Am I just a big fraud?

*Ahem*

Okay, another weekend, another provocative-but-facetious headline. Heh. But here's what brought it on.

One of my discs this week was OVA #2 of "Irresponsible Captain Tylor". From the very beginning of the first episode, I noticed right away that it was entirely different from the rest of the series up to that point. This disc is apparently full of "side-story" episodes that focus on various characters. The first one was about the empress. The look, the pacing, the seriousness, all totally different. And I'm saying to myself "just what is Mashimo up to here?" And in the context of that, I was entertained by it. But then by the end of the second episode, I noticed the credits.

Mashimo wasn't directing these.

A bit of a surprise. He wasn't anywhere in the credits as far as I could tell. Looking up the show in the ANN database doesn't show that there are other directors involved.

And at that point on for the rest of the disc, I wasn't quite as entertained. Things that I would have just thought was Mashimo messing around or experimenting were suddenly just some other director trying-but-not-achieving.

If I hadn't noticed the credits, I would probably have written some sort of glowing review. Now, I feel the episodes, while okay, maybe mucked with the tone and meaning of the series too much, and maybe missed the point entirely.

Which makes me think that, as a reviewer, I'm just a big phony. Heh.

At any rate, it's a bit of a revelation about how my biases affect my perception, and how judgemental I can be when something doesn't seem to fit the "rules" as I've constructed them in my own mind. Which is about all you can expect, I suppose.

Anyway, on to something outside my Mashimo bias -- I finished up "Now and Then, Here and There". Excellent series. Very tight writing, very involving characters. If it weren't for the fact that the video quality of the DVDs themselves is rather sub-par, I'd probably buy it in an instant. Instead, I'll be holding out for a remaster or something. But it's definitely worth seeing!