Then I looked at the staff, and understood. The director of Library Wars. Seriously? The only reason I didn't complain more about how shitty the first episode of Library Wars was was that I watched the first episode of Real Drive immediately afterwards and concluded that Production IG had managed to destroy all value their name brand had at Wachowski speed.
So I downloaded this wondering if Nahoko Uehashi's skills were enough to make them rise again, like the phoenix, as the Wachowski's did with the undeniably awesome Speed Racer, or if we'd have to wait for them to go crawling back to Kenji Kamiyama in the spring.
Sadly, I think I'll be reading the novel instead of watching any more.
You can definitely see traces of what must have been a very interesting story, but the director's instincts are those of a die hard hack. Possibly one who wants to be more, as the awesome choice to replace the violent animal attacks with crayons shows.
But the majority of the episode was a collection of little things that annoy the piss out of me with anime. Little kids who speak in an adorably retarded fashion I know Uehashi would never dream of writing. The way people smile, and the unnatural beats of conversation, the overdone voice acting, even a few artificial bits of body language. It all just amounts to a pile of bad habits anime directors have developed over the years, and that the best of them manage to avoid, and I've just watched too much anime to be able to tolerate this crap.
And the music is seriously fucking terrible.
Shame, because I really like the backgrounds, the adult monsters are suitably ferocious looking, and the story itself certainly finds an unusual place to begin, leaving several promising threads for the show to follow. Since most people can't read the novels, and probably aren't as sensitive to certain hackwork directing tics, this entire review may well be a sort of backhanded recommendation.
