2017-04-21
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2017 season
As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).
- My Hero Academia episode 14 is just the same as always; I like the
characters but the pacing is still really slow and hurting the show.
→
- Granblue Fantasy episode 1 is not interesting enough for me to
even finish the episode; I made it 15 minutes before quitting.
→
- Alice & Zouroku episode 1 was fun, interesting, and intriguing,
but the character interactions really made it. I especially like
Zoroku.
→
- Rage of Bahamut - Virgin Soul episode 1 was slower and not as
exciting as ep 1 of the original, but the ending portion made
up for it.
→
- Re:Creators ep 1 was interesting & well done, but so far it just
sets up the premise; it doesn't tell us what the show'll be like or
about.
♯
- Eccentric Family S2 episode 1: The tanuki are back, Kyoto is
beautiful, and things are spooky & quietly tense. It's everything
I could want.
→
- SukaSuka episode 1: Now that's how you start a slow-build show.
There's nothing new here but it's very well assembled & pretty
appealing.
→
- Grimoire of Zero ep 1 was very light novel but also surprisingly appealing and well done. The characters are cliches, but interesting ones. →
These are all the first episodes I've felt energized enough to watch so far and I'm probably not interested in adding more so I'm going to call it here, even with a few potentially interesting ones unwatched. Notably missing is Sakura Quest, which is frequently praised but has a setting that usually doesn't work for me, and I'm not certain the premise sounds like my thing either. Perhaps I will get around to it later, but so far I've felt like watching Kemono Friends instead.
2017-04-06
Watching Kemono Friends benefits from knowing some general spoilers
Kemono Friends was a series that didn't even make my radar for the winter season, but it's been steadily picking up buzz and good press and I recently started watching it. This experience very much benefits from knowing some general spoilers due to what I'm going to call the Symphogear effect.
Much like Symphogear but more so, the opening episodes of Kemono Friends are not particularly attractive on their surface. The CGI is frankly janky (although I can get used to it and I even find it kind of charming now) and the general plot of each episode is not particularly deep. While the show is laced through with mysteries and allusions, it's all too easy for a show to drop lots of hints that amount to absolutely nothing and plenty of shows fumble their ending this way. Which is where the general spoilers come in, because they do the crucial work of letting me know that Kemono Friends is not one of these.
For example, those mysteries and allusions are in fact our old friend incluing at work doing subtle worldbuilding. Those uneasy feelings I get when I watch the show and see things in the background are entirely intentional, and paying attention is thus actively rewarding; I'll pick up things and have fun theorizing. And things like Nick Creamer's review of Kemono Friends lets me know that the smart writing I think I'm seeing is not an illusion and the show has a real and satisfactory payoff in the end.
All of this elevates the show well above its relatively modest surface appeal. When watching Kemono Friends with this advance knowledge, I can both enjoy the surface, which is decently entertaining in a lightweight way, and amuse myself by thinking about all of the things in the background. I'll also admit that seeing all the memes and artworks of various characters on Twitter has helped to prime me for their actual appearances in the show. If I'd tried to watch Kemono Friends cold without this general background, I suspect that I'd have bounced off the show entirely on the grounds that it was very little more than it appeared to be and didn't have enough promise.
(The surface show of Kemono Friends is okay but it's not deep; it's goofy friendship slice of life and learning experiences, mixed with lectures on animals and ecologies and so on. I might have watched it for that alone if I was sufficiently bored, which I actually might have been last season.)