Postby Mr. Hat'n'Clogs » Fri Jul 06, 2012 9:33 pm
Whoo! It's been a while, so I should post here before you all may never discover my opinion on the things I've recently watched!
.hack//Quantum is basically what Doc said.
I also checked out all six Break Blade movies, which are okay. They started pretty rough, and while they never really capitalized on any of the potential of the premise, the action was getting pretty good, but then the characters all began to make maddening decisions and I was only watching for the action and fantasy trappings. Could be great, but certainly miss-able.
Angel Beats was a weird experience. Aside from having to put up with a terrible dub, I actually was enjoying it even though something in the back of my head was telling me something was wrong. It wasn't until the show ended that I realized what a mess it was. It tried to be everything and ended nothing, and the characters don't make the slightest impact, and it keeps shifting focus from what it's trying to do but none of it really sticks at all. I kind of liked the girl that looks like Haruhi though, surprisingly, except for when she's like SUDDEN DRAMA, but that aside she was a pretty interesting character. I also liked the idea of absurd violence because they're immortal, though the dub killed any of the real comedy. It's a mess but you could enjoy it for the pretty visuals? Still a pretty bad show in the end, kind of like this paragraph.
Toradora, on the other hand, was surprising in every aspect. I went in expecting to like it because of the staff, who are responsible for two recent shows that I really enjoyed, namely Ano Hana and Ano Natsu, but I also expected to be rolling my eyes at some dumb stuff and being annoyed at the eventual romance between Ryuuji and Taiga because I was 100% sure I would hate Taiga. Well, the first five or so episodes were exactly what I expected, before kicking it into high gear and really showing off that this director, Nagai Tatsuyuki, has got this drama schtick down. When he wants things to get heavy, they actually can get very intense, and I'd say Toradora pulls this off with more regularity than either of the Ano shows. It's also fairly surprising in that it will take an established cliche of high school shows and do a surprising twist on it. I was rolling my eyes when I saw a cultural festival was coming up, but then it not only had their class do an awesome pro wrestling show, it managed it inject some very good drama into the event.
Each of the five cast members does an amazing job of breaking out of any stereotype you may have assigned to them based on their introduction. Ryuuji is our lead who eventually has three women pining after him, but rather than them falling for him because he's a good insert for the viewer to impress themselves on, Ryuuji shows a lot of spine, caring, and intelligence. He also has some fairly feminine traits, such as his handiwork at cooking and his love of cleaning, which was a fairly interesting move. Ami is similarly a really fantastic character. She's introduced as a fairly ditzy and moe~ girl with an annoyingly high pitched voice, but it's quickly revealed that she does this as a front to hide her inside, which is vicious. She however, also quickly turns into a bro, and her antagonism of Taiga is also really great to watch. Taiga herself is a huge surprise, starting off as a fairly typical tsundere but showing a lot of growth and eventually changing from the girl who really just lacks self-confidence into a person who genuinely cares about her friends.
Anyways, really great show with fantastic direction that easily tops it's successors, recommended to anyone who is willing to gamble on a high school drama even if it isn't the kind of thing they would go for. The ending is also pretty surprising, and I don't think I liked it a whole lot but it's definitely a gutsy move. I recommend this wholeheartedly.