Tags
Anime, Beautiful Bones, Comet Lucifer, Concrete Revolutio, First Impressions, One Punch Man, Opinions
Listening to: Itsumo no Fuukei – Satoru Kosaki (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya OST)
Minor spoilers follow for Concrete Revolutio, Beautiful Bones, Comet Lucifer, and One Punch Man.
I’ve made my choices for this season’s selections, so let’s hop right into what I think of them so far!
Concrete Revolutio
A superhero-genre story full of color–both metaphorically and literally. Concrete Revolutio tells the story of a magical girl named Kikko and her colleagues at the Superhumans Bureau. So far, the series is pretty fun, although I was pretty confused initially during the first episode due to the jumping time periods. (“I am twenty years old now!” seems like a weird thing to say when meeting someone for the first time in awhile, but I guess they had to try hard to show time had passed.)
Going back to the color, the animation is spot-on, calling to mind the Silver Age of comic books (or at least, my impression of the Silver Age). It’s simultaneously campy and charming. We’ll see what further fun is in store for our group of superhumans and normals in the episodes to come.
Beautiful Bones
Beautiful Bones is another one of those anime that have a plethora of different, overly long titles (the others are Sakurako’s Investigation and A Corpse Is Buried Under Sakurako-san’s Feet, so I’ll stick with the short one). The protagonist is Shoutarou Tatewaki, a high school student who acts as the assistant to the bone-obsessed Sakurako Kujou. They frequently run across mysteries in their search for bones to study, and Sakurako’s skills always come in handy to solve them.
So far, I’m enjoying the series, although I do have some doubts about the dynamic between Sakurako and Shoutarou. Shoutarou acts as the Watson to her Sherlock, but hopefully there won’t be as much shipping of the two characters involved… the age difference makes it rather uncomfortable.
Comet Lucifer
The beginning of this actually reminded me quite a bit of Geass: the protagonist stumbling from everyday life into a military conspiracy, discovering a mysterious girl, and being saved by a strange power. The giant robot fighting did a bit to reinforce that impression, as well.
Still, while the premise is certainly familiar, I’m more curious to see what the world is like. There seem to be quite a few people with superpowers of some kind, and it has yet to be fully explained how exactly that works out. Hopefully it’s not disappointing.
One Punch Man
I expected good things from this just from hearing the premise, and I have not been disappointed. One Punch Man is about Saitama (“secret identity” of the superhero One Punch Man), who has the ability to (surprise, surprise) defeat any enemy in one punch. His frustration and ennui with how simple his job has become are used both dramatically and comedically, to interesting effect.
So far the episodes have been very entertaining, though there’s perhaps more gore than I expected at first blush. (One Punch Man’s single punches don’t tend to leave much of their target intact.) Regardless, I’ve had a lot of fun watching this show and I’ll likely continue to enjoy it as it goes on.
