Well, a post like this had to come sometime, where I’d be forced to give my first impressions of the most generic, least entertaining shows of the season. I never would’ve thought that they’d be uploaded on the same day, but then again I never thought that I’d see a greater cinematic abomination than Plan 9 from Outer Space.
These aren’t horrible shows, they’re just at that level of badness that ceases to be entertaining and instead just comes across as a hopeless ordeal to sit through.
Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi
Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi is… yeah. I needed to watch it a second time to fully take in the plot. Not because it was an overly complex tour de force that rattled my very being and left my brain a coagulated mass of grey goo, but because it was so boring that I zoned out by the five minute point and only came to when the main character was hit by a truck.
Synopsis
The episode starts in the protagonist’s dream, him imagining himself as a young child being bitten by a vampire his own age. He wakes up, signaling the point where I start losing focus, to his classmate shaking his shoulder. She dotes on him, he shrugs her off, and the two head out of the classroom in time to see the student body president parting his way through a mob of fangirls. I swear, these tropes always come in two per season. He’s followed by possibly the most annoying character of the episode, which takes a real effort to be. I wouldn’t mention that usually, but I really hate this girl.
When the protagonist leaves the school grounds, he sees a truck come barreling down the street right for the annoying girl. Rather than act like any rational human and watching it pave the asphalt with her innards, or just yelling at her to run, he jumps in front of the speeding truck and takes the full brunt of the impact. His head ends up detached from his mangled body, yet he remains alive. Even stranger, he can maintain control over his detached body.
He wills his body to move closer to him, scaring bystanders in the process, before reattaching his head to his inexplicably healing body. Meanwhile, in Vampire Loli Limbo, the vampire loli from the protagonist’s dream drifts around in a half dead state, suddenly worrying about the protagonist forgetting about her. He decides to break free of her prison somehow and meet with him by a playground. He meets her there, she gets stabbed by the obviously evil student body president, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger that nobody’s really in a hurry to see resolved.
Reaction
Guessing from that, you could probably surmise that this is a decent, if uninspired anime entry from the director of KoreZom. If you leave out the ‘decent’ part, that’s a mostly correct assumption. It takes some real talent to make something that sounds marginally appealing come across as anything but. What makes it worse is this hardly seems like a real effort on anybody’s part, it just seemed like a lazy cash-in on the baffling success of Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka.
Considering it lacks the comedy to make it so, as well as any scant amount of originality, I’d say that makes it a failure in many regards. Uninspired animation, uninterested seiyuu, a lazy director, and a boring means of plot progression means one show that’s not even worth the time slot. But hey, I’d be surprised if anybody expected different.
R-15
On an equally boring note is R-15, the Lotte’s Toy of the season. With the lush and vibrant visuals and surprisingly boring ecchi, it screams “Hey, we’re trying to appeal to a niche demographic here!” And while I can’t say that I fit that niche, I can say that this is just an incredibly boring affair that made me yawn much more than it should’ve. Also, oh boy! Another harem anime.
Synopsis
So Takuto is a porno author in the Japanese branch of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, who have apparently needed to draw as many definitions for ‘gifted’ in as possible in order to maintain funding. Takuto is also fifteen, and constantly imagines porno scenes that he has to resist the urge to pen. And that’s your plot/central gimmick, folks. Oh, he also meets up with a girl for a newspaper interview who’s a clarinet genius.
Reaction
Unlike ItsuKuro up there (Which doesn’t even have a neat contraction), R-15 at least succeeds at what it’s trying to be; a boring harem anime with no chance of getting better. The humor’s stale, the characters are simply dull, the animation’s colorful but has little else to offer, sound’s bleh… if you have an urge to watch this for whatever reason, go ahead. Just expect to be bored out of your mind by the end of the first episode.
So with most of the first episodes of the season winding down, I think I can give a rough approximation of what I’ll be following, and what I’ll be blogging out of that list.
What I’ll Be Blogging:
Kamisama Dolls
Blood C
Mawaru Penguindrum
Sacred Seven (For Rabbit Poets. For those who don’t know, I’m guest writing there this season.)
Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi started with such an inane amount of chit-chatter, broken up only by random panty shots for no explicable reason. I couldn’t believe how often I drifted in and out of the first episode that I just couldn’t be assed to rewatch it. I wrote about nearly every single anime this season but I simply could not do the same for this anime, that Twin Angels show and YuriYuri.
I had to really force myself to write about it. The only show that I’m having trouble writing a first impressions post for that I haven’t just forgotten is Nekogami. Actually, I think that’s the last of it before things start to wind down a little bit.
Oh, I figured I’d forget one of them, but I typically avoid shows like Nekogami. When it’s just a series of jokes, I don’t feel like there’s much to say; it’s either funny or it’s not (usually not).
Eh, the jokes are mostly miss. It’s like Ika Musume, sans the naivety and charm of the lead.
I can not imagine Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi getting any better than what I seen. Might give it another episode, but I am sure it will be on a backlog list behind a lot of other series.
R-15 on the other hand was not that bad to me. Stale as it, I assume I can get a few cheap laughs (hopefully) in later episodes, so it will be on my list, but not top priority.
I’ll give them both one more episode before making my verdict. It’s rare for me to drop something on the first episode.
regarding itsuten, indeed you will be surprised; you should do a search really and widen your horizons. there are indeed bad parts about the adaptation, but the animation is the least of it. the story flow and the fan-service maybe yeah, I’ll agree. I think it’s better to review everything but the plot in the first episode. though I understand you’re talking about first impressions, so I don’t blame you. but I think it’s better to watch at least a few more episodes and do some research before reviewing the plot imho :)
obviously, if you’re prefer light stories with no serious tones, then this anime is definitely not for you :)
If the premise interests me, I look into the source material. I’m not dismissing the entire franchise, just the anime adaptation, but I will give it at least one more episode before dropping it. As it stands now though, it isn’t looking too favorable, giving off the feeling of being dense and impenetrable while having almost no substance.
[…] “It takes some real talent to make something that sounds marginally appealing come across as anything but. What makes it worse is this hardly seems like a real effort on anybody’s part, it just seemed like a lazy cash-in on the baffling success of Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka. Considering it lacks the comedy to make it so, as well as any scant amount of originality, I’d say that makes it a failure in many regards.” – Shinde Iie […]