Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingKnight
What sort of originality do you find in the scriptwriting yelling "OMG LOOK GUISE WE ARE SO SMART WE BREAK THE FOURTH WALL EVERY 30 SECONDS IN THIS AWESOME 20 MINUTE POINTLESS DIALOGUE!" (mostly for episode 2, episode 3 had less of that but it still was yawn-inducing most of the time). Spice and Wolf at least had interesting dialogues, this one's are completely pointless 9 out of 10 times.
seriously the concept coupled with the art was interesting at first but it's growing to be goddamn boring every minute. It's not helped by the terrible decision of making 12 40-minute episodes each spread over a month, either.
Expanding a bit on my opinion of the series, the thing is that it's trying to base itself around character development (so much talk so little action) when there's only one remotely interesting character, Togame. And even she's not that interesting in herself. The hero bloke is as bland as a mentally retarded, son-of-the-jungle character can get. Seriously, if they were trying to pull off witty dialogues or something like that we should have at least got someone remotely interesting (hi Lawrence). The rest of the cast is pointless and even though there are some interesting side-characters (the miko in episode 3) they obviously don't get nearly enough screen time to warrant anything given the "monster of the week" approach of the series.
And don't even get me started on the ninjas.
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I can't really believe you found nothing interesting in episode 3. I'd agree with you on episode 2, that there was altogether too much fourth wall referencing, but these last two episodes have made it clear that the 'swords/enemies of the month' are a significant part of the content in this series, and I think each episode (even episode 2)
has managed to deliver on that, hasn't it? I disagree that the series trying to base itself solely around continuous development of the main characters when from my perspective,
every episode has been very conscious about presenting a complete and interesting story in itself. In episodes 2 and 3, those stories began with the introductions and ended with the deaths of Uneri and Meisai respectively.
Since you said you found the concept initially interesting: in each of the episodes, despite all the time wasted on fourth-wall 'meta' referencing, at
least as much dialogue has been devoted to the peculiarities and attributes of the swords themselves. And that basically
is the concept of this series, right? A quest to collect 12 individually interesting swords, all presumably held by equally individually interesting wielders. I honestly can't see how anybody intrigued enough by this series' premise to watch it could find episode 3's dialogue, with so much of it exploring the connection between the 1000 formed Sentou Tsurugi and Meisai's empty-hand Sentouryou fighting style, to be 'boring every minute'.
More importantly: given the poignancy of Meisai's death, I can't see how you could really think that this series' opponents are just 'monsters of the month' who are merely stepping stones for the main characters' development. Certainly the writers wouldn't devote so much time crafting Meisai's backstory, and portray her death as the culmination of something like 'fate', if this was truly the case, right? In every episode, I think the side and supporting characters are just as important as the recurring mains themselves. Considering that the original form of each episode was a novel, they almost
have to be (while it might be okay for a single anime episode to focus entirely on the development of its main characters, in the case of an entire
novel, the antagonists certainly must be enough of an entity in themselves to make the protagonist's triumph over them meaningful, don't you think?). Each episode in and of itself is a complete story; I think that's also enough to make the monthly release rate appropriate.
Rather than seeing every release as an 'episode', maybe it would be more appropriate, in the context of other anime series, to see each episode as an 'arc'. That way you might be able to see the antagonist characters with enough weight in and of themselves (as the big bad of an arc, that is), taking the focus off your issues with Shichika, and also alleviating your issues with the release rate (1 month = 4 episodes usually = 1 arc? Seems pretty reasonable to me.).