I think the opening sequence would've worked well as the series's ending sequence, but the noir-and-blood imagery is an odd choice for an opening representation of a story with this much comedy-romance.Botan wrote:PS. That black-white-red OP (as ED in first episode) is so darn good.
KLSymph's review of the Rakudai Kishi anime (episode 2)
Well, the character art is already starting its descent.
Never change, anime industry!
The second episode didn't cut out the heart of its most central scene like the first one did, which is good. My main complaint this time is that the series flattens interesting contrast in various places. For example, the introduction of Oreki illustrates this. In the novel, Oreki's introduction shows her as acting excessively high-spirited and healthy, up until the moment she coughs a ton of blood to reveal her sickness and frailty. The spirit of this transition lies in the contrast between her initial impression (accompanied by confetti fireworks and everything) and the graphic reversal of expectation (accompanied by blood flying). The anime flattens this contrast by giving Oreki away as unhealthy both visually with dark bags under her eyes and audibly with a very low-energy vocal delivery (though the actual words are still high-spirited), so when Oreki spits out a fountain of dark and dead-looking rather than vibrant red blood, the effect is much weaker than I expected. The rest of the class didn't respond as strongly as in the novel either. This flattening is very unfortunate, because I think Oreki's voicework and appearance are quite interesting and I would've accepted them easily if only the episode had started using them after the initial joke was made, under the excuse that she hid those expressions of her ill health for the sake of the new students, which is of course exactly what the novel said she did.
Sigh.
Shizuku's introduction scene also suffered from this kind of flattening of contrasts. For starters the two main points of context for her introduction in the novel were excised from the anime: we don't have Ikki's reminiscence on Shizuku from their childhood, and we don't have Ikki's fight with his male classmates right before Shizuku's entrance--and just as importantly for this particular issue, we don't have Ikki's girl classmates fangirling over him. This deprives Shizuku's introduction of two vital points of contrast that the audience was primed with in the novel: we don't know how Shizuku acted toward Ikki as a child (because that is very different from how Shizuku will act toward him now), and we don't know how average people act toward Ikki at the moment (because that is also very different from how Shizuku will act toward him now). It's a subtle effect, but this makes the kiss less personal for both parties, turning it into generic surprise incest instead of generic surprise incest but also wow your classmates respect you for the first time and there are suddenly a lot of girls who want to get to know you and oh god now you just got kissed and also your sister completely inverted her personality! Cliche is cliche, but the difference between cliche that's just cliche and cliche designed for a specific situation can be that tiny, and Shizuku's intro is worse for it.
It's also worse for a few other reasons. Like with Oreki, there just is not as much other people reacting to what's going on. In the novel, these sub-minor classmate characters still spoke and acted, yelling out support and such as faceless nameless individuals (not even counting Manabe and his friends starting a fight). The people in the anime's hallway are entirely paper cutouts spouting murmurs at best except for one specific line in unison. Kagami can't carry everyone else's responses in this fashion, not when she has to represent herself as a unique minor character (though otherwise I'm happy that her introduction is exactly what I hoped it would be). This lack of a more involved background gallery, and the stronger retorts they gave in the novel, detracts from the contrast with Shizuku's abnormal actions. Going beyond the contrast problem, Shizuku's demeanor just has weaker impact. The anime uses generic yandere audiovisual cues like the patch-of-shadow and a sharp sound effect on revealing her expression, but they are all obviously comedic in nature. And the comedic sound effects are pretty decent for the comedic bits, like the misunderstanding over Ikki telling Stella to sleep with him. But I wish that the anime could've taken just a moment away from comedy, dropped all the sound effects and music into dead silence to show Shizuku's reaction to that misunderstanding as legitimately scary as Ikki thought it was in the novel.
Oh well.
The most important scene in this episode (though not for the novel chapter) is probably the scene where Ikki tells Stella about his past that was missing in the previous episode. My only problem with this scene is that Ryouma's delivery of that inspiring speech about Ikki not giving up on himself was vocally delivered in a very uninspired way. In the novel, all that was described about Ryouma's demeanor was that he gave those words with the smile of a young man. This isn't reflected in the episode at all; Ryouma just said it in an old man voice in an old man tone, making the very important scene just not very interesting to me (and like the bed scene in the previous episode, I spent quite a bit of time polishing this speech in the novel to sound more appropriately dramatic, so it kind of irks me). Beyond that, I found the scene competently handled. The music was nice, and having the explanation happen against a backdrop of the setting sun is certainly better than having it happen in the dorm room.
Though I demand someone explain to me: if Ikki knew nobody cared about him and he wasn't going to attend the family's New Year's party, why was he dressed in a suit jacket and bow tie?
I don't mind how this exposition was relocated, but I wish the anime made an effort to rewrite the story around that change. Much of Stella's actions make less sense when she received the explanation later. For example, there is no reason for her to announce that she's Ikki's slave in order to answer Shizuku's question about why she's related enough to Ikki to get in between the siblings, since Stella's relationship with Ikki seems much weaker without her knowing his circumstances. In addition, the anime uses Shizuku's indignation to kick off the topic, which I'm... not exactly disapproving of, but it feels slightly off, because now Shizuku is shown to be hot-headed in a way that contradicts her previous presentation as cold in her way of losing her temper. Less forgivably, the anime also uses the incident as a way to throw Arisuin's first impression straight into the trashcan. The anime presents Arisuin in a way that ignores major aspects of his character: the introductory gender joke is annihilated, of course, and so is the idea that Shizuku is highly misanthropic and wouldn't talk about herself with others, and Arisuin somehow managed to get her to open up with sympathy. Now the presented course of events is that Shizuku started talking on her own out of anger and Arisuin just kind of went along with it. Both character traits, gone. Not what I was hoping for.
I darkly suspect the anime will still try to play Arisuin's gender mystery joke straight. If so, they'd better be very clever about it.
Lastly, the bathtub scene was fanservice. It was fanservice in the novel, and it's fanservice here. The reason is different (one-upsmanship on Shizuku versus... I don't know, pity toward Ikki's family situation?) but it doesn't matter much here, because the scene was unabashed cheesecake. It was competent. I didn't find it especially arousing, but the funny parts were funny. I wouldn't have ended on Ikki getting slapped, personally, but it's consistent. Stella is already established as a slapper in the anime. That ship has sailed.
