(L+CR) Mekaku City Actors

[Eudaimonia]

This episode definitely looked better animated than the first one. I rather liked the relaxed pacing and so far the show is rather straight-forward. Sure, there's little to no explanation but you can pretty much put two and two together and even figure out in which direction the story will go. The newly introduced girl possesses supernatural powers that allow her to stand out amidst the crowd and enabled her to enter the idol business and now that she was sighted by the hoodie girl she will probably join the gang like NEET boy from last week seemingly did.

Glad the show is living up to its name as the majority of the episode really plays out similar to a stage play with the cast being limited to characters gifted (or cursed) with these abiliies and their close ones. Supporting characters aren't given actual facial expressions and remain as grey blobs in the background or are presented through symbolic elements such as the teddy bear or the grammophone, methods I probably would have used if I had to set up an actual stage play with this content. These visual tricks and the occasionally beautifully rendered background really make for some stunning shots. Momo's "tragic" backstory wasn't played up as I expected and refrained from being overdramatic. This and the way how the visuals quirks actually complement the content makes me hopeful that this show won't end up as mere style over substance in the way the Idol girl was accused of by her neglected competitor.

I wonder how much the fact that the original creature is writing the script for the anime plays into the anime adaption. I recall an argument where Jin insisted being in charge of the script, otherwise he wouldn't agree with the anime getting green-lit, even though most of the time a person with actual experience in this field would normally take over. Perhaps that why the pacing is unusually slow for an one-cour show?

[shmaster]

Other way around. It is Shinbou who asked Jin to do the script. As Shinbou believed only Jin can handle it.

On the other hand, this show's chimera like style is getting somewhat annoyn.
It is tossing Penguin Drum and Monogatari into a melting pot.

[FlareKnight]

Yeah, I can see this episode pretty well tanking interest. I mean I'm sure it will come together in some sense, but just randomly shifting to another character with next to no follow-up on the last episode seems like a questionable strategy.

I didn't dislike Momo in general. Can certainly feel for how her ability to gather attention in a frightening way has caused her trouble. Of course in a sense it's pretty much saved her since with those kinds of horrible grades and study strategy she needs pure fame in order to bring in the money .

In the end it wasn't that bad, just didn't exactly build up my interest in the show at all.

[ghost013]

I don't think Ep 2 was as bad as people said, but maybe that's cause I read the manga. But yeah, this season seems to have a lot of pacing issues.

Anyways, I like Momo and I enjoy her relationship with Hibiya. But other than that it was a bit slow. I think they could have done away with the song chasing scene. That felt a bit random.

The animation was good, but I still really can't get used to Shaft's style. Too many random close up shots and metaphorical imagery. Feels like it's in a different world. I'll probably still keep watching though.

[eceso]

all those poses lol

it was ok

[HandofFate]

what do the characters on the girl's pink hoodie say?

[MK-95-]

Wow, if I didn't already know I was watching Kagerou Project/Days or Mekaku City Actors [Whichever damn name you want to call it], I'd think I was watching Monogatari. Seriously, the traffic lights & the slo-mo foot stepping down to the ground, screamed Monogatari!! Basically, every scene in the episode had some Monogatari-esque feel to it.

Tatemiya & Momo = Araragi & Hachikuji Ver. 2.0

--------------------
OT: What did I just watch? That was nothing like the manga...Is that something from the Ln? Or is SHAFT doing their own thing? Only a few parts (Specifically the teacher-student meeting & getting swarmed by people, minus Hibiya making his debut) were manga faithful, but other than that, I was like wtf?

[shmaster]

This is anime original.
You should expect this, Jin said this is a new route after all.

LN has a little of what happened in this episode, but not nearly as much exposition on Momo's character.

But I really feel for Momo, especially her brother is a total failure that's doing absolutely nothing, even in the times their mother was ill. And that room! How shameless of him to swip Momo's credit card like that!!

[MK-95-]

Oh! Its original? New route huh...Well, I won't rely on existing info when watching this series then.

So I'm assuming that this new route will serve as the true route for the series? Or are we talking alternate route here?

[casanova0202]

Hate the character Design of MoMo in the anime ...

[BionicMeerkat]

Hasn't Jin said multiple times that the music project, LN, manga and anime will all share their own original routes? I, for one, look forward to seeing where he plans to take this. I mean even the LN and manga deviated, and the manga went straight for the (heh) jugular!

This will definitely tweak out new viewers/comers to the project.

Edit: The episode I thought was good, but the pacing seems way too lax. Is there a confirmation on how many eps they will have? I know it's 1-cour, but I seem to see people say only 11 eps which I find odd. The inclusion of Kisaragi Attention was also a nice touch. I do miss IA though...ED was a feelfest though!

[Student no.0]

Where exactly did Jin state this would be a completely original story?

[Kaoru Chujo]

Originally Posted by DorkingtonPugsly

...I guess this is just gona be a series only die-hard fans will be able to enjoy.

Fans of either Jin or Shinbou. Count me in, as a Shinbou fan. At a certain point before halfway I felt it was going a bit slowly, but that feeling evaporated. Highly enjoyable merging of the Shinbou world and the Kagerou world. Love Momo's voice (done by a little-known seiyuu called Kashiyama Nanami). With the various takes on being an idol we have seen recently, this is an interesting one: magical ability to attract eyes, oppressive feeling of being surrounded by eyes.

[shmaster]

Originally Posted by Student no.0

Where exactly did Jin state this would be a completely original story?

Jin had said the anime will have its own route more than once on Spoon2DI.
Each individual presentation of the project should be taken as a separate route.

[BionicMeerkat]

Originally Posted by Student no.0

Where exactly did Jin state this would be a completely original story?

Originally Posted by shmaster

Jin had said the anime will have its own route more than once on Spoon2DI.
Each individual presentation of the project should be taken as a separate route.

Yeah I learned of the other routes from Spoon2DI and from other sources(tumblr, youtube, etc). I wonder which of the adaptations will be viewed as the "true" ending.

[Iron Maw]

Well this was better animated than the usual SHAFT episode. That's a good start!

Up until the last few minutes of the episode before the ED played, my immediate thoughts this was going to be one of those really episodic shows after getting absolutely no follow up on what happened last week. Then that green haired guy shows up gives some context that this all convergening at somewhere. Aside from that I found Momo to be cute, but didn't get a whole lot out of this week otherwise. I did note that Momo's eye-colors changed red to from time to time, but I'm not this is just SHAFT's shenanigans at work or something more.

I supposed it ranks a bit better than last week thanks to the technical improvements, but I still don't know what to think about show over all.

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Eudaimonia

This episode definitely looked better animated than the first one. I rather liked the relaxed pacing and so far the show is rather straight-forward. Sure, there's little to no explanation but you can pretty much put two and two together and even figure out in which direction the story will go. The newly introduced girl possesses supernatural powers that allow her to stand out amidst the crowd and enabled her to enter the idol business and now that she was sighted by the hoodie girl she will probably join the gang like NEET boy from last week seemingly did.

Glad the show is living up to its name as the majority of the episode really plays out similar to a stage play with the cast being limited to characters gifted (or cursed) with these abiliies and their close ones. Supporting characters aren't given actual facial expressions and remain as grey blobs in the background or are presented through symbolic elements such as the teddy bear or the grammophone, methods I probably would have used if I had to set up an actual stage play with this content. These visual tricks and the occasionally beautifully rendered background really make for some stunning shots. Momo's "tragic" backstory wasn't played up as I expected and refrained from being overdramatic. This and the way how the visuals quirks actually complement the content makes me hopeful that this show won't end up as mere style over substance in the way the Idol girl was accused of by her neglected competitor.

I wonder how much the fact that the original creature is writing the script for the anime plays into the anime adaption. I recall an argument where Jin insisted being in charge of the script, otherwise he wouldn't agree with the anime getting green-lit, even though most of the time a person with actual experience in this field would normally take over. Perhaps that why the pacing is unusually slow for an one-cour show?

So much i'd like to say to this but meh spoiler policy ><

[Flower]

Weelll.... Was kinda funny to begin with but then the idol / student and the teacher began all of their dramatic ballet style poses while saying their lines and... well... apologies, but it was so artistically pretentious that I cringed and stopped the episode.

I do not think I will be following this one.... Way too much "shaft" my my tastes.

[Bakaizer]

well i don't really get what they are planning., first a NEET, then an Idol
anime original? uh ok,

speaking of idol, not only they have the same Seiyuu as Honoka from Love Live, they also look similar, and even concept of Idoling is fused in those two characters

[Karolik]

so about the romance tag

Spoiler:

Does it develop later? I haven't noticed any in the manga