The jury’s sort of still out on this one for me, but I think it has decent potential so far! Neither the plot not character design are particularly original (I feel like I’ve seen Hatchi’s exact look about a million times in the past 5-6 years), but it seems like it’s not taking itself too seriously, so what’s the harm in that? It’s like an anime version of Guardians of the Galaxy. Or Futurama. Hey, Robby even kinda looks like Fry. I’m really into the colour palette of the series so far, as well. It’s so bright and happy.
And even though the setting is kinda derivative, it really seems like more of an homage to the space opera genre than a rip-off of anything in particular. And I’m still pretty intrigued by what we’ve heard about the world so far. I’m excited to see the direction they take with Isekandar, because it seems like there could be something reasonably dark lurking in that plot. I’m not sure whether I like the idea of the tone darkening too much, but as long as the comedy stays heavy in the mix, which it looks like it will be from the OP and ED, I’ll be happy.
Also “Space Potato” is cracking me up over here.
Robby is definitely my favourite of the duo as it stands, I love watching lazy losers fuck around in space getting involved in various Zany Schemes/MLM scams. It’s like if you stuck Larry Butz from Ace Attorney in space and gave him his own series. Except not so lame (still pretty lame though). I also love his long-suffering bunny robot butler.
To be fair, though, Hatchi grew on me a lot over the course of the episode. I was fully getting ready to hate him at the start of the episode because of the whole “oh god I’m so smart everything is too easy help me” cliché, but then it became apparent the show was making fun of that sort of character and he doesn’t stay like that for very long anyway so it’s fine, everything’s fine, it w
as a false alarm. He’s actually pretty cute, to be honest (his little face when he gets excited omg), and he had some of the funniest moments of the episode, like the whole debt collector bit, and when he pops up again on the space ship. He and Robby work pretty well together, too. Speaking of which, is this show… kinda gay? Because the ED seemed pretty gay. Fine, sure, I ship it. I like their chemistry so far.
And the mecha! That was a twist. With built-in theme music and everything. I’m not a mecha person, particularly, but that scene was one of my favourites of the episode. I was expecting a lot of things from this show, but I was not expecting it to be a gay mecha. If that is, indeed, what it ends up being. Big if true.
Anyway, consider my interest piqued! If the rest of the series follows the tone set by this first episode, I’ll definitely be following and covering this. I’m not sure it’ll be my favourite of the season considering all the heavy-hitters, but something about it clicked with me and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
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