Fall 2014 – First Episode Reflections, Part Three

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I WOULD LIKE TO GET OFF THIS RIDE NOW PLEASE. Since my last post, I’ve checked out Parasyte, Daitoshokan no Hitsujitai, Chaika: Avenging Battle, Garo the Animation, Shirobako, Psycho-Pass 2, Your lie in April, and How The Fuck Did They Approve a Show That’s Basically Just One Joke About Twintails. You can check out episodic posts about every single one of these shows on ANN.

Of this group, I strongly recommend Parasyte and Shirobako, also enjoyed Garo and Your lie in April, and was perfectly content with both the Chaika and Psycho-Pass sequels. Daitoshokan and Twintails have essentially no reason for existing, and their continued existence in spite of this is baffling and faintly disturbing. So yeah, Of these eight shows, I actually solidly enjoyed six of them – I’m pretty happy with that ratio!

KimiUso

14 thoughts on “Fall 2014 – First Episode Reflections, Part Three”

  1. Yea the new rookie in psycho-pass is annoying.. Seems like she won’t contribute to anything other than bringing the show back on cleared ideas.
    There was also a lot more mumbo jumbo then I remember was present in the first season (maybe to set the settings and cause I didn’t care about the actual case), which I guess is to be expected from the director of ghost in the shell. The speech at the end makes me hopeful that it will at least try to be interesting. Also non-moe Akane is a strange sight.

    I think I like Garo for it’s style alone. The characters looks bright and sharp as hell and they have exuberant personalities, which is good for what it’s doing. Though those freaking armor wolfface are ugly.

    Your lie was lovely but like you said it’s attempt at humor was pretty bad. It relies too heavily on funny faces.

    • Non-moe Akane was hilarious. Akane poses like a badass amongst slow-mo explosions. Might be a Tow Ubakawa thing. Like the show was saying, with Kogami gone Akane gets to do the cool stuff now.

      Although it is an organic direction from the Akane at the end of season one, who was jumping on trucks to shoot out their tires.

  2. Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai was okay for me, but that’s probably because I grew reading VNs so I’m used to it. It wasn’t great, and it probably won’t be great, but it’ll keep me entertained. I do am disappointed that they animated this instead of Aiyoku no Eustia.

    DnH is probably just a VN AUGUST had to release to get money for their next VN project. Besides I know where this train headed, I’ve watched their previous adapted VN anime so I know that this will just be a filler, nothing great but nothing too bad either.

    By the way, are there any shows you’re interested in making a write-up like before? I don’t think you’ve been doing any since writing for ANN.

  3. I wasn’t sure about Garo at all, but the second episode somewhat managed to intrigue me into staying a bit more. I really liked how the light falling on that Watchdog lady’s face was so intense that it made it hard to see her face; together with the setting and the voice acting, it gave her a curiously sinister, enigmatic quality. I also liked the alchemist lady and the fighting sequence she was in… Still, I feel like both Garo and Bahamut (which is better than Garo, but not overtly so, if you ask me) will drop the ball sooner than later. Bombastic openings in anime always make me suspicious.

    Of all the debuts of this season, and I watched them all, Shirobako was my favorite, and probably the only one which immediately made me crave its second episode. Sure, it wasn’t as flashy as, say, Parasyte or Fate SN, or even objectively that good in general, but it pushes too many of my buttons I’d like to be pushed for me to care. Keep on keeping on, Shirochan!

  5. I’ll be honest. I also watched and somewhat enjoyed Your Lie in April, but I really don’t understand the ratings and your recommendation for it. Other than Toradora, every single romcom I’ve ever watched has ended up unfinished (Golden Time), used awful tropes (Sakurasu, Nisekoi), or just… … (Kokoro Connect). I don’t know why there’s expectation that this one will be different. It looks pretty. It sounds pretty. The characters are palatable. Yes, but what will I be left with once the season is over? I just can’t forsee anything but disappointment, especially considering the status of the manga (ongoing). Can you unpuzzle this for me? Because I don’t get it… V_V;

    (Of course, this might have something to do with my generic annoyance at the genre in general. Stuff like Spice and Wolf must have spoiled me too much.)

    • My expectations are entirely based on the material so far. Golden Time, Sakurasou, and Nisekoi all demonstrated they would be bad within their first episodes – so far, Your Lie in April is hitting the right notes. It could very well fall apart, but I’m not going to condemn it until there is reason for it to be condemned.

      The fact that the manga is ongoing is worrisome, though. Toradora was definitely a stars-aligning situation on that front.

      • (On that note, WAS Toradora done when they started animation? The original material I mean. Light novels or otherwise.)

    • I thought Kokoro Connect had been considered to be pretty good, scandals asides, or at least I’ve heard it’s good… though I’ve watched Sakurasou in I would like to say that it was great. It actually managed to move me with its last episodes. The beginning was pretty… ergh, though (thanks to that I put off watching it for half a year).

      • Eh, I don’t know if this could be ‘resolved’ in any definitive way until “well… according to me” kicks in, since, I guess, so much depends on how much you empathize with certain characters and their particular struggles. I agree with teezoen’s general sentiment, for instance, that most romcoms just doesn’t cut it, though I differ on specifics. Nisekoi, Sakurasou, Golden Time was all bad for me. Kokoro was kinda cute and poignant until its confused-and-contrived-as-hell second season came along. Toradora was really, really good, but left me frustrated and unsatisfied with its later episodes and resolution. And Spice & Wolf was spectacularly mediocre in every way, especially in the banter and interaction between its two main characters, which is usually the facet it is most lauded for—but it just fell flat for me. Only romcom I was satisfied with and that still has a place in my heart despite its failings has been Honey and Clover, though I’m not sure if we can call it a romcom per se, anyway.

  6. I wanted to like Your Lie in April, but the exposition is horrendous. It’s painfully done. When you show a bruised and bleeding and crying child in front of an adult with a raised cane, and the child then says “I’ll play if it makes you feel better,” saying “she made me play piano and she was a harsh teacher” as exposition simultaneously does three things:

    1) it answers an interesting question before it even gets going (in light of that scene, and the way his mother is dead, and how he doesn’t play the piano now that she’s dead, how does he feel about her?). Sure, it could be self-deception, but an answered question is still less interesting.
    2) It suggests a fundamental lack of faith in the intelligence of the audience.
    3) It makes future ambiguities much less interesting, because if a show is going to explain the most ridiculously basic things, anything it doesn’t explain is probably an accident.

    That moment just pulled me out of the show entirely. The exposition while he was crying on stage wasn’t as awful, but it’s the sort of situation where a shot of the funeral immediately before that, or a well-timed flashback within the flashback (have him put his hands on the keyboard, flash, eyes widen, he starts crying and can’t play) would do the job of that exposition. And then it repeated the talk about falling in love while showing the female lead, when it was already presenting that through standardized “falling in love” cinematography!

    Any drama that ham-hands three different incredibly important moments in its first episode is in trouble. I liked a lot of the rest, yeah, but they were practically bludgeoning the audience.

    (like the protagonist’s dead mom, hey-yo)

  7. What are your thoughts on the second (well, technically first) episode of Fate/stay night that came out yesterday?

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