Yeah, yeah. Everybody has to do Unlimited Blade Works these days.
This was an hour long premiere, though with no commercial breaks, and no OP or ED, clocking in at 58 minutes, it was really more like a triple length episode, so I’m already feeling a bit worn out. Also, the screencaps may make things seem more exciting than usual since they’re much more spaced.
Impressions:
Thankfully, it wasn’t too bad of a first ‘episode’, which I highly suspect is going to be promoted to impressive once the competition falls on its face as is more normal. Let’s start with the bad. This absolutely did not need to be triple length. Even double length would probably be pushing it. Its greatest sins were that after every little bit of action had to be followed by about ten minutes of exposition. Now, given the standard has fallen to the point of explaining the concept that time passes, its sin of explaining the convoluted world system WITHOUT status screens or numbers is extremely low on the sin-o-meter, but it did kill the pacing. Same with the magical girlfriend goddess character, who showed up an immediately demanded head pats. I sigh, roll my eyes, and then remember how much worse is to come in other shows.
As for the production, the animation was far better than what they were showing off in the promos and it’s nice to have monsters that aren’t ultra janky half-assed CGI. Still CGI enhanced, but the knights were worse in that regard, and even that was used sparingly. That said, while an impressive effort for Kai given their past shows, you can definitely see that they’re far more focused on swinging camera angles rather than character movement or choreography. There were a couple moments of some more artistic visuals, but that was fairly rare. It was especially bad during the big climax, after he forges his contract with her, etc, and their new super power is 99% throwing swords while posing with all the budget into explosions while the monsters snarled from a distance.
I know that’s a lot of critiques, because there’s a lot that could’ve been improved, and again, I’m kind of worn out by the triple length premiere that didn’t have any moments that really blew me away or that I’d point to as the clip that’d sell someone on it. It’s on the upper end of competent for what ten years ago would have been generic anime fantasy, but since “generic anime fantasy” at this point is “I was reincarnated with cheat powers in an RPG with a harem,” can you even call this generic anymore? I struggle to call it dark fantasy even given that nobody named was even in any real danger and they introduce infinite respawns right away. In any case, I hope it solves the pacing issues and becomes far more character focused because I know the budget is going to tank, and it’s also not in a great place to start.
