It's 2015. The song came out last year. Avex's latest idol group, unfortunately named, I kid you not, lol. The group's name is lol. WHY. WHY MUST YOU NAME GROUPS SUCH AWFUL NAMES. You really stunt their overseas growth. Japan really is a walled garden - idol groups can flourish within those walls, but are like bonsai - miniature to what they could be.

Regardless, listen to the song and tell me that this doesn't sound like something S Club 7 wouldn't have sang. The co-ed group is a rare sight these days, with idol groups either being all male or female, like AKB48, all female, or Super Junior (are they still around?), the opposite. The resulting sound is fuller than single gender unit. A group of all women will sound higher than they might be individually. A group of all men works similarly. The combination might not sound initially different, but there's definitely a difference between them.

I can't get this song out of my head. 

Story Mode has you play through the game with a set party, rather than the traditional generated party.  Your 'main' character is Beowulf, a Highlander. The titular Millennium Girl is Frederica, who initially suffers from amnesia upon waking from her time in cyro-stasis. The remaining three traveling from Midgard, researching the recent geological phenomenons: Simon, Arthur and Raquna.

For those of you who haven't read it yet, here's the preview I wrote for this one.

For those of you who have read it, I am a freaking genius. The episode went pretty much as I described it would in the preview. After that first episode, I've got high hopes for this one. Spoilers abound, so if you haven't watched it yet, I suggest you don't read the rest.



I'll admit that I began to expect the worst when I saw Taroumaru and Miki. Did they skip all of the earlier Act 1 just to focus on the slice of life stuff in the latter parts? Are they altering the story? All of my worries quickly were put to rest and things started to make sense. The way the side characters are drawn and the way shots are carefully framed up all helped inform to viewers "in the know" that there's more to the scenes that they're showing. For example, when Yuki is talking to the class, everybody is generally a silhouette, but when Miki shows up, the shot is only outside the class or from. When Sakura (the pink haired teacher) showed up, she's only shown from Yuki perspective, and when she happens to be in a shot from a different angle, her face is shaded out, which looks suspiciously different from the rest of the characters.

That ending was perfect. Yuki talking to her classmates, Miki watching her from the doorway. Shot framed behind Miki, giving the viewers a glance into the "new reality".  Having it right at the end meant that non-"know" viewers had the wrong idea of the series, and tosses the hook right at the end. It was a fun, obnoxiously bright episode, but I hope they don't wear this slice of life part down too much. Yuki's air-headed, uber-moe nature makes her a prime character to becoming a massive annoyance. Too moe. She's too much for me.

Another thing I'm a tad worried about is the idea that they may have played all their cards too soon. Some of the characters in this first episode don't show up for a while, and showing them gives fans a resounding "we'll cover that". I'm just hoping they don't rush things through to try and get to those characters as soon as possible. A rush job could really put a stopper on the impact this series could have.