Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the particular studio behind a given show – I honestly couldn’t tell you what companies produced a lot of my favorites. But one credit that will make me sit up and take notice is the involvement of Studio Trigger. The reason for that is that a lot of Trigger productions, perhaps all of them, share a few traits, meaning that there’s more of the Studio’s style mixed in with the particulars of genre, writers, director, talent, and so on. Not that other studios don’t bring specialties to the table, but Trigger’s inclinations are obvious and loud. Perhaps it’s because Trigger favors original productions, meaning they have a lot more in-house creative control over most of their project than do adapters of Manga and Light Novels that already have a well-defined look and feel from their source material.
Trigger Anime shows are, without
exception in my particular experience, arguably defined by excess.
They’re bright, colorful, and loud. They cram in a ton of story,
some uniquely bizarre visuals, usually a good lot of action,
over-the-top characters, weird high concepts, and probably a hearty
or heavier serving of fanservice as well. Even their most mellow and
down-to-earth efforts are high flying and bizarre by the standards of
others. I’ve joked at times that Trigger shows almost seem to be
written by the corrupted cores from Portal 2 – there’s a deep
thirst for adventure, a willful disconnect from the universe and
“fact” as others know them, and they will often find a way to go
to space for their climax. When they’re good, they’re amazing. When
they’re bad, they’re still amazing, just in a very different way.
That should tell you that, despite the
fact that I can usually enjoy the ride, not every Trigger show is a
winner. In some ways that makes it even stranger that it’s taken me
this long to get around to reviewing one of their productions, but in
any case now is the time to rectify that oversight. And thus, we’ll
be taking a look at Trigger’s attempt to play against type while
still playing exactly to type, Kiznaiver.
Read More…Read More…