Board Thread:Anime/@comment-25730832-20150324162253/@comment-24.8.244.55-20150331220539

Hm. First portion of my review is based heavily on ep 12, but since I then go on to the series as a whole, I'm pretty sure it goes in here.

About two minutes in when Kongou and Hiei hugged and I immediately thought "Hug later! You're in battle!" I knew this was something I didn't really want to watch.

Never has so little been done in 23 minutes. Half the time it hardly felt like a battle! Yes, talking is a free action, but come the fuck on: at least dodge shit and fire salvos or MOVE while you blab. What a hamfisted way to try to inject a dramatic plot at the last minute - much of which could have been exposited AFTER the battle as everyone was heading home instead of halting its momentum every five seconds. *Flashbacks to Bleach*

Everybody's essentially hashed out anything I may want to say (sure is impressive when they blow up harmless AFK Abyssals), so just three points from me that I still want to yell about:

1. Making Henderson evolve into Midway does not fix the problem of not including Midway from the start. (Leotard catches on fire... and becomes a ballgown???) And no, I'm not happy that I got to see two of my favorite Himes because it took asspulling to get there. And oh god her neck. Even in her final form it is not in the same ballpark of disturbing. Go home and think about what you did. (This one has been said before, but it just really, really pisses me off they thought they could fix it by having both. And this from someone who likes the idea that Abyssals evolve into other Abyssals!) 2. I was promised Junyou and WAS NOT DELIVERED. That's the part that makes me angry; they essentially said she and RJ would show, AND THEN THEY DIDN'T, unless I'm supposed to be happy with another damn blink-and-you-miss-it cameo just before all the boats we've already seen show up. The fuck did they go? Oh well, it's not like that's the first promise this show has broken. 3. Is it just me, or is everything wrong about Ooi and KTKM's happy reunion wrong after Ooi wigs out over the Abyssal gunk and before the Destroyers show up? No, at this point I don't even care if it's just me. This is way out of line for someone who should have been a relative badass, and what the hell? Also, you're in battle!

And yes, the stop-go on the OST ruined that whole aspect! One second I'm nodding along, and the next the funky tunes are abruptly gone. The rest of the time, they were being mixed together terribly, and not always the most appropriate music for the event.

Are we absolutely sure they did not change this at the last minute? So much seems shoehorned in.

As to the show as a whole, there's those fiddly instances of OOCness that bite my bum. Episode 11 is the only episode where Hibiki seemed remotely like herself. Before that? She was either a more laconic Ed (the Ed you think in Cartoon Network context, not Cowboy Bebop) or subtly insulting everyone (unlikely), and neither of those are herself. KTKM's blandness has been pointed out, and not only is it a waste when you consider she and Ooi could have made a decent comedy duo, it somehow got worse at the last minute. As did Akagi, turning into a brooding defeatist within the span of one episode when she used to be one of the more positive characters. In Kongou's case the personality changes worked out great (here's another that didn't care for her before the anime), but then she and her sisters are the exception, aren't they?

Surprisingly, I don't think that Fubuki as MC was a big strike. Once you've already accepted your favorite girl (Akitsu Maru, in case you were wondering) probably won't show up, much less be focused on, it mostly stops mattering who does. But in a game with so many bloody characters, it doesn't do to focus on a dollop of unseasoned mashed potatoes to the exclusion of most of them; that's where they went wrong. Maybe Episode 6 is favored not because lol filler or lol curry antics, but because it focused on other barking ships for a change.

With regards to the series tone, they need to either: -Find writers that can properly balance lulz and drama. It can be done. This season is not proof. -If that's out of the question for some reason, pick one and stick with it. It's okay if they want to do a SoL, what's not okay is including heavy drama at the cost of the verisimilitude of both approaches.

For a better anime, I envision a show that takes the military life concept way more seriously than we saw here. Someone pointed out the various tactical reasons why Fubuki taking Yamato on the water was nonsense; a SoL genre shouldn't erase the realities of a military/war setting. Needs more dark humor and less lol Kai Ni didn't give Fubuki diddies.

Even if the writers continue to not play the game (which, as mentioned, should have been the first item on their to-do list), that would be a vast improvement.

Now, to get into more subjective territory, some cast changes to be consistent with that...

-I agree with casting Yukikaze as the next MC; being such a celebrated ship should give her more room to have a vibrant personality beyond lol Akagi-senpai makes me wet, or at the least would make it make sense for her to be so speshul without really doing anything. -Tatsuta could be the main supplier of that dark humor I mentioned, that being her whole personality, and you can't have her without Tenryuu. -I promise I'm not just buttmad about this episode when I say Junyou. She could be the one who can make a positive out of a bad situation, without losing touch with its gravity. (I'm embarrassed to say, though, most of the traits they gave Kongou were things I'd have expected to see in Junyou, so they'd have to work hard at not making her Kongou 2.0.) -Throw in the foreign exchange student with Prinz Eugen, or one of the Zs, and you have a ready-made plot good for one episode there. Most will think she's innocent due to her personality, when in reality she has seen some shit. -Let's get some Yuugumos in here.

And that's about as far as I can go without falling into listing most of my favorite boats and spiraling into pure wish fulfillment. They already tried to make wish fulfillment, and look how that turned out. If avoiding repeating history is such a big theme to them that they had to dive deep to swim under an Abyssal shark at the last moment, then they'd better not do all this again in Season 2!

(As a cracky aside, all this talk of AFKness makes me think of the Abyssals leaving their computers for ten seconds to get sodas and the fleet girls, being opportunistic bitches with no netplay manners, swooping in and nuking them. BWS Flag-Kai returns to find herself sunk and Midway swearing into her headset at everyone as she goes down slamming her Fire button until her runways are empty.)