Maybe it’s because the first time I vis­ited an anime blog was to read a Spring 2008 sea­son pre­view, but these sea­son pre­view posts always feel a bit spe­cial. Noth­ing else takes as much time to make or attracts as much hits. Sea­son Pre­views are argu­ably the most import­ant posts blogs pro­duce for the rest of the anime com­munity (well I’d argue that it is). So sit back and enjoy the latest Fall Anime Sea­son Pre­view! (why Fall? Real men say Autumn)

You can prob­ably see where I’m going with this pic­ture. Not only does this sea­son see the return of one dog-eared demon, but we also see the birth of a brand new hit. It’s a good time to be a shounen fan­boy. Shame I’m not one…

Most of the syn­op­sis are either taken fron ANN or MAL (even though MAL takes most of it’s syn­op­sis’ from ANN but whatever). Other info is gen­er­ally taken from Chartfag’s amaz­ing chart, Moetron or Can you Moe. You can also go to Ganbatte’s pre­view as it’s the only other one I’ve seen that’s actu­ally had effort put into it.

A quick note before I begin. Please for gods sake, do NOT copy and paste this entire pre­view onto a forum or your own blog. If you do I’m going after you with a machete

Sequels

Darker than Black: The Comet of Gemini

Stu­dio: Bones

Syn­op­sis: Hei and Yin are now on the run after betray­ing the Syn­dic­ate in the pre­vi­ous sea­son. After leav­ing Japan, Hei encoun­ters Suou Pav­lichenko, a 13 year old Euras­ian girl who becomes embroiled in the war and polit­ics of the vari­ous fac­tions and Con­tract­ors vying for power. Mean­while, Hell’s Gate remains stand­ing in Tokyo, after Hei’s efforts to stop the Sat­urn Ring anti-Gate particle weapon from activ­at­ing. Although Con­tract­ors are safe from the danger of hav­ing their exist­ences erased, this does not pre­vent new and old Con­tract­ors from abus­ing their powers. As Misaki Kiri­hara and her team in the Pub­lic Secur­ity Bur­eau deal with the increas­ing Con­tractor cases, she also has to keep the Syn­dic­ate at bay, who has major pos­i­tions in the Japan­ese police andin­tel­li­gence bur­eaus around the world. The storyline set­ting primar­ily takes place in both Japan and Russia.

Scamp: Read­ing that syn­op­sis high­lighted a rather large prob­lem: I can’t remem­ber the plot from the ori­ginal series in the slight­est. I’m sure they revealed what the syn­dic­ate was up to but I just can’t remem­ber any­thing. Judging from the trailer and syn­op­sis, it looks like this sea­son is told from a dif­fer­ent stand­point aka: that Rus­sian girl. Which hope­fully means we will  be explained the plot again. Then again, I never really knew what was going on in DTB.  It’s  the only anime to have more con­fus­ing con­spir­acies than Eden of the East. BTW, no Yoko Kanno this sea­son, which is a downer but the guy who’s tak­ing over isn’t half bad. Oh, of course I’m watch­ing this, the first sea­son was awe­some. It’s just I just have to pre­pare myself for utter con­fu­sion all over again.

Toaru Kagaku no Rail Gun

Stu­dio: JC Staff

Syn­op­sis: Academy City. 2.3 mil­lion inhab­it­ants. 80% of the stu­dents are act­ive in the ‘Brain Devel­op­ment Pro­gram’ and out of those only 7 are Level 5s. Meet the civil­ian prot­ag­on­ist Mikoto and her friend Kur­oko, main­tain­ers of peace and order in the Uni­ver­sity dis­trict. Kur­oko is a mem­ber of ‘Judgement’

Scamp: Never got into Index so I don’t have any interest in watch­ing this.

Since those two anime were effect­ively spin-offs, they needed a syn­op­sis but the rest are all dir­ect con­tinu­ations so I’m not going to bother with one. If you’ve seen the first sea­son then you know what they’re already about and if you haven’t, then you won’t be watch­ing it.

Natsu no Arashi! 2

Stu­dio: Shaft

Addi­tional info: Air date Oct 4^th

Scamp: I’m sur­prised this got a second sea­son see­ing as it wasn’t that pop­u­lar. Per­son­ally, I’m delighted to see more of those bizarre milk-carton argu­ments. This show really grew on me as it progressed.

InuYasha: Kanketsu-hen

Stu­dio: Sun­rise

Scamp: You can’t deny Inuyasha was in dire need of this sequel, but I have no interest in it. Ah well, I’m sure there’s plenty of fangirls manly men delighted to see this.

Queen’s Blade 2

Stu­dio: ARMS

Scamp: The greatest anime of the year, pos­sibly the dec­ade, has made its much desired re-appearance. Praised by crit­ics world­wide, described by many as a cross between Cow­boy Bebop, Mushishi and Ikkit­ousen, it’s enga­ging plot and deep emo­tional impact are on dis­play for the world to see. Are you watch­ing the sequel to Queens Blade? Do I even need to ask?

Asura Cryin’ 2

Stu­dio: Seven Arcs

Scamp: Why do crappy anime get second sea­sons any­way? I thought the point of mak­ing 2 sea­sons was to cut costs if it was rub­bish. Appar­ently not if this has a second sea­son and neither Bac­cano nor Moy­ashi­mon have a sequel yet.

Ten­tai Sen­shi Sun­red 2

Stu­dio: AIC ASTA

Scamp: This wasn’t on Chart­f­ags chart but ANN and MAL both list it as air­ing this sea­son. Con­sid­er­ing how much I love ran­dom com­edy, I won­der why I never watched this when it came out ori­gin­ally. I don’t think any­one was sub­bing it.

Nogizaka Haruka no Him­itsu: Purezza

Stu­dio: Diomedia

Scamp: Meh, it has its fans. I’m not one of them

White Album 2^nd Season

Stu­dio: Seven Arcs

Scamp: Pretty pic­ture. Shame the show sucks

Shin Koihime†Musou

Stu­dio: Dogakobo

Scamp:*Copy and paste ran­dom rant on ANN about how these anime are killing the industry*

Right, now they are out of the way, let’s get onto what we really want to see. Well, what I want to see anyway

New Series

Tatakau Shisho — The Book of Bantorra

Stu­dio: David

Addi­tional Info: Based off light nov­els. Air date Oct 2^nd

Syn­op­sis: In a world where dead people turn into books and are stored in the Ban­torra Lib­rary where any­one who reads a book can learn their past. Ban­torra Lib­rary is main­tained by Armed Lib­rar­i­ans who wield psychic powers and their enemy is a reli­gious soci­ety known as Sindeki Kyoudan.

Scamp: Well the trailer has already man­aged to be 10 times more inter­est­ing than Ris­tor­ante Para­diso ever was, Stu­dio David’s only other anime I’ve seen thus far. I do want this anime to be a hit because it’s always encour­aging new stu­dios to com­pete in the anime uni­verse. The dir­ector has worked on some pretty decent stuff but what really has me is the trailer. The anim­a­tion looks slick, the music is cool and the action looks like it will flow freely. Plus since light nov­els quite often turn into pretty good anime, it’s cer­tainly worth a shot.

Kobato.

Stu­dio: Madhouse

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga writ­ten by CLAMP. Air date Oct 6^th

Syn­op­sis: Kobato is sweet and perky girl, but also extremely naive about the world around her. She has a “mis­sion”, which is to fill a mys­ter­i­ous bottle of hers with the suf­fer­ing from people’s hearts so her wish to go a cer­tain place that she desires to go can be gran­ted. How­ever, she must not fall in love with a par­tic­u­lar boy she works with and whose heart she must heal.

Scamp: ClampXMad­house is one of the ulti­mate combo’s in anime. From Card­captors to X to Chob­its (one of my per­sonal favour­ites), Mad­house have proven they are the best when it comes to Clamp’s works. The thing is, Clamps work ranges from the girly to the extremely girly and this one looks like the lat­ter. The homepage had an awful lot of pink. Still, I’ve been look­ing for­ward to this for a while now. It’ll be good to see Mad­house pro­du­cing qual­ity again. After three years of pure bril­liance from 06 to 08, they’ve been pretty poor this year (Need­less any­one?). You should know by now if you like Clamp or not so if you do, lucky us, we get some awe­some Clamp. If you don’t, well…you have no taste. Mwa­haha, go my biased views, go!

Sasameki Koto

Stu­dio: AIC

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga. Air date Oct 6^th

Syn­op­sis: Mur­as­ame Sum­ika is pop­u­lar in the high school for her excel­lence in the marks and sports. How­ever, she has a secret: she is in love with her class­mate Kazama Ushio. Ushio also has a lik­ing to the love between girls, but she hasn’t noticed Sumika’s feel­ing and always been refused by other girls.

Scamp: Yuri. This instantly trans­lates into auto­matic no interest for me.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Stu­dio: Beijing Glorious/Future Planet

Addi­tional Info: Joint Chinese/Japanese pro­ject. Based off fam­ous book by the same name

Syn­op­sis: The ori­ginal fam­ous novel depicts the tumul­tu­ous war­ring period of second-century China and the polit­ical intrigue between the dif­fer­ent factions

Scamp: I have ser­i­ous doubts that this will ever be fan­subbed, much less licensed. In that sense, it’s point­less to work up any enthu­si­asm for this series.

Nyan Koi!

Stu­dio: AIC

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga. Air Date Oct 1^st

Syn­op­sis: Jun­peiKō­saka is a second-year high school stu­dent who des­pises cats and has an allergy to them. It just so hap­pens that his high school crush is Kaede Mizuno, a girl who adores cats. One day, while walk­ing home from school, Jun­pei kicks an empty can and unfor­tu­nately beans the local neko-jizō-sama(guardian deity of cats). He finds he can now under­stand what cats are say­ing, includ­ing his family’s own ill-tempered cat, Nyamusasu. How­ever, if he does not grant 100 wishes from cats, he will turn into a cat himself.

Scamp: So many things point to this being a crappy anime. AIC are not a good stu­dio and I’ve found very little hype behind the manga itself, which is never a good sign. And yet I find myself look­ing for­ward to this. Why? Slightly because I like the char­ac­ter designs, slightly because there’s a not­able absence of fanser­vice in any promo mater­ial, slightly because I love a good com­edy. But mainly because the syn­op­sis made me laugh.

Kuchu Bur­anko

Stu­dio: Toei Animation

Addi­tional Info: Based off Short stor­ies. Air­ing in noit­amA timeslot which (usu­ally) means high rat­ings and 11 episodes

Syn­op­sis: In mod­ern Japan, people visit ‘doc­tors of nuer­o­logy’ rather than ther­ap­ists. Dr.Ichiro is an eccent­ric neur­o­lo­gist with an injec­tion fet­ish, an Oed­ipus com­plex and a green Porsche, known for mak­ing patients much worse before they get better.

Scamp: Now this has really got­ten me inter­ested. By the same group who worked on Mononoke, the best anime that nobod­ies watched, and air­ing in the now fam­ous noit­amA timeslot. Now I’ve never seen Mononoke but the reviews are fant­astic and it’s been a while since I’ve watched a proper elit­ist anime that I’ve really enjoyed (the last was prob­ably Cas­sh­ern Sins). The short stor­ies it’s based off has won awards, the syn­op­sis is so won­der­fully ran­dom and the promo pic­ture is so bizarre. Maybe not for the more cas­ual fan but if you are one of those ‘moe anime are killing the industry rawr rawr rawr’ type of people who flood ANN, then this looks like your sort of thing.

Fairy Tail

Stu­dio: A-1 Pictures/Satelight

Addi­tional Info: Based off ridic­olusly pop­u­lar Shounen Jump magazine manga (thanks vir­alu) manga. Air date Oct 12^th

Syn­op­sis: Lucy is a 17-year-old girl, who wants to be a full-fledged mage. One day when vis­it­ing Harujion Town, she meets Natsu, a young man who gets sick eas­ily by any type of trans­port­a­tion. But Natsu isnt just any ordin­ary kid, he’s a mem­ber of one of the world’s most (in)famous mage guilds: Fairy Tail.

Scamp: To call this ‘the next big thing’ in shounen isn’t cor­rect. It’s already big! To give you an idea, it’s the fourth most pop­u­lar manga on onemanga.com, behind Naruto, Bleach and One Piece. So get ready to see lots of shady stream sites called ‘watchfairytailonline.com’. As for myself, I’ve never been a fan of these long-running shounen hits. I want to like them, they have kick-ass fights and cool look­ing char­ac­ters, but everything is just dragged out so long it kills the fun. A-1 and Satelight are good stu­dios, neither of whom have anim­ated a true shounen series before so I’m guess­ing they’ll take a slightly dif­fer­ent approach to anim­at­ing this. I’m def­in­itely going to watch it but I really hope this moves quicker than a herd of one-legged tortoise’s stam­ped­ing through maple syrup.

11eyes

Stu­dio: Dogakobo

Addi­tional Info: Based off Visual Novel

Syn­op­sis: Sat­suki Kakeru lost his sis­ter by sui­cide andhas been liv­ing a dull life ever since then. One day, he is trans­por­ted into a bizarre world “Red Night” along with his friend Minase Yuka. In order to sur­vive and escape from Red Night, he fights against Dark Spir­its (Ralva) and Black Nights.

Scamp: Some people seem to be excited about this anime. WHY? It’s based off an eroge, which trans­lates to shitty anime 90% of the time. It’s made by a noth­ing stu­dio and the char­ac­ter designs are ulta-generic. I would quite like to be proved wrong. I’m hop­ing this to be as good as that other eroge-turned-anime that was excellent…can’t think of any right now but I’m sure one will come to me…eventually.

Sora no Otoshimono

Stu­dio: AIC ASTA

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga

Syn­op­sis: Sak­urai Tomoki has been hav­ing the same strange dream since he was a child and would wake up in tears. Sug­ita, an upper­class­men as his school, believe the dream to be of the new con­tin­ent. Later that night while wait­ing under the cherry trees for his Sug­ita and Sohara, his child­hood friend, an angel comes fly­ing down.

Scamp: God this looks awful. The manga reviews are crap and then there’s those hor­rible droopy breasts, urgh. Why does this have to be one of the few anime to have a trailer out? I would much prefer to see Kobato or Fairy Tale trailer’s.

Sac­red Blacksmith

Stu­dio: Manglobe

Addi­tional Info: Based off Light Novels

Syn­op­sis: Once upon a time, there was a tra­gic war, in which the power of the dev­ils was involved. After the war, the dev­ils’ power was banned and the world was restored to peace. Cecily Camp­bell is a knight, who has been look­ing for a black­smith to repair her old sword given by her father. One day, she saw a man fight­ing with a ruf­fian who used the tabooed devil’s power. The man defeated him with one blow of his weirdly shaped sword. The man turned out to be a black­smith called Luke. The fate­ful encounter was the begin­ning of the adventure.

Scamp: My elit­ist side hates this anime. Man­globe gave up mak­ing ori­ginal anime pro­duc­tions and decided to anim­ate a fanservice-y fant­asty novel. My non-elitist side points out that it’s not like Michiko to Hatchin was any good. Man­globe always pro­duce high qual­ity anim­a­tion and the trailer proves that much. My elit­ist side responds by point­ing out that the last anime this dir­ector worked on was Line­barrels of Iron, not a good sign. There was a wor­ry­ing amount of boob shots in that trailer. My non-elitist side says who cares, the girl is hot! Besides, the last fantasy anime with a hot female lead was Spice and Wolf and look how awe­some that is. My elit­ist side said, fine then, have your crappy moe shows. Anime has been going down­hill for a long time and this is the last straw. My other side says fine then, you have your way you whiny little git…yeah, take what you will from the above conversation.

Sei­tokai no Ichizon

Stu­dio: Deen

Addi­tional Info: Based off Light novels

Syn­op­sis: The mem­bers of the stu­dent coun­cil of Hekiyou Gak­uen are chosen by a pop­ular­ity vote. As a res­ult, all the mem­bers are cute girls except for Sug­izaki Ken, who stud­ied hard to enter the coun­cil. This novel is about the end­less chat­ter­ing of the mem­bers with full of par­od­ies of “The Mel­an­choly of Haruhi Suzu­miya”, “Dragon Ball” etc.

Scamp: Ah Stu­dio Deen, you are one weird stu­dio. Everything from Hetalia to Higur­ashi to this. Some moe show about girls sit­ting round a table, talk­ing about noth­ing and prob­ably eat­ing cake. Chances are watch­ing this will recount all the most bor­ing exper­i­ences in your life. Hey, this sounds almost as bor­ing as Lucky Star doesn’t it? If you liked being bored out of your skull by that, chances are you’ll like this too. I made a ref­er­ence to being bored 3 times in those few lines. Guess how I think this anime will turn out?

Winter Son­ata

Stu­dio: G&G/JM Animation

Addi­tional Info: Based off K Drama, voiced by same act­ors as ori­ginal live action. Air date Oct 17^th

Syn­op­sis: The story fol­lows two child­hood friends — a boy and a girl — and the tragedy and angst that befalls them and those around them in the years between high school and young adulthood.

Scamp: I didn’t really want to put this in since it keeps being delayed. Chances are it will be moved back yet again. It sounds, heck it is, an ultra cheesy soap show so the anime will be no dif­fer­ent. Never liked cheesy soaps myself.

Let­ter Bee

Stu­dio: Pierrot

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga

Syn­op­sis: Gauche is a gov­ern­mental employee, given the task to deliver any let­ter to it’s des­tin­a­tion. Meet­ing a young boy who is the let­ter to be delivered, Gauche makes friends with Lag and inspires him to take up the job. Five years later, Lag See­ing finally becomes his dream, that of a Let­ter Bee. How­ever, the one who inspired him has gone miss­ing and only there does the mys­tery start.

Scamp: Pier­rot already made a pilot epis­ode of this and I highly recom­mend watch­ing it. I found it on you­tube when search­ing for a promo vid. Here’s the link to the you­tube video but if you are fussy enough to want to down­load it then find it your­self. But really, go watch it. I was expect­ing some gen­eric shounen flick since it’s a Shounen Jump manga but that’s far from the truth. It’s much more mel­an­cholic than that. You for­get that when Pier­rot aren’t mak­ing gen­eric shounen, they make some really excel­lent stuff. If the rest of the series is as good as the pilot then we have a poten­tially bril­liant show on our hands.

Mir­acle Train

Stu­dio:

Addi­tional Info: Based off…err…trains?

Syn­op­sis: 5 fam­ous train lines in Japan turned into bishies…and that’s pretty much it.

Scamp: Call me if some Koreans get this banned

Käm­p­fer

Stu­dio: Nomad

Addi­tional Info: Based off Light Novels

Syn­op­sis: Senou Nat­suruis a nor­mal high school boy. One day he wakes up to find him­self turned into a girl. A stuffed tiger “Harakiri Tora” gains a life and tells him to fight as a female psychic fighter “Käm­p­fer”. Hav­ing no idea about what’s going on, Nat­suru is involved in the battles against other Kämpfers.

Scamp: I know enough about this to know it won’t be any good. Done by a pretty crappy stu­dio, the reviews of the nov­els told me that it was basic­ally full of fanser­vice and little in the way of coher­ent plot. Can’t say I’m look­ing for­ward to this much.

Kimi ni Todoke

Stu­dio: Pro­duc­tion IG

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga

Syn­op­sis: This story is centered around a girl named Kur­onuma Sawako who is nick­named Sadako (ghost girl from “The Ring”) by her class­mates because of her scary face and demeanor. She greatly admires Kazehaya-kun from afar, he is “100% refresh­ing” and is able to draw in people with his per­son­al­ity. Unlike her facial expres­sions she yearns to make friends andlive as a nor­mal stu­dent. Gradu­ally she starts affects those around her, includ­ing Kazehaya-kun…

Scamp: I’ve saved one of the bet­ter ones ’till last. The manga is one of the biggest shojo manga’s to come out in a long time. I remem­ber see­ing it was the top manga for girls 10–20 to read in Japan and plenty of the older gen­er­a­tions read it as well. The manga is also rated in the top 100 on MAL, so it’s a hit amongst Eng­lish speak­ers as well. True, Pro­duc­tion IG aren’t the best when adapt­ing manga and the dir­ector is a bit of a nobody but I really recom­mend keep­ing your eye on this one. I’ve never really liked shojo anime but I’ve found myself really look­ing for­ward to this one.

Movies and OVAs

The DVD for Sum­mer Wars should be com­ing out some­time over the winter. It’s by the same folks who made Girl through Time, but I hope this time they make a bet­ter bloody end­ing then that dis­aster. The final epis­ode of Time of Eveis com­ing out. I think it airs in Septem­ber so now would be your chance to check the rest of this fant­astic series on Crunchyroll. There’s a Shak­ugan no Shana OVA com­ing soon, as is extra epis­odes of Mahoro­matic but neither of them is a full series. The Macross Fron­tier movieis screen­ing Novem­ber but it will be longer before any­one sees that. Ditto with those Eden movies, one comes out the end of Novem­ber and the other in Janu­ary. I really hope those movies cover the rest of the plot, I would hate to see such a great series come to a dis­ap­point­ing end. There’s also a Tri­gun movie which was said to air some­time 2009 but I’ve heard very little about that. In fact, the only movie that you are likely to see any time soon is the second Gur­ren Lagann movie, which looks like will be made of entirely new mater­ial judging by the way the first movie ended. Don’t quote me on that though. Finally, a pilot epis­ode for an anime based off a Vocaloid song is com­ing out in Septem­ber. Sounds stu­pid until you look at the homepage.

Black Rock Shooter. Looks pretty awe­some doesn’t it?

Sea­son Overview

The most obvi­ous thing here is the huge amount of sequels. Nor­mally this would leave me raging but this year had been keep­ing the sequel count to about 3 per sea­son so an explo­sion at the end was to be expec­ted. Dis­ap­point­ing, but expec­ted nev­er­the­less. One wor­ry­ing sign is the lack of anime ori­ginal mater­ial. The only thing in this entire list that is ori­ginal mater­ial is Darker than Black and that’s a sequel any­way. We may be in the middle of a reces­sion and com­pan­ies don’t want to take risks but it’s been proved time and time again that anime ori­ginal mater­ial has a far higher per­cent­age chance of being bril­liant. The best anime of this year so far was Eden, another anime ori­ginal cre­ation. How­ever next sea­son Aniplex and TV Tokyo are join­ing together to cre­ate a new timeslot called ‘Anime no Chi­kara’ which focus on cre­at­ing ori­ginal anime mater­ial so hope­fully we can expect some qual­ity come next year. One thing I’m rather relieved about is that the num­ber of moe anime appears to be drop­ping. Yes, there is still a lot but hope­fully this means moe sat­ur­a­tion point has been met and we’ll start to see a decline. Or maybe that’s just due to the fact there’s no anime by Kyo Ani, Gonzo and only one JC Staff. Meh, it’s not the greatest sea­son but there’s cer­tainly enough there to keep you enter­tained. The spread is decent but, yet again, mecha fans are left in des­pair. WTF really, I though Code Grease’s pop­ular­ity would spark plenty of copycats but we’ve got­ten none what­so­ever. The only proper mecha this year is Mazinger Z and that’s abso­lutely rubbish.

Final Roundup

F:Mir­acle Train, Sasameki Koto, sequels of bor­ing first seasons

E:Sei­tokai no Ichizon, Sora no Otoshimono,

D:Winter Son­ata, 11eyes, Kamp­fer, Romance of the Three Kingdoms

C:Sac­red Black­smith, Fairy Tail, Nyan Koi!, The Book of Bantorra

B:Kimi ni Todoke, Kuchu Bur­anko, Let­ter Bee, Kobato, Natsu no Arashi Sea­son 2

A:Darker than Black: Comet of Gemini

As usual, I’m going to ask you what are you watch­ing, but don’t you dare say ‘it all looks crap’ or else I’m break­ing out that machete again.