Nazo
Since: Oct, 2013
09/28/2020 00:00:00
Oh man. As a Spaniard seeing this is so funny. Lemme just say that those books are infamous nowadays: lots of folks loved them when they came out, but now they\'re mostly remembered as so bad it\'s good teen fluff that makes for great snark bait and contains some pretty harmful messages (incidentally the author had her own JKR moment a handful of years ago, where she basically shut down her forum because people called her out for saying LGB Tphobic stuff. So, that hasn\'t contributed to the series\'s public image).
So when the show was announced everyone basically took it as a joke and spanish twitter has been tearing it apart ever since it came out.
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5 episodes of generic fantasy nonsense
First off, this is a review of the TV series recently released by Netflix, not the books the show is based on. I have no idea if the books are better or worse, but I have no interest in reading them, particularly if they are anything like the show. Idhun is surprisingly only 5 episodes long, meaning it can be watched entirely in one sitting. Key word is "can". Should you?
No.
Idhun is an incredibly generic experience, essentially being the anime equivalent of an unsalted cracker.
Idhun's most noticeable problem is it’s visuals. The character designs are generic and they don’t mesh very well with the background art. There is a LOT of animation shortcuts and goofs (awkward tweening, re-used animation, continuity errors, off-model faces, etc). The show also suffers from poor shot composition, which is just as, if not more important than animation quality. Good direction can actually save lackluster animation sometimes (just look at 1997 ‘'Berserk''). Fight scenes suffer especially because, while the choreography is not bad by itself, the way the fights are shot and edited lacks tension and excitement.
The writing is also a big problem. Dialogue is cliched and critical information is delivered in..you guessed it… heavy exposition dumps. The magic system isn’t explained well, and I have no reason to care about saving Idhun when we never really see it. Not to mention Idhun’s attackers are an army of goofy looking flying snakes.
The main character, Jack, feels like a non-entity and a load to the other, stronger characters. Victoria is bland and the other two characters even blander. None of them have any distinctive personality to latch onto. Even when the show goes off the deep end and kills off one character and makes the other a...furry....(inner confusion)...I don't care because neither of these characters were interesting to begin with. The villain (good grief) is an emotionless teenage edge lord who spends most of the series looking (and sounding, thanks Johnny Long Bosch) bored out of his mind. Psst..Show, maybe don't have your main villain sound like he wants to fire his agent. If the character doesn't care, why should the audience?
At times, the show started to give me weird flashbacks of Chronexia and the Eight Seals, another show (welll…failed pilot) with confused world-building, amateurish designs, poor animation, worse framing and generic characters. Chronexia was made by a small animation company, which I think is also the case for Idhun. This comparison isn’t just me being mean, I think Idhun, like Chronexia, was made in earnest, but suffers because the companies behind them weren’t very well managed and lacked experience. I have no idea if this will get a second season, but if it does, I hope the studio who made Idhun is able to improve. I for one, will not be watching more.
4/10