Kūchū Buranko (Trapeze) | First Impressions

 An example of some of the rotoscoping this series uses.

Without a doubt, if anything else this series will definitely be by and far the most visually impressive series out this season, if not the most in a real long while.  Much like he did with Mononoke, Kenji Nakamura delivers his brilliantly unique directing style with such mastery, and also like with Mononoke, the animation style of this series really is quite literally unlike anything you've ever seen.  Granted a lot of it is quite obviously rotoscoped (that is, taking live action shots and animating them up within an animated world), which let's be honest, isn't something that hasn't been done before, but that doesn't make it any less amazing to watch.  But along with some of the impressive rotoscoping that is utilized, I'm more impressed with just the sheer amount of innovativeness of the art style, which can always be expected from the same people that did Mononoke.  I think for me the most impressive thing to look at were the paper cut-out visions of all the background people.  Simply put, this series from the previews looked very, very impressively trippy and odd yet highly innovative, and visually, I must say it definitely delivered in that area.

I won't go as far quite yet as to toss it aside as yet another astonishing visual masterpiece that fails in all other areas though, seeing as how this is just the first episode.  And quite frankly, with series like this we usually stand a bit confused after just one episode anyways.  Honestly though, even then it was far from failing.  Just not quite as interesting as I was thinking it would be based off of the previews is all.  But like I say, this is just the first episode and I'm sure there are plenty more aspects of the basic premise and main idea as well as the actual storyline that are yet to be explored more deeply.  It does set up a pretty fairly interesting concept with this with this Irabu Ichirou's different personas and how he uses them to treat his patients psychologically.  Based on what I can tell from the next episode preview, it almost seems like it'll be exploring all of the different people involved with the circus' trapeze show, with Irabu Ichirou helping them out with their different psychological issues.  But I'm probably way off on that, who knows.

Once again though, I have to say I really enjoyed the BGM of this series.  Mostly just a bunch of upbeat techno, but really catchy and awesome sounding ones at that.  Both the OP and the ED I was very, very impressed with.  Here are examples of both:




I must say, I'm really looking forward to seeing how much more this series is capable of.  It already looks promising enough, even if not as much as I was hoping it would.  But I'm sure the best is yet to come.