Well, here we are. Sekai Seifuku had the easily strongest premier of this admittedly weak-ass season, and though that first episode was mainly very pretty, very silly, and very endearing, this show is possibly the only one that shows the potential to go somewhere. That’s based on a couple very specific strengths, with the central one being the fact that it’s actually got a talented writer. That’s something you can’t fake – the first episode consistently hit a variety of styles of jokes, and even featured a solid speech from the protagonist that pointed to some possible themes while also demonstrating his own personality and bias in a very natural way.
But of course, this is also the show about a little girl in a ridiculous outfit conquering the world. So if it just remains the “I’ll share my snacks and the world with you” variety hour, that’s pretty okay too.
Anyway. Let’s see what we’ve actually got.
Episode 2
0:05 – Our villain marches down an ominous, low-budget CG hallway. Incidentally, I didn’t comment on the “secret identity” of our heroes/villains/antagonists from the last shot of the first episode, but I love how useless these costumes actually are. Not really much good wearing a mask when you’ve still go purple hair down to your hips
0:07 – Who could possibly be hiding behind that alluring mask?!?
0:21 – I’m still liking this show’s dreamy, consistent color scheme. Coral-colored pastels as far as the eye can see
0:52 – Hence their stupid bird hats. Of course!
3:46 – Well look who it is! My mild-mannered classmate, Komadori-san!
4:26 – I like how little respect this show has for this other show that could easily be going on right now. Well, actually, it is going on right now, it’s just called Nisekoi.
4:51 – SCHOOL IS BORING FAST FORWARD MORE CONQUERING
5:20 – Confound these clever disguises!
6:35 – The radish definitely helps
7:17 – I’m very happy this show doesn’t point out its own jokes. That’s a pretty huge problem with most anime comedies
7:52 – Yeah, that’s about right. Another nice example of this show’s art style – it’s not NagiAsu, but it’ll do
8:00 – And now the “you just told me your secret identity” running joke is tweaked for a visual gag. Humor!
8:08 – Please stick to fuzzy slippers in the secret base
9:54 – More “finding a place for yourself.” Also, Jimon’s “sorry I’m so normal” seems like it might be worth keeping in mind, too
10:08 – Nice embroidery
10:49 – Something tells me it isn’t just the stick-figure girls this show is peddling. They’ve moe’d this kid up good
12:17 – Yeah, I’m sold on this adorable family of misfits
12:51 – She enters from a high chair in the ceiling. Yes, this is a good show
13:07 – And again, they set up a gag expectation and then trip you by switching the word flubbed. The fact that they had to explain why this was all even a joke kind of kills it for us as sub readers, but it’s still well-constructed and not overplayed
13:20 – Her smirking tone is just so great
15:01 – Yeah, I’m stealing that line
17:08 – Thank god she has that sensor to help find the enemy base
17:56 – This naturally resulted in a giant manta-starfish monster
18:19 – A cunning plan
19:39 – And so ends the career of Jimon, amateur supervillain
19:45 – OH SHIT! JIMON DOUBLES DOWN! Maybe he’s got supervillain potential after all
20:34 – This show is pretty great
21:18 – I love this guy’s design
21:36 – She even has one of those silly safety forks
And Done
Well, if that episode’s anything to go by, we’re leaning far more towards silly than anything else. But good silly is good! And this was very good silly – solid big gags and a ton of tiny little jokes that really made great use of this ridiculous premise. This show feels very confident – it doesn’t try too hard to throw humor at you, it just keeps chugging along, exploring new parts of its world and being funny and endearing all the while. If it can keep moving forward to avoid overplaying the same jokes, I think it’ll be a very pleasant ride.
As someone who was already cynical about this show last week, I couldn’t really see anything truly great in this episode. (Copypasting my Reddit post)
Not good enough.
In my opinion, this show is not good enough. It’s either not serious enough or not funny enough. The show has too much humour to make a story about world conquest seem believable, and it doesn’t have good enough humour to be a show that genuinely makes me laugh. On the serious side, the whole thing with the bouncy creatures being some kind of multi-purpose superweapon doesn’t reallly interest me, and on the comedy side of things, I feel like the jokes are overplayed(the joke about Jimon’s name went on forever) and a bit too standard to be truly funny. In addition, on the technical side, the visual style is not that interesting anymore. For the first episode, I liked the distinct textures, but now all I can see is a lazy filter over some boring textures and quite a lot of CG.
That said, when it comes to the writing, I still like Kate as a character, because it’s obvious that some real effort went into her writing(unlike Yasu and the eyepatch girl). And, when it comes to comedy, Natasha is pretty funny. But that’s it.
One or two good characters do not a good show make.
Well, so far it’s pretty much just a comedy, so whether or not it works for anyone is going to be dependent on their sense of humor. Personally, I much prefer this “absurd scenario played straight” style humor (Hataraku Maou-sama did the same thing) to the hyperactive gag style or otaku jokes I generally associate with anime (D-Frag, Outbreak Company, HenNeko, etc), and the dynamics between the characters are working for me, so in a weak season it’s one of the bright spots. But comedy’s even more subjective than most of this stuff.
Tiny note, but this actually touches on the themes – it’s not just a secret base, it’s home. Also, it contrasts with the opening sequence of the episode – cold and impersonal hallways, wearing boots. As far as could be from the homey and warm feeling of this base.
Not just that – cold and sterile versus muddled and organic.
I keep thinking Asuta is a girl for some reason, probably because of his kinda weird hair braid thing. I’m digging this show quite a bit at the moment, probably my favorite new one this season. The kinda serious intro to the first episode though, with Kate having conquered the world and it being in ruins, doesn’t really jive well with the silliness we’ve seen so far. Or at the very least I can’t imagine Zvesda causing that kind of destruction, they seem relatively harmless for a group focused on world domination. Still a very solid start and I’m looking forward to next week!
Getting from here to there seems kinda improbable, but this world operates on such obvious cartoon logic that I could easily see them more or less accidentally conquering the world. I have faith in our silly family!
Man. I am loving this show now. Having Killua’s VA voice the sword wielding eye patch wearing girl was a great decision.
Yeah, this show’s a ton of fun to watch. Didn’t realize that was Killua’s voice, but I’m definitely not going to be able to stop realizing it now!
Yeah, you can notice it a lot clearer some times, especially when she is angry. I kinda wish I could have that voice in real life 🙁