What They Say:
Thanks to the training by Tejirof, Gear and his companions are ready for their first mission. But they will learn a harsh lesson in the Hard Wars, that there is a fate worse than death.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With three months since the bland and fairly formulaic first episode, Aoi Sekai no Chushin de returns with a second episode. Very few shows attempt this kind of release format that end up as simulcasts and for good reason. By the time the episode comes around again, you’ve likely forgotten most of everything about it. And that feels pretty true here, though glimmers resurface quickly about all the silly videogame trappings that were just that, trappings and little to do with the actual show. That first episode only feels even more chaotic and poorly structured the more you remember about it and realize just how little of an impact it left when it first aired back in October.
This episode gives us a little more back story at the start, introducing the Atarika army and how it was poised to conquer the lands before it just completely fell apart. It’s an amusing take on gaming history once again as fantasy history with how it impacted other nations here after that fall, where they desired quality over quantity of life more than anything else. What it also did was to create something called a Killer, which is what Gear is as made evident through his skills and general abilities. It shocks him for all of a moment before he accepts and decides to just use it in whatever way suits his own goals the best. With Tejirof showing some of this to Gear, we also see that he’s making some inroads elsewhere and even spending a little time with Nel to put a few thoughts in her head as well.
The show spends its first half mostly with dialogue and going over in a somewhat circumspect way what it is that Killers are all about. But as it progresses, it starts to put the team out on its first mission as well, which is poorly formed and not all that clearly laid out in a way that flows smoothly. Before it can get to the place where they really want to go to do their bit of raiding for the mission, the group of four encounters someone in the forest who has a good deal of power behind him. It’s almost amusing in that they build up all this action style music strumming in the background but refuse to really, actively go with an action sequence for it. We do get some, once the dungeon raid gets underway, but it’s all just so terribly boring.
In Summary:
Three months for this? The first episode was bad in and of itself, but I liked the general idea overall since it harkens back a touch towards the old Bastard!! series with the playfulness of using videogames instead of music bands. The majority of this episode is all talky talky stuff that gives us a little clue about what the Killers are and that Gear is one of them, but there’s nothing really meaty about the episode to make it worth watching. The animation feels a slight bit improved and there is a bit more structure overall, but it’s just as flawed as the first episode and even more so in some ways. Few shows really bore me to tears but this one is knocking on that door pretty hard. It’s like the show really doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Grade: D+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
