Thursday, April 17, 2014

[New][April 2014] Chaika - The Coffin Princess



Summary: On the continent of Verbist, an age of war lasting for three generations finally ended with the fall of the northern nation, the Gaz Empire. In addition to legitimate knights and soldiers, the militant forces sent to battle included wizards, saboteurs, and mercenaries, totaling 620,000. What's more, three airborne strongholds and massive numbers of magical weapons plus beast and dragon cavalries were added to the ranks, ending in the annihilation of the Gaz Empire, which had been deemed "the root of all evil." Enter Toru Acura a 20-year-old retired soldier, meandering through life now that the war has ended. He encounters Chaika Trabant, a 'Wizard' carrying a coffin, and a 'Gundo' for using her magic, and follows her in hopes of finding meaning to his life again.

First Impression: Another anime from a manga I'm following, this one's a lot harder to summarize. Not for lack of things to say, but for figuring out what is a spoiler. There's a lot of detail in this story, but I'm not sure how much of it is making deep complexity or just decoration. It's going to be a lively anime to watch, and they appear to want to capitalize on this because they clipped out a large section of the manga emphasizing how much of a lazy layabout Acura is.

First Opinion: What's with all the anime from my manga reading list? The Manga is "Hitsugime no Chaika", for those interested. Mostly I've been writing off my knowledge from reading the manga, but trying to keep it tied down to what they've shown so far in the first episode, and what the websites are writing in their summaries. The history lesson is much more slowly delivered in bits throughout the manga, so the dumps not a spoiler, as much as a light introduction that normally takes too long to get, not that you need it. It is, mostly, irrelevant information outside of the fact there was a war with the Gaz Empire, Gaz has been defeated, and labeled the root of all evil. My best advice is 1: try to keep this one, whatever your first impression, at least 2-3 episodes because the manga, and the anime so far, winds up to top speed slow. 2: Don't turn your brain off for this one, at least not as much as you might otherwise think you should be. You very well should be asking questions about how fast things are moving in this first episode. The manga gets a bit more freedom to draw attention to this, but thinking on it for myself, it probably would have been a lot more dull to watch the first dump of information in the siblings living conditions in the town.
Of course, I'm still annoyed by the trending implication these last few anime have had, that we can't be bothered to be interested in an anime if it doesn't explode and dazzle us at the door from episode 1. Ah well, It's not like I have a degree in anime consumerism or whatever. Maybe they do need to do this to sell it well, and I should knock a few more points off my trust in humanity. Or just not care, but that's basically the same thing.

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