John Zeitler

Rush to Judgment is a feature I do every so often when I find that my stack has got to be way too big for me to find out what to start next. The last time I did this, I played through the first thirty minutes of ten games in order to see which one grabbed my attention… and, ironically, none of them did. Today I picked six anime series out of the ten I haven’t seen a single frame of yet, and this week I’ll go through the other four. For now, though, enjoy my impressions of the first episodes of the series below.

In retrospect, this was a really, really bad idea. But not for the reasons you think. I detailed the format of this little experiment above, but one thing I wanted to mention was that it was really hard to stick to that format. I forced myself to watch only one episode, in its entirety, to gauge how the series was going. In some cases, one episode was enough… and in others, it was woefully inadequate. Enough preamble: let’s do this.

He Is My Master: (Gainax/Shaft, 2005; Sentai Filmworks, 2009, sub-only)
Remember when you could say “it’s a Gainax series” and have people know exactly what you meant by that? It used to mean stacked girls and the flimsiest excuses. Nowadays it means pseudo-intellectual deconstructionism that threatens what it means to be an anime fan. Funny thing is, Master matches both of those descriptions. The series revolves around Izumi and Mitsuki, middle-school runaways who are looking for work. Luck (of the bad sort) leads them to the mansion of Yoshitaka, a similarly-aged heir who happens to be looking for a live-in maid or two. Yeah, you can guess how this will go. It veers sharply off the pandering formula around the time the nebulously-drawn crocodile starts chewing on Yoshitaka. The thing is, Master looks like it has the potential to deconstruct the whole “lonely otaku suddenly has gorgeous maids” fantasy fanservice type of show, but that largely depends on if the characters get some sort of development, Yoshitaka in particular. And yeah, despite the fact that I know she’s schmuck bait and specifically made to be a likeable character, I am kind of interested in seeing where Izumi’s characterization is going. But we’ll see. This is about exactly what I thought it was going to be… whether or not that’s a good thing is an exercise left up to the reader.

Baccano!: (Aniplex, 2007; Funimation, 2009, dubbed)
Okay, first, I have to ask this. “Jacuzzi Splot”? Really? You were doing so well with “Clare Stanfield”, and then you go and drop Jacuzzi Splot. Y’know what? I can forgive that. I pretty much have to, when the first episode of the series is pretty much a metafictional discussion of the concept of a “main character”, to say nothing of the concept of a story beginning or ending. The series literally defies description, but the short version is that it answers the unasked question, “How would the American 1930s Prohibition-era gangster wars be different if some of those gangsters were, in fact, imbued with the alchemical Elixir of Immortality?”. And it answers it thusly: “It would be awesome.” I made a note to the effect of this being my next series to watch through (helps that it’s only 13 episodes).

Negima!: (Xebec, 2005; Funimation, 2006, dubbed/switched to subtitles)
I realized about halfway through this one that I had actually seen this a couple of years ago. Just the first episode, of course, but that was on a fansub, and as it turns out that was probably for the best. Greg Ayres plays the decidedly British Negi Springfield, and does so with the single most atrocious fake accent I have ever heard. Hell, I could do better than that. I jumped to the subtitles and quickly realized that the dub script took a few more liberties with the text, too… so no real loss. Problem is, it was at that halfway point which I realized why I hadn’t gone further with this one: it’s… well, it’s just not that good. Okay, it has some good moments, and there’s bound to be at least one character I’ll like here (I still have yet to read through more of the manga) because the opening credits is basically a checklist of stock “cute girl” characters. It’s not that it’s bad. It just has to have one of the slowest starts to the actual plot that I have ever seen… was it really necessary to stretch it out this long? The first episode ended on a really lame hook. Think I’ll let this slide until after I’ve read more of the manga (which is just as slowly-paced, but I can read the obnoxious parts faster than they can be acted).

Spice And Wolf: (Imagin, 2008; Funimation, 2009, dubbed)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a series set in a medieval time period– at least, one which was played straight. The Slayers is about the closest, and beyond that you’d have to go back to Scrapped Princess (subversion-o-rama), or Record of Lodoss War (which is pretty much ten years ago since I’ve seen it even most of the way through). I’m not big on swords-and-sorcery, but it looks like Spice has, in point of fact, neither. Lawrence is a traveling merchant, who somehow comes across the ambiguously-divine wolf “god” Holo (the coming of monotheism to the almost-western-European setting, including disdainful mentions of “pagans”, is also a seemingly-major plot point). She basically tricks him into taking her with him, but it’s done in such a genuinely charming way that you can’t help but like her. Holo really acts more like a fox than a wolf, as she’s somewhat untrustworthy and devious; on the other hand, Lawrence isn’t some easily-duped rube himself. Both of them have pasts, and probably most importantly, both of them have pasts that are presented such that I want to find out more about them.

Simoun: (Studio Deen, 2006; Media Blasters, 2007, sub-only)
Okay, yeah, there’s not really any getting around the fact that this is a series about magical flying lesbians. Now that I have your attention… it’s still about magical flying lesbians. Pretty much an instant-sell for a lot of people, but I’m trying to figure out where exactly I heard all the really positive impressions of this series, and how long it takes for me to find any of the overtly redeeming qualities. Judging from the first episode alone, this is going to be twenty-six episodes which alternate between showing cute girls kissing and wrecking them emotionally. There’s simply no way for Simoun to not end in a horribly depressing manner. It’s going on the back burner.

El Cazador De La Bruja: (Bee Train, 2007; Funimation, 2009, dubbed)
Fun fact: I switched these last two from their original lineup when I was changing discs after Baccano!, and I’m kind of glad I did. Cazador is a third-generation successor to Bee Train’s previous hit Noir, and in some respects, it shows: Ellis is appropriately wispy and enigmatic, there’s a shadowy conspiracy calling the shots from far away, and Nadie is a tall, confident gunslinging girl. That’s about where the similarities end. Cazador is talkative– compared to Noir, Cazador just plain never shuts up– and is a bit more humorous at times, particularly in how Ellis and Nadie interact. Their relationship is a bit more normal than Mirielle and Kirika’s was, in that they’re not actively planning to kill each other; more than that, it seems like there’s a cast of supporting characters here that promises to make the whole thing work so much more fluidly than Noir did (it was great, but it had its pacing problems). Despite the packaging and general assumptions, it should be noted that the series is set in the present day, and it’s also set in Mexico, which coincidentally explains the gratuitous Spanish being spoken by the dub cast.

Trailer Impressions
Two of the series I watched were prefaced with trailers of sufficient note to make me comment on them in my notes. I was already interested in Soul Eater, having read the beginnings of the manga in Yen Plus, but having seen the series in action, I’m probably going to have to pick it up at some point. Looking forward to that, especially if the dub work is of a fairly decent quality. On the other hand, we have Dragonaut. Initially, I had placed He Is My Master as the series with the most fanservice I’d seen tonight. When the trailer shows a girl to whom puberty has been particularly generous jump-roping, you kind of get a pretty good feeling for where the series is headed. In this case, it’s headed absolutely nowhere near my shelf.

I’d said that this was a bad idea, and unfortunately that’s for a very good reason: I now have no idea which of the three best series I’m going to watch first. That, in case you’re wondering, completely defeats the purpose of running the Rush to Judgment to begin with. I’m not going to complain too much, mind: it’s probably the best kind of problem to have, but it’s still a little frustrating. In the end, though, I think I’m going to go with Baccano!, followed quickly by Spice and Wolf.

Tomorrow, I’ll preview the last four “new” series on my stack; I may also manage to get some models sprayed up properly.