April Roundup

This spring sea­son is a good sea­son indeed, and yet I have a hard time leap­ing into prais­ing these series as read­ily as I might have done in pre­vi­ous sea­sons. My two favour­ites of the sea­son are stuck in the B+ ter­rit­ory of anime I love but can’t quite go all out with my declar­a­tion of my love for it yet, while most of the rest are stuck in C+ ter­rit­ory of anime I like but can’t quite come out and fully get into them that gives the series that shove up into B ter­rit­ory. So for­give me if I hold off declar­ing this sea­son a suc­cess until maybe next month.

::Note:: I won’t be includ­ing anime that I only watched one epis­ode of. I’ve said everything I have to say about them in my first impres­sions posts.

A Grade: One of the tops of the year. Get ready for some fan­boy­ing here

A Dur­arara!!

I love this show. Abso­lutely bloody love the thing. Izaya, Shizuo, Celty, Shin­gen, Kida, Shinra ah, they’re such a crazy and diverse set of char­ac­ters that I feel like I’d never tire of watch­ing them get­ting inter­twined in this plot. It will, unfor­tu­nately, never be a great as Bac­cano but I’ve never held that against it. It’s like com­plain­ing that every Brazilian foot­baller is not as good as Pele. It may be true, but by say­ing that you’ve proven your­self to be a total idiot.

A– Full Metal Alchem­ist: Brotherhood

I’m lov­ing these fights! This is how you do action anime. None of your pun­chup power-ups that is noth­ing more than a con­test of sheer strength. These fights have tac­tics and the char­ac­ters have brains. Little things like Kimblee throw­ing pebbles into the air so can find where Al is is what makes these fights so enter­tain­ing. My prob­lem with the series now though is that it’s start­ing to drag out this final day. The last epis­ode in par­tic­u­lar star­ted to grate a little.

B Grade: Hugely enter­tain­ing stuff. Not amaz­ing but def­in­itely worth watching

B+ Arakawa Under the Bridge

My frus­tra­tion with Shaft over the years has been mainly due to the fact that I know they are cap­able of mak­ing series like this and Bake­monogatari but are such a hit or miss stu­dio that anti­cip­at­ing their latest anime is often a pain­ful exper­i­ence (f*cking Bund). This time it’s worked though. The feel-good hit of the sea­son, Arakawa has been an abso­lute joy to watch. Shinbo is a bit of a one-trick pony but that’s one fine trick he’s able to pull.

B+ Angel Beats

A beau­ti­fully con­struc­ted mas­ter­piece it is not, but that hasn’t stopped Angel Beats from being ridicu­lously enter­tain­ing. It’s just so much fun to watch and guess what the story behind this world is. The char­ac­ters are such a non­sensical bunch, they feel like they could quite eas­ily be a bunch of School Rumble minor char­ac­ters. You can easilly ima­gine the girl bal­an­cing the broom to fit right into one of the non­sensical situ­ations the School Rumble cast get into.

B– House of Five Leaves

I know there’s some people who might dry foul if I say this, but House of Five Leaves is best enjoyed with your brain turned off and let­ting your­self sink into the atmo­sphere. I’m not a fan of this mangaka by any stretch and I think she writes some of the most banal dia­logue around, but Man­globe have done such a fant­astic job of this that I’m actu­ally not bothered by it in the slight­est de gozaru~

C Grade: It’s good enough to keep watch­ing but it’s not that memorable

C+ Big Win­dup Sea­son 2

I think my prob­lem here is that this anime is bet­ter to mara­thon than watch weekly but I’ve become so entrenched in my weekly watch­ing ways that I find it hard to actu­ally mara­thon any anime any­more. It’s even worse now that I’ve star­ted the series. The week break has the unfor­tu­nate abil­ity to com­pletely wipe my mind of what happened in the pre­vi­ous epis­ode to the point that I’m incap­able of prop­erly fol­low­ing the game. Maybe I just need time to get used to this weekly format.

C+ Giant Killing

I think my prob­lem here was my pre-season impres­sions for this show didn’t turn out as planned. The tac­tics aren’t as pro­nounced as I thought they would be, Tat­sumi isn’t as badass as I hoped he would be and the foot­ball isn’t as real­istic as I think it could be. A lowered expect­a­tions has helped though and I’ve cer­tainly enjoyed the last epis­ode more than the first few, although I think that may be more down to the Prince. I just have a thing for fab­ulous characters.

C+ Rain­bow

Star­ted very poorly but I think I’m finally begin­ning to warm up to Rain­bow. There are some parts to it that are way too over­done but I’m actu­ally start­ing to really enjoy this series, although I feel uncom­fort­able using stand­ard phrases like ‘enjoy’ and ‘warm up’. The nature of Rain­bow is that you don’t strictly enjoy the series the same way you do Arakawa or Angel Beats. Still, it has the manly An-chan and he alone makes this series worth watching.

C Hetalia World Series

Yup, it’s finally got­ten to the point that Hetalia has lost its main charm and any laughs that come from this series are more of an epis­ode by epis­ode basis. If this was any other series I might have dropped it by now but at 5 minutes per epis­ode I can’t see myself doing that any­time soon. Besides, when it does pro­duce a good epis­ode it really does light up my day just that little bit extra.

C Senko no Night Raid

I don’t know why I’m fail­ing to warm up to this series. From an object­ive stand­point I’m able to look at plot twists, little rev­el­a­tions and so on and think ‘that was a clever twist’. But I just can’t get into the show. Epis­ode 3 is a great example of this. It had a lot of the things that make me like an epis­ode but never once did I feel that enter­tained except, typ­ic­ally, when the girl gave the little moe yelp when the other bomb went off in the dis­tance rather than the one she was dis­arm­ing herself.

D Grade: I’ve lost interest in this anime. If it’s a D then I’ve prob­ably dropped it

D B Gata H Kei

Just not a well made series. As amus­ing as the premise is, they’re so lazy with the premise that there’s little to no actual qual­ity jokes com­ing through. It just felt like the cre­at­ors phoned in on this one. If the people work­ing on the show didn’t have the enthu­si­asm to work on this anime, how am I sup­posed to have the enthu­si­asm to watch the thing? Give me some Angel Beats where Mr.Maeda is con­vinced he’s work­ing on the greatest anime ever over this anyday.

E Grade: Unlike D grades where I drop out of dis­in­terest, E grades are dropped in Disgust.

F Grade: Any F stand­ard anime I would only watch 1 or 2 epis­odes of so god only know how an anime could last to the end of the month and still get an F but I’m sure it will hap­pen some day