Sunday, April 7, 2013

Zettai Boei Leviatan First Impressions--Let's Have a Bar Fight Without the Bar Fight

Zettai Boei Leviatan First Impressions Image 1

A fairy gathers three dragon girls with the intent of creating a defense force that will save their world from an alien invasion, combining elements of fantasy and magical girl series along the way. This would be awesome, except the execution is amazingly generic. There's not much going on here that most people haven't seen before. The characters are color-coded JRPG stereotypes--the blue one has hidden powers and a missing family member, the red one is a hothead mage, the yellow one likes food and is strong--and they live in a generic JRPG town where the biggest problem is hooligans.

Zettai Boei Leviatan First Impressions Image 2 Zettai Boei Leviatan First Impressions Image 3

The plot of this episode, what little of it there is, involves the characters wandering around until something happens to them. The bulk of the episode is focused around some guys who are upset because the fairy and the red dragon girl called them some names after they harassed some girl. It's drawn out and not very amusing, and I can't see what point it serves other than to get the main characters to officially meet each other. The show also doesn't seem to know how to build-up or transition into things, since early on we get an elaborate magical girl transformation sequence out of nowhere.

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In fact, I'm not really sure what this show is really trying to be. It's main selling point at the moment seems to be "moe fantasy," but there are some bits that don't exactly fit. The start of the episode promises a "heartwarming story" then goes into an angsty J-rock OP. In the first few minutes, a CG bug flies around and hits our main characters so hard in the head that they go off-model. They chase after it, but they treat it as a minor inconvenience, which it is. However, the background music seems to think that this is an EPIC BATTLE, since the sequence is set to electric guitar. I really don't know what mood they're trying to create here. Does it want to be a cutesy show? Is it trying to set up a dark twist? Either way, it's not exactly working.

Zettai Boei Leviatan First Impressions Image 6

I feel a bit bad for Gonzo. This is supposed to be an "original" anime, yet so far all it's done is mimic the more boring aspects of the genres it's trying to combine. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now, since it's possible that it just got off to a rocky start. However, it's equally possible that this is all Leviatan is capable of.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.

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