The first installment of the Spring 09 Impressions will cover the first four shows of the spring season I’ve watched, which would be the vintage Dragonball Kai, moe driven K-ON, action-thriller Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~, and the anime adaptation of hit SRPG, Valkyria Chronicles. First impressions are a fickle thing really. You only get one, and although they really aren’t a true determinant to how good a show is, it’s still important to leave a good impression to keep us coming back. So without further ado, let’s kick off Wolf Hurricane’s first batch o’ impressions.

Dragonball Kai:
This is essentially a director’s cut of the original DBZ with a remastered 16:9 HD ratio, new music, new voice work and less filler. The original series was a whopping 291 episodes, and the new count is supposed to be around the 100 mark. So far it’s already noticeable that the pace has quickened, and cutting out all the filler episodes and stupid scenes (ie. prolonged powering up, long stare downs, five minutes of waiting for the dust to clear after a ki blast, random cuts to nature and animals during the middle of a battle) has helped the pace immensely.

The production staff said the animation has been remastered, but several frames are still quite shaky, and quite frankly the animation quality hasn’t been polished to HD level. The 16:9 was a valiant effort, but it looks more like a giant crop job than a true 16:9 show. With all the effort that went into this remake such as new music and voice work, why couldn’t they have gone the extra mile and animated the show with the same quality as the new OP and ED? The effort that has gone into this is apparent, but it still feels half-assed to reuse the same animation from 1989. Despite these faults, I’ll continue watching DB Kai if only for nostalgia’s sake.

What’s old is new again with DB Kai. Almost everything about it is new except the animation.

K-ON:
Another season, another moe driven KyoAni show. It’s what we’ve come to expect, and it’s what we usually get. K-ON basically boils down to four girls in a light music club with generous servings of moe. This is the type of show you either love a lot or don’t. I’m in the camp that loves it though sometimes too much is too much, as K-ON can induce diabetes due to its sugary moe-moe levels being equal to or greater than a numerical value of 9,000. We’ve got the basic archetypes down from the clumsy space cadet, the hyperactive proactive girl, the cool girl, and the rich girl.

Animation was pretty good, voice work fit the characters, and the music based premise has me hook, line and sinker. The OP and ED songs are really, really “super moe fun time” for lack of a better term. I know the obvious comparison is to say K-ON is like Lucky Star but it’s really not. K-ON will probably focus more on slice of life and the progression of the little band. At 13 episodes, you don’t have much to lose by trying it out. My only quip is that the show initially airs in 4:3, which makes me semi RAGE.

If moe could kill, KyoAni would be a serial killer. K-ON is definitely aimed at the crowd that adores moe idolatry, but it may “strike a chord” with music fans too.

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~:
Hands down, Phantom was the show I was most looking forward to for spring, and surprisingly Bee-Train didn’t disappoint. The first ep stuck pretty close to the original script and instantly drew me in with plenty of mystery, intrigue and action. The tone is indeed a dark one as the story focuses on a mysterious organization known as Inferno that kidnaps talented individuals and trains them to be assassins for their own ends.

The animation was fluid, music foreboding and bold, and the voice work was pretty good. One aspect of making a good first impression are OP/ED songs, and I absolutely loved Phantom’s minimalist but haunting OP. Call me crazy but since I still like ali project, I liked the ED. This is a show I’ll fervently follow for this season… Partially because Ein is super yummy, delicious, awesome, assassin girl goodness.

The new Noir? Perhaps. Thrills and action abound in this tale about assassins.

Valkyria Chronicles:
Since I already did an episodic for this, I’ll just briefly skim over my thoughts on VC. Pretty good adaptation for the most part that took liberties but remained mostly faithful to the original story. It still carries elements of the game’s very unique watercolor visual style as well as the original music. Overall VC left a good impression and should be fun to watch for fans of the game and newcomers alike. A solid adaptation thus far.

Good adaptation of a great game. Also it has Marina Wulfstan. You will watch it just for her. Believe it.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under Anime, First Impressions.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.