Kiddy Girl-and

[sadht]Kiddy Girl-and[/sadht][sadhl=2704]kiddy-girl-and[/sadhl][sadhdc][/sadhdc]

Kiddy Girl-and is the much anticipated sequel to Kiddy Grade. Originally announced in October 2006 (3 years ago this month!) as Kiddy Grade 2, it was to be animated by asread. With the exception of a trailer in 2007, nothing was hear until February 2009 when it was re-announced as Kiddy Girl-and along with it's manga counterpart, Kiddy Girl-and Pure. The not-so-newly-announced anime was now to be animated by Satelight and based on a story by gimik, the creators of Uta~Kata. The manga, which started serialization in March 2009, is drawn by Yukari Higa, creator of Shina Dark.

Kiddy Girl-and takes place 50 years after the original Kiddy Grade and sports two new Heroines, Ascœur (アスクール, Asukūru?)[6] and Q-feuille (ク・フィーユ, Ku Fīyu)...

I'll finish the rest once I finish watching the first episode.

Fansubs
Himatsubushi

Impressions
Wow... what a cop out. I will need to say this: If you have not seen the original Kiddy Grade the beginning of the first episode will not make sense to you. The initial scene of the anime is ONLY there to throw a bone to loyal fans. Except it isn't really a bone, its more like a extremely sharp serrated barbed knife... without a handle... travelling with inertial dampers at 100%...

So then....

And then....
In essence they're trying to turn this into a comedy action... Kiddy Girl-and has all the makings of Uta~Kata except worse. gimik has taken an action anime and bastardized it into an emo-fest. Character expressions as the same as Uta Kata. The main character really reminds me Arika from Mai Otome, she's fucking annoying. Now take all the emo crying helpless girls from both Uta Kata and Stellvia and you have episode 1 of Kiddy Girl. Oh and throw in a dragon too! Just for good measure.

Uta~Kata had a bunch of fanservice, but KGa is taking it way overboard. It's a tit-jiggle fest, and honestly, was that whole panty issue really necessary? It's like they're targeting all the god damned pedophiles in Japan. And that annoying as fuck transvestite head waitress, ugh I fucking hate characters that are like that...

I will inevitably compare this to Kiddy Grade as it is it's successor, and in all honesty, it doesn't live up to it's namesake in the least. The initial action scene was excessively drawn out and involved much of screaming from a heroine full of fail. There was no pretense for the attack unlike KG's initial action scene which, while sudden was actually very easy to follow and elegantly executed (not only by Eclair but by the storyboard team too). The only thing we get to learn about all the characters is that they scream alot...

The only redeeming thing I saw in episode 1 was Q-feuille but she essentially looks like Eclair's daughter... And she looks like she'll be a supporting lead character with Ascoeur as the main lead.

I won't even bother with fansub quality comparison because I'm so pissed.

I want to cry...

Finished Ep 1. I pretty much agree with Lenaxia. Very disappointing.

I'll probably still follow it, if only because I like the KG universe and find the animation style appealing. And who knows, maybe it'll actually pick up.

First episode's trend wasn't all that different from KG's first episode. Both were there to cater to pervailing tastes when it came out (currently it's ditzy harem girls). KG took a LONG time to get going and I expect the same this time around. I think most people who liked KG have a skewed memory of the original. I really liked KG but even I have to admit the first few episodes was nothing but pandering and the show took its sweet time to get going. I expect this one to do the same.

As for the opening sequence
With regards to the comment in the first post about the story, both series were composed by Hidefumi Kimura (same company does not always mean same people who are working on something, as Rare has shown), who also did the script for Utakata. It all began with the anime, and the series (both) have always had multiple people scripting each episode.

Honestly I don't really feel my view of KG is all that skewed. It really wasn't that good of an anime. As you said, it took forever to get started, being completely episodic for pretty much the first half of the series, with no character development. Then in the second half dive straight into some convoluted story that was totally all over the place. It took me watching it three times to actually figure out that they switched bodies.


Think about it from a general perspective: someone who hasn't seen KG, suddenly picks up KGa and is thrown 8 characters with no introduction, no context and two of them, to the best of their knowledge, die. How overwhelming is that?

Now lets take it from our perspective, having seen KG, we are glad to see our old characters come back and we're used to an extremely poorly written plot, I mean KG was like that after all. Yet here we are "killing" off the two main characters as an easy excuse for changing the entire pretense of the anime to try to cater to "what's popular" (ugh, Kobato anyone?).

Kiddy Grade's first episode was very strong, they had a nice but short action scene and introduced the characters, set their roles and the "KG Universe". Given it fell apart afterwards, I don't disagree.

KGa's first episode... there was a lot of screaming... and some boobs jiggling... and a transvestite... and then some more screaming... Did I mention screaming? Fine, have a ditzy main character, but for heaven's sake, don't make the entire cast out of them!

As for who wrote the script, yeah, multiple authors, Hidefumi is doing the manga interpretation, but as far as I've been able to tell, he wasn't writing the anime script.

I was never good at analyzing things much, but I can tell you this was not a good start. If I knew nothing of the first series, I would have yelled "DROP!" by the end of this episode. But I will continue this, hoping that it will improve over time like its predecessor. As for Eclair and Lumiere, I wonder...

Lenaxia said:

Uta~Kata had a bunch of fanservice, but KGa is taking it way overboard. It's a tit-jiggle fest, and honestly, was that whole panty issue really necessary? It's like they're targeting all the god damned pedophiles in Japan. And that annoying as fuck transvestite head waitress, ugh I fucking hate characters that are like that...

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Huh, you know, like Purplemo said Kiddy Grade wasn't all that different... Pretty much the same level of fan service, no real plotline in the first couple of episodes, and afaik the main characters weren't given much of an introduction either in KG.

I liked Kiddy Grade, loved Uta~Kata, and so far I'm enjoying Kiddy Girl-and because it's exactly what I thought it would be. A whacky comedy with pretty girls, decent fanservice, and not much of a story until we get halfway through.

It really feels like I'm the only one who actually enjoyed that episode... seems like this thread might be a quiet one in the next few weeks. >.<

Oh and:

Lenaxia said:

Think about it from a general perspective: someone who hasn't seen KG, suddenly picks up KGa and is thrown 8 characters with no introduction, no context and two of them, to the best of their knowledge, die. How overwhelming is that?

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It's a sequel, why would anyone do that and expect not to get confused?

I just finished watching the first episode and its exactly what i expected. Its a continuation for Kiddy Grade which i loved. The only thing i disliked was the tranie.

In regards as to how KGa is staring out, imo it's starting out in a similar fashion as did KG did. The first episode was good it gave you a basic intro to the new characters and a return of some old faces. i think that this series is going to develop much like its predecessor. I also expect Eclair and Lumiere to make an appearance in some form.

Wtf, since when did tweedledee become so perverted?

It's like Eclair became a 2 year old kid and Lumiere took over Eclair's body.... Q-feuille is the reserved one now and the emotional support...

When Ascoeur yells "Q-feuille, I won't let your scarfice be in vain!" in a high pitched voice... it doesn't really have much effect...

Well anyway, I suppose I can consider this episode somewhat amusing and a decent intro to the characters. Q-feuille is a little more aggressive than I thought they'd make her so hopefully she won't be in the background as much.

Well, this series is so far a great example to how popular tastes in anime have changed in the last 7 years. Still pandering to the predominant favorite genres in the beginning (hopefully like KG only in the beginning), instead of action and hooker costumes we get cute ditzes in hooker costumes . . . well I guess it's not really all that different . . .

I'll still follow given the pedigree says it should stop pandering to the horny boys soon . . . and hey, so far the costumes are less hooker than Lumiere's so that's something.

fucking... eyes.... bleeding.... ARRRGGHHH!!!!!!

Oh the god damned inhumanity of it all!

What the cock was that shit? It was like some horrible collection of horribleness, as if they took all the most random cliched plot devices they could find, threw away ALL of the context and content and made an episode out of it!

"Hey the world is going to end because I got in a car accident! Quick get this card to a she-male an.. OH SQUIRREL!!!"

It's not anything like Kiddy Grade! Atleast they blew shit up in the first few freaking episodes. Even if there wasn't a plot line there were things going BOOM! to distract you!

Fuck, I swear to god its like watching a eplieptic seizure-inducing version of Stellvia all fucking over again except about as interesting as a necrophiliac raping a dead cat.

It's like a fucked up mind rape, I now know how Auska felt

</rant> (atleast until the next episode)

Ep 3 was actually pretty good.

Looks like the dark overtones are starting to come back . . . maybe another few episodes for it to take hold.

It was nice to see them step outside the GTO headquarters for once too. Looks like they are running out of ideas for powers though. Saphir's is okay (but pretty tame) but Rubis' is a joke. At least it's an homage to the old catgirls, not like the little loli catgirls nowadays.

I just can't watch this garbage anymore. I started episode 6, and turned it off a minute or so after the intro had finished. It's just... terrible.

Not to mention, completely misleading. They killed the main characters off from KG in the first what, 2 minutes of the first episode? wtf? Ok, fine, they want an entirely new story. But the first episode is about a character not wearing panties... there's another episode dedicated to stealing pudding from a refrigerator..

Really?

I tried giving it a few eps but.. I just can't. I mean, it took 'em 3 years after an announcement and trailer to come up with this? The characters are bland and annoying, the action isn't the least bit interesting(to aru kagaku no railgain does a MUCH better job in the action department), no established story arc, nothing beyond a couple of character introductions, loads of missing explanations(I mean wtf, it seems like half the focus of the GTO is a damn bake shop).

The art and animation are crap also. There's way too many instances of characters simply not moving unless they absolutely have to with the camera just panning instead(I mean completely motionless except for a mouth moving because they're speaking). There's weird inconsistencies with the body proportions of the characters(especially crappy since it seems more common in the main characters, mostly legs that just aren't shaped right in one scene or bent in some weird direction).

What's crappy, is that I've stopped watching so many other shows after the first 4 or 5 episodes in the past couple of years, because of crap just like this. I dunno wtf is with the general anime trends over in japan, but I'm not liking it one bit.

Someone's pissed lol. Seriously though, where did you get that part:

Prisoner1138 said:

I tried giving it a few eps but.. I just can't. I mean, it took 'em 3 years after an announcement and trailer to come up with this?

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?
Because the Kiddy Grade 2 project died a while ago, and this as nothing to do with it.

Anyhow, episode 7 was pretty good. Definitely the most Kiddy-Grade'esque episode so far. Can't wait to watch episode 8 and see if the trend will go on.

Fireaxe said:

Someone's pissed lol. Seriously though, where did you get that part:

?
Because the Kiddy Grade 2 project died a while ago, and this as nothing to do with it.

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OK, so next time there's a new gundam series lets blow up the gundams 5 minutes into the first episode and make the rest of the series a copy of pretty cure and call it "Gundam And?", yeah... that'll go over well, not.

Are you seriously trying to make excuses for this garbage show?

Prisoner1138 said:

OK, so next time there's a new gundam series lets blow up the gundams 5 minutes into the first episode and make the rest of the series a copy of pretty cure and call it "Gundam And?", yeah... that'll go over well, not.

Are you seriously trying to make excuses for this garbage show?

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whoa, long time no see O_O

Prisoner1138 said:

Are you seriously trying to make excuses for this garbage show?

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^^THIS

seriously Fireaxe sometimes i just don't know about you :P

It's totally ok to be a fan of kiddy grade but just trying to like kiddy girl-and because it's somehow? (who knows) part of the kiddy grade universe is just painful.

I enjoy that railgain comparison. at least railgain doesn't have me face palming after every episode.

chii said:

^^THIS

seriously Fireaxe sometimes i just don't know about you :P

It's totally ok to be a fan of kiddy grade but just trying to like kiddy girl-and because it's somehow? (who knows) part of the kiddy grade universe is just painful.

I enjoy that railgain comparison. at least railgain doesn't have me face palming after every episode.

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Hahaha, well I'm not saying the show's great, and I'm certainly not a big fan of Kiddy Grade. But to me, calling it a garbage show because it's not what you expected it is shortcutting things quite a bit.

Kiddy Girl is based on a manga which is based on Kiddy Grade. You could blame the mangaka, but really, the content of the show is nothing to be surprised of.

see i'm not calling it garbage because it isn't what i expected XD i'd call it garbage no matter what other title it held. it isn't entertaining and is very painful to watch....

although that oiled up sumo wrestler bridge thing in one of the episodes was quite hilarious XD

chii said:

see i'm not calling it garbage because it isn't what i expected XD i'd call it garbage no matter what other title it held. it isn't entertaining and is very painful to watch....

although that oiled up sumo wrestler bridge thing in one of the episodes was quite hilarious XD

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I was referring to Prisoner1138's comment though. I'm starting to get a grasp of your tastes, I knew you wouldn't like it. :P
That being said, that whole episode really cracked me up. To me, the show is fine as long as you don't expect it to be intelligent.