Natsu no Arashi introduces us to Hajime, our protagonist, and his friend Sayoko - A seemingly normal guy and girl who oversleep (well, Hajime does) and work in a local coffee shop. So far, so normal - Except that Sayoko (and indeed Kaja, another girl who works in the cafe) have some literally rather ethereal properties, not least the ability to travel through time. So, we have the hook for this series (and time travel is always a good one), so what does the first episode of Natsu no Arashi do with it?
An episode about strawberries, that's what. No, I'm not kidding. Now, mixing time travel with the mundane is no bad thing - The Girl Who Leapt Through Time managed to do so fantastically, but to be quite honest this opener to Natsu no Arashi is the exact opposite of that. It's animation style is pretty ugly to look at, its characters hardly leap out at you in neither design nor behaviour, and the stories which make up this first episode are incredibly tedious viewing. Indeed, the only kick I got out of the episode was the very brief visual nod to Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.
So, with all of that in mind this series is already in serious danger of being dropped - I'm going to give it another episode or two as it would be unfair to drop any show on the basis of a single episode, but at this particular moment in time I can't see anything which may bring redemption to this show in my eyes. I can only hope that I'm proved wrong though.
Posts
2 comments:
I'm in agreement, the episode was boring and strange and the character designs were hideous. I'm only continuing because it's so strange and because SHAFT is known for bad first episodes anyway. The SZS reference was funny, but the Touhou one made me ROFL.
Supposedly it's not all strawberry cake bomb and this episode was just to introduce the characters using a gag chapter from the manga. The camera direction was interesting and on par with what I would expect from a shaft show. I also was a big fan of school rumble (despite the ending) and am really hoping for this to get better. Also...I spent the entire episode trying to place Hajime's VA only to slap myself afterwards. It was Sanpei Yuuko and I just rewatched fuckin 51 episode long Eureka 7 with her voicing Renton. I felt dumb.
Post a Comment