First Impressions – Maoujou de Oyasumi

I’ll be honest, I was pretty bored pretty quickly by Maoujou de Oyasumi.  Normally I wouldn’t dedicate a standalone post to a show I have no little to say about, but I did preview it (it was in the middle of the pack, too) so I want to comment on it.  And there really isn’t anything coming up in the next couple days that suits a digest post, either.  So please excuse the brevity of these first impressions.

I guess the gag manga this show is based on is pretty well-regarded, but a gag manga and a full-length anime are two different things.  Sometimes the former can work as the latter, but it generally requires an exceptionally good gag in the first place and a whole lot of tweaking.  If this had been a short maybe it would work, but as a full-length series?  Not for me at least.  The joke – a kidnapped human princess trying to get a good night’s sleep in the castle of demon lord terrorizes his underlings – was modestly funny for maybe five minutes.  After that I was itching to get to the end credits.

There are some good people involved with Maoujou – Yamazaki Mitsue also directed Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (also at Doga Kobo) and Nakamura Yoshiko adapted it (and has a rather decent resume).  And there’s nothing wrong with this show per se, except that I just don’t find it nearly funny or varied enough to sustain 22 minutes, never mind a cour.  Maybe there’s more than meets the eye but it’s gonna be a short leash for me – one more episode that bores me like this one and I’m out.

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