I think I lost count of how many borrowings or rip-offs from other series I noted in these first 9 episodes. The "hero producing rediculously fanciful weapons" also reminded me of series like My-Hime and Mai-Otome. The "motley and mismatched crew of adventurers"? Seen it in Rune Soldier, Slayers, Lodoss War, Maze, and elsewhere. And, the "hero finds and decides to protect mysterious girl who turns out to have special powers" angle calls up soo many other series, like Outlaw Star, DearS, Chobits, Elfen Lied, and to a lesser extent, Scrapped Princess. However, the friend I watched the episodes with (who hasn't seen all that much anime) didn't catch most of those "overlaps", leading me to my "Theorem of Elemental Gelade Enjoyment" (ToEGE for short) :
Code: | A viewer's enjoyment of Elemental Gelade is inversely proportional to the number of anime he or she has seen. |
However, despite my comments on the Vol.1 review that I'd never watch this series ever, I wound up seeing the first two discs and not hating it. In that way, EG resembles Arc the Lad, another videogame-esque "shut the critical brain off and enjoy the ride" fantasy/adventure series. And like EG's uncharacteristically sad episode 8, AtL also features an unexpectedly sad episode (#13), which I've seen come up on numerous "crying over anime" threads on various forums.
I've only seen the English dub, so I haven't had the chance to compare it to the Japanese audio, but it seemed fine to me in isolation; my one complaint is that they cut corners on the term "Shichiko Houji" to render it as "Shiko Hoju." I know it's a mouthful to say it dozens of times, but why not just use "Rainbow Treasure" or a close English approximation? On the -senpai bit, they could've taken a cue from Millie & Meryl from Trigun and used "ma'am," but I can forgive them for stripping away Japanese cultural signifiers when the setting isn't Japanese to begin with. Honestly, I don't even feel the need to "forgive" them for presentational decisions when the show isn't that good to begin with. But despite the dazzling averageness, I'm still somehow looking forward to what they'll come up with next.
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