Not even steam. Just no nipples.
Two to go, and while one leaked early and I already did watch most of it, get disgusted, stop, and put it off for today, the other is Spice and Wolf, which I feel largely falls into the same category. I’m going out for some dog walking briefly before I subject myself to those last two ordeals.
Impressions:
We continue our journey through the different flavors of these stupid reincarnation things, going from the ultra edgy to fanservice comedy. It is somewhat unsual that all three of these are not a dude being given cheat powers, but having cheat powers in their past life and carrying them over. That’s oddly specific for happening thrice in a row. The truly unusual piece of this one is that it’s surprisingly well animated. It’s actually genuinely pretty impressive in places. The fight is quite slick, even with the nonstop pointless exposition weighing it down. Of course, then they go all take a bath with literally every single busty teenage girl to be found in a five mile radius, all of whom have had their nipples eaten by the bath demon, conveniently enough for the censors.
The animation isn’t enough to salvage it though. I wouldn’t say that the premise of an overpowered protagonist is enough to sink things just on its own. I enjoyed parts of Class of Heroes for example, which used that as its premise well, and was certainly a fanservice fest. This doesn’t have the strong characters, narrative (such as it was), or humor that did though. It has only really its one joke, that the dude has cheat powers, and even that’s not actually a joke. The animators try on occasion with a silly face here and there, but that should be the baseline, and it does very little to blunt the nonstop internal exposition about how… he has cheat powers and he is currently using them to cheat.
Not to spoil my next post since I did technically watch most of the third of these today, but if I had to pick one of the four cheat power shows (including that god games thing in that list) of Monday to stick with it, this would be it, absolutely, no question in my mind. It at least shows some flair in the visuals. But good characters and story can carry a lot more than a budget, and while other than the Bath of Vanishing Nipples, this doesn’t do much too offensive or obnoxious, there’s very little here that’s not just “Hey, another cheat power show, but with good animation this time!”
