[Switchblade]

Well, that was... not bad, I guess. I mean, it wasn't good, but it wasn't really bad either. It just kinda... was.

The pacing was a mess; there was easily two episodes worth of plot and character introduction here but it all got shoved into about 10-12 minutes and the show really suffered for it. The story's also painfully generic and lacks any strong hooks to pull me back in, like ToQGer's amnesia mystery. I do like Fuuka, since she's one of the only characters with a personality so far. I'm not sure about the forced clumsiness, but I do like that she seems to be the straight man to Takaharu's more goofball nature. The other three were totally there and stuff.

The action scenes are okay, but unremarkable. The weapons also look incredibly plastic, even by Sentai standards. The mecha is a complete mess of unrelated designs and, honestly, the little dude moving around on the chest actually kinda creeps me out. I do like the idea, though, that someone in Japan bought up a bunch of valuable downtown real estate solely to build a hollow skyscraper for a giant robot to hide in. I find that oddly amusing.

I forgot about dancing end credit scenes. It is very, very rare to find one that doesn't look completely stupid. Maybe we'll get one of those next year.

I honestly don't know if I'll watch the second episode. This one wasn't awful, but it made almost no real impression on me and nothing about it made me feel particularly interested to see any more. I may still check out a few more episodes, but it's really going to depend on not having anything that I'd rather devote 25 minutes to.