In glorious 3D!
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Whenever I’m picking anime to watch at
the start of a new season, all I do is read the descriptions and watch
whichever ones seem to appeal to me the most. Alice to Zorokou seemed interesting enough, so I decided to check
it out. How did the first episode fare?
Interestingly, Alice’s first episode is a double-length feature, coming in at 44
minutes total. The showrunners use the extra time wisely, spending it setting
up the two titular leads instead of filling it with pointless fluff. Basically
the whole thing is spent building the relationship between young magical girl Alice
(or Sana, I think she’s called) and gruff old man Zorokou.
As the episode is spent mostly on
developing the leads, we haven’t seen much of the main plot just yet. Unfortunately,
from first glance it looks pretty cheap and uninspired. It’s your typical “main
character on the run from an evil organization” anime we’ve seen in stuff like Flip Flappers before (and my opinion on
that anime is…controversial, to say the least). This time they seem to be
putting an Alice in Wonderland twist
on the genre, but the tent poles remain. The evil organization has employed
characters with similar powers to our main heroine’s, and they’re on a mission
to hunt her down and destroy her before she leaks their secrets. It’s pretty
yawn-worthy to be seeing this again, and I really hope that they put a unique
spin on it later on.
But at the expense of the storyline
comes some great chemistry between Sana and Zorokou. Zorokou himself is the
best part of the episode, with his grumpy attitude acting as a fun addition to
the cliché plot. I loved that he was able to call out the magical girl and even
the villains on their crap, showing them how dangerous they can be. It’s a
great twist on the typical “guy meets a mysterious girl” anime trope storyline.
Even better, Sana and Zorokou play off
each other very well. Their contrasting personalities create a fantastic
dynamic, reminding me a lot of Tsumugi and her father from Sweetness and Lightning. They have a lot of sweet moments together,
and I was very invested in their relationship by the end of the episode. It
does seem like they’re going to go the typical route of “grump gets a kid in
his life, befriends them, but then things go wrong and they separate before
rejoining each other in the end”, which is a shame. But I’m always open to
surprises, and if Alice to Zorokou can
give me one or two I’d be more than happy.
As for the animation, it’s…concerning.
First things first, the backgrounds are perfectly fine. They’re very colourful
and pretty to look at. No problems here.
Everything else on the other hand is definitely
struggling. The character animations often look jagged and stiff, with the
linework on them occasionally becoming far too pronounced. They use the far
distance renders of the characters way too often as well, making Zorokou often
look way less detailed than he should. This also leads to a sizing issue where
characters occasionally seem to grow and shrink depending on their perspective.
The biggest problem, though, is the
overuse of CGI. I’m a firm believer that hand-drawn animation and CG animation
very rarely work well in tandem, and Alice
is a clear example of what can happen when mixing the two goes wrong. All
the cars are rendered in CGI, and they look like they belong in an entirely
different universe than the characters. It’s like seeing a car from a PS1 kart
racer suddenly zoom into the anime. This wouldn’t be a problem if the CGI
looked good, but it doesn’t. It’s very sloppily rendered and extremely lacking
in overall detail. I’d sooner believe these cars were sized up versions of Hot
Wheels than an actual working vehicle. There’s even a scene where the leads are
in a stopped car…but the view outside is still moving as if they were driving.
The CGI overall is just plain embarrassing to look at, and the show would
frankly benefit without it.
Despite these criticisms, this isn’t a
bad start for Alice to Zorokou. I
liked that the writers used the extra time they were given to get a head start
on building the relationship between Sana and Zorokou instead of spoon-feeding
us the same plot we’ve seen a thousand times before. And because of that, the
relationship was very sweet and believable by the end of the episode. It made
me excited to spend more time with these characters. Despite the seemingly clichéd
plot and ugly animation, this is definitely a new anime to keep an eye on this season.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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