Fall 2010 Anime PART II
MM!
I’m not going to lie: I think MM!’s opening episode is entertaining. It has some good laughs, and isn’t boring. But at the same time, I absolutely cannot watch any more. Given the show’s premise, all aspects of it are far too tsun tsun for my tastes. But the cracker–the thing that really slays me–is just how soulless the show is. I can just see the production committee ticking off boxes while watching it, and they’re not doing much else to humanize it. Visually, the show is produced well, but its really bright and clean-cut look bothers me. And to top it all off, both the opening and ending sequences are completely directionless and boring.
So yeah, dropped.
Arakawa Under The Bridge x 2
Much like season 1, the only really awesome part of this episode is the opening monologue, and the rest is SHAFT at their least interesting. This show had a lot going for it when the first episode of season 1 hit, but now the material mostly falls flat, and SHAFT doesn’t seem to really care. It has its moments, though.
Kami Nomi Zo Shiru Sekai
I was weary of this show’s premise before it even dropped, and the only thing keeping me interested was the promise of fully animated Watanabe Akio designs. And upon finishing the first episode, that’s still the only reason why I’ll persist for the time being. The first episode seems very poorly directed, and it flows very choppily. There’s this thing they try to do where they incorporate manga sound effects into the animation, but for that to really work it has to be like Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei where the seiyuu voice the sound effects along side its kana appearing on the screen. The main premise entertained me more than I would have imagined, but not by much. This thing already has a second season, so I’m not sure I’ll stick around for the whole thing, but I’ll see where this goes for now.
Interesting, you dislike Arakawa season 2, but enjoy Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru? I feel the complete opposite. I hadn’t liked the humor in season 1 of Arakawa, but thought episode 1 of season 2 was hilarious (though episode 2 wasn’t quite as good). Whereas SoreMachi’s humor jus felt like Shaft was phoning it in.
SHAFT just does straight adapting of manga scripts, so the material isn’t up to them.
Shaft may adapt the dialogue straight up, but they seem to add their own unique style that enhances the final product. I’m only speaking from having read Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Hidamari Sketch, but that’s the sense I got. With Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, the Shaft-isms didn’t really make things any more entertaining.
So you mean to say you enjoy Arakawa’s substandard storyboarding and “SHAFT on Autopilot” editing?
Sure, why not. Perhaps they can get away with it because the source material is better or something, but the character comedy worked very well for the first episode of the second season. That said, I didn’t like the first season as much as most people. And the second episode of this season wasn’t particularly good…
With all this, I don’t like this I don’t like that its starting to sound a little like ANN around here… HAHAHA JK JK.
Give The World Only God Knows a good chance to develop, the manga is great, and I think the anime can do as well. I agree with you 100% on MM!
I’m thinking of dropping MM! too. I wanted to like it because it started out funny but Xebec’s weak production values have their hold on this show (Ladies VS Butlers and Today in Class 5-2 were their best shows).
And yes, having reading the manga version for Hidamari Sketch, the anime adds quite a bit more elements, mostly characters that were mentioned in the manga but not shown (like Sae’s sister Chika).