Friday, April 5, 2013

New Airing Anime Initial Thoughts: "Aku no Hana" and "Devil Survivor 2"


So the new anime have started rolling out and I am still in the process of deciding what I will stick with. Of the plethora amount of new airing anime, I have only seen episode one of Aku no Hana and Devil Survivor 2 and I have to say they both seem pretty unique.
Starting with Aku no Hana I really don’t know what to think about it so far. I was very interested within the first two minutes due to the very unique animation style and the very airy and engaging piano track that gets repeated throughout the episode. The animation is shooting for a much more realistic approach rather than what most anime try to go for (you know super slender character models with outrageous bust sizes with lights and reflections going crazy). It depicts a much more real feeling Japan since the atmosphere feels much blander and you see many different characters with very different statures. The animation itself though I am not a huge fan of. The refresh rate is quite low so when you see a character changing their expression, it is not a smooth transition at all. Also whether or not you see facial features is totally dependent on how far away a certain character is from wherever the camera is. So if a character is walking towards the camera, you will see a blank face from far away but as they approach closer and closer, you will see the eyes then the mouth. It is unique I will give them that but all in all it is quite distracting. As far as the plot goes, I cannot really comment on it since I don’t know what the fu#@ is going to happen.
Devil Survivor 2 as far as I can tell is going to feel a lot like Xam’d: Lost Memories since they seem to have the same general plot device. We essentially have three fish out of water characters that are forcefully introduced and thrown into a situation they did not want but they will have to learn how to deal with it. Each of the main three characters was involved in a train crash that should have killed them. They were given the option to live on and thus they were granted these “avatars” to use in whatever situation they see fit. They end up fighting different monsters that they just label “demons” and at the end of episode one, they are arrested by some government type people. Right off the bat I was really digging the animation. The scenes are bright and have some awesome reflections especially off of the eyes. Speaking about the eyes, I love how they are drawn. I cannot tell you why I like them so much it’s just a personal quality I like about animation. The sound was good at best; I like the voice actors but the music seems kind of generic thus far. Characters start to grow closer to each other as the episode progresses so I hope they keep up the character development throughout later episodes.

Out of these two anime I can already tell that this anime season is going to (hopefully) bring much more than the typical high school drama stuff that we got force fed last season. As more anime get released I will try to comment on each one and by early next week I should have a list of what anime I plan to stick with. Also look for some more reviews on last season’s anime sometime this weekend.

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