Somali and the Forest Spirit

Satelight is not my favourite studio ever but god fucking damn, I checked out the artwork of the manga for this and it actually looks really gorgeous to me, like scenery pron:
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Interesting looking traditional fantasy is continuing to make a splash AGAIN and I'll take this over typical isekai bullshit any day of the week. All my FUCK YES to this, I am so in.

Ikuko Itoh is also involved as series compositor and he hasn't had a major anime role since his creation of Princess Tutu.
 
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Sigh...

Goddammit.

I hate children.

Even besides the fact that somali is annoying, this show really sucks ass at world-building so far. There's not bothering at all, which The Witcher does, and then there's this shit where we get it all through dumb exposition dumps from these cheesy-looking animal creatures.

This is super disappointing. And beyond all that, the art looks super cheap too. IDK what I expected from statelight. The environments are alright, I like the pastel aesthetic, but the character art is kind of meh.
 
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I'm so happy this amazing manga is finally being animated! The world only gets more interesting as they travel from place to place. I do worry that the gorgeous "scenery porn" the manga is known for will not be well drawn for the anime since all that detail takes a lot of time to draw and studios are known to simplify backgrounds and designs to save time and money.
 
I'll jump on the Somali-is-so-cute bandwagon, and why not - Somali is freakin' ADORABLE! She has a lot of similarities to Latina.

First episode was well done. Great artwork, beautiful OP/ED, and solid voice acting. I'm hooked.
 
Episode 1:
Very charming. The world building got to a good start, except for the super clumsy exposition dump in the bar that made my eyes roll back a bit. But there are a lot of little details to be found that don't get spelled out.

Somali is a lovable little shit, totally adorable. The golem is smart and doesn't take shit, he feels at home in that world. The dynamic and relationship between them is great, it feels intimate, like they actually know each other for quite some time now, but there is still a lot of room for them to grow together. They captured a child's behavior and spirit well with Somali, while the golem is a good counterbalance to it. He's stoic, but unlike most stoic characters in anime he's not socially awkward or fails at life, he's street-smart and knows his way around.

The weakpoint is the story itself, it got to quite a heavy-handed start. Humans versus nature and so on in a very hamfisted way, but luckily they put the emphasis on the worlduilding and character interaction which ends up a lot better.
 
Yeah, Somali is super cute. For some reason though I think she's the kind of child that's a lot cuter when she's SLEEPING, rather than when in a talkative mood. But again, I don't like kids to begin with. Especially in anime when they make them overly cutesy like this, because cutesy usually just means annoying in anime.

This show isn't that bad I just don't think I'm the target audience, I guess.

Reminds me of that babysitter show.
 
I love the art style of this show. The various species, the bit of story blurb about how the humans disappeared (of which from the inhumans version, totally sounds something from our actual history) and the interactions between the golem and the human child. I am pleasantly surprised by this first episode and hope the next few keep this pacing and style.
 
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