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REVIEW: Qualidea Code Episodes 1-12 Streaming




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Yttrbio



Joined: 09 Jun 2011
Posts: 3653
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 10:09 am Reply with quote
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The spectacle side of things is the easiest and most immediately recognizable failing of the series. It simply doesn't look that impressive. None of this production is outright bad; the character designs are clean and recognizable, and the animation is at least consistently functional. However, motion has an inclination to stiffness and off-model awkwardness that it's never quite able to shake, hampering the battle scenes quite a bit. For a series revolving around super-powered teenagers fighting hordes of alien invaders, these fight scenes are never quite able to hit their marks, all the way up to the final episode. There are plenty of moments that are obviously meant to be cool and exhilarating, but their framing and execution are just ever so slightly off.
Was there a secret special stream you watched that I didn't know about? The animation problems weren't a matter of being "stiff," "off-model," or "awkward," the animation was just plain not done. Scenes were straight-up missing, with only half-assed efforts to cover it up by moving not-quite appropriate animation from other parts. It's a problem we occasionally see with last episodes in shows where the schedule catches up on the production and they're forced to improvise with incomplete animation, except for in Qualidea Code, they were already having these problems by episode 4.
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NormanS



Joined: 15 Aug 2014
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:41 am Reply with quote
Its hard to agree with any rating about the music when the review doesn't even address it.

Personally what got me hooked me to watching the series was the music in the promo "Take" in the OST, this specific music piece has some guitar riffs with some great synths and calming vocals, its my favorite track that reappears briefly as an insert.

Other great inserts in my opinion include "I Can't Find U" which is a more synth heavy and aggressive tune but quite danceable.

Another big favorite of mine was Canaria's battle tune "Time to go", it starts in a soothing piano introduction then switching to synths then going a little bit in the edm genre with Canaria's VA singing in the background, this reappears almost everytime Canaria is on the battlefield.

Even the other background tracks that are in the other battle scenes that are not what i mentioned above are pretty decent, some of them are drums, strings and horns playing in an epic trailer music format. And some of them have synths and guitar tracks similar to a standard video game battle theme.

While the anime's overall budget seems very sparse. The music seems to be the exception.

ANN's review rating of series' music irks me especially when there is no mention of the music/background track/Opening and Ending. I know music is really subjective to the reviewer, but at least make a passing comment on it. Or better... remove the rating completely if there is no mention.

While i understand that its logical to not pay attention to the music when its not the series' focus or genre isn't about music. But its there. And it really helps the scenes when they do appear. Plus there'd might be a track in the OST that the listener (reviewer included) might enjoy or the entire OST might be actually fantastic but the series is mediocre average at best (like this one).
Not being able to display the music in any series (anime or non-anime) is one of the failings of reviews in general. It saddens me how many OSTs that might be on someone's playlist but missed it because reviews in general cannot show case them without looking them up.

Apologies for the rant and long post. But as you can see i am really passionate about music.

edits: more words, spelling and trying to make things more coherent.


Last edited by NormanS on Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:36 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Spike Terra
Subscriber



Joined: 21 Mar 2016
Posts: 359
Location: Maryland
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:51 pm Reply with quote
NormanS wrote:
Its hard to agree any rating about the music when the review doesn't even address it.


I'm with the you, I loved the music from this series. I would argue that "Brave Freak Out" was the best opening for that season. I'm just sad that the show had almost no animation budget and I wished they would have structured the series differently so we could spend more time with the entire cast.
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Chipp12



Joined: 30 Mar 2012
Posts: 303
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:41 pm Reply with quote
NormanS wrote:
Plus there'd might be a track in the OST that the listener (reviewer included) might enjoy or the entire OST might be actually fantastic but the series is mediocre average at best (like this one).

Seiken Tsukai no World Break that aired two years ago might be one of those shows IMO (though it was mostly because it was rushed really badly, 5 volumes in 10 episodes + some needless anime original additions).
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OpinionatedWeaboo



Joined: 08 Jan 2014
Posts: 118
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:54 pm Reply with quote
I dropped this at episode 5. The typical bullcrap with authors not liking a particular character (lots of series come to mind, but most people would understand if I just leave it at "Tomoe Mami") and how overused said plot device is. It literally brings nothing new to the table, and personally serves to piss me off if they present the character as even mildly likeable.
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NormanS



Joined: 15 Aug 2014
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:07 pm Reply with quote
OpinionatedWeaboo wrote:
I dropped this at episode 5. The typical bullcrap with authors not liking a particular character (lots of series come to mind, but most people would understand if I just leave it at "Tomoe Mami") and how overused said plot device is. It literally brings nothing new to the table, and personally serves to piss me off if they present the character as even mildly likeable.


Personally i really like how the big twist was related to "Qualia". Originally i thought this was one of those series with random or unrelated words slapped for a title. As for the character event that happened in episode 4, spoiler[it is literally not what it looks like in the end].
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Chaos Wings



Joined: 05 May 2015
Posts: 277
Location: Your guess is as good as mine?!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 3:00 pm Reply with quote
I won't disagree about the music because it was good, frankly the shows only virtue by the end of its run. But damn everything else just turned to garbage.

Episode 1 presented what looked like a decent powers/alternate reality story, it looked pretty nice and seemed rather interesting. But from EP2 onwards it was like the entire production just belly flopped off a cliff or something.

The twist midway through was admittedly an interesting one, it kind of gave me hope that things might turn around. But I was soooo wrong, like everything else it was utilized incompetently.

I can't really agree that Mahime and Hotaru's arc was all that engaging either. I was constantly left feeling frustrated by how many times we've seen this sort of stale character dynamic play out (and better imo). Hotaru lives to serve Mahime mindlessly and obediently no matter how idiotically she may postulate or act. There's no logically discernible reason for this (that I remember) other than dum da da dum Mahime's heart is in the right place. Ugh, their 'sort of' (disfunctional) relationship irritated me in the same way the siblings with the complex about each other did.

Qualidea Code just ended up being dumb, ugly and extremely forgettable.
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Luke's Yu-Gi-Oh! Channel



Joined: 11 Dec 2016
Posts: 159
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:42 pm Reply with quote
Maihime was the best character on that show. I loved her personality.
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Lemonchest



Joined: 18 Mar 2015
Posts: 1771
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 5:08 pm Reply with quote
My memory of this is that it felt less like a "collaboration" & more a script that had been redrafted multiple times by different people, each wanting to focus on something different.
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SpeckTech



Joined: 31 Dec 2014
Posts: 195
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:24 pm Reply with quote
The plot and animation quality have an inverse relationship IMO. I mean, it had some nice ideas but bad execution. It really seems like the budget went to the music. I love "Brave Freak Out"
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DRosencraft



Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 665
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 1:53 pm Reply with quote
My view of the series was not as stark as this review. The music was certainly good, and the animation was certainly not up to par. But I think the show suffers more for being a somewhat unique anime approach than for just outright being bad. That is to say, I didn't personally find it jarring how they handled the switch off between the lead duos. The setup clearly indicated how important the duos were at the outset, the fault perhaps most being in not doing a round-robin of the duos in the first episode instead of splitting them across the subsequent series as a whole.

I think the way the full plot was unveiled, again, is not common to anime outside of probably the mystery genre. But it is a format that makes sense, at least to me, as a more organic way of how such events would unveil themselves when viewing from the characters' perspective. Because overall we as the viewer are only being given a slightly larger than 1st person peek at the other side, far smaller than a standard 3rd person omniscient vision, I can see why some folks would be irked. It can seem like the story is teasing the viewer, or worse, that it doesn't know what it's doing and just throwing things out to see what sticks. The effectiveness is critical, but I think a part of judging effectiveness is based on the openness to the method. At this point, I don't think enough series use this precise storytelling method for it to be particularly well received at this point, so it'll need to see more use to be better accepted.
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