Hello everyone,
Here we are to talk about a new OVA anime series that we quickly introduced in the Maji de Watashi ni Koi Wo Shinasai preview of some time ago and that turned out to be a very nice pick for any fan of the Tsukihime/Fate world like me. This series is named Carnival Phantasm and is a production dedicated to the tenth anniversary from the creation of the company TYPE-MOON.
The concept behind Carnival Phantasm is very easy (and a lot reminiscent what an indipendent developer has done with his RPG game Battle-Moon Wars) that is merging the characters from the various products of the company (mainly from the Tsukihime and Fate Stay Night universe) into a new storyline together. This time the story it looks like it will be a wacky fun parody with plenty of laughs and comedy.
This series is slated to have three "series" (they're actually series composed by four short episodes of 13 minutes so very small if you consider OP and ED), but at this moment only the first one was released (at the Comiket 80) that is also the focus of this post. The other two series are planned respectively for the 28 october and the end of december. (Probably at the next Comiket?!)
In this first episode of the first series (the one I watched till now) they do a re-take at the story of the fifth grail war of Fate/Stay Night by changing the hot battles between heroes from all times into a variety show with plenty of "stupid" games for our characters to overcome to obtain the grail.
It was really funny and refreshing to watch all the characters, allies and enemies band together in this play. We had everyone from the Fate world (Tohsaka is, by the way, as hot as ever) with some cameo of some characters from the Tsukihime one (especially Arcueid is shown multiple times).
From the various jokes there are quite some of them I liked! For example I loved Tohsaka's remark "I studied 10 years for this?!" after watching Lancer and Archer fighting in a card game. Berserker tennis "game" against the cute Caster in tennis clothes (ouch, she's incredibly beautiful when in normal clothes) was also very good and let's not forget the Gilgamesh bully behaviour that, as always, end up becoming Lancer's demise.
Another great note of this episode was the OP song/animation, it features pretty much all the girls from the two games dancing together and is strangely addictive in both music and animation (watched it more than twenty times in these days...) and I'll probably buy the single CD when it comes out as it is only 1200 yen (so its pretty much a steal for me).
Talking about animation, this OVA sports one of the best animation of the last years together with the cute and colorful art style that I love to have in a series. This company, Lerche, is doing a really magnificent job on the production of Carnival Phantasm and my hopes for a nice animation in Maji de Watashi ni Koi Wo Shinasai are increasing day by day...
Also nice job to all the seiyuu involved in this little project. Plenty of big names here like Ayako Kawasumi in Saber's role, Kana Ueda in Tohsaka Rin's role, Mai Kadowaki in Ilya's role. Most of them reprised their original role they had in the previous adaptations with some little changes like Kumi Sakuma taking Fumiko Orikasa's role as Ciel from Tsukihime.
This series is proving itself to be a great one in every regards, the only downside is in its shortness. Only three series of a couple of 13 minutes episodes each are going to make us want more and more...but maybe if the sales are good they can think of a full 12 episode tv series as a sequel of a sort?!
See you soon,
feal87