sekirei 1
Categories: anime, episodic review
Tagged: sekirei
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The Frankenstein of harem anime.
It’s rarely a good sign when my readers badger me to blog about any series. For example, this past season, I received more requests to blog Code Geass R2 than anything else, and no one suggested that I blog Daughter of Twenty Faces. There’s zero e-mails in my inbox that says, “Hey, you should blog Twenty Faces!” Though it still can’t top spring 2006 when I got nothing but requests for School Rumble 2nd Term and zero for Haruhi Suzumiya. This season? Tons of e-mails for Sekirei. Zero e-mails for pretty much everything else (a few for Hidamari, but… uh…). Can it break the curse? We’ll see.
Nope, it can’t. The first issue with Sekirei is that the first episode really didn’t impress me. Usually great series start off with a bang– Kamina hitting on Yoko, Mikuru getting pimped out by Haruhi, http://blogsuki.com/archives/2008/04/19/1380/, Miki tossing a perfect emo facial distortion– this one really didn’t. In fact, I spent the first 15 minutes of the episode going through a mental checklist of moments taken from other series. You can follow along:
1. Loser male lead who got rejected from college. Geez, is this why Sekirei‘s Wikipedia entry calls Minato a “Keitaro-grade loser”? At some point, I expected him to crash into either well-endowed Mutsumi or well-endowed Naru any minute after his “I can’t even get a girlfriend!” line. (Love Hina)
2. Crash landing introduction. And he does! My gosh, I wish I could go outside, mutter about how I don’t have enough hawt haremettes in my life, and have one drop into my lap. (Too numerous)
3. For whatever reason, the girl ends up staying with the guy because she has nowhere else to go. Of course, this does not address the question of where was she the night before or the night before that. At least in REC, they burned her house down. In Sekirei, Musubi dropped out of the sky and then said she has no home. Uh. Okay. (REC, To Love Ru, Girls Bravo, etc)
4. And because girls aren’t allowed where the loser male lead was staying, they get kicked out. And since he’s such a loser male lead, he can’t find housing. And, just to hammer the point home, they do a montage of how he can’t get housing. The next day, they miraculously stumble across a pad waaaaay too good for them. Geez. Haven’t I seen this before? (Aa! Megami-sama)
5. The girl is no ordinary girl– she has to go through a ritual with a guy to make him her master, thus empowering her with special abilities. They even have a special jargon for this– “wasabi”– oops, I mean “ashikabi.” (Zero no Tsukaima, Fate/Stay Night, Rozen Maiden, etc)
6. She needs these special abilities to compete in the Sekirei Game, which grants something like a wish to the guy who wins at the end. There’s apparently 108 combatants, which is probably 100 too many. (Fate/Stay Night, Ikkitousen, Battle Royale, etc)
7. Not only do the female characters have ridiculous large chests, they’re all the same size. Is it really that difficult to draw female characters with a gradation to their bust sizes? (Too numerous)
8. The girl just randomly falls for the loser male lead, and even when asked why does she love him, she goes on about a completely unrelated subject– “Hey! Ain’t the moon purrty?” (Too numerous)
9. The Elfen Lied intro, only nowhere as gory and nowhere as awesome. (Elfen Lied)
10. Did I mention that the loser male lead, despite his want of a girlfriend, runs away at the first sign that he might get some action? (Kanokon)
I felt Sekirei was a Frankenstein series. It doesn’t add anything new to the genre, and it just recycles old pieces. While many harem series recycle previous elements, Sekirei seems to do it in the most horrific way possible. It’s unapologetic in that it doesn’t do anything new to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if it started recycling dialogue too. (This is worse than seeing C.C. and Anya develop Soma / Allelujah syndrome.) I went through this whole first episode, and I can’t think of even one remotely original scene or moment. 24 minutes without originality; even for anime, that’s a special task.
Added to the unoriginality, which isn’t fatal if executed properly, is the poor execution. The animation is sparse and not well-drawn for a 2008 series. There’s a lot of times when they just show a still picture and then move the camera around to mimic movement, which was acceptable back in 2000, but with shows like Code Geass R2, Gurren Lagann, and Macross Frontier pushing the edge, it’s more disappointing. The animation level is about where Spice and Wolf was, which isn’t a compliment. The character designs for the girls seem to make them look a bit too butch.
The voice work was also fairly bland; it’s like they went on the cheap with Sekirei. The lead male is voiced by Shinnosuke Tachibana, and this is like his first big role. Saori Hayami does Musubi, the female lead, and she too has no real prior experience. Ayako Kawasumi voiced this character for the drama CDs… I wonder, how often do famous seiyuu who did the drama CD role get bumped for a no-name in the anime version? Isn’t it usually the other way around?
I guess I’m just not too hot on this series. Worst case, it competes with Spice and Wolf for Most Disappointing of 2008. Best case, Minato and Musubi become the new Kouta and Chizuru.
45 Responses to “sekirei 1”
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I’m speechless. I was fearing that this was the kind of series you were going to love blogging, which is largely the reason I made my pre-emptive strike on it on my blog.
Thank you for having standards.
So… what I got out of this was that you can’t just have fanservice. It has to be classy, high quality, and addicting, in addition to the other numerous qualities and specifications required for it to be on the “fanboy breaking shelf.”
Indeed. Seeing as the source material was very D-grade crap and following the formula: Source Material >/= Things made from source material 99% of the time. This anime, I all but knew, would be generic D-grade crap. I seriously cannot see why anyone would lobby for this one. Then again, neither could I for Kanokon, To love RU, etc…beyond gratuitous melonpan of course.
>> I was fearing that this was the kind of series you were going to love blogging, which is largely the reason I made my pre-emptive strike on it on my blog.
Let me get this straight. I even said before that my favorite series to write about recently have been Gurren Lagann, Clannad, ef, and Kamen no Maid Guy. So how exactly does Sekirei have anything in common with those?
>> So… what I got out of this was that you can’t just have fanservice
No, fanservice for fanservice’s sake is okay. Ninomiya-kun was enjoyable, mainly because the art style was decent and the animation was very good. Fanservice shows with poor animation and nothing else going for it just doesn’t cut it (see: H2O, Tsuyokiss).
If service is all someone is interested in, why not just go all the way and watch hentai instead of softcore anime with contrived plots that buy into their own nonsensical jargon, unoriginal plots, and other nonsense while bringing nothing new, well written, or genuinely interesting to the table. I mean, at least series like CG are well-drawn and animated and just plain stupid enough to be interesting. What it looks like jason is saying here, is that its fanservice show we have all seen at least twice somewhere else. Yep.
A fair point. You win this round, Jason. You win this round.
(But I will defeat you one day Miki!)
It has but one thing in common: there are female characters in them.
What I find interesting is that Maid Guy and Macross were on the “5% chance of blogging” list, and now they’ve joined Chiko and Oh GEASS NO. Mind you, I’m not sure I’d gave watched Maid Guy either, and would’ve missed out on Fubuku and the Naeka hitting on her bits.
It is worth noting H2O actually did get better after the first episode (maybe the first few episodes, don’t remember). Not fantastic by anyone’s standards, but passable. I’d rank it above Kanokon, at the least.
Hayami Saori did Kou (Wagaya no Oinari-sama) which is quite a popular character on Spring. She lead Touka Gettan as Momoka, and her singing isn’t bad too.
I haven’t watched Sekirei, but their cast list was quite good, with Endou Aya, Hanazawa Kana, Inoue Marina, Yukana, Ohara Sayaka, Nabatame Hitomi, et al. The drama CD seiyuu were far more experienced, but the young-uns replacing them are great too.
Sekirei just bored me, seen it all before and done much better. At least the manga is entertaining with decent art work.
Seriously, Strike Witches Episode 1. I have no words to describe this, I’m honestly at a loss at what to say. This could turn out to be the worst or best thing Gonzo has ever done, their Magnus Opus as it were.
Spice and Wolf may have been fairly disappointing in not living up to our expectations but it was still enjoyable enough. I don’t think I could stand this show for very long..
I wasn’t going to watch this but thought that if you started blogging this, I’d at least get the lulz from reading them posts instead of actually putting myself through the show itself (worked incredibly well with Gundam 00 XD). Well, if it’s not even worth Jason Miao bloggage, Sekirei looks like a complete gone case.
To reiterate what danie~ said this anime has some of the best young seiyuu’s currently around. Really talented group of individuals. Among those not mentioned by danie~ are Fukuyama Jun, Kobayashi Yu, Katsuyuki Konishi and some veterans like Miki Itou, Michiko Neya (probably best known as Melissa Mao in FMP), Sayaka Ohara (the leather clad Hasegawa Haruka in Moyashimon) and my favorite Paku Romi (appearing in just about any show worth watching these days)
The first episode may not have highlighted the stunning cast this show has but hopefully subsequent ones will. I have high hopes for the show and its cast that makes Seiyuu fans squirm in delight.
Crap, and I was looking forward to watching it, but now all the motivation is gone, because when I think of big breasted girls, bad animation, and fighting, well, I’ve already seen Ikkitousen.
And it’s actually a pain in the *** to draw different body styles. If you stick to one, you can blaze through it without thinking much. Plus, if you’re good with photoshop, you can just paste new heads on them (since in anime, they usually wear school uniforms~)
Stupid new season. God, Blade of the Immortal better not suck like I think it will.
Strike Witches.
[voice=Movie Trailer Guy] “In a world without pants, only one group of girls….”
I’m gonna love this. The series, yes, but also, that in 3-4 weeks everyone’s gonna go…”Maaaaaann this show is AWESOME, I can’t belive I was bashig it”….happend before (last time with StrikerS) it will happen again.
>> Haesslich
No, I put Kamen no Maid Guy at 1% because of you. I felt you were broken enough as is, so I didn’t want to make it worse. Though now I realize it might actually be a cure instead of a disease.
>> I haven’t watched Sekirei, but their cast list was quite good, with Endou Aya, Hanazawa Kana, Inoue Marina, Yukana, Ohara Sayaka, Nabatame Hitomi, et al.
No, the only seiyuu I saw on the cast list for Sekirei that I would rank ahead of Ayako Kawasumi was Marina Inoue, and the male lead absolutely sucks.
>> Sekirei just bored me, seen it all before and done much better. At least the manga is entertaining with decent art work.
Welcome Sekirei to the Tsukihime All-Stars!
>> I’m gonna love this. The series, yes, but also, that in 3-4 weeks everyone’s gonna go…â€Maaaaaann this show is AWESOME, I can’t belive I was bashig itâ€â€¦.happend before (last time with StrikerS) it will happen again.
You mean “A’s” right, because if you mean “StrikerS”, you sound like one of those guys who thinks that Gilbert Arenas is a max contract (or $111 million) guy. I think Sekirei being good will be almost as big of a shock as the Wizards winning the NBA championship next season. He’s only been hurt the last two seasons… he hogs the ball… he has never been the best player on a playoff team that went beyond the second round… he’s completely insane (read his blog, especially the epic “There Are No Such Thing as Shark Attacks” post)… of course he’s worth $111 million. Oh, well, at least it’s not as bad as Rashard Lewis getting $125 million.
Wait, Spice and Wolf as Most Disappointing of 2008? Maybe I was distracted by Horo’s tail…
At least the manga is entertaining with decent art work.
I’d rank the artwork of the manga much, much higher than decent. I’m strongly against oversized boobs, but the high quality of the art kept me reading. (And the Sekirei don’t all have boobs like that – the four ones that do just happen to attach to Minato.) As for the story, it ranges from fairly recycled to junk. But when Kuno and Haruka appear, it actually gets decent. This Sekirei and master pair want no part of the tournament, and Minato, his harem, and even a few of his rivals all work together to help them escape the barricaded city. Unfortunately, you have to go through 30 chapters of (very well drawn) junk to get there.
Interestingly, the artist of the manga is Sakurako Gokurakuin, a Boys Love artist best known in the United States as the artist of the bishonen-filled card game adaptation, Aquarian Age – Juvenile Orion. Hence the boys in Sekirei (Shiina, Minato, Kaoru, Haruka, and Kagari*) being just as pretty as the girls.
I’ll try out Sekirei and a few other series (Strike Witches, Someday’s Dreamers), but this season will probably end with me watching only those series I’m obligated to watch by my contract with J.C.Staff: Slayers Revolution, and the continuation of Nabari.
Differences between Sekirei and other anime:
-loser lead actually gets kissed…by 4 characters in 3-4 volumes, if I remember correctly…
-uhmm…can the melonpan possbily be any bigger?…
-oh, wait, there’s one character that I remember that doesn’t have G-cups…too bad they’re japanese A-cups…but meh…
Thanks for taking the bullet on this one Jason, so I don’t have to even think about dodging. Doesn’t come as a surprise, as I’ve seen 3-4 (maybe even 5) chapters of the manga. The foremost impressions it left me with was contrived and cliche with a marked lack of originality, seemingly only existing for the singular purpose of fanservice. Pass.
Ok then, I formally request that you blog Slayers Revolution or at least one post about it or Slayers and its awesomeness in general ^^ Unless you don’t like Slayers, which would be a big shock.
Sixten: Do you believe that the anime will even reach the “decent story” part? How many episodes would that take?
Do you believe that the anime will even reach the “decent story†part?
If they know what they’re doing, the Kuno and Haruka arc should be the concluding arc. It ties up a lot of story threads, with Tsukiumi deciding that being Minato’s “wife” is more important than the tournament rules, Kazehana finding a way to move on after losing someone important, Kuno deciding to go all out despite her weak Sekirei powers, part of Musubi’s past revealed when her secret power is unlocked, and the “rivals coming together to help a common friend” formula that usually works. And it even ends happily.
The Kuno and Haruka arc is the only part of Sekirei I’ve read where the story actually works. By showing characters trying to break the rules of the Sekirei Game (and succeeding), the story breaks out of just being harem building and Pokemon battles. It’s the only way I can see the series having a satisfying end without having to invent material. Also, there’s so much junk leading up to it that could just be cut out – they don’t have to animate all 30 chapters before it.
…wait, why am I defending Sekirei anyway?
I enjoyed Slayers, but I don’t remember anything from it. I may go need to rent it or something to jog my memory. Right now, summer 2008 is validating my worst fears– it’s going to be a long summer.
Thankfully, Code Geass, Macross Frontier, and Chiko are all still rolling along. BTW, I just realized that Tome and Sayoko have the same seiyuu. Satomi Arai might be the first non-anime character inducted into the Meido Pantheon.
(Comparing Sekirei to Pokemon doesn’t get me excited about it. At all.)
I’m starting to think that you’ve either made me a demon in the DbD pantheon, or a guest blogger with that justification. And Maid Guy isn’t a cure for broken – he’s a cure for Hosaka’s fantasy issues… except that Hosaka’s in Los Angeles at the moment, getting auditioned for a Food Network show.
Plus, per the preview for spring, you noted Macross F’s sequel to 7 would cause issues. Thankfully, the only torments so far from 7 are Fire Bomber songs and the flying speakers. As for Maid Guy, how would that have broken me any further? He’s a maid GUY, not a trap.
P.S.: I’ll refrain from the obvious joke that comes to mind when comparing Sekerei to Pokemon, as filtered by a television executive delivering a show concept.
Oh geass no!!!…^_~
It’s bad enough that we have to stomach the melonpanrific but absobloodylutely trainwreck that is Code Geass and now we have this…Kyoto should do something about this on the scale of a Diablo 3 announcement by finally releasing Haruhi or FMP…^^
Or maybe I should just go back to reading my C.C doujin….Oh geass YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!…heheh…^_~
Hmmmm.
Yeap that tears it, we need a third series of Minami-ki. Breakage humor seems to work best around these parts mixed with Haruka is Amazing moments.
From what I’ve gathered from your impressions Jason, Sekirei is like the Miami Heat; a concoction of lots of old and tired elements that, when fresh were entertaining and good, but have overplayed their novelty and are better utilized elsewhere.
I’ll echo the sentiments of other comments here and point you towards the promising New York Knicks of the summer season: Strike Witches? It’s Gonzo doing Sky Girls! Gonzo works in similar ways to Isiah Thomas, pretty much guaranteeing a circus every week. What else could possibly be worth your time?! Or are these “emails” the only valid avenues where we can request your blogging efforts?
well jason i would have asked you to blog twenty faces if i knew you actually read your blog email and consider the things in them
At least the manga is entertaining with decent art work.
I couldn’t even finish the first chp of the manga.
How can people read the manga because of the artwork?! I’m in with Xellos; I could hardly finish the first chapter, it was so insipid.
Slayers Revolution is really easy to get into if you have seen at least parts of the original series and know the characters. They really kept the same “vibe” and it just looks like old Slayers in High Quality (which is a good thing). And Lina so blows away most female leads of recent animes.
sixten: and what happens after this arc? the manga hasn’t ended yet … so does it stay decent or gets back to junk? And the art looks good indeed, if it weren’t for those ugly large breasts (why why why) … the anime art doesn’t look as nice.
Is there really any guy that considers these breasts beautiful?
So… tempted… to quote what I said on jpmeyer’s blog, and thus scar everyone so badly that they go gay or lolicon…
But I won’t. I wonder if this show will make Jason blog Antique Bakery instead? That’s getting good reviews from bloggers, and gg seems to have picked it up too.
I raged: http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.....p?id=63462
I liked her role as Momoka on Touka Gettan, For a rookie, it was pretty good.
I raged again. Yukana and Nabatame Hitomi are very experienced.
Whoops, I meant to quote this instead on the first part.
…
scar everyone so badly that they go gay or lolicon
The reason I even read so far into Sekirei was because I wanted to learn how to appreciate breasts on anime characters. On the surface it made sense: Sekirei was a series noted for breasts illustrated by a top tier artist. But Sekirei being what it is, it ended up making me even more pro-flat-chest than ever. Jason has to make threats to get me to draw breasts now.
and what happens after this arc? the manga hasn’t ended yet … so does it stay decent or gets back to junk?
It so far hasn’t descended to the crap and cliche of the beginning, and a number of interesting developments have come up: Kagari’s transformation, the harem masters starting to mark their territory in the city and gather lesser masters into their respective factions (Minato’s not the only pimp in town), and Minato’s sister’s adventures as a female master with Shiina, her male Sekirei. It stays decent, but I wouldn’t call it “good”. There are still plenty of stupid moments.
I don’t wanna know. I seriously don’t want to know what Jason threatens you with to draw breasts now. So far, Sekerei the anime doesn’t really show me much knowledge of female anatomy. About the only part they got sorta-right was how breasts react when the body’s falling down (read: they’re not going to stay round globes unless you’ve got them restrained somehow)… and then failed by making them vary in shape AND size throughout the course of the episode, as illustrated by a series of shots here and at jp’s blog.
This is like Haruka’s inflatable chest flotation devices, but taken to the next level… and again, I don’t want to know what Jason threatens you with to draw breasts, or the conversations that involves. But seriously, would it have been THAT much more work to draw a few sizes of variation?
No, the only seiyuu I saw on the cast list for Sekirei that I would rank ahead of Ayako Kawasumi was Marina Inoue, and the male lead absolutely sucks
Well most Male lead roles for harem anime goes to the dogs, although it is quite humorous to see Fuji and Ryoma’s VAs for the animes you least expect them to be in (aka Hanyuko Maid Team and He is my master respectively). It is tricky to have a decent male seiyu for harem guys, aside from suigita, there isnt just that many guys who can be our seiyu choice for harem animes
>The reason I even read so far into Sekirei was because I wanted to learn >how to appreciate breasts on anime characters
You mean, you wanted to learn to appreciate unnaturally large breasts on anime characters? Because, I dunno, I think there are enough series with characters having healthy, normal sized breasts … like Lina, f.ex. errr, no, Birdy for example ^^
In fact, the first episode of Birdy the Mighty Decode turned out to be 4839234 times better than Sekirei, ok that’s not difficult. But it was quite fun and the animation looked great, might turn out to be a pretty decent series.
I decided to try something as extreme as Sekirei because the usual Mikuru, Kyou, Haruka (not Sekirei’s male Haruka), etc. large breasts had no effect on me. But it was of course a bad idea.
No kidding. Strike Britches it ain’t. I especially love the way their flying devices require them to go around with legs spread wide all the time.
Except that instead of 3-4 characters, you get a dozen or so loli groinshots flying around. Which reminds me… Is there a special word for a herd of camels?
Ep. 1 of Slayers Revolution was “pretty good”.
If you figure in J.C.Staff loyalty and Slayers nostalgia, it moves up from “pretty good” to “freaking sweet”. Anyone who remembers the old school Slayers will feel right at home.
And Sekirei? Dropped and deleted. I won’t even continue the manga anymore.
>> well jason i would have asked you to blog twenty faces if i knew you actually read your blog email and consider the things in them
I read my e-mail; I just don’t respond to every one. I take that bullet for you guys.
>> I couldn’t even finish the first chp of the manga.
Well, good news is that the first episode follows the first chapter of the manga. Or is that bad news?
I tottaly respect your point of view on this blog but I think glyph were to harsh and didnt give it a chance. Sekirei is actually a pretty good series. It’s rated pretty well on Netflix and on must reviews I’ve seen on websites. I will admit it’s a kinda boring in the beginning and the plot isnt to good. But as it progresses it gets a lot better. The plot just has to get set up and stabilized the first few episodes. That being said the first view episodes aren’t that bad. They have there moments in them that may not be noticeable at first or you may not have understood clearly what they meant. Not all anime series or ecchi whatever genre it is can start off with a bang. It’s like a tiny pebble rolling down a hill. Some pebbles start off bigger than others and some getter bigger faster than others. It just depends on the slope. But in the end they all get bigger as they go down hill and gain mommentum. As the story progresses it gets better. The characters personalities all develop and Minato bond strengthens with his Sekireis as time progresses to a point where he will do anything to protect them. Like I said I respect what youre saying. But maybe you just started off watchingthe series just looking for something bad to appear and when it did you just kept looking for more bad things and in that blindness you must the good moments in there. That’s just human nature. You get the idea something is a certain way and then you look for thing to reinforce your idea.
Thanks for listening.
Matto Watanabe