Ozuma - 1

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Even though officially the spring season doesn't start until April, this short six episode series has started airing and since I have a little bit of time (with BRS and Brave10 coming to an end) I figured I would pick up the series before the main ones have started.

So for all of you (until recently that included me) who haven't heard of Matsumoto Leiji, go to any site such as ANN, MAL or AniDB and you will see that the man has created many original works and most of which contain the word Uchuu (space) in the title. When I found this out in my initial web research about the series, I could just tell that this series would not be terrible and wondered whether it would actually interest me. So far it's done quite well.

In the first episode not much was revealed in terms of the overall plot of the storyline, in fact I think more revealed from the general synopsis I read a while back which made me interested in watching this series. Instead of focusing on the story this episode, we were instead introduced to the main characters; Sam Coin (protagonist), Maya (the heroine) and then the crew of what seems to be space pirates led by a female captain who reads cards. The characters were likeable almost instantly, though with this being such a short series I don't particularly foresee a great amount of in-depth development in their relationships - maybe for a few but not all.

Besides the characters, the scenery and the music all seemed to mesh rather well; the scenery looked a lot like an animated Tatooine (Star Wars reference for anyone who didn't know), fitting for a story which is primarily set in the desert and thus why the artwork of the characters and the scenery works so well together. Whilst both of these elements make this first episode enjoyable to watch, the music is what I remember most about the this episode - a rather strange occurrence since Kousuke Yamashita, the man in charge of the music is not particularly well known (to me at least) since he hasn't really done this a lot and most recently he's only been involved with Chihayafuru - but if you consider the music along side the composition, design etc. it works rather well (maybe sometimes overpowering in the episode).

All in all this was a good first episode, since it's an original piece I don't know how the story is going to progress but I do assume it will involve Sam's chase of Ozuma, which is actually the name of a sand whale, whilst Theseus is chasing after Maya who is now a passenger on the space pirates ship. Let's see what happens!