Friday, April 11, 2014

[New][April 2014] Blade and Soul

that says more about you, than it does her

Summary: A skilled sword-woman, Alka, travels in pursuit of vengeance for her masters death, as required by her clans rules.

First Impression: Cheap Action-shock appeal right out of the gate. A very flat main(?) character, and a relentless slaughter of basically every character that is introduced.

First Opinion: I'm reminded of Tokyo Ravens and Wizard Barristers high speed openings...only both of them did it a hell of a lot better than this. Almost everything about this first episode felt forced, and completely unexplained. They throw a slap-dash of random events at us, explain nothing, and proceed ahead with more action. I honestly have no idea if the viewer is expected to get any kind of attachment to the first set of characters we're introduced to, or if they're just there to set the tone and pace of the world. Not a single one of them seemed at all interesting, and all of them felt like they were forcing themselves onto the screen and the main character. Unfortunately I'm running out of spoiler free things to talk about, so lets clock up to something strange I saw. NC Soft's name, and what I assume is their Japan equivalent, were the first on the opening credits. "Now wait," I thought to myself, "isn't that a game company...yes, yes I'm quite sure it is, their game eXteel was fairly fun while it lasted, and I'm sure that was the name of the company on that one."
Suddenly, while following this train of thought, I recalled reading and googling a bit about a game that was being hyped up in its development...with the same name as this anime.
Oh hohoho. Now I get it.
This is basically just an expensive bid to attract attention to the game by proxy, isn't it? It certainly explains the characters all feeling very flat and forced.

I'm still going to give this one the benefit of the doubt, and hold it for a bit, but I'm putting my usually low expectations even lower, and right now this is first on the list to be dropped if it can't get at least a little more interesting with something more to offer than just action scenes.

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