Liking the show so far.

Character designs - very strange. Chins sharp enough you could shave with the point, more like chisels than anything you'd see in an anatomy textbook. It's not bad, and I didn't get that "whoa, ugh" feeling like the first time you see Initial D characters. I think it's working because of the clean lines and relatively good (if undemanding) animation work so far; the model's bizarre but the animation is spot on, if you will. I'd hate to see what it would look like on a woman, but as there aren't any yet, I haven't had to.

The show can border on incomprehensible. I've played mahjong games before - I even fumbled my way through the one in Sakura Taisen 4! - but I have to pay close attention to follow the various rules, scoring combinations, and characters staring at their tiles in heart-attack-inducing states of tension over which tile to discard. In its own way, it's kind of like watching an episode of Yugioh, except twenty times more complicated, and with an almost infinite increase in manliness. At least when the characters cheat, it's made easy to follow for the viewer. But there's plenty of times when a character will tip over his hand and say "tsumo, triple straight dora dora dora, man gan" and everyone else will freak out at the huge win while you're trying to figure out what just happened.

Akagi is an immensely attractive character, though. The combination of erratic play and absolute confidence (and the occasional bit of outright theft) is something I can relate to. The only problem I have is that they spend quite a bit of time calling him a genius - it's in the show's title, for that matter. We get the point already, you don't have to mention that he's the genius that descended into darkness FIVE TIMES in an episode. Lay off the fanboy, Mr. Narrator.

Still, that's a minor complaint for a show I'm enjoying. Darn it, now I want to go play mahjong again...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 12:29 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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