First Impressions / Series Introduction / Snapshots

OP Sequence

OP: 「堕天國宣戦」 (Datengoku Sensen) by ALI PROJECT
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

Summary:

Along a coast somewhere, a group of Armed Librarians attack a ship controlled by the Shindeki Church. The religious organization responds by sending out people known as Meat who have bombs inside of them. Doing their best to avoid these, the Armed Librarians’ mission is to free the Meats and to seize evidence from the ship. They are easily able to defeat the ship’s defenders and make their way below deck to find a room full of Meats. As the others are helping the Meats off the ship, one of the Armed Librarians discovers a message carved into a steel beam that reads “Vend Ruga is alive. He is living inside Olivia Litlet.” This proves to be interesting to their leader Hamyuts Meseta who is observing everything from the coast. A short while thereafter, explosions rip through the ship, and many of the Meats that the Librarians were trying to save get thrown off. The Librarian named Volken attempts to save one, but the Meat just falls back into the water lifelessly after getting pulled up.

Sometime later, the Armed Librarians are gathered back at their library of books holding the memories of the dead, and they review the materials they found on the ship, which includes a book fragment concerning Shiron Byacornise. 280 years ago, she was the only person who knew how to produce the medicine to fight a disease called the Dragon Pneumonia, and it is said that she spread the disease to sell the cure. The Armed Librarians are after the rest of the book fragments so that the Shindeki Church won’t have both Shiron Byacornise’s memories and the Dragon Pneumonia. Meanwhile, in a mining town, the Meat named Colio Tonies that Volken tried to save meets up with a member of the Shindeki Church and is ordered to kill Hamyuts Meseta. He’s got with him a fragment of a book that had fallen with him into the water and had touched him. As a result of that, he had seen a beautiful girl from the past, and she had left him a cryptic message, at the end of which she had said that she loved him. Colio has a hard time accepting this because he’s been brainwashed to believe that love is only for humans, and he’s not human.

ED Sequence

ED: 「Light of Dawn」 by Annabel
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

I actually didn’t think the opening song began all that bad, but then the main part hit, and I was reminded of how I don’t like ALI PROJECT’s music. I swear it all sounds the same. The ending song was at least was decent, and it was a bit more upbeat than the last Annabel song I heard (the ED to CANAAN).

For a first episode, this was a little overwhelming in the beginning given all the characters and terminology that appears. I got a much better understanding and appreciation of the episode after watching it a second time. As such, I liked the concept of the Meat as a lower class of people, and Colio’s struggle with his humanity based on a vision from a book is promising. Of course, the idea that books can convey dead people’s memories and feelings in itself was interesting, and there’s a lot of possibilities there. That plus Armed Librarians are the reason I watched this series in the first place. Speaking of which, the Armed Librarians were pretty cool, but we only got a brief glimpse of their abilities this episode. Hamyuts Meseta is the most intriguing one so far, and a lot of that is because she’s still surrounded in mystery.

Production-wise, I don’t have anything particularly good or bad to say about the work that david production did, though I guess the CG during the boat scene wasn’t all that great. The voice cast, on the other hand, was pretty nice, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise given all the big names on the cast list, plus I always enjoy hearing Kawasumi Ayako. All in all, it made for a solid first episode, and since I’m still on the fence about whether I want to follow it, I’ll give it another week or two.

33 Comments

  5. Omni, I swear I had the exact same reaction to the OP that you had.

    So I’m liking the jazz riffs in the OP and thinking “Well this sounds pretty nice. Very interesting piece. Sounds like this’ll be a pretty good song….”

    Then the music started getting faster and then I was like “No….No! NO! ALI PROJECT!”

    That song could have been a lot better both musically and visually.

    garfield15
    Reply

  6. Awww… Where to start?
    – Too many people with too many different weapons/abilities/whatever like in Asura Cryin’
    – Poor animation quality
    – 3D sequences PURE FAIL
    – Big boobed female trying to save a shitty plot? Come on guys…

    Already dropped…

    I really can’t understand Kampfer’s haters for a show which was surprisingly good and Book of Bantorra’s lovers who think that there is here a good potential for a MASTERPIECE… Open your eyes ;_;
    Or my tastes are too weird >.>

    Mabo
    Reply

  7. Seriously, Ali project just needs to disband NOW. I have never listened to a single song of theirs halfway without having my brain bleed. As for this show.. kinda hits you too hard with all the different terms(as stated.) I’ll give this show a shot just for the boobs. Seriously.

    Avenger
    Reply

  8. i disagree totally , armed librarians is very superior to kampfer , kampfer has beautiful girls and a handsome protagonist but the history and the plot is nothing special , armed librarians have a great animation i loved how the characters were drawn , poor animation ?????? i only agree with the 3d but for only one scene i not dropped a promising anime and the history i liked it

    kk
    Reply

  9. I was actually really waiting for this to air. When I saw it however, it was kind of a disappointment. It didn’t make me scream that this was totally awful, but I am not as excited as I was before to see the next episode. Indeed, the 3D seens where pretty crappy, and the animation wasn’t as good (maybe because the last series I watched was Canaan, which has some of the best animations I’ve seen) and I’m not too fond of the character with big boobs. I just hope that the second episode is better.

    Nerdruda
    Reply

  11. Personally, both Armed Librarians and Kampfer so far are awesome. Eitherway, I think I’m going to enjoy it as both have something that the others don’t have. Kampfer has things that I don’t need to explain and Armed Librarians has some good action and atmosphere.

    An extra note, I simply love how Kampfer does not have those types of “in your face” fanservice. I simply get irritated with those like from Sekirei and Ikkitousen.

    Silver
    Reply

  14. I was looking forward to this too but was left disappointed. NONE of the characters seemed appealing and the models were all so bland and boring. The premise is good, but seeing as how the first episode is suppose to be the hook, this premiere failed to do that. Ill give it a couple more weeks though, to decide whether to keep watching or not.

    damian
    Reply

  15. Overall this episode was a disappointment it had too many things going on at the same time to many characters introduced all at once yes there were parts like the opening scene with boy with the scar,
    and the scene with the mysterious lady with sword. i also wonder why everyone in this anime want to kill that arrogant woman called Hamyuts Meseta shes just annoyin.

    Chakra
    Reply

  18. The CG looked like it was rendered with a Gamecube.

    I didn’t really find this episode especially interesting. There is a lot of room for brainwashed suicide bombers, but there wasn’t any subtlety in the presentation here. It’s also hard to discern the rules for how people live or die, when we see some guy sink into the ocean and show up later. Does he live because of the book fragment? Was he going to survive at the bottom of the ocean anyway?

    I didn’t really see any characters in the cast that really resonated with me, but there were a lot of characters introduced so there wasn’t a lot of time spent on any one of them. They clearly favor Boob-chan and her psychic nattou, but without more of the story it’s hard to see why I care if they blow her up.

    I’ll have to give the show another episode to flesh out the world a little more.

    m
    Reply

  20. i quote @m
    i think that for a start up there’s a lot to see and understand for a single episode of a show…also the very beginning don’t make any sense for me…what’s with those espers?where is the usual anime “let’s build up a fantasy world” explanation? i would give this show one more shot next week, but i don’t expect much more.

    actarus
    Reply

  22. The plot and stoyline seem interesting and Hamyuts Meseta look so hot and sexy, but no matter how hot she look I can’t help but totally hated her, hope she really get kill by those brainless zombie.
    You got innocent ppl brainwash and become sucide bomber, and her attitude is carefree and not give a damn about it, is fine to be like that if she was just a minor character, but for someone sitting in the position of a boss and having that kind of attiude piss me off. Someone in that kind of position need to understand the situation and its responsibility, treating it like a joke is not how a boss should be behaving. If I were that green hair dude I would walk up and slap bitches like that and tell them if you not goner treat these kind of situation seriously then step down and let other who actually understand the responsibilty thats bestow upon them handle it, and don’t be an eyesore get outta my face.

    Mike
    Reply

  25. Goddammit I hate Ali Project. Totally agree that the song began promisingly enough with a sort of slow, moody noir-ish piano thing (which seemed to fit the setting), but dammit they ruined it with their signature speedy screeching.

    Raika
    Reply

  27. My favorite part of the episode is that Colio looks and sounds just like Zwei from Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~. (He’s voiced by the same seiyuu, so that’s not shocking, but he seriously looks like a skinnier Zwei.)

    Shinmaru
    Reply

  28. So far too many things happened in one episode or too many characters introduced in one episode. I can’t like this one yet because I can’t connect to a particular character to appreciate this one. I have notice animes always have worked for me when there’s one particular character to connect to. In the episode, 4 characters seem to be important and really that’s too many to connect to.

    conyo985
    Reply

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