Tsubasa First Ep review.
Apr. 11th, 2005 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katharosA lot of moaning and a few grudging positives. With screen caps!
General animation first… the character designs weren’t as bad as I was dreading – they look better animated than they did in the stills we’ve seen. The music… sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Except when it REALLY didn’t, such as in Ceres. Have the production team managed to completely miss what every fan out there has picked up on? Fai=Western. So what with the oriental music at our first sight of Ceres? And what’s with the jaunty, happy Oriental music at the first sight of Ceres?
Which brings me to my next complaint:
NO DEAD BODIES!
Really, where are the dead bodies? Where’s the blood stained corpses throughout Ceres castle, lending an even darker edge to Fai’s actions and lots of interesting implications? And where the HELL are the dead bodies in Japan? We have Kurogane’s laugh, and it’s a very good laugh I admit. BUT. NO. DEAD. BODIES. Which Kurogane is supposed to have just slain, leading Tomoyo-hime to make her decision to exile him. Instead, Tomoyo appears to be exiling him for leaping about on the rooftops and having a really creepy laugh.
And there is no Tomoyo being Tomoyo! Clasping her hands to her cheek, ohohohhoing, sighing over why Kurogane can’t be a NICE Ninja – I want my Tomoyo back!
There is no REAL interaction between them, no sense of their relationship. We don’t see that Kurogane feels betrayed to be exiled in this manner by the Princess her serves. We don’t get to see Suoh yelling at Kurogane to be more respectful to the Princess.
And for that matter, they’ve missed two very, very significant little details. We don’t see Fai transform Chii into an extra ward on Ashura-ou, which is sure to be a very important little detail when CLAMP gets around to Fai’s story. And we don’t see Tomoyo lay the curse on Kurogane, just the glowing sigil.
I can only hope these very, very important plot elements will be included in flash backs – though I really don’t see HOW they are going to work them. Especially Fai’s. Fai doesn’t talk about his past. Fai doesn’t THINK about his past, unless circumstances or Kurogane forces him to. So I can see the lead in to THAT flashback being a LITTLE difficult to pull off without completely butchering the chararacter.
All in all, slicing up Kuro-pon’s and Fai’s scenes really didn’t work. We didn’t have time to appreciate that atmosphere of each for one thing. But you know what REALLY disappoints me? Their arrival at Yuuko’s. They take it in TURN to speak!
And there is no LOOK!
Their first meeting! The LOOK they exchange! They didn’t have the LOOK!
Argh!
The very first KuroFai movement and they didn’t see fit to include it! No connection, no shocked into glancing at each other stripped of masks – just two strangers arriving either side of Syaroan.
Sigh.
OK, complaints about the Clow country side of things. There were lots of little details that grated, but they didn’t get my back up as much as the butchering of Kurogane’s and Fai’s introductions where so much has to be squeezed in and so much left implied – their emotions, relationships, worlds – that the details are ESSENTIAL.
My first WTF moment occurs in the market place, when what I assume to be Royal Guards appear,
and Syaroan grabs Sakura and runs away with her.
There are a few things wrong here.
First, Syaroan. Mega, Ultra respectful Syaroan RUNS AWAY from the Royal Guards, deliberately disobeying the implied orders of the King.
Second, in doing so, he grabs Sakura’s hand and lifts her off her feet so she goes FLYING THROUGH THE AIR after him.
I could have excused this shot of them through the market as just a bit of anime taking liberties with the laws of physics for comedic emphasis. Which is a good thing when done well.
However, THEN the camera focused in on Sakura’s pointy slippered feet, STILL flying through the air.
Sigh.
One of my major problems with this episode is that it seems to have given Tsubasa an emotion amputation. Everything is so… bland and uninspired. The characters don’t convey there depths of emotion, either in the animation or the voice acting. Taking the Kinomoto siblings scene.
Anyone who knows them from CCS knows that theirs is a tempetuos, stormy relationship filled with lots of name calling, metaphorical hair pulling, and literal foot stomping. Along with a deep, genuine love and an overprotective older brother.
It’s my favourite sibling relationship in all of animanga.
Now then, Brother and sister get into a screaming, knock-down-drag-out fight over Syaroan. Stubborn opinionated little sister meets stubborn over protective older brother.
The manga:
Sigh. Aren’t they sweet?
The anime, and this is the most extreme it gets:
Touya hasn’t even gotten off his throne.
Snarlgrowlsnarlcontemplatemurder.
Ahem. Yes.
May I just say wtf and where’s the logic for the ‘archaeology by night?’
It also means we lose the cute scene of Sakura bringing Syaroan a bento. Of all the characters, Sakura is the one most butchered. She’s acting like the Sakura of a few chapters on, who has only recovered two of her feathers but is missing most of her will and personality - Not the wonderful, complete, whole, wilful, strong, Sakura-chan!
Grumblegrumblegrumble.
Skipping ahead a bit to the big send off…
Touya apparently knows what Yukito is going to do. Which removes a nice source of Yukito angst. And Touya, apparently, is NOT wounded and poisoned which really leaves me wondering what they are going to do with that pair’s only other scene later on. They had better not leave it out, that’s all I’m saying. I want more King Touya and Priest Yukito!
And Touya being absolutely perfetootly fine also neatly exorcises such lovely scenes as this.
Or this.
What? Are they so enamoured of the Sakura/Syaroan angst that they’ll deny us the lovely lovely YukiTouya angst? GrowlsnarlGrowl.
On to the voices. Mostly, they’re fine I think. Yukito sounds wrong to me, but I expected that. Anyone other than Megumi Ogata as Yukito was going to sound wrong. But still, I think a softer spoken seiyuu would have been better – his voice sounds too deep.
I liked Kurogane’s voice when I first heard it as he shouted over the rooftops, but later I started to wonder if it was too deep. I’m not sure if it will be capable of all the spazzing Kuro-pon does…
I think that’s a problem with all of the cast actually. The acting seems awfully… bland is the best word. As if they’ve been drained of all extremes of emotion. This is a fault of the animation too – as in Sakura and Touya’s fight. And Kurogane… argh. He sounds like he’s reading off lines as he gets sucked down to hell.
Of them all, I think Fai’s voice actor handled that best. They did a fairly good job conveying Fai’s complex emotions during the Ceres scenes. The only thing was, his voice seemed awfully… ‘catchy’ is the best word I can think of. As in ‘a catch in his voice.’ It worked for this first scene, but if it will show the ‘steel under velvet’ side of Fai…
Ah well, I’m just going to remind myself of something. When I re-watched the first Prince of Tennis episodes, the voices of the Regulars sounded just plain wrong. Especially Eiji’s. It’s amazing who much they’ve changed and improved and settled into the characters since then – just have to hope for the same thing here.
Mokona’s voice I’ll wait for the next episode to pass judgement on, but going from the ‘next episode’ voice over, the voice actor is trying a little too hard to be ‘cutesy.’
Yuuko’s voice is the one I’m gutted over. I suppose it’s not quite as bad as it might have been, but it’s still too light. Yuuko NEEDS a deep, sultry voice to make your toes curl. I really hope she has a different seiyuu in the xxxHolic movie.
The nitpicking.
Yuuko’s expression here. This is not the ‘ruthless and mysterious Witch of Dimensions persona’ expression. This is the ‘Watanuki, you just farted didn’t you?’ expression.
Young!Sakura smiles. Young!Syaroan smiles. Surely she had to work harder for this?
What have they done to Sakura’s wingspan?! I’m dreading seeing Mokona’s…
It’s the amazing spiderman! Doing whatever a spider can! Howl.
Kurogane looks mildly annoyed while being sucked into the depths of hell!
And now the amazing magician Fai will disappear in a puff of smoke! No. Just, no.
Alright time to be positive. What DID I like?
First, of course, has to be Fai’s tattoo shot.
Practically identical to the panel in the Manga – yes yes yes and yes. Followed immediately by a shot of the sleeping Ashura-ou?
Yes. Perfect. Closeup of Ashura also nice. 
The touches between Fai and Chii conveyed the same sense of caring, creator/creation relationship I got from the manga. So yes to that as well. 
I liked Kurogane’s laugh. It worked. Otherwise I saw little to be pleased about with the Japan scenes.
Clow! Anytime Clow appears is a very good thing. Nodnod.
Touya! And Yukito! Smiling! Calling each other by name! Lovely intimate Yuki To-ya against the backdrop of the night sky. This moment worked.
(except Touya called Yukito ‘Yukito,’ not ‘Yuki.’ *Fizzesandspits.*)
Speaking of Touya… King Touya. Rawrr. Hot hot hot, sexier than thou King Touya! Love the pose, the clothes…
gotta love the smirk!
(To bad it wasn’t followed up on… ok, positive positive!)
Touya fighting the bad guy’s goons… yes yes yes. Loves it.
Also loves any and all shots of Priest Yukito.
Priest Yukito fighting alongside King Touya? Double whammy.
There were some individual shots that managed to be really pretty, like this head shot of Fye. Love his hair here!
Body types, however, seem to be all one type. The stringy cheese type.
This positive thing is difficult, isn’t it?
Ok, one thing I can be unapologetically positive over is the landscape shots. The production team knows what its doing there. Clow,
Japan,
Ceres…
all looking very nice.
Liked our first shot of the four of them together.
Also liked the way they had Fye writing sigils.
And both magic circles:
(Very much like the reappearance of Clow’s magic circle.)
And! Beacon of hope! Screenshot from the next episode – we have spazzing Kuro-pon!
Yay! Now I just hope the voice actor can reflect it…
Manga images taken from Be With You Scans.
General animation first… the character designs weren’t as bad as I was dreading – they look better animated than they did in the stills we’ve seen. The music… sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Except when it REALLY didn’t, such as in Ceres. Have the production team managed to completely miss what every fan out there has picked up on? Fai=Western. So what with the oriental music at our first sight of Ceres? And what’s with the jaunty, happy Oriental music at the first sight of Ceres?
Which brings me to my next complaint:
NO DEAD BODIES!
Really, where are the dead bodies? Where’s the blood stained corpses throughout Ceres castle, lending an even darker edge to Fai’s actions and lots of interesting implications? And where the HELL are the dead bodies in Japan? We have Kurogane’s laugh, and it’s a very good laugh I admit. BUT. NO. DEAD. BODIES. Which Kurogane is supposed to have just slain, leading Tomoyo-hime to make her decision to exile him. Instead, Tomoyo appears to be exiling him for leaping about on the rooftops and having a really creepy laugh.
And there is no Tomoyo being Tomoyo! Clasping her hands to her cheek, ohohohhoing, sighing over why Kurogane can’t be a NICE Ninja – I want my Tomoyo back!
There is no REAL interaction between them, no sense of their relationship. We don’t see that Kurogane feels betrayed to be exiled in this manner by the Princess her serves. We don’t get to see Suoh yelling at Kurogane to be more respectful to the Princess.
And for that matter, they’ve missed two very, very significant little details. We don’t see Fai transform Chii into an extra ward on Ashura-ou, which is sure to be a very important little detail when CLAMP gets around to Fai’s story. And we don’t see Tomoyo lay the curse on Kurogane, just the glowing sigil.
I can only hope these very, very important plot elements will be included in flash backs – though I really don’t see HOW they are going to work them. Especially Fai’s. Fai doesn’t talk about his past. Fai doesn’t THINK about his past, unless circumstances or Kurogane forces him to. So I can see the lead in to THAT flashback being a LITTLE difficult to pull off without completely butchering the chararacter.
All in all, slicing up Kuro-pon’s and Fai’s scenes really didn’t work. We didn’t have time to appreciate that atmosphere of each for one thing. But you know what REALLY disappoints me? Their arrival at Yuuko’s. They take it in TURN to speak!
And there is no LOOK!
Their first meeting! The LOOK they exchange! They didn’t have the LOOK!
Argh!
The very first KuroFai movement and they didn’t see fit to include it! No connection, no shocked into glancing at each other stripped of masks – just two strangers arriving either side of Syaroan.
Sigh.
OK, complaints about the Clow country side of things. There were lots of little details that grated, but they didn’t get my back up as much as the butchering of Kurogane’s and Fai’s introductions where so much has to be squeezed in and so much left implied – their emotions, relationships, worlds – that the details are ESSENTIAL.
My first WTF moment occurs in the market place, when what I assume to be Royal Guards appear,
and Syaroan grabs Sakura and runs away with her. There are a few things wrong here.
First, Syaroan. Mega, Ultra respectful Syaroan RUNS AWAY from the Royal Guards, deliberately disobeying the implied orders of the King.
Second, in doing so, he grabs Sakura’s hand and lifts her off her feet so she goes FLYING THROUGH THE AIR after him.
I could have excused this shot of them through the market as just a bit of anime taking liberties with the laws of physics for comedic emphasis. Which is a good thing when done well.However, THEN the camera focused in on Sakura’s pointy slippered feet, STILL flying through the air.
Sigh.
One of my major problems with this episode is that it seems to have given Tsubasa an emotion amputation. Everything is so… bland and uninspired. The characters don’t convey there depths of emotion, either in the animation or the voice acting. Taking the Kinomoto siblings scene.
Anyone who knows them from CCS knows that theirs is a tempetuos, stormy relationship filled with lots of name calling, metaphorical hair pulling, and literal foot stomping. Along with a deep, genuine love and an overprotective older brother.
It’s my favourite sibling relationship in all of animanga.
Now then, Brother and sister get into a screaming, knock-down-drag-out fight over Syaroan. Stubborn opinionated little sister meets stubborn over protective older brother.
The manga:
Sigh. Aren’t they sweet?
The anime, and this is the most extreme it gets:
Touya hasn’t even gotten off his throne.
Snarlgrowlsnarlcontemplatemurder.
Ahem. Yes.
May I just say wtf and where’s the logic for the ‘archaeology by night?’
It also means we lose the cute scene of Sakura bringing Syaroan a bento. Of all the characters, Sakura is the one most butchered. She’s acting like the Sakura of a few chapters on, who has only recovered two of her feathers but is missing most of her will and personality - Not the wonderful, complete, whole, wilful, strong, Sakura-chan!
Grumblegrumblegrumble.
Skipping ahead a bit to the big send off…
Touya apparently knows what Yukito is going to do. Which removes a nice source of Yukito angst. And Touya, apparently, is NOT wounded and poisoned which really leaves me wondering what they are going to do with that pair’s only other scene later on. They had better not leave it out, that’s all I’m saying. I want more King Touya and Priest Yukito!
And Touya being absolutely perfetootly fine also neatly exorcises such lovely scenes as this.
Or this.
What? Are they so enamoured of the Sakura/Syaroan angst that they’ll deny us the lovely lovely YukiTouya angst? GrowlsnarlGrowl.
On to the voices. Mostly, they’re fine I think. Yukito sounds wrong to me, but I expected that. Anyone other than Megumi Ogata as Yukito was going to sound wrong. But still, I think a softer spoken seiyuu would have been better – his voice sounds too deep.
I liked Kurogane’s voice when I first heard it as he shouted over the rooftops, but later I started to wonder if it was too deep. I’m not sure if it will be capable of all the spazzing Kuro-pon does…
I think that’s a problem with all of the cast actually. The acting seems awfully… bland is the best word. As if they’ve been drained of all extremes of emotion. This is a fault of the animation too – as in Sakura and Touya’s fight. And Kurogane… argh. He sounds like he’s reading off lines as he gets sucked down to hell.
Of them all, I think Fai’s voice actor handled that best. They did a fairly good job conveying Fai’s complex emotions during the Ceres scenes. The only thing was, his voice seemed awfully… ‘catchy’ is the best word I can think of. As in ‘a catch in his voice.’ It worked for this first scene, but if it will show the ‘steel under velvet’ side of Fai…
Ah well, I’m just going to remind myself of something. When I re-watched the first Prince of Tennis episodes, the voices of the Regulars sounded just plain wrong. Especially Eiji’s. It’s amazing who much they’ve changed and improved and settled into the characters since then – just have to hope for the same thing here.
Mokona’s voice I’ll wait for the next episode to pass judgement on, but going from the ‘next episode’ voice over, the voice actor is trying a little too hard to be ‘cutesy.’
Yuuko’s voice is the one I’m gutted over. I suppose it’s not quite as bad as it might have been, but it’s still too light. Yuuko NEEDS a deep, sultry voice to make your toes curl. I really hope she has a different seiyuu in the xxxHolic movie.
The nitpicking.
Yuuko’s expression here. This is not the ‘ruthless and mysterious Witch of Dimensions persona’ expression. This is the ‘Watanuki, you just farted didn’t you?’ expression.
Young!Sakura smiles. Young!Syaroan smiles. Surely she had to work harder for this?What have they done to Sakura’s wingspan?! I’m dreading seeing Mokona’s…It’s the amazing spiderman! Doing whatever a spider can! Howl. Kurogane looks mildly annoyed while being sucked into the depths of hell!And now the amazing magician Fai will disappear in a puff of smoke! No. Just, no.
Alright time to be positive. What DID I like?
First, of course, has to be Fai’s tattoo shot.
Practically identical to the panel in the Manga – yes yes yes and yes. Followed immediately by a shot of the sleeping Ashura-ou?
Yes. Perfect. Closeup of Ashura also nice. The touches between Fai and Chii conveyed the same sense of caring, creator/creation relationship I got from the manga. So yes to that as well. I liked Kurogane’s laugh. It worked. Otherwise I saw little to be pleased about with the Japan scenes.
Clow! Anytime Clow appears is a very good thing. Nodnod.
Touya! And Yukito! Smiling! Calling each other by name! Lovely intimate Yuki To-ya against the backdrop of the night sky. This moment worked.
(except Touya called Yukito ‘Yukito,’ not ‘Yuki.’ *Fizzesandspits.*)Speaking of Touya… King Touya. Rawrr. Hot hot hot, sexier than thou King Touya! Love the pose, the clothes…
gotta love the smirk!
(To bad it wasn’t followed up on… ok, positive positive!)Touya fighting the bad guy’s goons… yes yes yes. Loves it.
Also loves any and all shots of Priest Yukito.
Priest Yukito fighting alongside King Touya? Double whammy.
There were some individual shots that managed to be really pretty, like this head shot of Fye. Love his hair here!
Body types, however, seem to be all one type. The stringy cheese type. This positive thing is difficult, isn’t it?
Ok, one thing I can be unapologetically positive over is the landscape shots. The production team knows what its doing there. Clow,
Japan,
Ceres…
all looking very nice. Liked our first shot of the four of them together.
Also liked the way they had Fye writing sigils.
And both magic circles:
(Very much like the reappearance of Clow’s magic circle.)
And! Beacon of hope! Screenshot from the next episode – we have spazzing Kuro-pon!
Yay! Now I just hope the voice actor can reflect it…
Manga images taken from Be With You Scans.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 12:02 pm (UTC)Trust me, as a fan of Namikawa Daisuke (Fai's seiyuu) who knows what sorts of performances he is capable of... he can more than handle this role. In fact, I'd venture to say that he's PERFECT for it. He was freaking AMAZING as Kami-sama in Saiyuki Reload, a character who is quite similar to Fai in that he has two very distinct sides to his personality-- sweet and tough-as-nails (okay, so in Kami-sama's case it was more psychotic than anything else, but still.).
If anyone can portray complex emotions, Namikawa Daisuke can. I'd never heard of him before his performance in Saiyuki Reload, but once I heard his work I was immediately impressed. This guy's got serious talent.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 12:04 pm (UTC)I'll look forward to it.
(makes me want to get my hands on Saiyuki Reload now to hear him for myself.)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 12:42 pm (UTC)(If you want to hear him in Reload, you'll want to get episodes 17-25. That's the arc he's in.)