(6 13-minute episodes, aired two at a time to fill Black Rock Shooter‘s noitaminA timeslot until February)
What’s it about ?
A 2nd-century Roman architect marvelling about Japanese public baths.
Characters
Lucius, our protagonist, is a traditionalist architect who has a bit of a crisis of faith after falling out of favour, somehow ends up in modern Japan (or maybe is it a dream ?), and brings back some revolutionary ideas to design better public baths.
He gets a token friend as a soundboard for exposition, but mostly he monologues endlessly.
Production Values
This seems to have no budget whatsoever. The animation is beyond crude, frankly ; most web-broadcasted shorts I’ve watched over the last couple of years look better than this.
There are random oddities at times (non-standard character designs, including a cyborg dude in ancient Rome for some reason) that are probably just there for effect, although I’m not sure what the expected effect is (“funny” anachronisms ?).
Overall Impression
Uh. I’ve watched the first episode twice, just to be sure I hadn’t missed something. But no, I just can’t find the joke funny. I think I can see what they were going for, (and commend its makers for doing something so different from usual anime fare) but it just doesn’t work for me.
It doesn’t help that we basically get an (inexplicably blonde) foreigner who’s rude, racist and backwards-minded (ahah, Romans had slaves) discovering the awesomeness of Japan. Er…
Yeah, I think I’ll give this timeslot a pass until February.
