We’ve talked a lot about the visual trademarks Shaft has brought to this work, but, as Jeff said a while ago, that could just be lipstick on a pig. I think what makes the visuals work is the way the story is being put together: three intertwining stories, each reflecting on the others, each taking words from the others and using them in completely different ways (sometimes with almost opposite meanings (at least momentarily — a lot of that may get resolved in the wrap up that I haven’t seen)).

Sort of as a continuation on my Gedo Senki remarks, I’d like to think that directors are looking at ef and learning lessons. But no one seems to have learned much from Nadesico, so I’m not too confident in that respect. I suspect we’ll see a lot of text thrown at the screen artlessly, glowing characters, and weird color palettes, without the story (and interplay of stories) that ef has employed so well. In other words, what you’d get if you watched ef with the sound off and pre-disposed to dislike the tricks. Or maybe Pani poni dash.

I was looking at my forum remarks on this series a couple of days ago. I went from “doesn’t look very interesting, I doubt I’ll watch more of it” to “this show is brilliant” in a handful of episodes. The thing is, I think the show got even better from that point. Of course, I’ve liked the accessible experimentation that Shaft has done in a lot of their previous works (this is the only thing that kept me watching, at first), so I was pre-disposed to give them the benefit of the doubt.

N: I did leave out Negima!? Because it’s … Negima… I will say they are very plesant to watch compared to the original anime adaptation, but it’s not really that memorable, partly because of the style of the show wasn’t the greatest given the subject matter and content. Zetsubo Sensei was a better match for it.