Kyosougiga (Capital Craze Comic)
Summary: In an alternate version of Kyoto (called Mirror Kyoto in the subs) Koto and her two brothers are on the hunt for a mysterious black rabbit and after they find it they will be able to go home. But certain factions in the city seem to think that Koto herself has an important connection to the city and aren't so keen to let her go.
The Good: It's very difficult to tell a complete and satisfying story in just half an hour and while Kyousogiga doesn't pull that off perfectly it does a really good job. It was able to set up a basic plot, establish almost half a dozen characters and generally just be a really cool, half an hour distraction. There is a plot, I had been afraid that it would be a half hour of nonsense accompanying some interesting imagery, and I was interested by the characters and each of the main characters had enough screen time for them to feel at least partially fleshed out. More than anything else I feel like this story has a lot of potential but even in short form it was fun to see.
The Bad: Earlier in the year a five minute promotional video for this was released and barely any of the scenes were used in the ONA which makes me rather sad since the PV seemed to tell a story with pieces that were missing from the end version. While the story worked for the ONA it did seem like it was missing several scenes, like an explanation for exactly why Koto and her brothers are trying to find the black rabbit/how that will send them home (I'm also curious how they can all be siblings since the brothers are yokai for sure yet Koto seems fairly human). This feels like a story that needs more time to flesh itself out and I'll be disappointed if this is all that ever comes of the idea.
The Audio: There were a number of really fun to listen to tracks that worked great with the crazy visuals. The voice acting also seemed rather solid, no overacting or flat characters, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only did this ONA look good but it sounded good as well, it's amazing what you can do with a budget and not have to stretch it as much.
The Visuals: Some people are comparing this to FLCL because of their crazy visuals and the comparison is rather apt. There's barely a quiet moment, there's always something moving on screen and it looked really good even when watching a low quality fansub. Having watched this twice now I'm amazed at the amount of detail put into the scenes, usually there's a main object of interest moving and then one or two pieces of the background moving around as well, and with such a vivid color scheme it simply looks gorgeous.
I've heard that the youtube stream (there are legal, non-region locked youtube and niconico streams, they just don't have subtitles) at the very end has a date in March with an announcement about an announcement so I have my fingers crossed that this will turn into a full anime in the spring or summer season (heck, stick this in the noitaminA slot, at least this would kinda work for it). I'm not sure what else they could announce besides a movie/tv/manga deal so I really hope everything works out!
Also, I don't know if any tropers read this blog but I just created the works page for this today and I'd really love if someone could help out and put some more examples down, I know there have to be more than what I've thought of.
