mostly chanting a long list of Ghibli-associated staff, without mentioning that this is the most feared of all kinds of modern anime. A GONZO show.
First episode covers the first chapter of the manga, with the first robot fight, completely faithfully. This being Gonzo, they’ve used 3D CG everywhere they could. Unfortunately, it’s surprisingly bad CG, and is quite jerky. This detracts noticably from the episode :(
Production quality: good aside from the CG. This episode is mostly a night scene, which I’m not a big fan of.
Audience: Hopefully everyone; Bokurano is very good.
This is getting far too long, so I’m going to cut it off here. I’ve got to be well rested before I write some kind of obsessive StrikerS review, after all.