(L+CR) Arpeggio of blue steel

[erdii]

you guys almost saying me go read manga it is a torture for anime only viewers to resist reading manga :S well at first ı almost expect this would turn up Upotte or girl and panzer. ı mean girls as warships,it sounds similiar ı am greatly delighted that ı am wrong. lately everything sells as long as you attach highschool girls tag to them

[ReddyRedWolf]

I don't usually have a problem with CG if it is done right but... The anime feels stiff to me.

Anyway a Tsundere cruiser appears!

[xizro345]

Having read the manga, I was looking forward to it...But the whole technical level is unacceptable. Stiff movements, bad anatomy...The ships/submarines are better but I think it's overall mediocre.

[Kaoru Chujo]

Originally Posted by bastek66

...Source material is seinen. Seinen is not a genre. It's demography of manga and light novels.

Yes, it's from a seinen (should I make that bold, colored, or huge?) magazine. I checked Japanese Wikipedia for the target audience of the magazine it's published in (Young King Ours, published by Shonengahosha). But I understand that some magazines do include work outside their main target audience. What makes this story seinen? Is it the pretty girl-ships and Iona's relationship with the MC? Is it something in the plot? Is it the age of the MC? I'm not challenging the point, just trying to understand.

I got various things wrong, but I still think this is following a typical set-up used in shounen (and related, lol) work: the less skilled (even if it turns out that he has been trained) young pilot who can do what older ones can't, partly because he has some history or blood tie that makes it possible. Scenes of older men plotting how to use the younger guy for their own ends. And a young girl (in this case also a ship) who has special power. The association of weapons with girls seems to be popular right now, too.

The reason this matters to me lies well beyond this show: I like shoujo romance, and many people put that genre down for following cliches. I like to point out that other genres have their own cliches. But I don't care in either case: anime and manga are popular literature, and get much of their excellence from developing standard memes. Cliches survive to become cliches because they resonate with the audience. Originality is overrated, in my opinion. I didn't mean to attack this show for following shounen-ish memes, just wanted to point out that it was doing it. I liked the episode.

I thought the show did a good job of telling its story. I've read just about this far in the manga, and I thought they got us going quite well, with energy and some clarity. The animation seemed fine to me, but my standards apparently aren't that high.

[Triple_R]

This show has a certain Narm Charm. Though it is amazingly stiff, listless, and kind of silly, it also takes itself very seriously.

And Iona definitely contributes a lot to this. There's something about her voice, dialogue, and delivery that makes her come across to me as a deadpan airhead. Now that's different.

I'm not sure if Narm Charm alone can carry a show though. I'll probably give it another episode or two to see if it can.

[ookamigirl]

This one looks different.
Naval warfare anime, should be interesting.
Usually, I'd go for this kind of thing.
But I think I'm gonna skip this one.
I'm just not feeling it...

[ZabiLegacy]

I think now that I have had a night to digest it, it's safe to say that this show ended up exactly like I was convinced it would. The writing, directing, and animation were all just so weak, that it was just impossible to capture anything close to the manga. I've already said as much in other places as well. I'm probably dropping it.

[AC-Phoenix]

Read the manga, now.
They cut a certain scene but thats OK in my opinion, as it wasn't really needed other than introducing some characters which they can do on another occasion too.
So yeah not bad until now
I also realized something about the ships themselvses, but I'm unsure if I should refer to it now already, so I will wait for about ~ EP 5

[Peo01]

Finally got around to register to this forum :whistle:

Made this video from the first episode, nothing great, but I thought it would nice to share it anyway.

Minor story spoilers of the first episode!

[thundrakkon]

The CG reminds me of the series Kingdom, which started off with really bad CG, but improved tremendously later on. However, the story in Kingdom makes it one of the best shounen series around right now, but from some of the comments on this thread, I'm a little concerned about the story for Ars Nova.

It is only 1 episode so far, so I will have to reserve judgement until a few more episodes come out. So far, the background and setup is interesting enough.

[Myssa Rei]

Even without us manga readers muddling the waters, the fact is the execution of the first episode was, in a word, lacking.

[RRW]

I think is solid introduction thought. background story and initial mission is shown nicely. probably bit simplified but straight to the point. it just the stiffness that kinda ruin the presentation

[neshru]

Originally Posted by ReddyRedWolf

I don't usually have a problem with CG if it is done right but... The anime feels stiff to me.

Yeah, the character animation is downright terrible. If their goal was to make CG that looks like hand drawn they have failed utterly.
I've seen better efforts by SANZIGEN. Even the CG they've done for Kill la Kill episode 1 looks much more convincing.

[Marina2]

Should I feel bad or good that I never noitced that entire show is full of CG ( A ship is only thing I noticed) before I saw everyone post about it?

[Wild Goose]

Somehow, I get the feeling for First Fucking World Problems when reading through some of the comments. Admittedly this is because I grew up in a literal jungle in the literal fucking middle of nowhere (look up Telupid on Google Maps, a place so insignificant that Google Maps has practically nothing on it). Also the airport - if it did exist - is pretty much defunct, and the closest thing to an airport around there is a grassy strip that could only support light aircraft, helicopters, and maybe a Hercules, since that thing flies anywhere and lands anywhere...

Anyway.

So I watched the episode three times last night; once in 480p, then twice in 720p. Didn't bother with 1080p because my eyes can't really tell the difference between that and 720p. Animation was stiff, but I've seen worse so it's fine, IMO. Artwork was gorgeous. I especially like the neon styling of the Fog ships.

Notes on the opening battle: That's a lot of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, lol. Pretty sure some of those are Kongo, Atago and Sejong the Great licensed variants. They mentioned Tachikaze getting sunk, which suggests again either parallel timeline or something, given that she was decommissioned in 2010. A lot of Standard SM-2 missiles fired at the Fog ships; understandable, I suppose, when one considers that there are a lot more Standards out there than there are Harpoons, and the Standard does have a secondary antiship role.

Seeing that Fog battleship (I think - WW2 ship recognition is not my strong point, that's Cold War aircraft and WW2 tanks) sail past that carrier (judging from the island design, I'm guessing it's one of the later Nimitz-class carriers) and ram that Arleigh Burke really drove home to me (a casual Harpoon player) how FUBAR things are, if the enemy fleet is sailing past your CVN. The last time I can remember capships in range of carriers was the Battle off Samar.

I also noticed something interesting - there's a shot of something boxy, looking something like a container, up in the air, raining read beams of death down at everyone.

Story is about what I expected. It set the tone, it set things out. It's not entirely compeltely awesome, but I don't think it's as bad as people are wailing about. Not every show can be as awesome as Person of Interest right off the bat. I'll wait and see. Remember, even Girls und Panzer took until episode 4 to kick into high gear, equip the Removed Speed Governor, fill up the Lend Lease Oil, and load Gold Rounds.

I really don't get what people are saying about bad animation. I grew up watching crappy 50s and 60s animation. Fuckit, if it looks better than Kimba the White Lion or 80s/90s anime, that's fine with me. (To be fair, I was living in a jungle until about 2001, and only was really able to start getting into anime somewhere around 2003-ish, where much of the available anime was 80s-90s anime, and it's only recently that I've been able to keep up with all these new shows.) It's not the greatest perhaps, but it's not terrible either. At least, that's how I feel.

Iona was HHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGG. Oh my god I want to take her home. Now. And as another poster has said, she gives off a vibe of being a deadpan airhead, which is greatly amusing to me. And the way she announced crash dive... that was the most moe crash dive ever. And I'm in agreement with that girl who I think is their engineer. Iona is so cuddly and huggable.

Interesting note on Gunzou, however. His academy uniform hows him to be a cadet Lieutenant - note the two solid stripes on his shoulderbars. It's not so visible on his suit jacket, but if you look closely at his cuffs, he's also got two solid bands there - again, the rank markers of a Lieutenant. An interesting tidbit, anyhow.

Also, his flashback - the woman in the bathtub of blood - suggests his mother committed suicide.

And Maya was lol, Kongo was elegant, and Takao was Takao. Liking the voices so far, see no issue with them, and I like the idea of giving new kids a chance to shine. And again, inb4 iM@S itaships.

...a warship gunner-style videogame might be quite interesting. The more I watch this show and see the ships, the more I get Warship Gunner flashbacks lol.

All in all, the first episode is basically vanilla ice cream or a plain sugar doughnut. I'll wait until the end of the series to pass my final judgement, but I'm still following it.

[Master_Yoma]

A nice start but it did seem a little slow but the CG look great

[Myssa Rei]

Originally Posted by Wild Goose

Also, his flashback - the woman in the bathtub of blood - suggests his mother committed suicide.

Which is in itself a sticking point for manga readers. It's a big thing, as big as the fact that Yamato has never been mentioned even ONCE.

[Wild Goose]

Originally Posted by Myssa Rei

Which is in itself a sticking point for manga readers. It's a big thing, as big as the fact that Yamato has never been mentioned even ONCE.

IIRC - it's been about 3 or so years since I read the first few chapters of the manga - but didn't Yamato get mentioned only sometime midway through the series? I don't recall her being mentioned early on.

[ZabiLegacy]

Originally Posted by Wild Goose

IIRC - it's been about 3 or so years since I read the first few chapters of the manga - but didn't Yamato get mentioned only sometime midway through the series? I don't recall her being mentioned early on.

She was mentioned in chapter 1

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Myssa Rei

Which is in itself a sticking point for manga readers. It's a big thing, as big as the fact that Yamato has never been mentioned even ONCE.

Tbh I totally missed the scene with the bathtub and the blood...
But yeah thats wrong on several instances.
Yamato not being mentioned until now on the other hand isn't that bad.
I didn't even spot her in the OP (currently Ed since its EP 1), so Yamato might not even get more than one scene at all.