Little Busters - Episode 1 Discussion / Poll

[NoemiChan]

Just watched the subbed... and I seemed confused..

Main heroine's (?) voice was a bit...too cute for her personality.. I thought this would be a romance harem anime... but still... I'll observe for more to see if this will be good...

[rulfo]

This was a good episode. Nothing terrible so no qualms. First episode wasn't special nor outstanding. Nothing stood out of the ordinary. It was fairly entertaining so it's a keep.

Though I think the merit still goes to the fact that the scenarios in the source material was good. The storyboard felt flat. Animation wasn't stellar nor noteworthy. Then again this is JC Staff. So complains about that is stupid. I'm just glad they're consistent with this episode. Here's hoping they keep it up.

So far I'm happy with this episode.

[Mephos]

Well, as I am just starting into this anime with no knowledge beforehand, things were...odd for me at the worst. However, I feel like I'm getting the hang of it somewhat and is waiting for next week.

[TJR]

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

And this show is supposed to be higher profile, too. It makes me wonder what is going on.

I think it's a myth that popular properties always get bigger budgets (last year, some were similarly surprised by Persona 4). While that's sometimes true, a production committee may decide that the original work is so popular that they don't need expensive animation to attract viewers.

With Little Busters, much work has gone into replicating the look and feel of the original, which should give us some insight into their strategy for this production.

Originally Posted by DasDingus

After watching real video of the first episode rather than a stream I've significantly softened my stance on the animation. I still have issues with some of the budget-cutting techniques they employed but the parts they did animate aren't really that bad.

That's where we have to draw a distinction between limited animation and bad animation. One is a budget issue, while the other has more to do with talent.

You can produce animation that's expensive but disappointing. While 10,000 frames were drawn for the first episode of Angel Beats, there were complaints over the artistic quality (a potential issue if the schedule is tight and strict drawing quotas are prioritized over quality. That's the policy of P.A. Works, partly for discipline reasons) of the animation.

[Crimrui]

As the first episode goes, I'm quite satisfied. The pacing is nice and all those gags and jokes from VN are faithfully transplanted into the show. Hope they don't rush into introducing new characters too fast. Oh, and I hope more funny battle scenes gets animated.

Don't know why people are discussing about the animation. To me it's far from average. They move better then some action type anime out there.

[erneiz_hyde]

LB anime wasn't exactly hyped, I think. The "hype" was how it's going to be doubly horrible because 1)it's not KyoAni and 2)it's JCStaff. If you can ignore those two and see the show as what it is, then there's the fact that this is adapted from KEY's work, which I can tell from experience can be a huge range of hit and miss among the viewers.

Anyways, for the episode. Looking good so far. Really takes me back to when I first played this. Animation has much to be desired if you're nitpicky enough, but it's not horribly terrible or terribly horrible, just alright. I just hope this means more stable quality throughout. The OP was okay, but I still preferred the older versions I guess, though Alicemagic was alright. I will refrain from commenting about the story for now and just let everyone judge it by themselves.

anyways, one last thing

Spoiler for Saturday Night Fever!:

...or not

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by TJR

That's where we have to draw a distinction between limited animation and bad animation. One is a budget issue, while the other has more to do with talent.

This is actually a good point. In watching the episode, I actually thought the animation was very nice -- quite fluid and kept rather well on-model. But of course, there were scenes of essentially static images. So, it looks like a certain strategy was used to manage the budget here; to have limited animation in certain scenes, so that other scenes could have more fluid animation. And perhaps that juxtaposition is a bit odd to people because some might remember the static scenes more than the ones that were animated.

(It doesn't help that sometimes when people talk about "bad animation" they're actually not talking about animation at all, but rather the art, character designs, colouring, backgrounds, storyboarding, and other things that all get lumped together, and this all makes it a bit hard to know exactly what is meant.)

[Marcus H.]

^ And they did not complain when Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari happened.

[Linkark07]

Ok, watched it with subs finally.

What else I can say, animation seems fluid, like the new voice for Riki, prefer the original voice for Sasami, still not accustomed to the new art but so far it seems good.

[PonSquared]

With this series getting its own sub forum, I was expecting to be blown away by LB!... a slice of life school drama... but I left the first episode feeling underwhelmed.

What, exactly, am I missing? What is so special about this series that I am not getting (yet?)?

[Linkark07]

Originally Posted by PonSquared

With this series getting its own sub forum, I was expecting to be blown away by LB!... a slice of life school drama... but I left the first episode feeling underwhelmed.

What, exactly, am I missing? What is so special about this series that I am not getting (yet?)?

Well, I suggest you continue watching it. That's all I can say.

[Insane]

What the? The MC looks very feminine and not a dominant guy in his group (which is rather rare considering he's the protagonist of this harem show). And Kudryavka didn't appear, even though i've been anticipating her to appear at the first episode.

[bahamut zero]

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

Main heroine's (?) voice was a bit...too cute for her personality..

Well, I thought Riki's voice was just fine

[Aspirety]

In response to everyone caling Riki's voice girly...

Images

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

I had a good laugh. :P

[rulfo]

Originally Posted by Crimson Cloud

Don't know why people are discussing about the animation. To me it's far from average. They move better then some action type anime out there.

Because there are many types of animation. It doesn't have to be an action type anime to be impressive. It's the same old wrong notion that majority of the anime viewers have. "If it's not bombastic it's not good" and that's wrong.

[flack]

I just watched the episode again the second time and I gotta say I am still disappointed with the visuals (and I am not comparing just with Kyo Ani).

I got this from another anime web:

Spoiler:

The frames per second and image quality of the anime are already bad enough compared to the other animes that are airing. They should at least fix things like this.

My only hope now is the quality of animation does not effect the story depiction. Not yet disappointed with the development of this episode. Although it felt a bit fast compared to the other Key animations which is understandable since it is going to be 26 episodes. Since they haven't announced second season, I assume 26 episodes for 5 routes + main route at this pace is about right I guess.

EDIT: who am I kidding, take a look at the other 24 episode animes JC is making, their visual look on par or better than LB... Yea their probably just treating it like "another" anime.

[Julio C]

I was expecting the animation to be bad, but not this bad. The flashback scenes were poorly done. As for the episode itself, not bad. This is the first time where I was not instantly hooked on a Key's show. I'm afraid that I will have to give a three episode run for this one. I was far more impressed with Kyoani's new show than this.

[Kanon]

I was surprised that the main group consisted of 4 boys and only one girl. It looks a million girls are going to be introduced later on though, so this is Key alright...

The first episode was rather underwhelming. Not very interesting nor very funny.

Spoiler for Comparison to Angel Beats and other Key works:

This seems like a typical high school anime, but being familiar with Key, I know this is probably not the case. It's not really a Key work but the setting reminded me of Angel Beats the most for some reason. I seem to recall people comparing Angel Beats to Little busters but I'm not sure. In any case, I hope the twist won't be that they're actually all dead

[Utsuro no Hako]

Spoiler for Comparison to other Key works:

While watching the episode, I couldn't help but feel I've seen it all before -- Oh, I remember that joke from Kanon. Hey there was a scene like this in Angel Beats. That guy reminds me of Sunohara. There was nothing especially bad about the episode, but by the end I was wishing Key would try something other than school-based comic-tragic-weepy-dramas. At this point I feel that Key-based anime are a genre unto themselves, and that genre needs new ideas.

[Crimrui]

I must have been watching the wrong shows lately... The shortage of panty shots and boobs flying on my screen was rather... satisfying.