When I found out about this show, I read the synopsis and thought it sounded nice. Saw David Pro was behind this, I was pleasantly surprised. They’ve predominantly done Jojo for the past five years, with a couple other shows in that time. I think it’s nice that David Pro is handling other kinds of shows and genres (even though Jojo is a combination of all genres in a strange little package) so I was looking forward to this show. Yes, kids having strange powers has been done a lot, but I was optimistic.
Now? I’m not so sure how I feel.
I’m not sure what they were trying to do with this episode. Just get to the action already, hoping we know who these characters are? This episode felt very slow, but it also was very rushed. If that makes any sense. What I mean is. the episode was slow because I felt like nothing was happening, and with the monotonous voices and expressions coming from Kei and Misaki, I felt as though things weren’t moving along. The camera would zoom into the character’s lifeless faces, with no movement. There weren’t many scenes as well. However, there was conversation after another the entire time. The conversations went by so quickly that I felt I couldn’t keep up with it. It also didn’t help that almost all of the conversations were philosophical. That made it even more difficult for me to pay attention because it went from one subject to another.
And I’m sitting here thinking, what in the hell happened?
I guess I can sort of understand Haruki? I think. She realized as a child that everyone and everything would die someday, and she was so sad that she lost her emotions or something like that. But she didn’t realize she was sad for herself? And that’s why she’s emotionless, or whatever. Like I said, I could barely keep up to what was happening. I know this moment was to show us what kind of person Haruki is, but I feel like they should have saved this moment for much later on! I mean yikes slow down. They just happened to have someone in the school who can copy the ability of anyone and transfer it to someone else? I mean how convenient. But yeah, we know what kind of person Misaki is…I guess. Misaki used her Reset ability when she saw little Mari crying, so we know that she must use her ability when she sees someone sad or in pain in hopes of helping them. So she is a good person.
That was the only thing I understood this episode. My problem with this premiere was I felt like things were happening, but they weren’t being explained. And one of the biggest problems was Misaki’s ability: Reset.
If she can’t remember anything after she resets, how did she even figure out that she can reset? How does she know she can reset and save? Kei was the only one that could figure out something was up because his ability is that he can remember things from the past, which includes when Misaki resets. This is the first time that Kei and Misaki have met, thanks to Soma. So how in the world did Misaki figure out her own ability? Is there someone she knows who has sort of the same ability as Kei and told her about it? This is the biggest plot hole we have so far and it’s bothering me a lot. The second she said she cant’ remember things after she resets, I just thought of that first. I was hoping we would get an explanation for that. Maybe that’ll be something they mention later. Of course, by herself her ability is useless. It can useful to her, such as if she messed something up she can reset and fix things for herself, but it looks like Misaki uses her ability for others. But she doesn’t do anything to help them. She sees someone sad, resets, hopes it helps, it doesn’t. Kei’s ability is pretty good though. I mean, it’s good to remember everything. But the same question that I have for Misaki also applies to Kei. Growing up he could have just thought “Hey, I have a pretty good memory!”, but unless he experienced the reset firsthand with Misaki, it would have been then he would have realized he has an ability like that. Again, how did he find out? It’s something only pertaining to him, in his mind, in his thoughts. It’s not something physical like shooting fireballs from your hand.
I’m not going to sugercoat my words. The characters are bland, and the show was bland. And confusing. Apparently Kei is hypocritical, he’s malicious, but he thinks he’s a good and righteous person. Soma says this to him, but I don’t see that because this guy hasn’t even done anything yet! It’s only been one episode and all they did was talk. The episode was basically, this guy is _, his ability is _, this girl is _, and so on. We got talks of being righteous, a good person, etc, and that was all supposed to explain who these characters are.
But all it did was dump us with all this info, but since we haven’t seen these characters do much of anything, it does nothing for us. Especially when they all lack expressions, except for Soma. But even with expression, I don’t understand Soma either. She’s just as strange. She brings Kei and Misaki together, but for what? She finds the little girl’s mother in no time. How? She was the one to tell Kei that little Mari is a fake, and that she actually died when her mother had a C-section. How on earth did she find all of this out? And why did she jump off the bridge in the end?
Am I being hard on this show with only its first episode? Maybe. It’s going to be a two-cour show, and it’s a mystery so it’s a given that it’s going to be slow. But I just felt like this episode was all over the place. I’d say we didn’t really get a proper introduction to the show and its characters, we just went immediately into the plot. The character designs are a little flat, the characters gave a bit of a bad first impression with lifeless and dead expressions, it was a very slow start but with too much dialogue of deep (and a little pretentious) themes happening too fast, no explanations, no time to get to know the characters, just…a bit of a mess. Again, this is only the first episode, it could get better later on and I’m still going to stick with this. But this isn’t what I was expecting. I will say, the very last two minutes in the end kept me interested enough, but as a first impression it left me with a sour note.
Jojo Part 5 when?
Possibility of watching: Moderate-Low
Possibility of blogging: Only if I keep watching
22 episodes confirmed for Sagrada.
22? I almost assumed it was a noitaminA show for a moment. Glad it’s not, this snoozefest isn’t worth being broadcast on there.
What a waste of an interesting premise.
I definitely agree with you on this one. I thought it was a poorly planned first episode and I don’t know if I want to give it much more of my time. I’ll probably watch one or two more episodes before I decide to continue, but I can’t say that I left this first episode with much of a desire to see more.