Okay, so, a little history lesson... I almost bought Get Backers once. Back in 2007, I was at an FYE location about twenty minutes from my house, toiling over the decision of what I should spend my trade-in money on. I came really close to buying the first season of Get Backers, even as close as going right up to the counter with it, but ultimately decided to get the first two disks of Haruhi Suzumiya instead. And Haruhi Suzumiya wound up becoming my third favorite anime of all time, so I can't exactly say I regret my decision.

But seeing Get Backers as the AOTM, I decided to check it out, after all these years. I had trouble finding a decent stream of the dubbed series, so I ended up getting both seasons off of Ebay for twenty bucks. They just arrived yesterday.

So, then, five episodes in... It's pretty cool so far. I like both of the main characters, the animation is minimal but otherwise decent, and I've already gotten a bunch of really good laughs from it. The pacing of each episode is pretty clever, and the pacing as a whole is even better... Two one-shot episodes to establish our characters and plot, and a well-executed three part episode to establish a very interesting trio of long term villains... I've gotta say, I'm looking forward to continuing this show. Of course, I'm watching Big O at the moment to, so they'll have to share my spare time.

My only real problem is that I've already seen so many shows where everybody has a different power, and in a disproportionate amount of them, the main character uses electricity. In addition to Get Backers, there's A Certain Scientific Railgun, Darker Than Black, and several others. Just out of curiosity, what's the appeal of shocking main characters? Are the people making these shows just trying to capitalize on the success of Pikachu, or something?