After many hours mindlessly downloading from some promising Bit Torrents over the past week or so, I finally had a chance to sit down an watch a couple. My findings:

Scrapped Princess

Scrapped Princess, as translated by the fine folks at AnimeJunkies is one of the best new anime I’ve seen in quite a while. Brought to us by the same people who made Cowboy Bebop, this show demonstates what a made-for-television animated story can do. It has a dabbling of D&D genre cliches. There are dramatic (and well-excuted) fight scenes with swords, sorcery, and the occasional giant monster. There is a hint of romance. There is a healthy dose of comedy, which instead of overriding the story actually seems to help “ground” the protagonists in their comraderie.

The story follows three characters (each of whom is multidimensional without falling into the “woe is I” angst-trap) as they alternately flee and fight the oppressive forces around them. They are faced with a prophecy which fortells that Pacifica, a naive and goodhearted 15-year-old, will destroy the world. Her adoptive brother and sister protect and guide her on a journey to who-knows-what. As the story oscillates from the tragic to the absurd and back again, they face commoners, soldiers, and priests, almost all of whom simply want to do the right thing and save the world from its fated doom at Pacifica’s hands. Scrapped Princess is exceptionally well-crafted, never lingering upon a mood or specific plot mechanism long enough to become tiresome or heavy-handed. The voice acting suits the characters well (I am not fluent in Japanese, so take that as you will). The animation is outstanding for a television series, which makes me wonder if it was exceptionally well-funded, completely done before they aired the first episode, or if something is horribly wrong with the rest of the television animation industry.

Thus far, only 13 episodes have been released, 12 of which have already made it to the fansub-consuming public in English. So far, it is leaning towards “classic” status for me. Let’s see how far they go, shall we?

Narue no Sekai

Narue no Sekai has proven to be a cute, if not-terribly remarkable romantic comedy. If features a lovable loser and a cute alien high school girl. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. I went through a handful of episodes and skipped over to some other titles. Not bad, but I don’t think I’ll be buying the DVD.

Divergence Eve

Divergence Eve was something I spotted in a recent issue of Newtype, and it looked like a somewhat-promising sci-fi epic. Alas, it’s heavy on the melodrama, melodramatically heavy on the CG spaceships and space opera catchphrases, and morbidly overdone on the boobage. It displays an Amazing Nurse Nanako aptitude for placing gigantic hooters on any female in the story that’s over 12 years old, which would be over 3/4 of the cast. I’ve only seen the first episode, so it may yet improve. The closing credits (a somewhat masturbatory “dress up the female lead” sequence that clashed in mood horribly with the melodrama) were the high point of episode one. In light of what preceded it, the credits were hilarious.