Spring 2009 First Impressions: Shangri-La

Just some random thoughts that ran through my head as I got around to watching some of the season’s premieres. First up? Gonzo’s Shangri-La.

Fansub group: AoT

Things I liked:

• Lush backgrounds, nice character designs for Kikuni, our heroine and Mikuni, the heterochromic loli.
• Good action sequence at the end. You don’t see boomerang fights too often.
• A WTF? ending.
• Kikuni’s skirtline.

Things I didn’t like:

• Character designs for all of the background characters. They all look so dull and lifeless. That may have been intentional, but it’s depressing to look at.
• Boring story. They were tossing around some pretty technical terms. Carbon trading discussions don’t exactly make good fodder for anime. I mean, I liked the economics discussions in Spice and Wolf, but that was because it was usually Lawrence or Horo talking about it, and they’re interesting. Random politicians talking about carbon on the other hand is boring.
• All the adult women looked and sounded like men. Ugh.

Random other thoughts:

I said before, that I wasn’t sure if the story is really interesting or really stupid. After watching the first episode, I can say, I still don’t know. But I do know that I was disappointed by the first episode. The dialogue and pacing were quite poor. And while the pacing may get better, I don’t know if the dialogue will. It wasn’t like all the boring talk was to just set up the background. I think all that eco-babble is going to be a pretty integral part of the show, which does not bode well. However, the last three minutes were pretty interesting, and if they can build on the WTF ending, maybe it’ll be ok. I’ll keep watching it to see if it improves, but the first episode definitely squashed any chance that I’ll write about SL on a continued basis.

Also, Kikuni’s skirtline was ridiculously high. With all the jumping around she was doing, I give Gonzo credit for showing some restraint and not turning Shangri-La into a pantsu-flashing fest.