I just received a shipment from RACS consisting of the BD versions of AsoIku and Infinite Stratos. I actually already have AsoIku on BD, because I bought the Japanese BDs for the whole series, including the OVA. So I'll look at that one later.

But I thought I'd try watching Infinite Stratos again, just to see if my attitude towards it might have changed since I watched it the first time.

But after two episodes, my opinion remains the same: the battles are really cool and well handled, but the characters are all one dimensional, if not even less dimensional than that. Chifuyu is still a bitch, who badly needs to get the crap kicked out of her. If Houki could get an IS which was powered by angst, she'd never run out of juice. (In fact, she might overload the damned thing.)

Ichika is about as reasonable a protagonist as I could reasonably ask for in a harem show, at least. He's a nice guy, and he's trying pretty hard, and he isn't a lech. He's got guts. He doesn't have a lot of brains, though, which is a pity.

But as a character -- well, he isn't one. He's a situation. He's completely determined by the situation he's in. His shape is determined by the plot hole he sits in.

I vaguely remember that things get better once Charlotte shows up. I don't honestly remember how long that takes. Sure hope it's soon. In the mean time, I recall hating Cecilia the most, and as of the second episode I still do.

Well, not the most. I hate Chifuyu the most. Cecilia comes in second.

My memory was that the high point of the series was the battle where Ichika and Charlotte as a team took on Houki and Laura. The biggest pleasure was the way Charlotte and Ichika cooperated so well, and were able to leverage their abilities in order to defeat IS's more advanced than their own. Or Charles? maybe that was when Charlotte was still in drag.

But that was only about half way through the series. Then things picked up again, a bit anyway, once Tabane showed up.

I bought this North American BD release for guilt, but I really feel as if I should use them, having paid for them, and that's part of why I'm watching it.

On another note: I really wish they would fix one thing in MPC-64. That's become my regular player program, but for these I have to use Zoom Player.

Neither of them understands the BD's menu format, but that's not really very important. All the episodes are separate files, and it's obvious which ones they are. I can drag-and-drop them individually into the player program. The problem is that they have both English and Japanese sound tracks, and MPC only sees the English one.

Zoom Player sees them both, so I can switch to Japanese. so that's why I have to use it. Which screws me up, because the keyboard shortcuts are all different.

UPDATE: Oh, there was another thing. The internal drive on my computer won't register the first BD of Infinite Stratos. I had to use the external drive to play it. (I've had this happen before. The Plextor USB drive is a lot more forgiving than the internal drive on my notebook computer.)

UPDATE: Ubu got the same thing I did, only he wanted to watch the DVD rather than the BD. And he says the DVD is 4:3. (I haven't looked at it, but I will later.)

UPDATE: Ubu has now posted a review.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 01:33 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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