Since I had a bit more free time recently, I thought I would finally get round to watching some shows I’d previously missed, and one of them was Crowds. I was hoping Crowds would at least be a decent superhero show that I could watch through at my leisure.
Sadly, Crowds frequently misses many obvious marks, isn't very exciting and has one of the most annoying main characters I’ve seen for a while.
Pacing and stakes are all over the place. Within the same 12 episode series, you can have one episode be about the Gatchaman trying to stop school kids from drinking spoiled milk (..yeah) and the next centre on a national disaster where terrorists try to murder the Prime Minister of Japan. The milk debacle isn’t even played for comedy, it’s completely serious in tone.
The episodes also cut to credits at very inappropriate times, such as in the middle of a fight scene. The finale of the show goes out with a wet fart, and a lot of key plot points you NEED to know to understand what on earth happened can only be seen in an extended director’s cut, which is a complete joke.
The Gatchaman feel obsolete in their own show as well, due to the prevalence of this social media entity called GALAX, which allows civilians to help each other out in emergencies (this doesn’t make much sense, as you’d hope if you were in an accident, bystanders with or without medical training would help you without first consulting an app to tell them they should!).
Why do the Gatchaman really need to exist in this setting? We are told they deal with aliens (kind of like the MIB) that civilians can’t see, but we only see them fight an alien once. GALAX/CROWDS basically do the Gatchaman’s jobs for them.
The Gatchaman themselves are very one dimensional. They can be described as: Gay Stereotype, Some Guy, Mr 2Cool 4School, Loli bait and…a talking panda. Riveting.
These characters range from forgettable to annoying and worthless, but then we get to…her.
Hajime is something else. If you like her, that’s fine, but if you dislike her, like me, she can really make this show a pain to sit through.
I usually have no problem with characters who act like they just snorted a truck worth of Skittles, but Hajime is so happy and perfect, you could set her on fire and she’d still be a bundle of rainbows and kittens.
Initially, her way of solving conflict through friendship rather than violence was endearing, but by the time she decided to make Facebook friends with the same axe-crazy genocidal alien who only five minutes previously had brutally tortured and nearly killed her friends, I was completely lost on the direction this character was going in. I was waiting for her friends to say “Hajime, what the heck have you done?!”, but nope, she always has to be right.
The second to last episode of the series is even a clip show where every main character talks about how amazing Hajime is and how much she’s "changed" them. I’m not joking.
Anime Surprisingly disappointing
Since I had a bit more free time recently, I thought I would finally get round to watching some shows I’d previously missed, and one of them was Crowds. I was hoping Crowds would at least be a decent superhero show that I could watch through at my leisure. Sadly, Crowds frequently misses many obvious marks, isn't very exciting and has one of the most annoying main characters I’ve seen for a while.
Pacing and stakes are all over the place. Within the same 12 episode series, you can have one episode be about the Gatchaman trying to stop school kids from drinking spoiled milk (..yeah) and the next centre on a national disaster where terrorists try to murder the Prime Minister of Japan. The milk debacle isn’t even played for comedy, it’s completely serious in tone. The episodes also cut to credits at very inappropriate times, such as in the middle of a fight scene. The finale of the show goes out with a wet fart, and a lot of key plot points you NEED to know to understand what on earth happened can only be seen in an extended director’s cut, which is a complete joke.
The Gatchaman feel obsolete in their own show as well, due to the prevalence of this social media entity called GALAX, which allows civilians to help each other out in emergencies (this doesn’t make much sense, as you’d hope if you were in an accident, bystanders with or without medical training would help you without first consulting an app to tell them they should!). Why do the Gatchaman really need to exist in this setting? We are told they deal with aliens (kind of like the MIB) that civilians can’t see, but we only see them fight an alien once. GALAX/CROWDS basically do the Gatchaman’s jobs for them. The Gatchaman themselves are very one dimensional. They can be described as: Gay Stereotype, Some Guy, Mr 2Cool 4School, Loli bait and…a talking panda. Riveting.
These characters range from forgettable to annoying and worthless, but then we get to…her.
Hajime is something else. If you like her, that’s fine, but if you dislike her, like me, she can really make this show a pain to sit through. I usually have no problem with characters who act like they just snorted a truck worth of Skittles, but Hajime is so happy and perfect, you could set her on fire and she’d still be a bundle of rainbows and kittens. Initially, her way of solving conflict through friendship rather than violence was endearing, but by the time she decided to make Facebook friends with the same axe-crazy genocidal alien who only five minutes previously had brutally tortured and nearly killed her friends, I was completely lost on the direction this character was going in. I was waiting for her friends to say “Hajime, what the heck have you done?!”, but nope, she always has to be right. The second to last episode of the series is even a clip show where every main character talks about how amazing Hajime is and how much she’s "changed" them. I’m not joking.
Rating
Disappointing