Hey, everyone! Same deal as every other week. Post with comments. Last night we saw Requiem for the Phantom, Seikimatsu Occult Academy, and Blue Gender.

To start with was Requiem for the Phantom. It’s hard for me to deliver a good opinion on this one. To me, the scenes in this show would randomly oscillate between ‘just bad’ and ‘badass’. The concept is sort of interesting, though the whole ‘evil mad scientist’ thing seems a bit cheesy to me. I would have liked to see more of the underworld that Inferno supposedly is running, as opposed to just seeing a disgruntled old scientist man train assassins. That said, though, I think it could really go either way. I want to see a few more episodes before I decide whether I think it’s worth watching or not.

Next was Seikimatsu Gakuen Academy, which left me a little unimpressed after the opening sequence and the OP, but then grew on me from there. The show eventually seemed surprisingly self-aware, stopped being too serious, and incorporated plenty of humor for the rest of the show. That said, though, I think it also might rely too much on reusing old gags (like the whole Maya hitting Abe a lot thing). I also feel like there could have been a little more action. I don’t mind slow-moving things, but I feel like some pretty action scenes here or there would have made for good payoff for the suspense they were trying to build. Still, I didn’t dislike the show at all–it just might not really be my thing, so I don’t know if I’ll watch more.

Blue Gender was… okay. I had actually tried watching this show some years ago and stopped some handful of episodes in, not really seeing the appeal. My feelings were basically the same this time around. It’s not that I think it’s a bad show, but it doesn’t really resonate with me–in this case, though, it could have been because of the dub. I know Matt said the dub on this one wasn’t that bad–and since I think English dubs can be legitimately good, I wanted to agree–but I’ve heard much better English voice work. In fact, I actually love Laura Bailey, who voiced Marlene (you might also remember her as Isara from Valkyria Chronicles, Rise from Persona 4, and Platinum from BlazBlue, among others), but Marlene was such a bad fit for her. All that said, I doubt I’ll bother watching more.

That’s about all I have to say about these shows. Feel free to comment–maybe convince me to watch more of one of these shows if you liked it!