Carmine
Well, I guess I’ll start this off. I went into this show completely blind, and all I can say is that I was gladly impressed with the first episode. Though I feel like not as much as some people. Why am I always so hopelessly optimistic?
I want to first comment on the animation, because I think that deserves a mention. The attention to small details is surprisingly life-like and smooth. Usually series’ make efforts to have small budget cuts in this regard, but I absolutely love it when they make it a priority. It really adds a lot to the scenes. The OP and ED were also pretty sweet, but nothing I haven’t seen before.
The story itself actually doesn’t interest me that much, as most of the episode was Kuriyama running around trying to kill Kanbara. I was praying to Madoka that they didn’t keep reusing his death as a running gag, as that would warrant me dropping the show. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised considering the amount of tropes were used again and again this episode, but I’m glad I was wrong.
Turns out the dude is half youmu(whatever that is) and she’s some spirit warrior. I’m not really sure what being half youmu is other than indicating his mom or dad banged one of those huge monsters, but I guess right now all that we need to know is that he’s immoral. He doesn’t appear to have any physical abilities compared to glasses girl… who is a total klutz I might add! In between her spinning axels she’s tripping over the simplest things(including small traps the Kanbara sets up), which honestly got a few good laughs out of me.
So apparently since spirit warriors need to kill youmu’s for whatever reason and she won’t do it, she figured Kanbara was close enough and continually killed him to help her build up some courage. I guess it was kind of funny and plus we got to see her bad ass power of making swords with blood, but honestly… it looked like it really hurt. I would be seriously pissed off if someone was attempting to kill me for that little of a reason. He must REALLY like girls in glasses to let it slide so easily.
The episode ends with glasses-kun and generic-kun fighting off some mummy thing. I did enjoy the episode quite a fair bit despite my complaints here, as the animation was vibrant, the story was okay, the characters were funny and the dialogue was generally well-written. Probably won’t be blogging it but we’ll see. Overall this episode was trope city but it was cool regardless.
