First Impressions: Durarara, Ookami Kakushi, Hanamaru Kindergarden, Seikon no Quasar

So I’ve decided to change my first impres­sions post­ing slightly. Instead of wait­ing for 4 shows before mak­ing a post, I’m going to do a con­stant update with each show I watch, sim­ilar to Star Crossed. These first impres­sion posts were a blatant ripoff err, inspired by his format any­way so it makes more sense this way.

Dur­arara

Well I’ve covered the first epis­ode in detail already but let me take a step back a second and say that this epis­ode was no A-grade mater­ial. It wasn’t so much expos­i­tion sat­ur­a­tion as intro­du­cing explo­sion. With so much inform­a­tion being hurled at you in the first epis­ode, it was impossible to take it all in.

Still the best first epis­ode of the sea­son though. I said it before, but it’s when an epis­ode oozes qual­ity even when not that much is hap­pen­in­gon screen that you know you’ve got some­thing great on your hands. Bac­cano star­ted the exact same way and that worked fant­ast­ic­ally and Dur­arara­has a whole 24 epis­odes to start mak­ing sense in.

So yeah, Dur­ararar­agi (sorry, I stuttered) had obvi­ous qual­ity stamped on it before it aired and the first epis­ode has obvi­ous qual­ity stamped all over it too. I just hope none of these char­ac­ters are as pain­fully annoy­ing as Enjin from Yoza­k­ura Quar­tet. This show gives off sim­ilar vibes to Yoza­k­ura and I’d hate to see it ruined.

Rat­ing: B

Ookami Kak­ushi

I appear to be the last man in the uni­verse not to have seen Higur­ashi but from what I heard, the first epis­ode of that was very sim­ilar to how Ookamistar­ted. So I’m all for giv­ingthis the bene­fit of the doubt and con­tinu­ing on but that doesn’t change that this was a very poor episode.

The writ­ing was poor and it didn’t have the failsafe of being com­pletely OTT like Umineko to fall back on to provide enter­tain­ment so the epis­ode remained pretty dull through­out. The ‘char­ac­ter designs by Peach Pit’ that every­one was tout­ing turns out to be a neg­at­ive strike for this, I don’t like them one bit.

It was an all round very poor epis­ode. But hey, mys­tery and intrigue and what­not are being­touted along with the pos­sib­il­ity that they will all get bru­tally murdered. But things really need to pick up or I might bail on this show. For everything Deen did with Umineko, at least it was enter­tain­ing. This isn’t…yet.

Rat­ing: D+

Hanamaru Kinder­garden

I had a half-written post in my drafts where I lamen­ted the fact that an awful lot of anime made recently have ‘cute­ness’ as the main appeal, such as Kobato, K-ON and Kimi ni Todoke. Hanamaru fits straight into that cat­egory except…I actu­ally enjoyed this.

My pre­dic­tion of some­thing sim­ilar to a Yot­suba anime turned out to be right on the ball. This is the cute­ness and inno­cence of kids in a world where real adult prob­lems and lives exist, with their prob­lems and life­style being seen through the world of these kids. Gran­ted, Yot­suba does this a lot bet­ter but that’s a high stand­ard to be com­pared to.

The genu­ine adult prob­lems was actu­ally a bit of a shock. I cer­tainly didn’t expect any­thing like that at all, which goes to show there is a bit of brains behind this anime. It lacks the cut­ting ‘that’s so true’ edge at the moment but it’s a sur­pris­ingly enjoy­able way to spend 20 odd minutes.

Rat­ing: C+

Seikon no Quasar

You know the way every­one was hung up over the ‘breast-milk’ aspect of this show? Well, that’s actu­ally the best part of this show. There’s a creepy nature to the sexual con­tent in this show when com­bined with the Chris­tian­ity and I can actu­ally see poten­tial here and I’m will­ing to give it another epis­ode or two. But there’s so much it does wrong.

If you’re try­ing to sub­vert the sexual nature, you don’t then and go toss in blatant fanser­vi­ceas well. The entire suck­ling scene would’ve worked far bet­ter if prior to that scene I wasn’t treated to con­tinu­ous Gain­ax­ing, panty-flashes and prom­in­ent curves before­hand. If the sexual con­tent was played for plot rather than fanser­vice this would’ve worked a whole lot better.

What’s going to even­tu­ally be the killing blow is the anim­a­tion. Oh dear lord was it ter­rible. Ran­dom pan­ning shots, a scene of a char­ac­ter stand­ing per­fectly still for 5 seconds, a still frame of some­thing that doesn’t need to be still-framed and the occa­sional shot­where the art­work sud­denly col­lapsed. Cen­sor­ship galore and it’s pretty darn jarring.

::Edit:: Hmm…actually the only reason I’m giv­ing this a shot is because I found myself think­ing “it has fanser­vice so I’ll instantly dis­miss it” and then hated myself for doing that. I’m going to cast aside my elit­ism for a change and when I do drop this show, it will be for poor story-telling and plot. Not for boobs.

Rat­ing: C–