The Horizon on Tits 2 Project – Episode 1

Yeap. Totally relevant to the “plot”.

Okay so, A Day Without Me has assembled a crack team of anibloggers for this random challenge – a different person will watch & write about an episode of Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere S2 each week, and none of us have seen anything else from the show.  I have the dubious honour of kicking things off – couldn’t be too hard since I’m used to writing first impressions posts…….right?

So yeah, the only other episode of Horizon I’ve actually seen is the first episode of season one from Autumn 2011, which completely bemused me – I’ve had a very similar reaction to this episode.

I actually watched this episode twice just to see if I could get a bit more of a grasp of what was happening on my screen, but nope, I still haven’t a fucking clue what this show is about!  I spent half the episode in wide-eyed shock, and the other half completely confused by what the characters were wearing/saying.

Actually lets just talk about the character designs for a second because they’re the most motley assortment of freak-shows ever assembled into one anime.  That top screen shot is from the OP and I half remember some of those bizarre characters from that episode I watched way back in S1 – especially curry dude……how could you forget really.  I then found myself pausing the episode every now and then just to marvel at some of the things I was seeing – that wide shot with all the characters in the background; yeah I don’t know what the fuck that’s all about either.

I haven’t even touched on the designs for the main cast yet!  The majority of the women seem to have massive, over polished bowling balls mounted to their chests and the most ridiculous hair I think I’ve ever seen!  I also had tremendous difficulty trying to figure out if some of the characters were meant to be flat-chested girls or men……it’s very hard to tell the difference when the all seem to be voiced by women!

There was also a scene with a naked ghost baby where a clueless androgynous creature who is apparently meant to be male, prattled on about having sex due to a “hilarious misunderstanding!”…….I seriously do not know.

Moving on from the weirdness of the character designs, this opening episode drops us right into a battle scene without really telling us why.  My best guess is that this fight started in the finale of S1 and this is the conclusion, but for me that hadn’t seen that, trying to figure out who was in the main cast and who the antagonists were was a real challenge.  I eventually cottoned on to the fact the enemy team were the ones in red (the Track & Baseball teams apparently??) – but that seriously took me a good 10 minutes.

The fighting itself was well animated and crazy looking with really excellent music – there’s so much going on all at once, and all the powers, weapons and mecha are so utterly bonkers it’s almost overwhelming!  I mean there is mecha with hair & boobs, an attack which uses a tennis racket & is called “The Great Backhand of Justice”, another which is actually called “Mountains of Text” (that made me laugh), and a weapon that actually hurls disgust at the enemy!  I sort of admire the mental creativity on display in this show in a strange way.

Oh yeah, after the random opening battle wraps up we suddenly find ourselves in Great Britain (which floats now) and fighting some Oxford Academy representatives of the Fairy Queen, who happened to include an “athlete-poet” and a moe William Shakespeare………..yeah I gave up attempting to understand what was happening too.

I haven’t even mentioned the lead male yet have I?  Yeah……he spent the entire episode naked and getting in everyone’s way.  I have no idea what his purpose is in the show other than to be as fecking annoying as humanly possible (I also can not unhear Panda from Polar Bear Cafe whenever this eejit opens his mouth, Fukuyama Jun uses the same high-pitched lazy drawl for both roles).

Right. So that was the first episode of the second season of Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere………..and I never, ever want to experience this kind of brain melting confusion ever again!