Gatchaman Crowds Episode 1: The Enthuastic Newbie

“Gatcha!”

Eva’s First Impression:
Ichinose Hajime… my goodness this girl is full of beans! She is definitely one of the rare characters who has such a enthusiastic reaction of being chosen to join Gatchaman and become magical girl super hero. One of the things I find really unique about her is that she goes with the flow and at the same time does her own thing. From her encounter with Lord JJ and having her NOTE (the source of their power) extracted from the core of her soul to seeing information  being passed (much like texting) in the NOTE and headed into action with the attitude of, “OOOOOH THIS IS SO COOL!” And you know what? I absolutely love her for that. Hajime certainly does come off as a weirdo when we first meet her, but the more we see her, the more awesome she is. She has a thing for notebooks and and considers a lot of things cute – such as MESS itself. Her Gatachaman transformation is super cute- yet badass at the same time.
Gatachaman is a group of people who have been chosen by Lord JJ (who is basically a God) to help protect their planet by eradicating alien criminals and unidentified objects that infiltrate Earth that pose as a threat to humankind. Their identities are to be kept a secret from the public. As of the late they’ve been dealing with more frequent encounters with “MESS”, that destroys everything it touches with its long tentacles. They are Gatchaman’s primary enemy at the moment. While they fight these enemies, Amnesia Effect is used to prevent people from seeing them in battles but since they are still within the same dimension they need to make sure they don’t run into people while they are in battles since Amnesia Effect basically only lets them be invisible. The organization also has these clones called Big-Small within their workforce who are in charge of rescuing those who have been absorbed by MESS/other enemies and later wipe their memories, but unfortunately some remain missing.
Team G members are led by Paiman (a Panda-like bear) who apparently had helped save seven other planets from the same or similar matters. Their team is are made out of five members, Tachibana Sugane (who also attends the same school as Hajime), Utsu-tsu (who is ridiculously precious), Hibiki Joe, O.D. (the only one of the group who doesn’t have a transformation) and Hajime who had just joined the team. I look forward to learning about the rest of the group since despite the lack of lines and screentime this episode, seem to be extremely likeable and interesting characters.
The animation is colorful, the character designs reminds me a little bit of Katanagatari but with heck of a lot more absctract designs. Then we got the chance to see both Sugane’s and Hajime’s Gatachaman Transformation that reminds me a lot Tiger & Bunny (especially Sugane’s when you compare his outfit to Origami’s outfit). It also has to do a lot with the fact it’s in CG. The fact it reminds me of Tiger & Bunny is probaby another reason why I’m not complaining about it, because it doesn’t bother me as much since I absolutely LOVED Tiger & Bunny.
Both the OP and ED theme are absolutely FANASTIC!!!! I will be listening to both all day long- I can’t wait for both singles to come out! Can I also mention that the OST already caught my attention? It’s that tempo that really makes you groove, not to mention the Gatachman tune is also pretty awesome. Gets you really into it you know what I mean… or is it just me? The OP sequence was just plain badass- I think this is the best opening we’ve seen this season, followed by the ED sequence that is just surprisingly captivating despite it’s simplicity. Might be because of the song though hahahaha/SLAPPED
This is hopefully probably going to be one of the most promising shows of the season, I am absolutely thrilled to have another show to be excited to watch so I will definitely be blogging this.
Possibility of Blogging: Guaranteed

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Chris’s First Impression:

 How should I put this… I didn’t like it. I think it would be fair to say that I found it very boring and, to be honest, I don’t know why. I don’t know, it just felt like I was watching an episode of Power Rangers combined with something that the animation studio Shaft might throw up on a bad day, y’know? I liked Hajime… for all of five minutes until her seemingly boundless stupidity finally made me want to throw myself out of a window.

 I did like her duck bag, however. Very kawaii.

I’m not going to lie. The plot was very off putting for me. Some weird ass God appears from nowhere, gives a girl a notebook that is apparently her soul (I’m not sure if this was meant literally so what I’m going to say next shouldn’t be taken too seriously: (MADOKA MAGICA SPOILER ALERT: an inanimate object acting as a person’s soul? Getting some Madoka Magica vibes here…END SPOILER) and then that girl runs off and becomes a superhero without even batting an eyelid? Most protagonists spend longer than two seconds before deciding that they’re going to go save the world, y’know?

 Gatchaman Crowds is actually part of a ‘Gatchaman series’ that originated in the 1970’s… who knew.

 But I digress, with my opinion on the plot taken into consideration, it shouldn’t be too much of a shock to find out that I don’t like the characters. I’ve read about their profiles and their histories, I did my research, but do I really want to watch a show with characters that I personally feel are either too bland and or too… too much? Both extremes are really annoying and I can’t sit through twenty five minutes of Sugune being a monotonous twat. Get a personality you stupid blue bird!

 And another thing! The animation was kind of derpy. Sugune was talking at one point and his mouth didn’t move. HIS MOUTH DIDN’T MOVE! This is an issue that I would expect from a bad dub not a show made in Japan with Japan dialogue and English subs to match, y’know? It felt sloppy in scenes where they weren’t fighting and to me that’s a sin. Shingeki no Kyoujin keeps making that very same mistake but no one gives it flack because it’s popular and hyped.

 I’m not like that.

 This show’s animation isn’t great and I’m not cool with that. Just thought I’d let you know.

 And the CG? I’m usually very tolerant of CG because, in my opinion anyway, CG is a very subjective animation style, just like rotoscoping. This CG in Gatchaman Crowds sucks. It took away from my ‘enjoyment’ of the show and ultimately left me wondering why they decided to use CG in the first place.

 I did like how colorful the show was BUT I didn’t like the character designs. But again, I’m not going to delve too deep into that point because the appraisal of character designs are another subjective viewpoint.

Overall, I thought this show was boring and some anomalies in the animation ultimately put me off the show entirely. I don’t want too talk too much about anything Eva mentioned but I would like to point out that I did quite like the opening. It was good. In the end however, I found the shows presentation and the depiction of it’s cast to be very off putting. Time for me to go back to watching my High School DxD NEW I guess…
Possibility of Blogging: NOPE