Cinnamon Ass

OP - Moebius (Janne D’Arc) - the backing’s a bit anaemic, but otherwise this isn’t bad, and the animation’s okay as well, although not something I really
ED - Furumu Bakegyamon (Kimidori, who I think is one of the characters in the show; also the name of an awesome Maaya Sakamoto song!) - okay, now this is quite cute, but I can’t explain why - it’s the art style, but I can’t quite describe it although it’s really familiar somehow. Hate the song, like the animation.

I’m trying very hard to watch the first episode of everything to completion, as I usually do for the April series. I’ve already reneged on that promise with Soul Link (turned off 5 minutes in, YOUR HEADS ARE TOO SMALL AND YOU ARE HATEFUL, BADLY ANIMATED H-GAME CLICHES, CHARACTERS!), and I’ve missed out blogging Digimon Savers because I can’t think of anything to say other than how disappointing I found it (ugly character designs and a boring “secret organisation regulating Digimon” plot).

For Bakegyamon, I only paid attention to the first five minutes before my attention was drawn away; as such, I basically made up what happened based on what was going on in the corner of my eye and the dialogue while I did something else. It was probably better that way.

Bakegyamon is an utterly stereotypical shounen merchandise-fight show, particularly reminiscent of Onmyou Taisenki, a guilty pleasure of mine. However, Onmyou Taisenki benefits from having a fairly reserved, likeable lead character, whereas Bakegyamon’s lead character is a brash, screeching boy named Sanshiro Tamon, who decides to go off on an adventure at the beginning of the summer holidays; he ends up on a ferry with his best friend whose name I didn’t catch, and they get molested by thugs (which always happens on ferries!) - there’s a mysterious girl twirling an umbrella that makes it rain very hard to save them, and then some shit happens with a demon called Fue who decides to partner up with Sanshiro in playing Bakegyamon, which is some kind of game they play in the demon world that basically involves a merchandise-tastic card swipe and magic beasties hitting each other.

Most disturbingly, though, there’s this terrifying character who looks like a demented clown crossed with a wilting sunflower that turned up at one point who may have scarred me for life.

As you may have guessed, I didn’t care for Bakegyamon. It has a really cool bit just before the OP which makes the show look kind of interesting with Umbrella Girl in a forest, but then the rest of the show is formulaic and boring. I won’t be giving this one another try, methinks.

Incidentally, the manga-ka for this show is the same as for Le Cirque de Karakuri, which someone recommended to me in my manga-suggest-a-thon - I’ve read the first chapter and am intrigued (great artwork!) but ended up going on a shoujo binge; I read the first volumes of Global Garden, Ouran High School Host Club, Moon Child and Mekakushi no Kuni and enjoyed them all (especially Ouran and Global Garden); still to try are Busou Renkin, Demon Sacred and Kaguya Hime in particular, although I will of course bear in mind all other suggestions!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 9:12 pm and is filed under One Shot Wonders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.