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「残存世界のグロリア」 (Zanzon Sekai no Guroria)
“Remnants of World Gloria”
With the creators of HenNeko (Sagara Sou), Date A Live (Tachibana Koushi), and Oregairu (Watari Wataru) at its helm, Qualidea Code came into this season as a series worth watching for its pedigree alone. Sadly, the series’ first episode ends up a miss more than anything—even if part of the reason lies within misplaced expectations (more on that later).
Content-wise, Qualidea Codestarts off as your generic alien invasion affair. A sudden Independence Day style attack leaves humanity on the brink of destruction, and to ensure their survival, the world’s children are put into a cold sleep. As the children awaken decades later, they discover that they’ve developed supernatural powers capable of defeating the “Unknown,” and the story shifts to the boys and girls responsible for the defense of Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Chiba.
Given the dark backdrop, you’d think there’d be a measure of seriousness to the entire affair, yet it ends up anything but. The vaunted “Unknown” are dispatched just as quickly as they arrive, the kids are so unstressed that they’re shooting each other by accident trying to claim points for kills, and one of them ends up demolishing a key piece of infrastructure going overboard on the enemies at hand. The fact that they rarely even mention the enemies by name shows just how little of threat they are, and the result is a far cry from the image I had in my mind coming into the series. It’s at this point where I admit that my misplaced expectations clearly affected my impressions in a negative way, but the fact remains that they effectively jumped from one fight to the other with little actual interaction/content, and there isn’t much explanation for anything aside from a bit where they basically say they don’t know much about the powers they wield.
Overall, it’s not an introduction you’d like to have from a developmental standpoint, even if it did serve as a showcase to what should be the series’ ultimate draw: it’s action scenes. Given the sheer amount of combat in this first episode, it’s a safe assumption that they won’t really hold anything back in this regard, and for all the issues one could have with aforementioned, this is one element that could make the series worth watching all by itself. The techno-pop BGM may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s undeniable that the fights were certainly a pleasure to watch, despite having a cliche cast of characters on the forefront and unremarkable enemies in the background.
I will say though, thatQualidea Code could be the one show that could get away without having a set of unique characters, if only because of the franchises that its creators have worked on previously. Fans of the HenNeko, Date A Live, and Oregairu franchises will likely notice off the bat that each city has characters reminiscent of those from one of the aforementioned, and while it’s not surprising given how each creator was responsible for a specific city, it means that there’s a higher likelihood you’ll end up liking the characters from at least one of the cities due to their origins and similarities. Of course, there’s always the flip side in wanting characters different than ones you’ve already seen, but it’ll be interesting to see how they interact when it’s all said and done (they’re essentially mirroring the potential interactions of characters from all three franchises), even if the three cities aren’t exactly the pinnacle of collaboration at the moment.
Looking forward, this is a series whose first episode will likely give you a glimpse into how the franchise will be. Whether or not that means adjusting your expectations accordingly will depend on your thoughts prior to the series, and given how things went here, Qualidea Code looks like it won’t be a show for everyone—much like the other series made by its respective creators—even though its action elements could make it worth a watch on a weekly basis regardless. The fact that it’s generally light on the seriousness (for now) and an easy watch certainly doesn’t hurt, and I for one will continue watching regardless, if not just to see how things work out. Just note that there’s no weekly coverage planned for Qualidea Code at this time.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「Gravity」 by ClariS
Preview
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End Card
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A ranking system and competing schools… dear god someone please tell me that this series isn’t going to devolve from the alien invaders into a student on student tournament show.
When did using crappy cgi for magic circles, energy balls, waves of power and fodder enemies become a “thing”??? Early 2000’s? Earlier??? Is it really that much cheaper production wise??
It always looks soo bad
yea the animation is ranges between decent and weak. Kinda disappointing considering that the first promo for this was released towards the end of 2016, meaning that this had been planned out for a while. I know a good amount of that time was spent storyboarding and writing the scripts (as well as promoting those prologue LN’s) but they could have spent their time polishing the production values. It always baffles me when an anime has an animated promo like 7 to 8 months before it’s release and yet when the series comes out, the animation is mediocre.
“When did using crappy cgi for magic circles, energy balls, waves of power and fodder enemies become a “thing”??? Early 2000′s? Earlier???”
I think it was popularized by shows like Nanoha, Shana & Mai-Hime? Those with more knowledge may correct me if I’m wrong.
A fun intro episode, with a nice little plot hook at the end.
I think it was overall pretty straightforward but nevertheless satisfying.
When I read in the preview that this was written by committee, my first thought wasn’t optimistic, but rather “another Chaos Dragon?” I actually watched all of Chaos Dragon, and while I would not call that a good show, my interest was maintained long enough by the “WTF with they throw in next” element.
This isn’t like Chaos Dragon IMO, but there’s definitely a weird, overall ill-fitting tone to the whole thing. It tries to be kind of serious (see introduction) then goes off to light hearted comedy to HS rivalry stuff. I mean the first “battle” (not that it was much of one) is the ML pawning these not so menacing pink blobs then Cana (FL?) arrives and falls into the sea. LOL? Comedy in general did not work for me with this show.
A big issue I had with this episode is the ML. Don’t like the guy and his “I’m all we need” attitude. Is that you Subaru? *sigh*. He’s pretty much just an ass-hat IMO. He could die next episode and I’d like the series more for it. Oh, I’m sure that he’ll learn the (very) tried and true lesson of (power of) friendship, working as a team, blah, blah, but how long is that gonna take? Cana doesn’t quite pull off “baka-adorable” either for me, but she’s better than ass-hat ML. It’s not all bad character wise for me. “Hime” and her group were kind of fun. Others were “OK”/”insufficient data” at this point.
As others have noted, it throws in some HS type ranking system which oddly seems to be the main (or equally main) focus vs. the “go defeat the aliens”, sorry, “Unknown” (Really? THAT was the best name you could come up with?). IDK. Maybe the threat isn’t all that severe anymore given all the nice buildings, ships, trains, etc. I guess humanity’s bounced back fairly well. Still, I do not see this ranking system, particularly given ML’s obsession with it, as anything beneficial. More like the other way around.
Lastly, I didn’t find the battles all that great – at least so far, especially when they devolve into some ranking competition because it’s so easy. Note/FYI to the show: That’s uh, not what friendly fire means/how it works. Friendly fire can occur with equal forces, and it’s not about “The battlefield becomes a place to keep score.” At all. You can even have friendly fire due to mistaken identity/etc. without enemy forces actually around at the moment it occurs (see Operation Husky). Perhaps a minor point, but for me it’s a lazy and needless mistake. Not sure why they even bothered putting that comment into the show. Just say that the battle has devolved into people trying to rank up and be done with it.
TL:DR = Dropped. Like a couple characters, but not enough to offset the negative parts which includes the ML.
im gonna go on a limb and say wataru watari’s scripts are centered around the chigusa siblings and chiba, tachibana’s scripts are centered on ichiya and canaria aka tokyo, and sagara’s are centered on maihime and hotaru aka kanagawa. Overall this was generic first ep with a generic premise and generic looking monsters. Generic isnt bad but it aint exactly inttiguing either; but hey it could get better. Out of the six, Asuha is the most tolerable, which by default makes her my favorite so far. Canaria grates on my nerves.
Just based on city I would assume Watari is responsible for Chiba, and those siblings certainly seem like they could pop up with Hachiman and co.
correction: sagara is in charge of tokyo and tachibana is in charge of kanagawa
It was an “alright” episode 1, nothing too special but it wasn’t truly bad either. If I didn’t know about the pedigree in terms of staff involved behind this anime though, I probably wouldn’t of tried watching the first episode. There really isn’t much to say about the first ep, it’s very cliche (when an anime starts with some sort of apocalypse and the main character is crying and it also involves another young girl, you know it’s cliche, lol). The fight scenes were graphically quite satisfying, but it’s like they were fighting random mobs, the enemies aren’t of any significance at the moment.
As for the ranking system, I think there is some potential in it. It’s very cliche for a magical school fantasy type anime, but I do like that the whole system is conveyed to be a bit flawed, or at least I hope that’s what they were going for. It’s like a first person shooter game where the more kills you get, the more rewarded you are, but this system doesn’t really reward much teamwork, and it’s mostly about competition. Perhaps in the future episodes, the enemies become much more threatening, and they’ll have to rethink how they’ll distribute points (probably involve more teamwork).
7/10 for now, I may give it the 3 episode rule to see if It can live up to it’s pedigree.
In terms of pure spectacle, yeah this one delivers pretty well. But holy hell i just can’t stand the anti gravity dude and his smug attitude. The whole “i’m all we need” which he said over and again like it’s a mantra is especially cancerous.
Pretty lame. The opening seemed promising, but then the characters were introduced, and many of them sucked. The world they’re in wasn’t fleshed out very well since they were too busy introducing the sucky characters. Then the bad guys seemed fairly forgettable and generic. Couldn’t even finish the episode. Pass.
This season isn’t looking too hot for action/sci-fi/fantasy stuff (new series that is). The drama/comedy/slice-of-life series seem to have much better offerings in comparison.
This show give me a vibe of Horizon-Genesis.
An ‘okayish’ first episode for me; somehow this reminds me a little of Valvrave, in that I can just sit back and enjoy the action and silliness. MC guy is really annoying and stuck up, and it seems that he’s nice to the blonde girl and just the blonde girl alone. Speaking of Utaha, I’m surpised that she could even qualify as a sub head; seriously, the Tokyo duo just rubbed me the wrong way.
The other four characters are fun to watch, though; Hime seems to be rather powerful and impulsive and the siblings are just so chill. Also, it was kinda funny to see that they weren’t really giving a shit about MC guy and that MC guy was merely working himself up into a rage.
Nothing outstanding, but not bad either. I guess I’m sticking around for the time being. If anything, it’s to see Suzaku eat some humble pie and more of the Chigusa siblings.