I don’t know if Shinichiro Watanabe actually choreographed the fight scenes in Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, but both shows featured spectacular combat sequences often showcasing strange and eccentric fighting styles. Clearly, Apllon isn’t a story heavy on fighting, nor would it make any sense for the characters to show of eclectic maneuvers.
Were this another show, I’d probably be complaining about the fight scene. Why waste high-grade animation on a fight wherein you can’t tell what the fuck is going on? I might assume that since it’s a non-fight-centric show, maybe they didn’t care that much about how the fights looked.
But of course they did. Watanabe always cares how things look, and I don’t care if this is a manga adaption, he’s going to leave his mark on it. The fight is meant to disorient. Not only does it not establish a horizon line—it seems to purposefully avoid one, cutting to random parts of the fight, showing people anonymously getting thrown around, all set to insane jazz music.
That’s the fight Kaoru witnessed. He didn’t know what the hell was going on—he just saw the magnificent beast that is Sentarou going nuts on a bunch of dudes and had about a million questions running through his head along the lines of “what the fuck just happened?”
Alright, ep 2 is done dling now.
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 
You know what I liked about the rooftop school fight was how it reminded me of the final bout in ‘Once Upon A Time In High School’. Good stuff.
I finally got around to watching episode one today as well…and then immediately decided that after Colbert and Stewart that I would watch ep 2.
Mhhhhh, after watching some eps from this anime I agree with your post. Real fights are not pretty and not cool, they are short, bloody and painful. It’s not like in Bleach or DBZ where they can stand around for hours and loose millions of blood. It think it’s also remarkable how character-designer Nobuteru Yuki suppressed his typical style (long noses and Escaflowne *cough*) and drew more mundane characters. I like this approach a lot in combination with the whole Jazz theme.