life ends at 27
Gawds, what an effin’ terrible show. For a moment I thought the “girl falling from the sky” scene in the beginning was a parody, turns out they were serious in the end. Avoid avoid avoid, and one more black mark in Teh Rie’s body of work.
<Tim>LET’S MAKE MAGIIIIIIIC!</Burton> So what exactly is C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control (a more pompous anime name is hard to recall)? Judging from the first episode, this seems to be a mad medley of Yugi-Oh, Boogiepop, Eden of the East and MEGUCA IS SUFFERING. What C does have in spades is an amazing sense of style, which makes it a more probable successor show to take over from the Star Driver timeslot rather than Ao no Exorcist. Even if nothing delivers on every other front for this show, I can see that visual asthetic take it to cult status, just like it did for all things Kiraboshi. That being said, this show is far more surreal than Star Driver ever was and is clearly meant for an older crowd with its noitaminA slot, and given the way the plot plays out in the first 20min the watcher is unsure what the general direction of this show will be. Again, there are parallels with Star Driver, which never did mesh well its action and school slice-of-life halves. My verdict is cautiously optimistic, and we’re VERY unlikely to see a 1st ep this season that’s more attention-grabbing. P.S: The E.o.t.East similarity fascinates me, because whatever that show was trying to do, it never raised itself over its major failing of trying to stretch its cellophane-thin plot over the credibility rack without using fantasy elements. C clearly isn’t going to redo that doomed experiment, because we can see the supernatural is afoot here. In my opinion, this already makes it easier for the watcher to swallow whatever nonsensical plot twists (and in this type of show, there are bound to be at least a few) arrive down the road.
AND THEN SHINPACHI WAS A ZOMBIE.
So Gintama is back, and it’s like it never left. Even better, the intro arc probably makes zero sense to a newbie, but then that was never the point, was it? Welcome back, godking of non sequitur shows.
P.S: Real slacker is SLACK.
Since we have Madoka ending its run on the 21st, Pic of the Day will be hijacked for a nice countdown for this bright, cheerful series on upbeat little girls defeating fluffy creatures in showers of pink confetti.
I don’t want to know who applies the oil
Not written by Kishi? So it’s actually slightly less stupid and infinitely funnier, tsk tsk.
Making the rounds:
Howling for the soul/flesh/blood/life-force/positive energy of the living, eh? Ah well, could be worse…astronaut really sticks out like a sore thumb. So prosaic.
…..better animation and plot than canon material, yup. It never fails to amuse me how the filler material is always better than Kubo’s canon stuff, which is purely down to the cyclical time management of Jump animation projects. Usually when canon material is more or less being played out on TV, the movies are in development, and the latter takes precedence in terms of team resources. So the canon episodes on TV are just an unrecognizable mush of bad animation, made even worse by the bad original writing of the various Jump authors in their mangas.
That reminds me though….haven’t I seen this before?
Hmmm. Well, I guess if ripping off Blackest Night was OK for Kishi, Kubo can have a turn too. The amusing thing is that Kishi made a complete bland stew out of decent material, so I’m wondering if Kubo will turn the half-assed Secret Invasion into something palatable. (There is also a fine line besides ripping off something for your source manga and doing it for throwaway anime storylines) The setup, with Soul Society fighting against “itself”, also seems to be a variant of the Zanpakutou Rebellion arc, except with presumably more backstabbing. This being shounen and being Bleach, I don’t expect that to be very prominent a plot feature because it’ll probably still resolve itself into the familiar fight-challenge boilerplate patterns. Fans will get their wish of custom fight pairings, but I suspect they’re going to be disappointed in a lot of cases, because copouts WILL happen. A nice touch in this first episode is the canon references to the original manga events (specifically in the Deicide chapters/episodes), which makes for some nice continuity.
P.S: Is this the first time in a long while Ichigo’s bankai speed is shown explicitly? That’s hilarious and sad all together.
I thought it was hilarious when they did the nonsensical calculation for Bruce Wayne’s nett worth, but no, Forbes’ not stopping there. When you’re dragging out the SRD for your calcs you know you’ve crossed the Geek Event Horizon.