|
I think if there was anyone who missed Haruhi (poor unfortunate souls) and doubted that either Ishihara Tatsuya or Sugita Tomokazu could do comedy, this should dispell all doubts. That episode was hilarious. Some of the timing and delivery reminded me of School Rumble, back when it used to be funny.
But never mind Kyuuichi or the director, Makoto stole the show. I wouldn't have guessed she had the capacity for such hilarious scenes before I saw this ep. The only qualm I had was that they dampened the impact of the porn-mag joke as compared to the Toei version by not actually showing her buy the book. Other than that, every attempted joke in the two versions was much better in this one.
The story is still veeery slow. I still maintain that I wouldn't be enjoying this so much if I hadn't already seen the first Kanon. In particular, I'd imagine I wouldn't have thought highly of the demon hunting plotline revealed in this ep. I seem to remember thinking of it as one of the weaker plotlines when I first saw it all those years ago, but between then and now I've seen similar (and worse) more times than I can count. I'd imagine it would have come off as a case of "been there, done that".
But I'm slowly starting to turn towards the fact that they've really slowed down the pace of the story, since it's allowed them to flesh it and the characters out more. The character interactions were always (one of) the best things about KyoAni's Air, and I'd say it's working as a strength again here. Characters take part in seemingly pointless conversations, yet it still somehow adds to the entire progression, giving another dimension to the entire story. It's something that's not really easy to quantify, but if KyoAni's Kanon turns out anything like KyoAni's Air, then it'll be of great benefit to future eps in the series when events turn a little more dramatic.
|