10 Second Anime - Saekano - Episode 0

Saekano - Episode 0

An otaku recruits creative arts girls and a normal one to help him create a visual novel. Romantic comedy elements ensue. Series premiere.

First Thoughts.

Sexy fanservice while a metanarrative critique of this very anime ran through the dialog grabbed my attention in the first few minutes. When normal harem comedy anime started happening again, the metanarrative continued. Good. I doubt the rest of the season will be like this, since this is a prelude episode, occurring sometime after the actual story begins, but it did its job in introducing the characters, the premise and the narrative tone (light comedy). Unfortunately, because of the meta nature of this prelude, I paid more attention to things than I normally would have, like the voice actor of the main guy character. He's called Tomoya here, but you could also call him Kirito, Arata, Tooru. Another harem king role for this same guy. He's also going to be in that Unlimited Fafnir show. Too many harem show roles, too close together kind of ruins the individual show for me. I'll have to see if I can appreciate this show on its own terms: gorgeous girls, reaction gag comedy and harem clichés. They seem to be doing a good job so far.

 

Heh.

The convention of a confident beauty stressing out an almost confident but slightly immature girl is used to great effect here, but I hope they don't use up too many lines of dialogue with the comedic fighting.

 

Highlighting those two's competitive streaks can lead to good visual comedy, though.

 

Like the table tennis challenge. They think they're being super cool, but the reality...

 

That's good comedy right there and it fits the meta tone this show is reaching for.

Schoolgirls getting drunk on juice is an overused convention, because a drunk girl has to have an empty glass next to him to prove she drank something, but showing underage drinking is taboo, so the solution has always been something impossible. Also, showing a blushing girl with weepy eyes may make people thing of the wrong context. Here, the girls actually getting drunk on liquor filled chocolate from abroad is a bit more believable. It also leads to harem comedy.

Just what part of Mr. Ethical's body is Utaha going after first?

 

 

Hmm.

Because this was a prologue, we're not given any reason why these obviously beautiful girls would like the main character so much. One of them is a cousin and another is a childhood friend, so that might be reason enough for a show like this, but all the girls are mad that he's too focused on actually producing the game instead of giving them romantic attention. It's harem anime, just roll with it until we see how the actual episodes look.

Update.

I had the chance of watching the prologue again after the season was over, and I was impressed at the planning for this show. Included were the little details of character growth over the course of the season, such as Eriri calling Kato by her first name Megumi, showing Utaha's manic eyes when she's in the throes of inspiration and even Michiru using wrestling moves on Tomoya. Best of all, because this prologue takes place a couple months after the end of the season, Megumi even had more time to develop her emotional expressiveness. Lastly, there was even a callback to the jinx joke at the end of the last episode at the end of this one. Nice. Nicely done.

 

Now enjoy these pictures that make even more sense now that we know what our characters are like.