Drifters

Episode 3:

I was pretty bored with the episode.
It threw a bunch of characters and action at me, but neither had much time to leave an impact. The action isn't particularly impressive looking and since I don't know or care about these characters I'm seeing for the first time I'm just bored watching the fighting. The plot is simple stuff, but I still need more context to care about what is going on. I wouldn't mind the lack of explanation so much if the action had provided some flash and eye candy, but I got shitty looking CG dragons instead.

As for all the characters other than Hannibal and Skipio no one left much of an impression because they didn't get enough screen time. It seems like the Drifters fighting for the Ends have super power associated with how they died, like Seras of Arc's fire powers. It seems quite unfair to give one side superpowers, but I guess they'll have their drawback as well.

Also, what was the deal with Hannibal pissing himself? It wasn't particularly funny and I don't remember reading anything about him being incontinent.

I hope it gets better.
 
ZetsubouKaiji said:
Episode 3:

I was pretty bored with the episode.
It threw a bunch of characters and action at me, but neither had much time to leave an impact. The action isn't particularly impressive looking and since I don't know or care about these characters I'm seeing for the first time I'm just bored watching the fighting. The plot is simple stuff, but I still need more context to care about what is going on. I wouldn't mind the lack of explanation so much if the action had provided some flash and eye candy, but I got shitty looking CG dragons instead.

As for all the characters other than Hannibal and Skipio no one left much of an impression because they didn't get enough screen time. It seems like the Drifters fighting for the Ends have super power associated with how they died, like Seras of Arc's fire powers. It seems quite unfair to give one side superpowers, but I guess they'll have their drawback as well.

Also, what was the deal with Hannibal pissing himself? It wasn't particularly funny and I don't remember reading anything about him being incontinent.

I hope it gets better.
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I get your gripes, but I think this ep was more about establishing a bit of backstory to make you care about the fights that come afterwards so I'm not too pessimistic yet
 
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thor123 said:
I get you're gripes, but I think this ep was more about establishing a bit of backstory to make you care about the fights that come afterwards so I'm not too pessimistic yet
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I still think this has a lot of potential, so I'm not really pessimistic yet either. It's just as an episode this one was lacking in engaging elements. It might have served a purpose as a bridge to cool stuff later, but that doesn't make it more engaging. It could have been done better.
 
Those CGI dragons.....

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I'm more bothered by the idea that Joan of Arc and that other person has "magic" powers. Either everyone has powers or they don't and as of now, majority of them don't. Or it is to be revealed at a later episode. If so, they're doing an ass of a job convincing me that they could. I'm even okay with the concept that the entire premise is about 2 all powered "beings" having a hissy fight by gathering historical figures to fight for them. And really, a pilot?
 
Episode 3
Now, is it just the Ends that get supernatural powers? Hijikata summons Shinsengumi phantoms to kill people, Joan of Arc decided that if she burned, everyone burns, and Anastasia brings the Siberian snows. Also, I think I saw Rasputin standing behind Anastasia and Gilles standing behind Joan, but I could be wrong. Maybe that's why they had powers? That, or the Black King is giving them power?

Either way, I'm liking the new Drifters/Ends, but I would love to see more of the Japanese trio making fun of each other
 
Episode 5

I didn't expect it to get that dark at the end and it left a sour taste in my mouth. That aside it was a nice action-packed episode, and for once the comedy wasn't as bad as last week's episode (it still was shitty though (pun intended))
 
Nicknames said:
Episode 5

I didn't expect it to get that dark at the end and it left a sour taste in my mouth.
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Yeah, that rape stuff was completely unnecessary even if it's not exactly unexpected given the situation.

I was also pretty annoyed by that one soldier who went "clean out the shit with water or you'll get tetanus"... I mean, even without the shit those wounds would probably get infected - although that's something authors prefer to forget because dying from infection takes too long and doesn't sound cool.

Apart from that, the action was nice and less comedy is always a good thing in this series
 
5:

These tactics are the type of dirty shit (lol) you'd expect from Vietcong fighters. Nasty, but shit is a a cheap and easily produced resource so why not?

The ending was basically the set-up for every Medieval themed Elf doujin I've ever seen so it's kinda hard to be shocked. And why wouldn't these conquesting assholes not be raping the female elves?
 
I like this show a lot. Its basicly the anime version of The Expendables. Badass old action heroes kicking the shit out of everybody else.
And like Hellsing Ultimate with lots of violence and a bunch of interesting/semi-evil chars. But it has a slightly better story with the rebelling slaved demi-humans. Altough it isnt hard to have a better story as Ultimate. ;p

But Im easy to please with mindless action. Im also a big fan of the old 80's action heroes, Ive seen about every movie Arnold Schwarzenegger made.

I do wonder who the King is, since the face is hidden it is somebody known as well?
 
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Episode 6:

Hitler has some huge eyes in his portrait. He's lookin' pretty moe.
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This episode was filled with bad humor to drag down the pacing. Even throwing Sugita into the mix didn't improve the humor. I'll never not be happy to hear Sugita, though and it looks like he'll have a bigger role to play. At least he seems to be having a bit of fun hamming it up even if the material is eye rolling.

This show is really failing to connect with me. Like Gedata said the elf stuff is extremely generic. I had to roll my eyes when one of the elves had to make a crack about hating dwarves because of course they do.

There hasn't been enough movement on the conflict between the Ends and the Drifters for me to really care about that either. Hopefully with the Ends coming to attack next episode we'll find out more about that.

But seriously Nazis again? This is looking more and more like Hellsing all over again, but with more crappy humor and less fun characters. I enjoyed the hell out of Hellsing Ultimate, but that doesn't mean I want to see the same damn thing over again. Once again it's a group of overpowered anti-heroes fighting villains so despicable that anything possibly interesting about having anti-hero leads is lost in the shuffle. There's never any grey area where I don't think I shouldn't be rooting for Nobunaga and company when the villains are rapist Nazis. I don't even feel bad when horrible shit happens to them because as someone once pointed out the reason Nazis are used so often in video games is because you can kill as many of them as horribly as you want and never feel guilty because they're fuckin' Nazis.

I'm not digging this. It's not horrible or anything, but it just doesn't have the same manic charisma as Hellsing and the humor here absolutely sucks.
 
They must had painted him when he was doing some sort of dry humor, like the rest of these schmucks.
 
Episode 7 had better be a LOT better or I'll actually end up dropping this :/ Probably disappointment of the season (or even of the year) so far for me. I liked the OVA, but the stuff that happens afterwards is just boring...
 
Episode 7:

This was more along the lines of what I was expecting from this show. Crazy balls out action with over the top characters. There wasn't any dumb humor this episode and it didn't spend the time going over really uninteresting generic plot stuff.
I do wish Joan and Giles had a bit more screen time before getting their backstories crammed into a few minutes before they were defeated. I guess Joan will be back since I doubt that headbutt killed her.

This episode was an improvement so hopefully it can build momentum from here.
 
Episodes 1 - 7
I get a really strong deja vu when I watch this series, partly because it seems to be the bloodier, head choppy graphic show of a little bit tamer/comic relief inspired Sengoku Basara series. Anyone else get that at all? I'll keep watching it, but the pace is a bit uneven at times, but that's not a big deal I suppose if it gets itself righted in the next few episodes.
 
Ep 8
wow, we finally get some historical jokes that western folks can actually understand?

not much to say about this ep... it's mostly more set-up for later
 
Ep 9
an ok episode again
Some fighting, some below mediocre jokes, some more fighting, suddenly a feast in the middle of a raid, and then lord-kun gets beheaded because he doesn't know how feudal Japan works.

Also, End Jesus likes farming, but makes the piggies do all the work...
 
Episode 10
Man, Jesus' power is freakish and interesting :o And the effect on that dragon... yum :3

We're also finally getting somewhere with the Dwarves and it seems like they'll skip a few steps in fighting the empire XD
 
quadruple post ftw I guess?

11
This was actually a pretty cool episode :o
And I totally love how they added the "Sacred band of Thebes" :laugh: It fits St. Germi's character so perfectly

If the finale delivers I might raise my score from 6 to 7.
 
Episode 12:

I liked this episode quite a bit. Toyo's battle with Hijikata was pretty great and it helped show how the responsibility between the drifters is divided. I was also amused by Hannibal essentially explaining his strategy at the battle of Cannae in the silliest way possible.

The Black King should have just promised Hijikata a whole pile of mayonnaise if he wanted him to withdrawn quickly.

This set the stage for the next season pretty well, but of course who knows when that's coming since there isn't a lot more manga for them to cover at the moment and being a monthly manga it's going to take time for it to build up more material.

I think this show did itself a major disservice by cutting the OVA in half and making it the first two episodes. The OVA flowed better as a whole and provided a good introduction into what the appeal of Drifters is. Splitting it in half left the first episode feel pretty underwhelming with all the cool stuff going in the second episode. With two episodes wasted showing the same thing as the OVA it crippled the early pacing of the series so it took forever to get to any of the really good stuff.

There's more story to Drifters than there was to Hellsing, but that's not necessarily a good thing, because story is not this kind of show's strong suit. The fantasy land here is pretty bland and the story is a lot of tired fantasy cliches.

The good parts are the over the top characters and crazy action. When the show got to that stuff it became much more entertaining.

The artstyle is cool, but Hood's animation was pretty meh.

Overall, I found this to be a mixed bag, but the good stuff was enough to leave me wanting to see a second season, which will probably be a lot more consistently entertaining now that the set up is out of the way. 6 out of 10
 
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