It's not a Yuu Watase series until someone gets thrown into an alternate dimension.
This was one of the shows I was looking forward to the most this season, and while I enjoyed this episode, it didn't blow me away like I expected it would. Part of that is due to the pacing of the episode and how things were presented. I haven't read the manga, but I knew before going in that this was a dimension-hopping anime following two guys with the same name. I've heard that the manga spends some extra time setting up the fantasy world before it goes into this premise (correct me if I'm wrong), but that's definitely not the case for this episode. We go very quickly from "Arata, stop complaining and dress as a girl" to "the Princess is dead and the scapegoat has run away, now our evil reign can begin." Also, the characters are drawn kind of comically at the beginning, and this plus the fantasy setting made me feel like I'd suddenly gone back to the early 2000s. Not that it's a bad thing; fans who remember that time period for anime will probably get what I'm talking about.
This race to get the plot started provides a lot of pros and cons; on the plus side, we're getting what we've signed up for right away, but there are random unexplained things that I hope the show will clarify later. Like, if they hadn't found a princess in decades, what makes them so sure that they'll find one in a few days? And while they're faking princesses, why did it have to be Arata and not the girl who follows him around? If everyone sees alternate universe Arata as the fantasy universe Arata, how does that explain his clothes and the school bag he's still carrying around? There are already potential plotholes here, and it's only the first episode.
Despite how it may sound, I still really enjoyed this episode. I wouldn't even care about the questions I listed above if it wasn't for the fact that I already buy into this fantasy world. I want to know how this ruling system works, who the Shinshou are and why they would want to overthrow it, and what's up with the magical swords. I'm also really interested in Arata's character (the student one), because it's obvious that he's got a lot of baggage and has been bullied a lot. I want to know more about how he got to the point he's at now, where he can't trust anyone, as well as why his bully has a magic sword in the ED. There's a lot going on in Arata the Legend, and I'm excited to see how it plays out.
Images from Crunchyroll.com. This post is also available at OASG.
It's true that the anime skipped over a lot of the set-up of the manga. All those questions are explained in Watase's initial work (Hinohara and Arata are seen wearing the clothes they have on that we as the viewer see them in, which turns out to be a plot point so it's kinda important. Also Kotonoha couldn't disguise as the queen since she had served for her previously and so would be instantly recognized, if that helps). Also more time is spent actually developing Hinohara's attempts at making new friends at his new school which makes the betrayal a bit more...impactful (at least enough to send him to emo corner), so I'm hoping they won't just drop all that development and actually touch on it through flashbacks or something later on.
ReplyDeleteI really love Yuu Watase and I think this series has a lot of potential (also coolest ED animation of the season in my opinion; it's very dramatic with the two main rivalries), but hoping the animation studio doesn't accidentally flop it.
For some reason I didn't get an alert for your comments, so sorry for the late response!
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing that up. I'm still feeling a "tip of the iceburg" effect, like there are valid explanations for the things that I'm wondering about, but the show doesn't have the time to go through them. At this point, I am really wishing that they took the time to explain Arata's bully though, because it feels like he's going to get relevant really soon (and also the fact that the OP and ED give that away).
I'm in a love/hate relationship with the animation in this show. Sometimes it can look really awesome (like what you mentioned with the ED) but a lot of the time the characters go off model. I'm not quite sure what's going on there.