Cinnamon Ass

OP - Shine (L’Arc-en-Ciel) - Hyde-tastic! The OP is well produced (especially the background art, which is consistently excellent throughout) but it’s not very inspiringly directed; lots of people not moving that much except to turn their heads a bit, mostly it’s a display of some nifty CG. I guess that, as the show has a much broader viewing base than many other anime shows, a typical flash-bang-wallop approach isn’t really necessary.

ED - Itooshi Hito E (Tainaka Sachi) - nice enough, I guess, with lots of shiny CG again as the camera pans back across a field; the show employs it well so I’m not complaining or anything, it just bears noting.

Barsa is a wandering bodyguard in a world resembling the usual feudal Asia but with strange beasts and magic doodads (from what we’ve seen in this episode), sad to be turning 30. She witnesses a beast drawing an imperial carriage go suddenly crazy and attempt to dive off the side of a bridge; with a wire bound in a bracelet and her halberd she manages to rescue the young boy within. Despite the raging torrent of water bearing the ruined carriage down on top of them, she is miraculously saved by a glowing blue light that appears around them for a moment.

That evening, as Barsa dines alone in the imperial city of New Yogo, she is brought to the Imperial palace. The boy, Chagum, is the second prince of the kingdom, and within him lie the eggs of a water spirit, an event that only occurs every 100 years. His mother tells Barsa that the maddened beast was part of an attempt to assassinate Chagum by the King and asks Barsa to protect her son, offerring a fortune in jewels as payment. Barsa, after much prevarication, ends up accepting the job, and sets fire to the royal chambers before fleeing with the reluctant Chagum.

Seirei no Moribito is unsurprisingly an extremely high quality production all round. Given the hype and funding poured in from all over the place (including Geneon USA, who announced the license at TAF07), it’s not a massive shock that the quality of the art is top-notch. The show does give off a very “Production IG TV show” vibe in that there’s nothing that particularly leaps out (save the lovely background art) but it’s all very nicely done; the voice acting is generally good (although it’s early days yet) and the animation is solid-to-nice although without any particularly memorable moments.

Realistically, it’s impossible to gauge where a show will go after the first episode, especially as I didn’t find out any more than I already knew from reading promo material etc. However, Seirei no Moribito is in one of my favourite genres and certainly appears to have a good team working on it, so the outlook is most certainly optimistic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Seirei no Moribito. 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.