1/05/09 Show ▼
Hinano: White Album is the shittiest shit that was ever shat out of a butt.
jpmeyer: This anime tried way too hard to feel like the mid-90’s when the game came out.
lelangir: Interesting characters, terribly utilized music, and a confusing exposition.
ferolare: Given my (nature) prejudice for those idol-esque series, I have nothing to say about the episode. To me, it’s just the normal, formal introductory phase.
Omni: My point is that so far the story is intriguing enough, though I hope the pace picks up a little as the series moves forward. …Anyway, this episode was decent, but not incredibly impressive, and as usual, I’ll need to see a few more episodes before I can commit to following it.
Aroduc: Good lord, was it boring. Absolutely nothing happened for the first 15 minutes, and then they crammed some cliche idol on idol hazing into the last 3 minutes or so, but presented and resolved in basically a single breath. …The really notable thing here was the music. Holy hell it was possibly the bizarre collection I’ve ever heard. …Overall, this went nowhere very very slowly.
Impz: it did show that there are a few interesting quirks that makes for refreshing takes on this popular melodrama genre, but I doubt that it will move far from the conventional plot. …[T]he BIGGEST PROBLEM, is that none of the female characters contain any tangible appeal at all, [they're all very similar].
Koji Oe: Horrible pacing. Characters brought in left and right without any formal introduction, names thrown around here and there. …[T]he characters are a little meh so I don’t know. …If you like this you like shit
What Aroduc said – music was whack. I guess that’s [typical?] Hinano RAEG for us, but I don’t blame anyone for hating this. I thought it was ok…but unless there’s massive dorama later it’s in the drop pile for sure.
01/06/08 Show ▼
pKjd: The first episode started off slow but…I feel it did okay in first presenting the story’s set of characters to the viewer.
Minnie: …[T]his episode was a pretty slow, almost boring start. …Most of all, they throw out a lot of foreshadowing and slice of life elements that I simply adore.
Tales: A lot of emotion was in this episode. I didn’t think that this would be such a serious series right off the bat. It was also nice seeing a lot of different side characters introduced in just one episode. …The thing I didn’t like was that Touya was basically a lazy bum. …I understand it’s just the first episode, but I’m still tired of seeing lazy bum character meets pretty girl.
Hanners: …[W]e’ve also been rather hurriedly introduced to a number of other characters. …[A]lthough White Album hasn’t really stood out for me here as a wonderfully animated or characterised series in this opener, its premise has quite a lot of promise.
roast-beefy-weefs: Ok, on to White Album, which had a pretty good first episode. As I’ve heard mentioned by a few other people, the male lead is rather flat at the moment, but so is every other romance anime male lead in recent memory. …I had no expectations (good or bad) for this first episode, so I came away relatively satisfied, though I don’t think you’ll hear much more about it from me.
avisch: Texhnolyze (ie. very depressing anime) + Kanon (the galge factor) + Hantsuki (real life aspect) = White Album. …The show already breaks your mind by throwing a dream sequence at you coupled with odd sound effects. The protagonist doesn’t do much. Infact he can’t even say a few words to his female friend for the first half of the episode. …So yeah that’s White Album a very depressing show with a no-animation opening.
psgels: I was convinced that this show has easily the best first episode of the new season so far. This show isn’t as much a romantic comedy, but rather as how you deal with being away from your girlfriend. What I especially liked was, however, the male lead: he has a personality, he works part time at a local cafe: the guy actually has a life!
1/07/08
warrior hope: It wasn’t extremely good or extremely bad. It seems cute though, so far most of the characters are like able, and the voice acting is good. It reminds me a lot of Itazura Na Kiss in terms of the complete feeling of the series, though their plots are nothing alike.
FuyuMaiden: I was actually kind of happy that everyone called it crap (because it means I get to blog it with less competition, hahaha). Of course, I tend to think everyone thinks it’s just crap because it’s boring. …A love triangle, no matter what, will cause rage of some sort at some point in time. I enjoy being enraged for some reason. It somehow puts me in a better mood. …This anime seems to be purposely taking itself seriously, therefore I am going to have to watch it so I can purposely not.
Ascaloth: …[T]he first episode of White Album was intriguing enough that I’m going to give this the three-episode trial run. …[Touya is] average. …I liked the vibes of nostalgic artsyness that the episode was full of, although it also seems as if this general vibe has a definite possibility of crossing the line into pretentiousness.
ID SOJOURNER: I am impressed! The setting stirs my interest. My curiosity for the characters has been incited.
jp: The images and animation is very crisp and pretty at 720p, the music is polished without being too exuberant. Great first impression. …The characters seem real and deep. …The best thing about it is how old the characters are, they all seem to be university students so we’ll hopefully be dealing with a mature story with quality drama that won’t fall into the idiosyncrasies of teenage ecchi dorama.
schneider: Well, the mixed bag of first impressions for White Album has certainly surprised me. But I can definitely say that I like the show. I like the text monologues, the ostentatious 80’s sensibilities, the character designs, and the seiyuu. I can bear with the bad music that stands out in the worst way possible. The only thing that I truly don’t like about the show right now is Touya, because he’s such a slob at life.