What They Say:
“Galileo DNA”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The second of this season’s two series on the noitaminA block, known for such masterpieces as anohana and Bunny Drop, is another new, original series, also produced by Aniplex but surprisingly not owned by them in the same capacity as most, resulting on it still getting on Crunchyroll, but through Fuji TV in this case. This one comes from Aniplex’s own A-1 Pictures, which happens to be the studio behind anohana as well, and is also confirmed for an 11-episode run to tell its story. Of interest to some may be the fact that the director is Yasuomi Umetsu, known for his action anime with adult content like Mezzo Forte and Kite. Of course, with this being a TV series, there’s no chance that it will follow suit of these previous works as far as the adult content is concerned.
As is apparent from the title, Galileo is a major part of the story, but that doesn’t tell you much, because it’s hard to imagine how he could be relevant. The main three girls are all his descendants, and the opening episode plays out by having them attacked by mysterious enemies who are searching for some treasure relating to Galileo, which none of them have any idea about.
Somehow inserting the name of a historical figure who seems a very arbitrary choice for a story like this makes it all come across as very silly, but it also makes it intriguing simply based on the question of how exactly the plot will work out to a point that makes it understandable to use Galileo as the main theme of the series.
It’s a little hard to even comprehend what all happens in this episode. It starts off simply enough, albeit unexplained for the most part, but as the episode goes on, there’s not all that much straightforward explanation offered in comparison to the random and confusing events that transpire. When it culminates with the youngest girl flying a giant goldfish machine into the enemy, you know this is going to be something different.
As expected from the companies involved, the production values are quite nice, although the specific staff doesn’t appear to offer anything particularly impressive just yet. Clearly someone’s got some interesting ideas going on and they look quite nice in action so far, but there’s really no telling where they could lead to. Although I’m glad the TV format guarantees we won’t be occasionally cutting away to explicit sex scenes with the underage female characters, the opening and ending showing off the youngest of them in nothing but very loose-fitting overalls has me shaking my head at Umetsu more than I had hoped to going into this. Hopefully this isn’t an accurate indicator of how her character will be used over the course of the series, because she appears to be a very interesting one otherwise.
In Summary:
This season’s noitaminA offerings are both originals and both a bit unusual. This one brings Galileo’s name into the plot in some seemingly arbitrary ways that will hopefully prove to make a lot more sense than they do right now, but it’s also very interesting. This episode is filled with some bizarre events and not a whole lot of explanation, but it has my curiosity piqued, and it all looks quite nice. This looks to have potential, so hopefully it heads in a good direction from here.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
