Epic fail
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
Drifters is the type of show that
banks on a really interesting premise, but has absolutely nothing to show for
it when push comes to shove. This is honestly one of the worst pilots I’ve seen
from an anime in a very long time.
Nearly everything about the show is
beyond terrible: the characters, the dialogue, the animation, the voice acting,
the sound design, the music, all of it is god awful.
The plot is that a samurai from 17th
century Japan who, after being fatally wounded, has been transported to a
fantasy world. There, he meets two other warlords displaced from time. They
proceed to communicate through extremely cheesy and over the top reaction
images, but the dialogue is so painful that you barely pick up on what they’re
saying.
It doesn’t help that all the
characters are one dimensional tarts with no personality whatsoever. Main
character is the hyperactive warrior always looking to start a fight, and the
other two fall into the tropes of wise old master and badass female. Nothing
about their design, voices, or traits are interesting, and you forget about
them mere seconds after the episode ends.
That is nothing to say of the dreadful
voice acting. It feels like it was meant to be intentionally bad, like
something out of Inferno Cop. The characters jump from over the top screaming
to grumbling at the drop of a hat repeatedly, but it doesn’t help when you’re
supposed to deliver such excellent lines as “My head won’t be yours…your head will be mine!” Ugh.
Speaking of Inferno Cop, all the
characters look like they walked straight out of that show. Now while this
design worked there (given that Inferno Cop is an intentionally stupid comedy
show), here in this samurai fantasy setting it just looks silly. All the expressions
and movement look unnatural, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be seeing that lobby guy
in my nightmares. The backgrounds, on the other hand, don’t look too bad.
Nothing special, just better than everything else here.
The absolute worst part of the episode (and that’s saying something!) is the
overall sound design. The music they choose somehow accomplishes the feat of
never fitting the scene it’s scoring. We had jazz during a fight scene, weird
Polynesian style music while the drifters were talking, and even some metal in
the 17th century scenes. It always feels out of place, and it will
always distract you. The sound effects don’t fare much better. Some scenes are
eerily quiet, missing crucial sounds, and others it just feels like they picked
the wrong ones. I never thought I’d see a cartoon “boi-oing!” sound effect
matched up with images of men running through a burning building, but Drifters
delivered on that!
This was honestly one of the most
painful anime episodes I’ve ever had to sit through, and that’s coming from
someone who watched the entirety of Comet Lucifer. I don’t know if this was a
fluke, but frankly I doubt I’ll be back next week to find out. As it stands
right now, stay far, far away from Drifters.
FINAL SCORE
1/10
Garbage
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