Overview:
Alka, a member of the sword clan, is on the run and trying to find the woman who killed her master so she can follow some code that may or may not involve killing the person responsible (they are maddeningly non-specific on that aspect).
First Impressions:
Okay, so I’ve kind of watched about half of this series before I’ve bothered to do first impressions but that’s okay. I still have about 7 episodes to go so plenty of things can change before I do my final review.
Firstly, I received this as part of my last Hanabee Mystery Box so I’m actually enjoying it enough for the price I actually paid for it.
Secondly, apparently I’d started this anime before (possibly on Crunchyroll but maybe somewhere else), though it took until the third episode before anything happened that jogged my memory that I’d seen it before (and amazingly enough it was the stupid armour the ‘Pleasure Gang’ were wearing that tipped my memory.
That said, given I didn’t finish the series the first time I watched it, and given even as I remembered that I’d started it before and dropped it I started thinking about all the things wrong with the series, my first impressions aren’t great.
Certainly, this show is watchable (provided the outfits on some of those girls don’t make you flee but you can figure that out from the art work). The biggest complaint I would have is actually Alka. She’s an incredibly boring protagonist and no one else has really stuck around long enough to leave much of an impression. Plus the show has this nasty tendency to introduce characters only to kill one of them off in a totally preventable manner but have Alka and other strong fighters just stand around and let it happen. That’s when the highly overpowered villain isn’t just turning people into red mist.
I am going to finish this because despite that complaint I’ve actually found a lot to enjoy. It’s ridiculous and the story is moving incredibly slowly (which is probably a good thing given there doesn’t seem to be much story) and the characters are all kind of caricatures rather than people but it’s the kind of ridiculous that is mostly relaxing to watch and if Alka develops some sort of personality it would almost be recommendable as a binge watch on a rainy weekend.
So that’s my first impression of this series and as I said it still has time to actually go somewhere or do something amazing.
Before I finish I’m going to add in one more major complaint. The guy who follows around the girl who either serves or is manipulating the villain (yeah, I’ve paid a lot of attention to names here). He only talks in grunts and seems less articulate than Chewbacca from Star Wars and yet the girl responds to his various noises as if he’s an ace conversationalist.