[Anime Review] Episode 17: September 17-October 8
Synopsis
The group continues the fight against Naoto's Shadow. But how can they win, against the age-increasing powers of it?
Art/Animation
• I'd like to say that aging the characters was well done, but they only actually showed Teddie in full, hiding the others to be lazy.
• I notice this in larger group shots, but they're pretty lazy overall with the animation. Probably because everything has to be individually drawn, unlike in the game where they can have a looped animation programmed for the model to do automatically.
Voices
• No new ones this episode.
Music
• Oh, hey, new music caught in the fight. Not bad, but not quite as good as the game stuff.
Extras
• Driving home the "Naoto is a girl" thing was a bit much, IMO. Naoto's story, to me, was always one about "gender doesn't matter." While yes, I think Kanji being embarrassed because he likes her is cute, the rest of it is a little over the top.
Changes from the game
• In the game, Energy Shower heals enervation (which halves stats). I like it's use here to heal the aging attack.
• Not a change: kinda surprised they included the hospital visit. I figured that would be seen as superfluous.
Final Thoughts
Of all the Shadow battles to get a two-parter, this wasn't the one I was expecting it on. Of course, they also got to the Shadow battle faster, so it's not really longer than the other dungeons at 2 episodes (other than Yukiko's, of course, since that had 2 battles in it that weren't back to back). Between the episode preview here, and having seen 18, I was wrong, and 18 was not the School Festival (that's 19). However, given that episode 18 is the Justice/Hierophant episode, the next dungeon may not take two episodes as I guessed. I'll give my updated predictions after the next episode.
Overall, though, this episode wasn't too bad, and I liked them incorporating a bit of Naoto's S. Link, especially as we're far too late in the series to get more than this. Also, from the preview, I'd initially thought they were skipping straight to the next dungeon, instead of just the two S. Links.