“Neighbour and Trion Soldier”


「近界民とトリオン兵」 (Kin Sakai Min to Torion Hei)

World Trigger is doing something that many anime adaptations nowadays don’t usually do – taking its time. It’s a lot more common these days to have anime that rush through the source material, packing in as much as they can into an episode without time to breathe. World Trigger is the exact opposite, taking a much slower approach; one could also argue too slow. But this was always inevitable considering that is exactly how the corresponding chapters of the manga were originally.

But for now, we have an episode focusing entirely on Osamu and Yuma. First of all we get an explanation between the differences of Neighbours and Trion Soldiers – information that is seemingly new to Osamu, despite being a Border agent himself. It does beg the question whether Border are keeping more secrets than they’re sharing, especially since they were able to originally able to fight back against the Trion Soldiers with the Trigger technology that the Neighbours possess. There is most certainly something going on behind the scenes that hasn’t been shown yet – further proving that Osamu is very little in the grand scheme of things.

But aside for learning those simple facts, the rest of their night together is spent showcasing how our unlikely duo bounce off one another. Osamu is without a doubt the Straight Man, whilst Yuma is the wild child who is still unaccustomed to the world he’s living in. It makes for nice comedic moments, and allows Yuma to beat up several thugs after he can tell that they are liars with a simple stare. Oh, and Yuma and his cheeky (=3=) face is here to stay! Don’t worry though, you’ll get so used to it that you’ll find it weird whenever he’s not doing it.

Comedy aside, there is certainly something bizarre about this alien child, who walks right onto the road when a car approaches. But the only injury he has is a crack on his face – like that of a porcelain doll – that heals itself after a few seconds with a puff of black smoke.

Back at school we also see the same bullies from last episode (there are a lot of generic bullies and thugs for Yuma to beat up in this series, right?) and it’s revealed that when they were taken in by Border their memories were wiped – adding to the list of foggy details that we know of the Border defence agency as of right now. But as they were still being punks, Yuma went for a pacifist approach of getting them to move out of his way and leave them quivering. Awesome!

In his amusing attempt to try and not stand out and be caught by Border, Yuma avoids the questions of his classmates by giving wacky answers, though reveals that the country he is from and many that he has visited have all been at war. He knows no different than fighting every day and being in a constant war zone, meaning that even if the Neighbours are doing the same to Mikado City right now, it suggest that they have their own internal problems that have shaped Yuma into the strange boy that he is today. I agree with generic classmate #3… Heavy stuff.

But just when Osamu is trying to keep his Border agent status hidden, a Trion Soldier appears at the school – a considerable distance from where they usually appear around the Border base of operations. Will this be Osamu’s time to shine, or will Yuma have to step in again and show him how it’s done?

All in all, a better episode than the first, I felt. There were less still frames this time around, even if there was not much action to animate. We’re still at the very beginning of the set-up here, but that’s just how I like it. World Trigger is not giving away all its secrets just yet. Instead, it’s opting for slowly – very slowly – building a foundation for a grand story to take place when the time comes.

 

 

Information Digest:

Synopsis:

  • Four and a half years ago, a gate to another world appeared in Mikado City. From the gate the Neighbours appeared to wreck havoc.
  • But the mysterious Border defence agency arrived to fight back against the alien invaders, allowing the city’s residents to live their lives normally again.

Previously:

  • Kuga Yuma appeared in Mikado City and transferred into the local high school. His arrival is welcomed by thugs and deceptions, before he and Mikumo Osamu are attacked by invading Neighbours!
  • When Osamu is unable to finish off the beast, Yuma does the job and reveals that he is a also a Neighbour!


 

Details Digest:

Chapters Covered:

  • Chapters 2 – 3

Different types of Trion Soldiers:

  • Last episode, Yuma pointed out that it was a Bamster-type that was invading – a scouting trion soldier with hard skin to pierce. This episode we see the slightly different Marmods!

Border Appears:

  • Make sure you don’t forget these faces – you’ll be seeing them again!

Trion Soliders in the Forbidden Zone:

  • Considering how the Marmods appeared in a safe-zone, it begs the question how and why they are there. It could be worthy of note that one of them had its attention on the seemingly innocent Amatori Chika.

Preview

26 Comments

    1. Pretty much. You’re hardly going to be watching World Trigger for the visuals, are you? It’s just a shame it never got a better studio to tell its story, but this is what we have… So unless the art and animation gets beyond unacceptable I won’t really focus on it too much.

      Samu
      1. it is a shame. The irony gets even worse when sport manga get adapted by Production IG or Madhouse and action manga get adapted by Pierrot or Toei. It really makes me wonder how those action series would look if they were animated by the better studios.

        Shadow
  1. If by ‘taking its time’ you mean ’10 second still shots through out the whole episode’, then I agree with you. Not only that, but the animation feels so cheap overall, the fights are terrible, and the coloring is awfully pale.
    A shame, I haven’t read the source material, but the previews and the first episode had totally hooked me up because of the premise and the characters. I might continue watching it just because of this (which is the most important part of an anime in my opinion), but the second (or one of) the most important parts of anime is that it’s actually ANIMATED. I’d rather read the manga than watch some poorly colored stills and some cheap ass CGI quality fights.

    Ey
  2. Well, despite many saying the animation isn’t great, I really still do like the episode. I don’t really have a problem with the pacing since I don’t hate slow episodes. But the scenes where Osamu is just thinking to himself and there’s this wavy background somewhat annoys me. Still, I don’t really care as much as long as the story is interesting – and it is. I also somewhat like the main characters’ interaction, though I couldn’t care less about the generic bullies and classmates 😀 Though there should soon be new characters I can actually be interested in, hopefully…
    Thanks for your review 😛

    ZJZJ
    1. Cheers! It’s good you’re enjoying it despite its production flaws. And do not worry yourself about there not being any new characters. Right now in the manga there are over 60 named recurring characters, but that’s partially why I’m doing the info/details digest! Once we get past the Introduction Arc, World Trigger will do what any epic Sci-Fi will do, it’ll start world building and giving us lots of information to chew on.

      Samu
  3. I really like the concept of what’s going on and the story genuinely has me intrigued but Holy fuck, the animation (and I use that term very lightly with how many stills their are) is just such low quality…

    I’m actually tempted to drop this and pick up the manga.

    P Ko
  4. I agree that they seem to be building up a nice story here, however, it is indeed unfortunate that the animation is not up to par. There were many times in this episode where I had the urge to check if the stream I was watching had buffering issues due to the duration the stills lasted. Once or twice is fine by me but having them continuously makes for quite some awkward pauses that shouldn’t be there.

    Zinc
  5. Man, how terribly unfortunate that World Trigger was picked up by Toei. And this animation is pretty amazing by Toei standards at that. People following along with the Sailor Moon Crystal reboot will empathize here. I really liked the premise of the manga and I was looking forward to this, but I’m not sure if I can be as forgiving to the production quality issues.

    Ralicht
    1. I dislike the thought that the animation quality is Toei being incapable rather than Toei lacking the budget for a children’s show that airs at an odd 6:30 on Sunday mornings.

      Of course, I don’t know if it was Toei’s idea rather than Shueisha’s for the unusual timeslot. 6:30 AM does make it a temporary member of Super Hero Time…

      Kiseki
      1. No one is ever happy to hear that Toei picked up a show. As far animation goes, it’s pretty much a death sentence. Even their best animated flagship series are comparably worse than the treatment they would get at a different studio. They were much more competitive in the 90s and earlier, but it seems like they just never left or improved for whatever reason. If they’re not a flagship series? Just hope that someone picks them up and does a remake like Kanon.

        Although I agree the timeslot is a good indicator this isn’t in the forefront on their project list, Toei is easily one of the most disappointing and incapable studios I’ve seen.

        Ralicht
  6. Does the story get any better soon? The first episode was decent, but the 2nd was a snore. And I’m annoyed at Kuga’s face, it was ok the first time around but almost every time he’s on a scene he does that face. Maybe this anime isn’t just for me. Dropping.

    Xignal
  7. It’s odd that anime tend to rush when they should take their time but the one that would gain in that case unfortunately is unusually slow.

    As of now I don’t like anything aside from Kuga’s character and reasoning. Sadly it’s a bit too little to stick with it so it goes on-hold. I will read your posts though and see if it will get better.

    Urizithar
  8. Oh boy oh boy, it’s just so great how this show is taking it’s time, having these scenes where a single image is on screen for one second too long to not be jarring! It’s like they don’t even want us to know that they’ve got the lowest budget ever!

    And in case that wasn’t dripping with enough sarcasm… no, I’ve got nothing.

    FirenWithLime

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