iAnime Fan

Wah, so much homework… I need to find more time to do these things. D: Anyway, with this post, I bring to you the wonders (or lack thereof) of Tales, Index, Kuro Shitsuji, and Linebarrels of Iron.

To kick it off, let’s start with Tales of the Abyss. It’s based on a roleplaying game (which I have yet to play), and it’s about a rich snob kid named Luke, who is gay with his servant, Guy is the heir to an unusally large sum of money, but is locked up in his mansion until he comes of age. If you can’t tell already, I’m going to be very skeptic with Tales of the Abyss.

I haven’t played the game, so I can’t make any reliable comparisons, but from what I hear, it was the exact same right down to conversations Luke has with other characters. The storyline is supposedly the same, and the characters themselves follow through as well.

The episode begins with Luke the douche Duke, jumping out of an open window and talking to some creepy old gardener guy called Pele. I’m seen the PVs and stuff, but nothing prepared me for Luke’s seiyuu. When I heard it, the first thing that was going through my mind was “Oh, he is a total uke.” He fits all the categories. Arrogant, large ego, long hair, heck, he even wears a belly shirt. You heard me, a frucking belly shirt. Look, this is proof:

See? You see that? It just screams UKE.

More proof he’s crushing on Guy:

Anyway… Guy, his servant, is running around trying to find him because Nathalia, his fiance, wants to see him. As it turns out, they were engaged when they were wee little tots, before Luke had amnesia after going to the other kingdom. During these few scenes, I was either laughing my head off, shuddering in disgust, or an odd combination of both. I mean, seriously. Amnesia? Amnesia?! Come up with something more creative, sheesh. Anyone remember C.C.?

So anyway, After a little while, Luke is called to a meeting with his dad and his trainer, both of whom have names which I have sadly forgotten. The trainer had to leave in a little while, so to make up for it, he promised Luke he could train all day. So they start sword fighting, but in the middle a girl busts in singing a song that I got stuck in my head (I went around the house singing “Tue re ze, croa riou tue zeee…..” and my family yelled at me.), and she suddenly starts trying to beat up he trainer. But Luke helps out and manages to get blasted off several thousand feet in the air, together with the girl, whose name is Tear. Fut the wuck? Shouldn’t they be blasted off in different directions? And even if they were, shouldn’t they, kinda, you know, be dead from falling 2,000 feet in the air?

I just realized how long my rant on Tales of the Abyss is compared to other first episode posts, lol.

So the two wake up in a flower garden or something, and they run into level 2 weakling monsters, manage to cut off their heads, and then my favorite part came up. Tear and Luke needed a ride back home, so they caught someone who would give them a ride for 20,000 gp (gold pieces, my Runescape habits are coming back… =_=), but they didn’t have it at the moment. So Tear gave up a valuable jewel, and you know what Luke says? He says, “Cool, you had something valuable on you! Great, now my shoes don’t have to get dirty any more!” (Speaking of which, why wasn’t he or his sword stained with blood from the weakling monsters?) Seriously, Luke is a douche, forget dukes.

The episode ends on them riding in the carriage, when all of a sudden, something attacks it. I’ll probably end up watching this and blogging episodes I feel are lulzy. What was with all the pre-release hype? It’s just a game, my god.

So anyway, moving right along, next we have To Aru Majutsu no Index.

Forgot about pre-release hype, everybody’s hyped about it now. It was actually way different than I suspected, and it was much more enjoyable than Tales, in a serious sense. Index focused on a teenager called Kamijou (JUNJOU ROMANTICAAAAAAAA) Tohma, who lives in a techy city in which it’s normal to have special powers. They do the introduction very well, aside from the fact that the scene in the first few seconds is almost the exact same as Tales, and they’ve used the good guy stops bad guy from hitting on poor girl SO MANY FRICKING TIMES. Akane Iro ni Somarusaka had that lame beginning, they should just think up something else.

Kamijou (I don’t care if his first name is Tohma. I AM CALLING HIM KAMIJOU-SAMA.) gets into a fight with the girl he was defending - or maybe I should mention is was the GUY he was defending. He knew the girl was a level 5 psychic, and the guy was about to get his arse kicked, so he attempted to save him, but the girl ended up hunting him down and obliterating him anyway. And now she’s caught up to Kamijou, and she proves to be pretty badass. Kamijou tries to stop the ensuing fight, but fails dismally, and she attacks him, the poor wittle level 0. He survives though, and the next day, he finds all his electricity not working, and so all the food is rotten and the place is a heat sauna. Oh, and he also finds an unconscious girl hanging on his balcony.

Only in anime is that ever going to be normal.

So anyway, he feeds her rotten food, because he has nothing else, and she explains that she has 103 religious texts that bad guys were after. The whole reason she was on his balcony was because she was jumping roof tops in an attempt to get away.

This doesn’t make sense for two reasons - One, they would’ve caught her. And two, even if they didn’t, wouldn’t she be dead? The thing is eight stories high, and she lands on her stomach! That should destroy her stomach, break some ribs, maybe break her spine, and who knows what else.

But getting back to the story, it turns out her name is Index, and Kamijou tries to show her his magical power. If she has 103 texts somewhere on her, then he has an unlucky right hand. Whatever he touches with his right hand is automatically defunct afterwards, and that must suck so much. My cellphone, my computer mouse, my keyboard, EVERYTHING I OWN would be broken by now if I had that hand. Sigh. But anyway, she leaves later on, and Kamijou heads to school, where he meets the girl from the first ten minutes. (I love how he calls her Sparky, because electricity is her power. Lol.) But when he gets back, the cleaning robots are trying to clean up something that’s kinda uncleanable. That is, he finds a bleeding and unconscious Index, lying in front of his apartment. Oh yeah, and a really creepy mage guy behind him. (Mage is a ninja!)

The episode ended there, sadly. It was better than Tales, at least. I loved the music and the pacing, the action-y feel fit it perfectly.

So there you have it, the first episodes of Tales of the Abyss and To Aru Majutsu no Index. Next up is Kuro Shitsuji, Linebarrels of Iron, and Casshern Sins.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 8:55 pm and is filed under First Episode Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.