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- TERRA FORMARS *** TRIBE COOL CREW *** KAREN SENKI
OK… that cliffhanger had a sharp enough twist to make up for
a lot of things.
For the past few years, there’s been a consistent axiom floating
around in animated TV development circles, urging would-be show-runners to
avoid ‘halls and malls’ when crafting boys action shows. The idea is that kids
want to see young heroes on screen whom they can identify with, but they don’t want to see them in
settings that are too familiar to the realities of middle school life. Ergo,
the people creating these shows try to avoid using schools and shopping centers
as locations. ‘Halls and malls.’
Since ‘shonen’ is basically ‘boys action’ in other language,
I’d love it if somebody passed notes like that across the Pacific, because I’m seriously
tired of seeing anime pilots largely set in high school class rooms. Seriously.
There’s always a scene where the new kid’s trying to fit in, and there’s always
a scene of him butting heads with bullies, and… you can fill in the rest.
This show mixes it up a
little by adding this dimension of the new kid being a terrible threat to
the bullies. There’s a touch of self-awareness about the whole
call-and-response, with a bit of black humor hanging over it, as these tough guys
tragically fulfill their roles with a hilarious ignorance about the danger they’re
provoking. I also dug how the show opens with an exciting, in media res flashforward before it makes us sit through the future
world info dump, but the excitement quickly deflated once we got out of the
theme song and into the class room.
The aforementioned twist about the new kid’s identify
recasts the whole plot, turning a lot of these clichés on their head. However,
there’s no getting around how 7/8ths of this pilot still requires you to sit
through those clichés.
Watch this pilot episode and decide for yourself.
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