Seasonal Anime ImpressionsWinter 2021Part 1Hi and welcome to "this thing with the title above", the only series of blog posts where I give my impressions of the first episodes of seasonal anime that I felt like watching. At least I hope it's the only one and no one steals my impressions. ... Anyways... Let's just start. [The stuff in italics are the synopses taken straight from MAL]Urasekai Picnic (Otherside Picnic)Her first encounter with Toriko Nishina was on the Otherside after seeing "that thing" and nearly dying. Ever since that day, exhausted university student Sorawo Kamikoshi's life changed. In this Otherworld, full of mystery, which exists alongside our own, dangerous beings like the Kunekune and Hasshaku-sama that are spoken of in real ghost stories appear. For research, for profit, and to find an important person, Toriko and Sorao set foot into the abnormal.Before watching this I feel reasonably hopeful because it's directed by Takuya Satou who is the other director of Steins;Gate that is not Hiroshi Hamasaki (It's sad that he is not Hiroshi Hamasaki though. There should be more Hiroshi Hamasakis). But also it's animated by LIDENFILMS and Felix Films both of which... well... they are what they are.The first scene is effective at characterizing the two main characters and also in this scene the anime looks really good... as long as it's not in 3D; but even the 3D it looks decent as far as 3D things in anime these days go. The world also seems decently interesting so far. This is all going far better than I thought. Suspiciously so...The OP song is pretty generic and the visuals are a mixed bag.And like that bag my feelings on the rest of the episode are also mixed. The scenes in the real world were really boring and the backgrounds and cinematography were drab. That much might be intentional to highlight how exciting and different the Otherside is. But the Otherside doesn't really make up for that. Sure the scenes there were visually somewhat more interesting, occasionally they were maybe even pretty but idk, nothing really grabbed me. The music was cool sometimes. The gimmick of the Monster Of The Week this week was decent-ish, I guess. The character interactions were decent-ish as well. You know, nothing in this anime is terrible and, maybe, very maybe it might even become a good anime with further episodes. But I won't use my time to find out.Oh it might be worth mentioning that the after-ED (the ED was very generic) scene had an interesting art style. That's it.Dropped after 1 episode - 5/10Yakusoku no Neverland 2nd Season (The Promised Neverland 2nd Season)Second season of Yakusoku no Neverland.I'm not sure how helpful impressions for the first episode of a second season are but here we go regardless.This isn't really structured like a first episode and begins with rather uneventful stuff.(Quick aside: Should it be structured like a first episode? On the one hand, no, because it's a second season and watcher are already familiar with things. But on the other hand, yes, because it's still the beginning of the second season, many viewers probably didn't watch this anime in a while and also this is the beginning of a new arc that at first blush seems very different from all that came before. Thus making an effort to grab viewers the way a first episode should might be a good idea.)When stuff finally goes down, it's resolved by hooded-person-ex-machina but all of this might have just been the setup to get the characters into a new situation that might or might not be just as sticky and that also seems closer to the Promised Neverland of old. Thus I can't really make any prediction about whether the story will hold up.Visually this seems less interesting than the first season but still above average.One more thing: It's not like Promised Neverland was every very subtle in what it is an analogy for but the OP here pretty much just spells out that this is vegetarian propaganda. And as much as I am for vegetarian propaganda (which is a lot), I'm not sure whether that really needed to be THIS explicit.Not dropped - 5/10Vlad LoveMitsugu Banba is a high school girl who finds meaning in donating blood. She frequently visits a blood bank to donate blood, despite being harshly treated by the nurse. One day, she encounters a beautiful girl who looks like she's from overseas at the blood bank. The pale girl looks like she's about to faint any minute, but then, she starts destroying the blood bank. The girl loses consciousness and Mitsugu takes her home...This is "directed" by goddamn Mamoru Oshii (He serves as "Executive Director" and wrote the original story apparently) and the trailer looked absolutely insane (not necessarily insanely good or something. just insane). I don't wanna get my hopes too high up before watching this but it's kinda hard not to.The opening scene and OP are certainly promisingly weird and promisingly promising.Soooooo the story went on to become something of a generic ecchi-anime setup? The weirdness of this anime seems far less weird when actually watching it. It mostly becomes normal-anime levels of weirdness. And yet all of this is still somewhat compelling... I can't quite say why though. But still only somewhat.The visual style is also interesting: Backgrounds seem like edited photos and the art style of characters is also pretty different from most things you see today but not in a way that really ties into the background style either. Not sure what to think of that. Also this anime's cinematography heavily uses panels the way you might expect from something made by Masaomi Andou (Kuzu no Honkai, Kanata no Astra, Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun) but it still has it's own idiosyncrasies to it: The way frames are chosen and how they persist is definitely noticably different from Masaomi Andou. And it's really cool. The anime also has its timing (comedic and otherwise) down.Yeah, I really hope the story becomes more of an actual thing. I was almost about to say that I can't believe it certainly will because Oshii wouldn't write something that's just a "normal" ecchi anime (no matter how good) but then again he did a lot of work on Urusei Yatsura (and also more things that aren't arthouse masterpieces. I shouldn't talk about him like he did only those.)So, again, this has a bunch of potential but I fear it might be squandered. Yet I will not give up already.Not dropped - 5/10And that's it for now. Nothing that really stood out too much today. In neither direction. I think I'll keep to roughly 3 anime per post, so the second post might come soon because a bunch of anime should release shortly.
Jan 6, 2021 • Subscribe
The Promised Neverland Season 2, Toilet-bound Hanako-kun, The Promised Neverland, Otherside Picnic, Steins;Gate
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