Friday, March 18, 2016

Myriad Colors Phantom World: Just...not going anywhere.


Last Seen: Episode 11

I waited it out to give it a chance, but really, I think I give things too much leeway a lot of the time. Certainly now that I'm spending more time around people I keep getting complimented on my patience for putting up with really stupid shit.

This show had a really promising first episode, and I still think that. It was really well laid-out and executed but...that was about it. After that, the show just gets so...un-amazing. I mean that there isn't anything particularly bad about the show, it's just there isn't anything spectacular or amazing, or even just interesting about it after that one great introduction. I suppose I kept holding out, because they keep waving these shiny things in front of the audience, promising that they may just do something amazing, but then they don't. The stupid remote, Haruhiko's ability never going anywhere, the harem'esque collection of new girls for the party...hell the general atmosphere of the show feels like a slice of life all the time, instead of what I thought it was promising with a really interesting surreal world to explore. For crying out loud, they didn't even use that really neat animation they had at the start of the episode when Haruhiko is waking up EVER again and I really thought that it had some kind of meaning about how Haruhiko perceives the world.

Hell, I think the only thing I truly enjoyed every episode was the one thing the show constantly seems to feel ashamed of, the opening sequence when Haruhiko just sits down with the audience and talks really deeply about some random piece of trivial knowledge. Ostensibly, that piece of knowledge is suppose to be relevant to that episode, but only ever so tangentially.
By all that is unholy and evil, that stupid floating elf is more annoying than any character I have ever seen yet. She constantly interrupts whenever something really intelligent is being said, even in the part of the show devoted to talking that way, evidencing that the studio behind this really was afraid we are all to stupid to pay attention if we aren't flashed a pair of tits every other minute. She contributes nothing to the story despite her constantly being around Haruhiko for no explicable reason, and she is just always doing something stupid. Having a prat-fall character in a show for comedic effect is fine, but having one that never amounts to anything but prat-falls is just annoying.

Don't get me wrong, the show's by no means completely terrible or a waste of time. In fact, it's a pretty good time killer. But that's all it is. There isn't anything deep about the show, at all. Not the characters, not the world, not the story. I'm not even sure there is a plot anymore outside that remote which gets shown maybe once every 3 episodes.

I waited till this long because I'm not sure how long this anime is running. If it's the short-season anime that I feel like it's going to be, they only have 1-2 episodes left to wrap things up. On the other hand, if this runs it out twice the current length, maybe they have some room to impress me, but I doubt it. At this point, I'm at about 90% certainty that everything about the show that I thought was really promising, was just me reading too deeply into things. The stupid fairy, that opening animation, and a few other things that I'm just going to go ahead and write-off as wastes of my time and attention.

In short? If you picked this show up because of my recommendation, I'm sorry, but really I only ever did recommend just that first episode, even in the post itself. Maybe I had my misgivings even back then...ah well, hind-sight 20/20 eh?
If you haven't picked this show up, know that there really isn't any reason for you to do so unless you just want to turn your brain off for a while, laugh, and kill some time.

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