Here's the last first impressions post on this blog for the fall 2009 season, and it's for Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra. I only picked up this anime because the promotional pictures looked nice, and it's an action fantasy which I don't mind watching. Anyways, here is my (very late) first impressions of the show.This guy is really feeling the blues.What sort of CG explosion is that? Thumbs down.Background and short summary of the first episode:Tataku Shisho is set in a world where when people die they become a stone tablet/book that contain all the details of a person's life. These tablets are kept in a "library" island guarded by a group of people with special powers known as the fighting librarians. The fighting librarians are respected by many, but they also have enemies, the most prominent of which is the Shideki church. The church's main plan for world domination is to capture people, stick a bomb in their chests, and brainwash them so that their only purpose in life is kill Harmutz Meseta, the leader of fighting librarians. These human bombs are called "meats".Any projectile can be used to pull off a missile spam if you have enough of it.I never knew that to take a water taxi you have to wait in the water.The first episode features a group of librarians intercepting a ship full of "meats". After defeating the Shideki sorcerers, the librarians try to rescue to remaining "meat" but none of them have the will live and almost all of the "meats" sink into the water when the ship explodes. One of the "meats" somehow gets in touch with a fragment of the book of an infamous witch from the past and that gives him the will to live. The fighting librarians also found fragments of the same book and are looking into the matter as well. The "meat" who lived ends up in a mining town and is reminded of his task to kill Harmutz by one of the church leaders. Meanwhile, Harmutz drinking at a bar and telling his subordinate that she might have found a man who could kill her.We can always use more hot evil witches.I wonder what a drunk librarian would be like.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The above summary is kind of confusing, but that's pretty much what went on in the episode. The story wasn't too hard to follow though; it's just a little incomplete given that it's the first episode, so it's way to early to call. I thought it was kind weird how one of the librarians got blown up by one of the "meats" so unceremoniously. If you are going to kill one of the good guys in the first episode, there should be more significance. Little gripes aside, I think the story has potential though. The show has decent concept with dead people literally turning into the story of their lives, and the plan by the bad guys to assassinate Harmutz is pretty curious, although wouldn't it be easier to train a smaller number of skilled assassins than manufacturing thousands of mindless "meats"? Capturing so many people and implanting them with bombs takes a lot of work. I also wonder why the bad guys, a weird religious cult, is at odds with the librarians. Anyways, I think it's worth it to watch a few more episodes of this show just to see where the story is going.As for the other aspects of Tataku Shisho, several other bloggers have already noted the overuse of low quality CG for some of the background and the big ship. The animation, especially during the action sequences, was pretty good though. Hopefully there'll be enough fighting in this show to distract us from any of the bad CG. The character designs for the show look pretty good and it's the main reason why I decided to watch this show. Harmutz' face looks a little manly, but there's not denying that she has a hot body. Another note on the character is that before watching the show I thought the blond librarian with the red uniform was a guy, but turns out she was a girl lol.Overall, the first episode of Tataku Shisho was decent. There is the bad CGI and the lack of details on the story, but there's enough in the episode to entice me to watch a few more. I won't be blogging this show episodically though since I already have Railgun, FMA, and Queen's Blade on my schedule, and blogging four shows is a little too much given that I'm in school.
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