January 6, 2009

Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou - 01

by: Tales



Thoughts: Two Nyanko-senseis are double the trouble!
Overall Rating: 9
This series really turned out to be worth the wait. Many other series just do not make me laugh like this one does. The sequencing of the scenes in the opening song were well done. The music fit perfectly in with everything, and I asked myself if this was the same Natsume Yuujinchou I had watched before in the previous season.

We start off with Natsume getting hit in the head with a soccer ball while he’s laying on a wall. After falling over, a demon crawls out from the bushes and chases him. Natsume runs into a similar seal that unsealed Madara from his prison in season one. A black version of Nyanko-sensei pops out and follows Natsume home. Gotta love Nyanko-sensei laying right next to his counterpart. The black cat snatches the Book of Friends and Natsume and Nyanko-sensei chase after it. Natsume runs into a spirit named Beniya, and it turns out that she knew Madara. She helps disguise Natsume as a spirit to let him mingle with the demons in the festival in order to find out where the black cat went.

This episode stayed true to the first season, in that it had some comedy mixed in with the usual spirit and demon encounters. The pace of the episode went pretty fast considering it was just episode 1. It makes me wonder how much plot development we’ll see in the next couple episodes. I do hope that Natsume opens up about seeing spirits to a few of his classmates. It would make the story much more interesting.

White Album - 01

by: Tales



Thoughts: A lot of emotion was in this episode.
Overall Rating: 9
I didn’t think that this would be such a serious series right off the bat. It was also nice seeing a lot of different side characters introduced in just one episode. It really helps keep you interested in what their connection was to the main character. I was stunned by the OP song. Nana Mizuki really did a great job on it. It’s my favorite opening of the season so far.

White Album starts off with the main character, Touya, having a dream about his close friend Yuki. In the dream, Yuki becomes an idol and won’t be able to stay with Touya any longer. By the looks of it, this will be an important plot device for future episodes. They’ll probably make Touya keep thinking of this dream in order for him to get more motivation to ask Yuki out seriously. The thing I didn’t like was that Touya was basically a lazy bum and spaced out quite a bit at times. His apartment was a mess, and he got fired from his part time job for being late. I understand it’s just the first episode, but I’m still tired of seeing lazy bum character meets pretty girl.

Eventually, Touya meets up with Yuki at the school and only gets a couple minutes to actually talk with her. It’s obvious he needs to be a little more assertive. He meets up with a few acquaintences and one helps him get a job at the store Echoes. It was pretty nice to see that his friend had a crush on Misaki and hasn’t asked her out for 5 years. I’m hoping we see more of them in the future.

Ogata Rina looks like a really interesting character. I’m curious to know how Yuki knows her so well. Maybe they grew up together or went to the same school. Yuki also needs to get some confidence in herself. Her character has potential, but I just hope she won’t be a useless character for the entire series. It’d be nice if Rina and Yuki were the ones who rang the doorbell at the end of the episode. I can see the second episode being possibly funny if Rina is introduced to Touya. Overall, the episode was really top-notch with great character designs. The music and vocal song Rina sang were very good. I can’t wait to see if Yuki sings in the later episodes.