First Impressions: Shangri-La, Z Mazinger, Cross Game, Sengoku Basara

My third bunch of first impres­sion posts for this sea­son. If you would like to read the whole lot, I’ve put up a ‘first impres­sions’ cat­egory off to your left. See, right there, the only one without cap­ital let­ters. Not sure why Word­Press won’t let me put cap­ital let­ters on it but I’ve stopped try­ing to fig­ure out what Word­Press does to my posts long ago. On the other hand, Bok­uta­chi no Blog has reached an impress­ive 400K hits, so thanks to all those people who some­how man­age to find out site by typ­ing ‘boobs’ into google.

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

Shangri-La

The ori­ginal delight I had when I saw the pre­views gradu­ally turned to sour as I saw some of the trail­ers. Would Gonzo mess up yet again? Would they finally col­lapse and have to resort to mak­ing hen­tai? Thank­fully no, they did not. Not if the first epis­ode is any­thing to go by. Shangri-La is an anime with real potential.

The Car­bon Tax idea is great, par­tic­u­larly the idea to set them as the vil­lains in this story. It’s a bit con­fus­ing to fol­low but that just means you are going to have to pay atten­tion. The scenery is lus­cious and you have to love Range Murata’s char­ac­ter designs. There are a few really odd things about this, such as the trans­vest­ites, but they prove this anime’s determ­in­a­tion to stay a bit left of centre.

It’s hardly per­fect now and there are a few oddit­ies, such as the amaz­ing anti-gravitational effects of Kuniko’s skirt and some of the fight scenes are a bit odd (accord­ing to Shangri-La, A horny transvestite>6 men armed with sub machine guns) but still, this really is an anime to keep your eye on.

Rat­ing: B+

Z Mazinger

I’m not sure how to review this epis­ode so I’m just going to give you a run down of events that took place over the course of the epis­ode. You may have to bare with me because I watched this a few days ago and my memory might be a bit fuzzy.

So first the main char­ac­ter appears and says stuff. Then there’s a fight with Dr.Hell involving giant robots and lots of fire. Then some other giant robots appeared else­where, fol­lowed by a bunch of old men with beards with one of them appar­antly paint­ing his face blue. Or maybe he was suf­fer­ing from hypo­ther­mia. It was around this point that I stopped pay­ing atten­tion to the subs.

Then we came to this house with some women in it. It star­ted being attacked by a bunch of guys with swords but then men on robotic horses came out and killed them all. Then these two women called levi and pevi or some­thing were in a giant robot and were killed. Then the screen set fire rather ran­domly. Then the main char­ac­ter appeared yelling some­thing in Engrish, fol­lowed by the appear­ance of another giant robot who called him­self ‘Zeeoouus’. I think the halfway point was around here.

Then that women from earlier appeared and said stuff to the man with hypo­ther­mia. Then a vol­cano erup­ted, which prob­ably explained why the screen set fire again. Then a man with no head appeared, fol­lowed soon after by the main char­ac­ter yelling some­thing else in Engrish. Then some­bod­ies dad died so there had to be soppy moment until the main char­ac­ter appeared again. Then the main char­ac­ter was about to fight an undead horde but then the epis­ode ended.

Rat­ing: A+ if you are accompinied by friends and vodka. Oth­er­wise F–

Cross Game

It wasn’t until I watched Cross Game did I real­ise exactly how bad Z Mazinger was. While Z put as much garbage as it pos­sibly could into the epis­ode, Cross Game kept it so simple that it just worked per­fectly. You just knew, even before the sea­son began, that this would be a hugely under­rated anime.

The sim­pli­city and intel­li­gence at which Cross Game went about it’s busi­ness was so bloody refresh­ing. While some anime will have char­ac­ters bawl­ing their eyes out and going on long spiels about how sad/confused they are (bloody Tor­adora at times), Cross Game kept it so simple and god was it effective.

But why oh why did they have to keep those hor­rible char­ac­ter designs? I mean, it’s one thing to keep faith­ful to the ori­ginal manga but this isn’t 1970 any­more, people have moved on a bit. Still, I think I can handle the anim­a­tion if it pro­duces a slice-of-life series of this qual­ity. And no, it’s not just about sports.

Rat­ing: B

Sen­goku Basara

Pro­duc­tion IG are great anim­at­ors. No mat­ter what else you decide to say about them, you can’t deny they have damn fine anim­a­tion qual­ity. But really that’s all Sen­goku Bas­ara has. I can’t really see any other reason for watch­ing this unless you hap­pen to like manly fel­lows fight­ing it off.

The fight­ing is wildly over the top, to the extent that fight­ing with swords and spears res­ult in an explo­sion that could knock over a women sev­eral miles away (although I got the feel­ing that I could knock over that women if I sneezed loud enough). The are flames and flashy lights and all sorts float­ing around and I do have to admit, it is sorta fun to watch.

Pro­duc­tion IG have two anime this sea­son. When a stu­dio does more than one a sea­son, you can often tell which is an unenthu­si­astic adapt­a­tion and the other is their real work (unless you’re Mad­house, who can make up to 6 in one sea­son). IG’s other work this sea­son is Eden of the East, so yeah, this is their unenthu­si­astic adaptation.

Rat­ing: D+