May 4th, 2009
Guin Saga seems to be a rather poorly paced show. I get the impression that the director and whoever’s adapting the books are much happier when they can just have people hitting each other with swords or daggers or whips or whatever; in both episodes 2 and 3, the show’s direction and animation really only come alive when there are action sequences.
The rest of the time, I find Guin Saga quite awkward to watch. It’s as if both too much and too little are happening at the same time.
I think the biggest problem with these episodes is that they shouldn’t even be happening at all; it’s made clear very early on that the Count who imprisons Guin et al is a supernatural being that could easily overpower them all at any time, and instead he chooses to stand around monologuing or to employ giant feral monkeys to attempt to do his bidding. I’ve not seen anime fall prey to Bond villain syndrome for quite some time, so it’s all the more disappointing that we see it here.
Aside from that, though, we’re also introduced to a small monkey girl who doesn’t speak the same language as everyone else who will no doubt be tagging along. Now she’s obviously fairly annoying, balancing out the fact that Remus is a little less whiny here; however, her scenes with Rinda are almost comically hasty. In the space of around three minutes screentime through the use of about four words they’ve not only become best friends but the monkey girl has elucidated on the different tribes of her race and that one of her rival tribes is attacking the Count’s tower without even seeing them. It’s very clunky, and although I appreciate this kind of world-building exposition is very difficult to do in anime compared to a novel it doesn’t mean that I can’t find it annoying!
I will continue with the show for the moment to see how the rest of the principal cast fares, but it’s not really awe-inspiring stuff despite the effective action sequences and sweeping music. Lord knows how long it’s going to run for…
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May 3rd, 2009
I made a decision at the start of this season that for shows airing on TBS in their stupid 4:3 timeslot I’d just wait until they turned up in widescreen before judging them. It wasn’t much of a hardship - it’s only K-On and this show that I needed to worry about, and believe me I have no plans to watch K-On as it airs. Maybe in a few years or so when the hype has receded, like I eventually did for Haruhi…
Anyway, this entry is supposed to be about Pandora Hearts, and so it shall be.
Pandora Hearts, far more so than 07 Ghost, is a show that I think fans of the manga will appreciate much more than us laymen who know nothing of it beyond a cursory glance at Wikipedia. For whatever reason, the first episode has absolutely no dramatic climax whatsoever; only one mildly momentous thing happens, when the protagonist Oz gets sucked into a vaguely Rozen Maiden-esque world filled with psychotic dolls, but it happens midway through the second half which then ends on an almost-but-not-quite cliffhanger. The rest of the episode is mostly spent doing the usual anime thing of dropping cryptic hints of things to come - here, it’s about Bells and Chains and Abysses and whatnot.
It’s not a bad opener, despite the lack of drama. I’ve read that some people think the show feels very “90s”, which isn’t really how I’d describe it; it’s true that it has a distinctive art style, but it feels a little like Xebec have tried to capture something a little more “manga-esque” than their usual super-bright-cartoony style. I had thought the animation was going to be naff, but it’s not bad at all for a TV show - the art looks a bit odd because everything is so washed out, I think, but the movement is fine and there are a couple of nice touches here and there. I liked the way the SD humour played out with Mrs Kate, for instance; SD is one of those stylistic quirks of anime that doesn’t often appeal to me, but here and in Higashi no Eden this season I’ve seen a couple of nice uses of it.
As I say, so little really happens in the first episode that it’s difficult to get a handle on where this might go from here. I’m sure those of you watching the 4:3 broadcasts can give me a picture of how things progress, but I do think I’d like to check the second episode out at some point although it’s hardly going to be a priority for the moment.
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April 20th, 2009
I will admit to being very surprised by the second episode of Shangri La. Surprised that next to nothing happened, that is.
It’s quite clever, really, if you ask me. What “happens” is that Kuniko et al go to investigate where they’re being bombarded from in Ikebukuro, which is overgrown with possibly poisonous jungle. Of course, the army are there too, so she ends up being confronted by the soldier-love-interest whose name I can’t remember (he’s that exciting) and blah blah blah fishcakes. They fail to find out anything useful whatsoever save that Kuniko and soldier-guy have similar swords, and everyone’s pretty much back where they started in the beginning save they’ve walked through some beautiful background artwork.
Walking is a generous term for the dire animation that Gonzo have produced for parts of this episode, but I’m feeling charitable.
Anyway, there’s some miniscule stuff with the antagonist, the psycho princess and the child genius too, including a bizarre explanation of how the genius plays the carbon market using dragons and water. I suppose you could call some of this character development.
I don’t know, though. None of it rings true - particularly the child genius, whose scenes are just a different permutation of what she did in the previous episode (i.e. played with carbon markets and freaked out over her parents). The other characters don’t even feel human - they don’t react to anything, they just say their lines and get on with what they’re supposed to be doing. The only character I really like is Momoko, who despite her ridiculous moment in the last episode still comes across as the most well-rounded character in the show, especially compared to Kuniko’s bland heroism.
I’ll be giving Shangri La another episode I think. I’m really not confident it’s going to improve, but I’d like to give it the benefit of the doubt; this episode is much less over-the-top than the first one but it’s also just a bit boring.
(PS is there any reason why the English episode titles provided by Crunchyroll are so different from the Japanese? I like the English ones in all their silly pseudo-poetic glory but the Japanese ones are fine as they are… I suppose it’s because Ikebukuro means nothing to most English speakers or something? It seems the title of this episode is a pun on “jukai” meaning “sea of trees” (used to refer to the forest surrounding Mt Fuji) where the “ju” is instead the kanji for “poison” - I can’t think of a good way that you would translate it into English really, but then I’m not a translator so what do I know!)
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April 19th, 2009
I’m going to be so pissed off if this show turns into a harem love fest, is all I can say.
Tears to Tiara is apparently based on what was at one point an ero-game but is now just your average RPG - that just happens to feature several female characters that become your wives, from a quick glance at Wikipedia. Oh, Japan, you and your crazy wish fulfilment stories. I sure know I’ve always wanted to be a demonic bigamist!
Anyhoo, I’m going to try and cast this out of my mind because without the foreknowledge that things could get annoying the first couple of episodes of Tears to Tiara are pretty entertaining. It’s not the kind of show where you really want to engage your brain very far, and that’s not to say there aren’t things about it that annoy me, but it’s a pleasant little watch for a fantasy show.
I think my biggest gripe, unsurprisingly, is with Rhiannon. I actually quite liked her in the first episode; she stood her ground until the stupid children showed up, didn’t really whine all that much, and then spent the rest of the episode completely zombie-fied which may have helped. However, then the dictations of ero-games are such that in the second episode her voice goes up about an octave and for almost no reason she declares that she’s going to marry a scary demon because she saw him crying bloody tears from within his soul. I hope the length of that sentence adequately conveys my annoyance with her - especially as she goes on to just stand in the midsts of a horde of dodgy CG skeletons looking panicky whilst the Manly Men beat them up, but hey ho.
Speaking of the Manly Men, on the flipside the three male characters we’ve really been introduced to are surprisingly interesting. Arthur veers close to the milquetoast lead but actually seems a pretty decent bloke; Arawn is surprisingly amusing for a tortured demon, and Ogam is appropriately jolly (although why no whizzy spells in the second episode? Whoever’s animating this clearly pays their effects animators well, there’s some very nifty pillars of light in the first episode…)
So I’m hopeful that Tears to Tiara will turn out to be more entertaining in the long run than I’m perhaps expecting it to be. Fantasy anime are a big weakness of mine, although I didn’t even make it to halfway through Tales of the Abyss last year (not sure why, I was quite enjoying it) so based on the first two episodes I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
The minute some mewling cutesy brat gets “married” to Arawn, though, my estimation of this show will plummet.
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April 19th, 2009
I find it incredibly difficult to spell the word “leopard” correctly. I ALWAYS get the o and the a the wrong way round. Drives me crackers. Writing about Guin Saga could prove to be difficult…
Well, it’s more difficult to write about Guin Saga generally anyway. Something I’ve been having a lot of trouble doing recently is trying to consider things on their own merits; admittedly anime recycles itself over and over again anyway, but I find myself constantly referring to other shows I’ve seen or books I’ve read etc. As for Guin Saga, the only way to describe it as a Western fantasy.
Anime fantasy tends to normally go for the more glamorous side of the swords-and-sorcery trope. Dashing swordsmen and all that sort of thing (I’m going to watch Tears to Tiara after I’ve typed up this entry and that’s fully the kind of show I’m expecting to see). Guin Saga, on the other hand, begins with the glamorous nobility being destroyed and a hulking great beast of a man with - unsurprisingly - a leopard head mask on beating people up and being very animalistic about it.
I’ve never read the original Guin Saga books (and indeed DigiKerot has basically put me off them) but I am a total trashy fantasy junkie - I’ve read David Eddings and still like his books, for instance. Guin Saga seems to be cut from a more “hard” fantasy cloth; wars and politics and all that mixed in with the leopard man beating up lake monsters, I suspect.
Anyway, enough babbling that doesn’t really make any sense. An opinion is in order!
Guin Saga comes across as something of a second-tier project for Satelight as an animation studio, certainly compared to Basquash. Although there’s clearly money behind the show, and there are some excellent visual touches - the final action sequence of the episode where Guin and his young charges are attacked by forest creatures is very well done - the character designs and general animation have the look of shows like Angelique or Glass no Kantai, where everyone looks simple and has no nuance to their movement.
From a story point of view, it is somewhat frustrating that we’ve been landed with a whiny male lead in the shape of Remus. Rinda, his sister, is at least a bit more of a go-getter, but Remus started to annoy me within the first few minutes of the show and things didn’t improve from there. I’m sure there will be plenty of character development but it’s not an auspicious start really.
As for Guin himself…he’s an amnesiac strong man. As long as he keeps beating things up he’ll fulfil his purpose, no doubt.
I can’t decide whether this show has much in the way of potential, strangely. There are flashes of interest, but mostly that’s just when Guin hits things; the story itself in the first episode moves surprisingly slowly given all that happens, and I think this might have worked better with slightly longer episodes to get more story telling done. As it is, 22 minutes isn’t a lot of time to get properly invested in a hardcore fantasy world like this, so I should probably give it the benefit of the doubt. We’ll see if I have time.
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