Watching The Third again, this time on DVD. Bought the first two as an obligation buy; I’ll be finishing the series purchase as it comes out. Definitely worth it. I decided to post some disjointed thoughts, rather than try to work them into a coherent post.
I believe that Honoka’s comic emo distortions become less frequent as time goes on, as I don’t remember so many of them in the latter half. I was also disappointed we didn’t get more of the dirty-minded doctor and his yuri android, but we did get Sensei instead. The characters of this story are vivid — even if they’re not always what we expect. That’s more a problem with expectations though; with most of them, what you see is what you get, and what they are. I don’t know if it was intentional, but the writers did a great job of surprising me with the obvious.
While the narration annoys, the poetry never completely goes away — although the nature of several story arcs does reduce its opportunity to appear. There are a couple of long ones, but the ending kind of sneaks up, one of the things I fault the series for; the ending feels tacked on, although seemingly unrelated events have been building in that direction for some time.
Although I was disappointed by the thinness of the overall plot, and annoyed by that incessant narration, it’s a solid B. I don’t think they did as much with it as they could have, but I do recommend the series. Top-notch voice cast with veteran seiyuu, pretty good animation (the CG work is excellent), and a post-apocalypse world that is, despite being a desert, anything but grim. And Honoka makes a rather engaging main character, being far more mature than her young years, yet young in the ways of the heart.
