It’s the weird feeling when  you are watching a show and you can tell it is the conglomeration of many different things you’ve seen before. And I don’t even mean it’s some kind of database/trope crap. It’s like channel surfing onto a Tarantino movie and you get the nagging feeling in the back of your head, saying “this must be a Tarantino movie.” In this case, it’s Zetsuen no Tempest, and the feelings I get are Okada, Ando, and a billion other things.
Zetsuen no Tempest, or Blast of Tempest (or what I’d call, WHO IS CIVILIZATION BLASTER) is streaming on Crunchyroll. This shounen-style manga adaptation is tricky to describe, precisely because it is a manga adaptation, and I don’t know what to credit the original manga. I guess I could read it, but guh.
I want to point out Okada because, for some reason, Zetsuen’s brute-ish pace reminds me the way Book of Bantorra was, in terms of throwing you in the middle of a pretty big setting and just let you sink or swim. The style of the fantasy technology/setting is also similar in how it makes very little sense except internally. And I can only really point to Okada as the one link between the two. Well, a Sawashiro character casting spells and talking over long distances might do the trick too. (For that matter, when’s the last time a major character is introduced to the audience by popping out of a barrel?)
The first episode? The non-linear arrangement (Rahxephon, E7, etc)? The standout, melocholilc girls (Star Driver, E7, DTB)? Nana Mizuki as some operative-agent (DTB)? The duo-male leads right out of Soul Eater? Seriously? And that’s not all. I half-expect a bunch of wolf-people to show up in episode 4 and a Chinese mage who uses electrical power, riding on a giant killer wasp to show up towards the end.
Joking aside, it’s good to see Ando’s magic fully at work for this show. I really enjoy his pilot episodes and it is interesting to see it here clashing with the almost senseless arrangement that probably didn’t pique as much as interests as a bunch of half non-sequitors could, as far as figuring out WHO REALLY IS IMOUTO. As in, clearly, this dearly departed sister/girlfriend of theirs play an integral role in all of this, other than being a sad Hanazawa Kana character on the back of a bicycle.
Well, given this story is WHO KILLED IMOUTO so far, we’ll get answers to all this in good time. Maybe we can get a strong finish for once! Hey, at least we already know why “civilization blaster” (and it’s not because they’re big fans of XCOM from the maker of Civilization over at Firaxis). All I know is I enjoyed the first three episodes.
PS. This post is nowhere nearly as funny if you aren’t in on the Who is IMOUTO jokes, truly.
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