First Impressions: Saki, Full Metal Alchemist 2, Basquash, Valkyria Chronicles

The second batch of first impres­sions and I should say that I won’t be cov­er­ing everything this sea­son. For example I’ve decided that I don’t have a fet­ish for acidic breast milk and there­fore won’t be watch­ing Queen’s Blade.

My Rat­ing Sys­tem Explained!

A = If you watch any­thing this sea­son, watch this

B = Very good, some­times sur­pris­ingly so.

C = If you have the time, you should check this out

D = Not my kind of thing, I won’t be watch­ing this

E = Bad. Very bad, ignore this show

F = Frus­trat­ingly awful

Saki

Gonzo are not doing well fin­an­cially. The reces­sion has hit them hard and they need some­thing that will earn them plenty of money. So they stuck to some­thing they know will work: Lol­ita fanser­vice. It worked with Strike Witches so why would it not work with this ingeni­ous mar­riage of Mah­jong and moe.

To be fair, it isn’t awful. Gonzo did actu­ally put a bit of effort into this. The dia­logue feels genu­ine and you already get a feel for the char­ac­ters in the first epis­ode, much like Strike Witches. There are plenty of things for otaku to gobble up aswell, such as that really large breasted pink haired girl who appears not to have heard of that inven­tion known as a bra.

It’s not awful but no, this is not for me. I’ve yet to develop even the slight­est interest in Mah­jong and I don’t think fanser­vicy lolis are going to con­vert me any time soon. It did exceed my expect­a­tions because it is not pain­fully dumb, but this is defo not my sort of thing

Rat­ing: D–

Full Metal Alchem­ist 2

I think Loba will be blog­ging this so hur­rah! As for my two cents, I’m not sure if I like the Soul Eater style anim­a­tion but oth­er­wise WOW! I didn’t expect FMA to get so good so quickly. FMA was great at build­ing up and bring­ing you deeper into the story as you grow to love the char­ac­ters. But screw that said Bones and BOOM, damn fine epis­ode we got here.

Rat­ing: A–

Basquash

Oh dear, oh dear. That was dumb. There will nor­mally be one show a sea­son who’s praise I can­not under­stand and Basquash looks to be it. The char­ac­ters were annoy­ing as hell and the dia­logue was pain­ful. I enjoyed the clos­ing song, slightly because it had a funky beat but also because it meant I didn’t have to watch any more.

The anim­a­tion is a slick as any­thing but what they are anim­at­ing is ugly. The crew look like a deformed Gekko State and the mecha’s, although they move slickly, are just ugly to look at, espe­cially when I’d just fin­ished Ride Back. And I may like the occa­sional bit of fanser­vice but those breasts are just hideous.

If it wasn’t for all the sexual innuendo’s, this felt like some­thing that would air on Car­toon Net­work. Heck, it felt like some­thing that 4kids would dub, fans would get out­raged because ‘tey took out teh boobies, now its rooned!!!11′ without actu­ally real­ising it wasn’t any good in the first place.

Rat­ing: E–

Valkyria Chron­icles

Being a game-based anime, I had lowered my expect­a­tions some what and good thing too. If I had been bank­ing on this I would’ve been dis­ap­poin­ted but since I wasn’t I was pleas­antly sur­prised. Look, it’s not a mas­ter­piece and never will be. But hey, that was actu­ally pretty good.

Set in an altern­ate world around the 1920’s, it tells the story of some small town being attacked by people with highly inac­cur­ate weaponry. Some­how this anime man­ages to remain believ­able and pre­pos­ter­ous sim­ul­tan­eously. There are about 20 people guard­ing the town, which includes women and 15 year old boys. These people are up against tanks.

Des­pite the fact our main two were get­ting shot at, they didn’t seem too wor­ried. Maybe that’s just the type of people they are(or else they read ahead in the script and spot­ted they were get­ting a giant tank later on). Still, I’m still watch­ing this, it seems prom­ising. Or maybe I’ve just developed a crush on the female lead…

Rat­ing: C