RDG Red Data Girl (Photo credit: Danny Choo)
So I got to attend the screening of FUNimation’s new release
Red Data Girl at Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park. I hate to waste time and space bitching about the venue, but I really hate when our screening gets the noob projectionist who doesn’t seem to have a f*cking clue. Oh, and the sound was horribly off,
with a nearly intolerable background hum through all of Episode 1 and most of Episode 2 that made me want to scream out loud GOOD GAWD THIS IS
NOT SERIAL EXPERIEMENTS LAIN! Then when they tried to fix the sound, we lost a good 30 seconds of dialogue altogether, and the projectionist did not rewind to catch the missing bits but just plowed ahead. This really detracted from the
enjoyment of this series.
It took forever for the projectionist to catch a clue and put up the Anime at the Alamo still shot screen that is up as host Rommel does his announcements. It took forever for the actual show to start. They had to shut down the show entirely
and re-start it at one point.
What’s worse, this was on a night where the Anime at the Alamo group broke its attendance record…we broke the “century” mark, i.e. over 100 attendees. I hope the horrible audio visual snafus don’t deter some of the first timers from coming
back! Those were totally a fluke, most of the time the Alamo Drafthouse puts on a fine show without any glitches. Man did they drop the ball last night.
Anyway, the main difficulty with Red Data Girl is its intolerably slow pacing. It only gets sort of interesting by about Episode 3 or so. This is a show I’d probably watch in streaming via FUNimation.com first, if I had
nothing better to do or watch. I doubt I’ll ever pick this up on physical media. If you wait until Episode 4 to try and “hook” me, forget it. You need to reel me in with Episode 1, right out of the gate.
It’s a pretty mediocre show so far, and I’m in no hurry to finish it. I have other priorities right now like
Toradora! and Jormungand.
