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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:1930#628] | ||||||
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(14 episodes watched): The first thought to go through my head while watching Slap Up Party was 'Oh God, another martial arts show'--and I was tempted to immediately abandon it. Fortunately, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. I was going to say that animation seldom manages to express martial art action in a cool and convincing manner, but this show actually does a pretty good job. Roxy's demonic transformation and the lighting effects of a particular scene also caught my eyes. This actually reminds me of Slayers. The tone is rather goofy and I was LOLing at several points. Fighting is "sanitized" so that only demons get killed and without any appreciable gore. The ED sequence is cute, too. All-in-all, what I've seen seems encouraging. This has quickly become a current favorite of mine, largely due to the whacked style which it has. Episodes two and three each introduce a new character to the group, sarong wearing martial artist Ryunmei and teenage sorcerer Ixia, respectively, while number four seems to introduce the long-term villains they will all face. I was a little uncomfortable with this, since I was having plenty of fun with the nonsensical episodic exploits of the group. The ending of episode four confused me, but the comedy is this show's strong point. Cabensis is my favorite character. Not taking itself too seriously, and finding some good humor to employ instead--these must have been the decisions which made Slap Up Party a success. I hear "Arad Senki" is a Korean martial arts/fantasy videogame, which in itself doesn't raise hopes for a good anime adaptation, yet it happens. The episode plots do get a little unexciting after awhile; it's unclear what has something to do with a longterm plot and what is purely episodic, which gets a bit confusing and frustrating. Still, I'm dismayed that work on the fansubs seems to have been abandoned after episode seven. No sooner had I said this than two new episodes appeared simultaneously. I got one good laugh out of episode eight and a lot of smiles. To be honest, around the midpoint of the series I find myself getting tired of Slap Up Party. It seems that they are running short of good ideas for new episodes and I wonder if making this a two-season (26 episode) series was a good idea. But some episodes are better than others, for instance number 14 about the absurd twins who are so alike that they always fall for the same guy--this time it's Baron. This one was both funny and had an intriguing plot, although the abrupt resolution without much of a twist was disappointing. My favorite line (so far): "It's not possible for me to look 'uncool' " --Cabensis Last updated Wednesday, August 05 2009. Created Friday, April 17 2009. | ||||||||
