Autumn 2010 – First Impressions (Togainu no Chi & Fortune Arterial)

Been off work sick today, so attention span has been all over the show – have no idea if these posts will make much sense!  Anyway today I sampled Togainu no Chi and Fortune Arterial.

Togainu no Chi

So I was quite looking forward to this – can never have enough angsty bishies, BL undertones & blood, plus Togainu no Chi actually has a pretty interesting plot so its big ticks all round for me! This first episode did a very good job at setting the scene (it basically covered the summary) and getting our main angsty bishie from street fighting to jail and then to a ruined Tokyo which is the main setting for the series. Akira doesn’t say much, he mostly communicates through smouldering glares into middle distance – not that I’m complaining but I’d like our primary protagonist to have a larger range of emotions than brooding, angry brooding and shocked brooding.

I do like the setting and plotline, and it seems that there will be a lot of bloody action over the course of the series which is a bonus – pretty bishies are all well and good, but pretty bishies fighting to the death with various sharp pointy weapons are much better! Unfortunately there is a lot of pretty crappy censoring in this 1st episode, whats the point to having all that blood splashed all over the place if you’re not going to show the dismembered corpses or any actual cutting? Red eyed bishie in the billowing coat (seems to be taking fashion tips from Luka of last seasons Uraboku) was pretty cool and was the primary reason for all the hacking and slashing – looking forward to seeing more of him! Oh and in terms of BL there’s not much here – the undertones are pretty obvious (especially to my fangirl eyes), but what show these days doesn’t have BL undertones of some sort?

On the production front I quite like the character designs (even if they’re quite generic and girly) and the colours used. The opening scene had this really vibrant red rain, and the blood in the show is that same luminous red colour (realism, whats that!?). The direction isn’t all that exciting, but the fights are decently choreographed (if horrendously censored) and the voice acting is pretty good (well not that much actual talking went on). The music is pretty interesting – the scene with Akira making his entrance into the devastated city had this percussion heavy music punctuated with like tribal chanting or something, which really added to the tense atmosphere. I really liked the OP and ED – nice animation in the OP.

So I’ll be keeping this on (was there any doubt?) seems like it could be very interesting in addition to being visually appealing – bonus!

Fortune Arterial

Wow, that was so bland and generic I’m actually impressed by the utter lack of creativity on display! In all seriousness I’m struggling to recall another bland harem lead that is quite as bland as this one – we’re talking absolutely no personality here folks, not even the tiniest shred of originality has gone into his character. The same can be said of the majority of the instant harem that’s sprung up around him – not one of these girls deviates from her assigned pigeonhole; we have the busty tsundere, the hyperactive violent loli, the shy big boobed girl, the childlike loli and the remarkably young pretty nun all covered in only the 1st episode (the hyper loli & busty shy girl also have the sisters and childhood friends aspect covered – hows that for cramming in as many cliché’s as possible!?). The other fellas in the show weirdly have much more personality than the lead – especially that vampire student council president who likes to teasingly invade the protagonists personal space just a bit too much. Also the pre-op segment was trying a touch to hard to be all Dance in the Vampire Bund (because we all know that show is a masterpiece!) with the naked-cloak-upside down combo. Yeah, as I said no originality in this show at all.

The character designs seem to have come from 7/8 years ago in all their generic glory – absolutely no attempt has been made to spruce them up for 2010 audiences and as a result the show looks extremely dated. Dull direction and static backgrounds don’t really help matters – everything screams generic and half-assed, why did they even bother!? Daisuke Ono sounds supremely bored voicing the lead, and all the girls have the usual haremette voices with no real distinction between them. Music was actually half decent though – didn’t really like the OP, but the ED was good.

Yeah I really didn’t like this show, just firing vampires into the mix doesn’t really make this any different from the hundreds of other shows that are exactly the same as Fortune Arterial. Lazy adaptation is lazy – dropped big time.