Kiba
New shounen show airing in April, Kiba is produced by Madhouse (Gunslinger Girl, Trinity Blood) and Aniplex (Kamichu) directed by Hiroshi Koujina (Grenadier). Character design is by Takahiro Yoshimatsu (Jubei Chan) and the conceptual design is by online artist Teikoku Shounen, art direction by Hidetoshi Kaneko (My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and who is also the art director for the up coming Black Lagoon).
Cast includes Hiroyuki Yoshino (Blood+'s Kai) as 'Z' (or is it 'Zedd'?) and the excellent Nana Mizuki (Fate Testarossa from Nanoha, Wrath from FMA) as Roia. Kikuko Inoue (who's been in everything, mostly recently she played Carmen99 in GunxSword) plays Sarah. 17-year-old Nami Tamaki (GSD ED #1) is providing the OP. (I'm a bit miffed Nana Mizuki isn't doing this!). Official site is http://www.ki-ba.com/ and here's the recently aired commercial on youtube.com. Here's the blurb from Animenfo: Quote:
The fact it's being helmed by Grenadier's director hasn't put me off Kiba (yet) as I doubt this series will plunge into DD fanservice. If I remember correctly Grenadier had some well directed action sequences, so that's also encouraging. Kiba airs on Sundays starting 04/02 on TVTokyo. Sources: ANN, Animenfo |
The background art is gorgeous, but the whole show looks a bit too shounen-y for my taste.
Also, the character design is rather bland. |
Actually to be precise the art director is Hidetoshi Kaneko but the conceptual designs are by Teikoku Shounen, a well-known online artist who does awesome, spanking awesome backgrounds (you'll see them in his amateur anime "Rain, My letter and the little girl" (or something like that), which is on ANimesuki).
So those background designs are prolly by Teikoku Shounen, but it'd be great if the art team can do justice to them! No really, they OUGHT to. Cos the rest of it does look rather boring (I agree about the character designs), so the setting had better be good... and as for Madhouse having a good track record, well, uhhh, um... it depends on which part of Madhouse, maybe... and a lot on the director... for examples of shit!Madhouse, try Ichigo 100% and Okusama wa Joshikousei, perhaps... and for leet!Madhouse there's stuff like Gunslinger Girls.. I think I'd have greatly enjoyed this if this was me about 3-4 years back, though. |
Though I'm not part of the demographic these shows are aiming at, stuff like One Piece and the early episodes of Naruto has proved to me that these types of series can be entertaining. I'm not getting too excited though, as I put too much faith in Bleach, Law of Ueki and MAR and see where that got me >_>
I think this is the only show of its kind this Spring, though? I may pick it up for a little bit of balance. |
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I'm keeping an open mind about Kiba because the last time I dismissed a typical shounen show it was FullMetal Alchemist which later emerged as one of my favourite animes... |
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About FMA, I thought it established itself as not your typical shounen show right from the beginning. |
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Crap like you mention belongs squarely in the "13 and under" category. There is however adventure anime that can be watched by people older than that. Unfortunaly, it isn't as profitable, so it's a bit rarer. |
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Stuff like Death Note is shounen, and that definately isn't mindless. |
No-no-no, we're talking about the shounen adventure genre (Death Note is different altogether). Naturo and Bleach are rather watchable in this regard.
Bakegyamon which you mentioned, and stuff like Law of Ueki or Digimon Whatevers, fall squarely in the "Anime Made In Order To Make Kids Buy Stuff" category. It's extremely focused on its audience (boys 10-13), thus it's pretty much unwatchable by everyone else. That is the main difference. There is shounen that allows for variability in its plot, style, characters so that different people can enjoy it, even though its main audience is still teenage boys. Naruto can get damn good at times (although, I didn't watch much of it). Shows like that differ across different episodes and storyarcs, and would allow other audiences to appreciate them as well. But there are shows that are very structured around a particular audience, mostly because of the concerted marketing effort to reach that audience in all aspects (like sell them toys, or cardgames, or whatever). Thus it is extremely unaccessible to everyone except that audience and weird otaku with a fixation. Fullmetal Alchemist is a regular story about boys growing up and thus was aimed at teenagers, but it was also dramatically mature in the way it presented that theme, thus it became interesting to a wider audience. Sonhex here hopes that KIBA becomes something similar. While I don't share his optimism, I might just be wrong for some strange reason. |
I guess I'm just lamenting the rather sad fact that this season seems to be woefully short on non-kiddie action adventure shows.
I don't know if Kiba will deliver and I'll be honest and say the promo dented my expectations slightly. I was hoping (and still am) that this won't be like the other lame TV Tokyo primetime output of late (same goes for Air Gear). |
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We'll know for sure when it starts tomorrow though. |
I watched the promo earlier and Im not sure about it, I like Madhouse and everything but it looks like one of those american cartoons that try to be anime like the newer He-Man cartoons, I'll give it a go still because I like shonen anime but Im not expecting much to be honest.
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So, I caught the first episode. Here's some pre-fansub thoughts...
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Oi, this was so bad...
It's funny that I talked about the shounen anime that is built around selling toys to little kids. Well, lo and behold, the had ads for the KIBA cardgame... Pathetic! They show is boring, badly drawn, cliched and not that interesting at all. The main character is a bad parody of Edward Elric (funny, this show is produced by Aniplex), but without any charisma or humor. The only good thing about it that I liked was about it was the fact that it is very dynamic. The pretty much jammed 3-4 episodes worth of plot into one. Impressive. Nami Tamaki just can't sing... The ending song (rap'n'roll) is pretty good, though. Pass, pass, pass. |
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I got a similar vibe to Zoids Genesis: obstensibly it's a kids show promoting it's own merchandise but all the same it has some interesting qualities. Kiba seems much darker than ZG though and the production is considerably better. Should we be surprised about the cardgame? Anime as a whole is merchandise-centric; each show is about selling something to someone, even if it's just dvds and cds. Even worthy shows have toys... Yes, I was dissapointed but I'll give it a few episodes and see if it goes anywhere... |
Speaking of cliche... 8)
Anyone remember Kawajiri's Lensman movie, based on the awesome old sci-fi novel by Doc Smith? Well, something is reeeeally familiar here. 8) http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3813/116dg.jpg |
So how is the card bit implemented? Do they like, shove it down your throat every few seconds? Is the actual "battling" focused on cards?
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The fighting is all about summoning this special familiar-monster to fight for you. The regular crap, in other words.
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So far, in the anime, the battle aspect seems to be gem based. With spheres being pulled from a gem held by the shard casters. |
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