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ANIME REVIEW: GENSHIKEN 2 |      |
| » CATEGORY: Daily Blog | BY:
tgbob « |
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| » POSTED ON: 10/17/2007 10:46:27 PM | MOOD:
mellow « |
Before I start reviewing them, I'll explain my ratings system for these series. The ratings are based on eight factors, each judged on a scale of 1 to 10. The factors are:
Concept: What do I think of the premise of the series?
Delivery: This is how well put together the show is put together. How well does the show flow into each scene?
Purpose Effect: If it's a comedy, does it make me laugh? If it's a horror, does it freak me out? That should explain what this factor is.
Animation: How good does the imagery look?
Dialogue: The voices, the talking, the lines, you know what dialogue is.
Characters: Are the characters interesting, unique, loveable, hateable, etc.?
Entertainment Value: Was I entertained? Obvious enough.
IT Factor: Something you just can't explain. You know IT when you see IT, and IT is that indescribable special thing that just defines the series and how good it is.
Now, on with the reviews!
First up is Genshiken 2, which is apparently a sequel to a series called Genshiken. Pretty obvious, huh? Well, before I watched the first episode of this one, I was thinking that I may need to watch the original series to get a feel for what it was about. After watching the initial episode of the new series, I don't want to go back and watch the first season, or the rest of the second season for that matter. This first episode was so dull and drab, that it was tough to even get through it, which was a feeling I hadn't experienced since trying to watch To Heart: Remember My Love.
The plot that I took out of this episode is as follows: There's a college visual arts club or something which is making a comic book for an upcoming comics festival. Which is fine and all, except that they want to do a hentai comic, which is beyond me why a supposedly college-sanctioned club would be permitted to make hentai comics. Maybe it's not college-sanctioned, and just made up of a bunch of college students or something. Who knows. But there are only three tickets for entry, and about six or seven members of this club who want to participate. A small subplot is introduced about deciding who would be the ones to go, although after the initial thought, not a single mention is made of this issue afterwards. I guess they're saving that for episode two. Because some old member (I think he's an old member) busts in and tries to suggest on something completely different for the comic, and claims he has a bunch of famous industry writers who are willing to help him out, with the promise of huge profit. Well, the new chairman just isn't standing for that, and turns the offer of fame and fortune down and insists that the club does it themselves. So then, the chairman gets a list of all the writers and has to call each one personally to tell each of them individually that they're not interested. Yeah, nothing like passing around phone lists of top-industry people! That would catch a good price on eBay! Well anyway, when he calls all of them, they pretty much tell him that they all thought that the one guy was full of crap anyway, and tells the chairman that he needs to do things his way. Yeah, go for it, and ganbatte on that hentai mag! Well, that's pretty much the episode.
Animation-wise, I wasn't a big fan of the style. It wasn't Shin-chan bad, and the images were smooth, but overall, the characters just looked kind of generic. No real flash or pop to them at all. There are some attempts at humour, most of which fell flat. Which is really bad, considering that this is supposed to be a comedy! I couldn't really get a feel for any of the characters, and it just seemed like the creators were just trying to apply certain established stereotypes to the characters and just kinda throw them into the show's premise. Didn't work at all, in my opinion. The storyline seemed like nothing special, and although the concept was average at best, it just seems like they could have done so much more with it. It overall wasn't the worst piece of crap I've seen, but it may take awhile before I revisit this series, as I just wasn't impressed. This may be one of those that may get better over time, like a good wine, but right now, it's just sour grapes.
So, for the scoring:
Concept: 5/10 - Just an average concept about a club trying to accomplish a task. The whole school club concept has been done so many times already, and its starting to get old.
Delivery: 2/10 - Even with this average concept, they still seem to screw it up. There's the whole not-enough-ticket thing which could have made for a somewhat interesting episode, but they just kind of toss it aside to go with something even more mundane.
Purpose Effect: 1/10 - It's listed as a comedy. It didn't make me laugh in the least.
Animation: 5/10 - Average. That's about it.
Dialogue: 3/10 - Once again, nothing special. A lot of the dialogue was just flat, and some of the character voices were downright annoying!
Characters: 4/10 - A lot of stereotypical characters placed in the wrong series. They could possibly work somewhere else, or nowhere else, but not here. They just don't fit.
Entertainment Value: 2/10 - Wasn't entertained, but like I said above, not the worst piece of crap I've seen.
IT Factor: 1/10 - It doesn't have it. Nothing really special about this series to make it stand out in my eyes.
Average Score: 2.875/10
I'll write the other two reviews a little later. This is a lot to digest for now, plus I'm going to take a break and go do some laundry. Bye for now!
-- TG
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OPINIONS: 4 PEOPLE APPROVED, WHILE 2 PEOPLE DISAPPROVED
