Midpoint Impression: Slayers (First Season)

Okay, it may be a little early on to be saying that I'm doing a midpoint impression of the first season of Slayers, given that I've only seen ten of the twenty six episodes, but episode ten more or less wraps up the series' first story arc, so I figured it would be a good point to do my impression at.

The plot of Slayers is pretty simplistic. It's basically a fantasy parody. The main characters seem to be Lina Inverse, an adventuring sorceress with a childish figure and an incredible amount of power, and Gourry, a dumb as a rock swordsman who 'rescues' her from some bandits -and then starts making comments about how he wished she'd been a real babe and not some kid. Several other characters are shown in the opening credits for the show, but so far we haven't met very many of them. Of the ones we have, the stone skinned Zelgadis is amongst the most prominent, and fulfils the 'dark brooding character' role that neither Lina nor Gourry is very well suited for.

Gourry: more brawn then brains.

Lina can be so cute when she's about to torch someone...

As you can imagine, a show like this has quite a bit of comedic potential, and there are certainly some very humorous moments (like the aforementioned first meeting between Lina and Gourry). Unfortunately, the show also has quite a bit of semi-serious stuff that can kind of drag it down a bit (it's not really good enough with the action for its fight scenes to be all that exciting), so while it's not really all that bad, it's not really all that great either. I'm going to wait and see how the rest of the series goes (after all, I just finished the first story arc), but at this point it's not much of a challenge to my current favourites. It's amusing enough to keep watching, but so far it hasn't had me raving very much.

Just one further note on Slayers: if it seems like it's not all that well animated, that's probably due in part to the fact that it was released back around 1995. I'm not sure its artwork was considered all that good even back then, but the fact that so many of the newer animes out there look so slick can't really help things.

Midpoint Impression: Shuffle!

Okay, since this is my second post on this blog, as well as the second post in which I'm going to mildly shaft a series, I'd just like to take a moment to say that I intend to say positive things on this blog as well (I do not intend for this to become a 'whine about things I don't like' blog). It's just that the first couple things I wanted to post about happened to have a bit of a negative bent.

That being out of the way, I am now going to give my impression of Shuffle!, which is based on the first ten or so episodes of the series

It's probably somewhat unfair of me to judge a series so early on like this, especially since at least one of my favorite series had a very weak start and my brother tells me that that Shuffle! is supposed to get a lot better later on. Nevertheless, what I've seen of the series so far doesn't leave me very impressed.

At it's heart, Shuffle! is a harem show, making it part of a genre that I have mixed feelings about. I don't have a very high impression of harem shows as a whole, but being a big Love Hina fan, I have to admit that there's the occasional one that can be pretty good. Unfortunately, there's a lot of mediocre and even downright bad harem shows out there (being a Love Hina fan, I'm going to point out the awful Love Hina Again OVAs as an example of how bad the genre can be). So far, Shuffle seems to fall firmly into the mediocre category.

The basic premise of Shuffle is thus: ten years ago, portals opened between Earth and two other worlds -the World of the Gods and the World of the Demons (just as a note, the terms 'god' and 'demon' should be used somewhat loosely with regards to this show, since the gods aren't really very divine and the demons aren't really very evil). This has led to an Earth that is shared between all three species. It also resulted in the Lords of both the gods and the demons making trips to Earth and somehow losing track of their daughters, who met up with a kind human boy. Now, years later, the two girls want to meet that boy again, and their fathers seem quite approving -not only do they let their daughters attend his school, but they expect him to choose one of the two and marry her (and in the process, become either a god or a demon himself). And of course, this being a harem show, there have to be a few other girls who have an interest in the boy as well. Among them his doting childhood friend, whom he's lived with since his parents were killed in an accident several years before.

The Lord of the Demons (Left) and the Lord of the Gods (Right).
They're definetly buddies and they don't behave the way you might expect.

Their daughters, Nerine and Sia. They're kind of cute, but that cuteness
alone isn't going to get them onto my list of favorite anime girls...

What all this results in, is a somewhat amusing, but not really all that great comedy show. Sure, there are some good laughs (the Lords of the gods and the demons are apparently friends, and their antics are not exactly what you'd expect from beings with their titles) but it failed to really hook me in. I can enjoy a romantic element in a series (I'm a big fan of the Sousuke/Kaname pairing in Full Metal Panic!, and the Eri/Harima pairing in School Rumble), but I'm not that into the complex mess of relationships in this anime, and I also feel that the series has too much in the way of cheap laughs and cheap fan service. It's not as bad as some shows are (at least judging by what I've seen of this one so far) but it's really not that great. Frankly, the first ten episodes may suffice if you're bored, low on stuff to watch, or a fan of harem shows. Otherwise, you don't need to get into a frenzy over this one.

Another guy voiced by the voice actor who played Kyon...

Also, does anyone think the guy who voiced Kyon (and voices the main character in this series) is starting to get a bit typecast?