Qualidea Code Dropped:

Episode four was boring throughout.  It fought a weak opponent while everyone fighting didn't look the least pressured or afraid -- a situation so routine that it obviously wasn't even worth narrating, which is just a waste of viewer's time.  It used this dull routine to lull us into a false sense of security, then suddenly out of nowhere obliterated one of the main characters.  Is that supposed to impress us?  You create a world where people fight without fear because everything is so routine and easy, and then kill someone before anyone can do anything about it, thus completely changing the setting of the world and throwing out the entire previous narrative structure like a limp dishrag.

What was the purpose of the first four episodes of this series then?  It told us the world was one way, when it fact it was a completely different way.  Then why even have those four episodes?  Why not start the series with this girl dying and introduce us to the changed world?  That would have made sense, but telling two completely different stories -- one where people are safe, another where they die without any foreshadowing or warning -- is not suitable within a single franchise.  It's like a story about walking the dog, "Milo and Me," or some feel good stuff like that, and then on page thirty space aliens invade and the first thing they do is blast Milo's head off.  Is that supposed to be good writing simply because the viewer didn't see it coming?  No, it's bad writing, because there is no connection between the elements.  It's just trolling the audience.

It's amazing how many bad series are being given wonderful looking high budget anime adaptions.  If they have so much money to throw at anime, why not animate one of the 100 series on my wishlist instead?  Or how about put that money into a proper animated Berserk instead of the cg monstrosity we've been stuck with for God knows what reason?  Qualidea Code had all the elements necessary to be great, music, character design, animation -- but the story itself was so poor that the author threw all that potential away.

Oh well.  Qualidea Code was dropped, but Naruto and One Piece are back, so all's well that ends well.  There are still 17 summer shows worth watching (18 if you count ReLife which was all released at the beginning of the summer).  The only show I could even possibly drop at this point is Bijutsubu but the odds of that are extremely low.  So these 17 shows are the true final say on the summer season.

Planetarian ends next week (until the movie comes out), so we're actually looking at a 16 show summer, but oh well.  By next week there will be Olympics anyway at which point who cares about anime~