This post ori­gin­ally ended with ‘+chart v2’ but then Chart­fag brought out his Amaz­ing Chart! So my work was done and I could go back to doing my usual super detailed, highly inform­at­ive, world fam­ous Cart Driver Sea­son Previews!

Inform­a­tion for this is taken from ANN, Moon­phase, Moetron, vari­ous offi­cial web­sites and ran­dom people on twit­ter, for­ums and blogs who I get most of this totally reli­able info from (but not MAL. As user friendly as it may be com­pared to many other web­site, the inform­a­tion from there is notori­ous for being wrong an awful lot of the time. Don’t use MAL for sea­son pre­views folks, trust me on this).

Bak­u­man.

Stu­dio: JC Staff

The totally obvi­ous hit of this sea­son. The manga is by Tsug­umi Ohba, the guy (girl? Ohba’s iden­tity is a closely guarded secret) who wrote Death Note. I haven’t read the manga myself because of this immin­ent anime adapt­a­tion, but I gather it’s slightly more groun­ded than Death Note and spends most of its time mak­ing nor­mal life look awe­some. I am a little bit miffed Mad­house aren’t adapt­ing Bak­u­man, but JC Staff have decided to make up for not being Mad­house by com­pil­ing their abso­lute best staff pos­sible. This includes Kasai Keni­chi dir­ect­ing, who is basic­ally their ace in the hole hav­ing worked on most of their best works (Nodame, Honey and Clover). Oh, and he’s joined by some other dir­ector fel­low who, accord­ing to ANN, dir­ec­ted Code Geass R2 epis­ode 25. He cre­ated The Cart Driver!

Blog­ging Chances: Fuck yeah Death Note author!

The World God only Knows

Studio:Manglobe

There are two anime the moef­ags are going nuts over this sea­son. One, the sis­con one, will have abso­lutely no cros­sover appeal to any­one else what­so­ever. This though has a lot of poten­tial. Been described if Lel­ouch was put into Amagami, while keep­ing his total dis­in­terest in the oppos­ite sex. It’s more of a sub­ver­sion of crappy eroge harems than pan­der­ing. Man­globe may be a totally dif­fer­ent stu­dio from the one that made Samurai Champloo, but they’re still able to pro­duce good stuff if given the right source mater­ial. My optim­ism took a huge dent when look­ing at the staff list (the only two other shows the dir­ector has done are Galaxy Angel 4 and Prin­cess Beware) but hey, I’m always stu­pidly optim­istic at the start of seasons!

Blog­ging Chances: Oth­ers are more excited than I am, but maybe I can use this as an altern­ate teach­ing les­son to Neil Strauss and The Game.

Star Driver

Stu­dio: Bones

Bones mak­ing mecha anime again. This has the poten­tial to be the greatest anime of the dec­ade. Nick­ing the staff list from THAT’s sea­son pre­view:

Dir­ector from Ouran, though he hasn’t dir­ec­ted any­thing since, and the script is from the who did FLCL, most of Revolu­tion­ary Girl Utena, and Nodame Can­tabile: Paris. Music Dir­ector did the music for Bake­monogatari, Lucky Star, and Haruhi (Dis­ap­pear­ance and Mel­an­choly). Art Dir­ector is from CANAAN, Karas, LoGH, and Samurai Champloo. The Anim­a­tion Dir­ector worked on Sum­mer Wars, GitS, and Ouran. Bla bla bla some­thing about seiyuu bla bla bla.

TL;DR – Best staff out of any show this season.

It also has massive poten­tial for fail. The camp­i­ness of the char­ac­ter designs, along with the slightly gen­eric sound­ing plot and the ridicu­lous look­ing mecha point to some­thing that could end up on the wrong side of corny into out­right stu­pid. It wouldn’t be the first time an awe­some staff sheet pro­duced unbe­liev­able crap and this does have the whiff of some­thing like that. Mind you, that’s just a gut feel­ing and, in the stu­dio and staff list, I’m star­ing in the face of over­whelm­ing odds that this will be unbe­liev­ably awe­some. Besides, if it does fail, at least it should be fun to watch the ensu­ing train wreck.

Blog­ging Chances: Whether to fawn over or to laugh at, I’m all over this one.

Sore­demo Machi wa Mawatteiru

Stu­dio: Shaft

Shaft.…on one hand, you know exactly what you’re going to get. All the usual Shinbo-isms, unusual angles and highly invent­ive open­ings and end­ings. And yet they’re the most notori­ously hit-or-miss stu­dio around. The manga it’s based off has won awards, which is always a good sign, and the trailer showed a rel­at­ive lack of Shinbo-isms (although I’m not entirely sure if I’m pleased about that. I might only real­ise when they’ve got rid of them that I liked Shaft’s close up shots of eyes and back­grounds full of school desks). I’m get­ting a gen­er­ally good vibe off it and Shaft finally tak­ing a break last sea­son can only be a good thing.

Blog­ging Chances: I’ve already got my eyes set on another Shaft show, but if oth­ers fail to impress then a maid is fine too.

Psychic Detect­ive Yakumo

Stu­dio: Bee Train

Bee Train are fam­ous for their girls with guns shows like Noir, Mad­lax, Requiem for the Phantom, El Cazador de la Bruja and so on. There may be a notice­able lack of girls or guns in this show but don’t expect them to be chan­ging their sloooow mov­ing plots, emphas­iz­ing atmo­sphere and devel­op­ment over excite­ment and fast-pacing. Can’t say a whole lot else for this show though, but I’m going to go out on a limb and and say, with a main char­ac­ter that bishie and being voiced by Daisuke Ono (Shizuo from DRRR, Sebastian from Kur­oshit­suji), this show will have fangirls all over it.

Blog­ging Chances: Slow mov­ing plots often give me little to work with, so no blog­ging plans unless it ends up less like pre­vi­ous Bee Train pro­duc­tions and more like Push­ing Dais­ies.

Panty and Stocking

with Gar­ter­belt

Stu­dio: Gainax

Sounds like a porno, looks like Power­puff Girls and with the staff behind Gur­ren Lagann work­ing on it, this is far and away the strangest and most dif­fi­cult to pre­dict anime this sea­son. First of all, it’s not a kids show. From what I’ve heard it sounds like a raunchy com­edy kinda thing, lots of crude jokes about sex and stuff. Due to Japans often lack of intel­li­gence when it comes to raunchy com­edy bey­ond ‘haha boobs haha sex haha fal­lopian tubes’, it could be stu­pid and unfunny, but hon­estly I just don’t have a clue what to expect from this. Ser­i­ously Gainax? This is what you’re making?

Blog­ging Chances: Suger, spice and everything nice. These were the ingredi­ents chosen to cre­ate the per­fect little girls. But Pro­fessor Utonium acci­dent­ally added and extra ingredi­ent to the con­coc­tion: Viagra.

Yosuga no Sora

Stu­dio: Feel

Eroge adapt­a­tion blergh. I actu­ally had quite a bit of fun watch­ing the trailer and pick­ing out the ste­reo­types. The gen­eric ‘nice’ male lead view­ers can pro­ject them­selves into. The tsun­dere sis­ter who isn’t blood-related. The large breasted dojiko. The gain­ax­ing maid. The soft spoken sen­pai. Ah you people who actu­ally like these sorts of shows. I will never be able to under­stand you. Inter­est­ingly the dir­ector did Spice and Wolf, but that appears to be a total once off on his part.

Blog­ging Chances: (-_-) <— this is my eroge adapt­a­tion face

Togainu no Chi

Stu­dio: A-1 Pic­tures

When I heard this got green-lit for pro­duc­tion, I took one look, saw the BL game title stuck to it and men­tally shoved it in the bin. A few months later I saw a trailer for an upcom­ing anime full of action and psy­cho faces and intense aura and instantly placed it on my to-watch list, only to dis­cover it was the very BL adapt­a­tion I dis­missed earlier. This did lead to many inter­est­ing dis­cov­er­ies that I hadn’t noticed before, such as the per­son in the trailer in bond­age gear was actu­ally an extremely effem­in­ate man. But, as watered down as the BL is rumoured to be in this adapt­a­tion, it doesn’t change the fact that BL game adapt­a­tions are often even worse than their gender­swapped coun­ter­parts. I’m hon­estly less wor­ried about over­bear­ing BL vibes than I am it simply being ter­rible. A-1 are a bog-standard, middle of the road stu­dio with middle of the road staff work­ing on it. I doubt this will appeal to any­one other than the folks that are watch­ing Uraboku, although at least these guys look like real men.

Blog­ging Chances: I’m going to need a longer break before I start blog­ging BL shows again

Kur­age­hime

Stu­dio: Brains Base

First, it’s in the Noit­am­ina timeslot (Eden of the East, Nodame Can­tabile, Moy­ashi­mon, Tatami Galaxy). Second, it’s by Brains Base (Bac­cano, Dur­arara, Nat­sume Yuujin­chou) and they’ve brought in the exact same crew who worked behind those shows, includ­ing the music guy. Kur­age­hime is an award win­ning Josei manga, which means it’s like shojo except with more matur­ity and less wish-fulfillment, and the story includes a cross-dresser, an apart­ment block full of fujioshi and a jelly­fish otaku. In short, what’s not to like?

Blog­ging Chances: I don’t think I’ve ever blogged a Noit­am­ina offer­ing. Might be time to change that

Tantei Opera Milky Holmes

Stu­dio: JC Staff

Yeah, this is for the same type of people who like Cam­pan­ella. I’ve been fol­low­ing this guy’s twit­ter account, and he says Milky Holmes has got a tal­en­ted anim­a­tion team work­ing on this and I’m inclined to believe what he says, so that’s some­thing for you moef­ags to look for­ward to I guess. Still, JC Staff are kinda stray­ing from their light novel ways of the past few years though, aren’t they. Oh well, at least they’re mak­ing Bakuman

Blog­ging Chances: (-_-) <– this is my eroge adap­tion face

Inva­sion! Squid Girl

Stu­dio: Diomedea

Moe moe squid girl. It focuses on cutesy slap­stick humour as a girl unused to life on land goes around telling people to stop pol­lut­ing the sea. Diomedea are hardly a stel­lar anim­a­tion stu­dio, or even an aver­age one. I’m prob­ably being too harsh on this though. I can actu­ally see this being a rather endear­ing com­edy. The dir­ector is a pretty tal­en­ted guy too, hav­ing worked on Gen­shiken, Big Win­dup and XXXHolic. There’s another name on his resume: Hare + Guu, a series that also looks like a cutesy com­edy from the out­side. So we could be in for a pleasent sur­prise here, but I’m not hold­ing out on much.

Blog­ging Chances: Would be a total wild­card choice if I did pick it up

Otome Yokai Zakuro

Stu­dio: JC Staff

I can so see this get­ting lost in the shuffle next sea­son. From the out­side it just seems like a jumble of whatever. Yokai and cat-eared girls and men in uni­forms and pink every­where, it’s hard to pin any­thing down with this series to get excited about. JC Staff have all their best staff work­ing on Bak­u­man and their high school girl staff work­ing on Index 2 so they’ve got a rather second rate staff work­ing on this. Maybe in a sol­stice sea­son I could see people actu­ally watch­ing this but not in a sea­son so packed full of stuff like this one. Hon­estly, the most inter­est­ing part about this is the director’s, Chiaki Kon, resume. Higur­ashi, Umineko, Jun­jou Romantica, Nodame Paris and Nodame Final. There’s a con­tro­ver­sial list if there ever was one.

Blog­ging Chances: I won­der if psgels will be the only per­son who blogs this show?

My Little Sis­ter Can’t Be

This Cute

Stu­dio: AIC

You know what I’d be inter­ested in see­ing one day? An anime with a mod­ern day set­ting about a nor­mal older brother/younger sis­ter rela­tion­ship. The closest I can think to one off the top of my head is Gen­shiken, and that was done delib­er­at­ley to sub­vert that very inces­tious trope eroge’s often have. But this cer­tainly isn’t it. While the reviews of the other moe com­edy series, World God only Knows, mainly focus on the comedic side and the great­ness of the male lead, all I ever hear about this series is from people wish­ing they had a cute little sis­ter who was also an otaku.

Blog­ging Chances: I have a little sis­ter. She is an otaku. Screw you only child otakus! I don’t have to watch this anime, I’m liv­ing it. I’m liv­ing your dream!

MM!

Stu­dio: Xebec

Bleh Xebec. This is one of those light novel adap­tions that I have dif­fi­culty wrap­ping my head around how it’s meant to work in writ­ten format, kinda like Ladies vs But­lers (unsur­pris­ingly also by Xebec). How are you sup­posed to get your edgy raunchy com­edy to work prop­erly in writ­ten format? There’s only a pic­ture every 10 pages or some­thing. That’s 9 pages with no cute girls to look at. As insta-shock value a char­ac­ter who is into mas­ochism might be, this has suck writ­ten all over it. The staff have worked on everything from To-Love-Ru to Kan­okon to Sac­red Black­smith. I think you should all know by now what you’re get­ting into.

Blog­ging Chances: I’m not put­ting myself through this. Unlike the male lead, I’m not a masochist

Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls

Stu­dio: Arms

The people who brought us Queens Blade, Ikkit­ousen and Night Shift Nurses. Expect more of the same. Noth­ing more, noth­ing less. The trailer actu­ally looks kinda cool, what with the ink splashes everywhere.

Blog­ging Chances: If I was a girl, I’d test doing the fight­ing moves these girls do to test if boobs really do move like that and then write about my find­ings as the blog­ging pro­ject. If I grow boobs before this starts, then I guar­an­tee you I’ll blog this.

Iron­man

Stu­dio: Mad­house

Lalala copy­paste from the Spring Pre­view before it was delayed.

Prob­ably the best part of this pro­ject is that Mad­house have been given total free­dom to adapt this story as they wish. Now I wasn’t that big of a fan of the movie but the story was indeed an inter­est­ing one. Plus just watch that trailer. After a miser­able 2009, this is Mad­house back on form with some slick anim­a­tion. There’s not a whole lot of info on this out there but the name Mad­house com­bined with the prom­ise of action always gets my interest up.

And if it gets delayed yet again, I’ll copy­paste that para­graph yet again. Sorry, but I’m never able to sum­mon enthu­si­asm for delayed pro­jects. I worked up my enthu­si­asm once before, it’s hard to work it up again.

Blog­ging Chances: I’ll leave this to comic book nerds to rave about

For­tune Arterial

Stu­dio: Feel & ZEXCS

(-_-)

SEQUELS

A Cer­tain Magical Index 2

Stu­dio: JC Staff

In a way, it’s almost refresh­ing to see Index on this list. It’s JC Staff being JC Staff and not uber-popular shounen manga adaptors, obscure girly manga adaptors or VN adaptors. I’m not a fan myself but I don’t begrudge the show or any­one who is a fan. Here’s more flat-chested lolis for you lot.

Let­ter Bee 2

Stu­dio: Pier­rot

I blogged this show. I got bored of this show. I dropped this show. I have no inten­tion of watch­ing the second sea­son. kthx

Sora no Otoshi­mono 2

Stu­dio: AIC Asta

Fly­ing panties.

Motte To-Love-Ru

Stu­dio: Xebec

The manga was can­celled because it was repet­it­ive, had crap humour, no plot and noth­ing inter­est­ing hap­pen­ing what­so­ever. The only appeal and only sav­ing grace of the manga and its respect­ive anime is the girls are hot. Just so long as you guys know that.

Hak­u­ouki 2

Stu­dio: Deen

Moar samurai bishies

Arakawa Under the Bridge 2

Stu­dio: Shaft

I loved the first sea­son. Abso­lul­tey loved the thing, but I’m a bit wary of a second sea­son. What made it great was how com­plete and well-rounded the whole thing was. It doesn’t need a second sea­son. Plus Shaft have a miser­able record with second sea­sons. But they made one, so I will watch it. And con­tinue blog­ging it.

Super Robot Wars:

The Inspector

Stu­dio: Asahi Pro­duc­tion

Only the most hard­core of mechaf­ags watch these. No really. Des­pite the pre­sense of giant robots, abso­lutely nobody watches these shows. I have my doubts that it will even be subbed. But if the chibi Gun­dam ver­sion of Romance of the Three King­doms got subbed, then I sup­pose this can too.

OVA and Specials

Well the two biggest names (at least, ones I care about) in the OVA’s sec­tion are con­tinu­ing ones. Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Trail epis­ode 2 is ship­ping out 30^th Septem­ber while Gun­dam Uni­corn 2 is out 30^th Octo­ber. Yoza­k­ura Quar­tet is get­ting an OVA release that’s sup­posed to fol­low the manga this time around. Now Yoza­k­ura Quar­tet was a bit of a dis­s­ap­int­ment, but at least it had oodles of stlye and nice art­work. I draw a massive eeuurgh at the art­work in that trailer. There’s a few extra spe­cial epis­odes for ran­dom series sit­ting around, such as A Cer­tain Sci­entific Rail­gun OVA and an Air Gear OVA. There’s even another To Heart OVA (for the series that is essen­tially the father of all crappy eroge adap­tions, I sure as hell never see it men­tioned any­where). Speak­ing of crappy eroge adapt­a­tions, I believe there’s also yet another ~Da Crapo~ OVA, although they seem to come in as reg­u­lar as a new sea­son of Major. In the region of OVA’s to actual new con­tent, there’s some sort of pilot epis­ode of Mirai Nikki, which I know has quite a lot of people excited about.

Movies

The prob­lem with put­ting movies in sea­son pre­views is we won’t see the ones com­ing out in Japan until the dvd release, sev­eral months after they actu­ally star­ted screen­ing. So while Gun­dam 00 movie, Loups-Garous and Mar­dock Scramble are all com­ing out next sea­son, we won’t actu­ally see any of them for a long time yet. So what can we expect soon? Well, the second Eden movie, Para­dise Lost, is already out on DVD, just nobody has subbed it yet, appar­en­lty because it’s not very good. I’d nor­mally cry foul at that but after the first movie it’s not that much of a stretch to believe that hap­pen­ing. Time of Eve movie is also out yet not subbed, although that’s just the same events that happened in the ori­ginal series told slightly dif­fer­ently. Second Broken Blade movie is out 27^th August, which I’m excited about but appar­ently very few oth­ers are. Fate/Stay Night Unlim­ited Blade Works is out 30 Septem­ber and King of Thorn is out 27 Octo­ber, and that is unfor­tu­nately it for dvd dates that have actu­ally been released. No idea when Dis­s­apear­ence of Haruhi Suzu­miya or Tri­gun: Bad­lands Rumble are com­ing out. Then there’s that Macross Fron­tier movie, which I’ve been writ­ing about for the past 5 sea­son pre­views. I’m start­ing to doubt that it ever exis­ted in the first place…

Blog­ging Scheduele

I’m going to try out being on of those blog-em-all anime blog­gers. I’m plan­ning on pick­ing up at least 4, pos­sibly 5 series next sea­son, so obvi­ously non-episodic stuff is going to be on the down­turn. Since I blogged and loved the first sea­son of Arakawa Under the Bridge, I’m def­in­itely blog­ging that this sea­son. Bak­u­man and Star Driver are the other two I’m def­in­itely blog­ging, unless there’s some sort of crazy world where all three air on the same day. Oth­er­wise it depends on air­ing dates and what dates I have free to blog these shows. Kur­age­hime, World God Only Knows and Sore­demo Machi are the other pos­sib­ilites with maybe a wild­card choice like Squid Girl or Psychic Detect­ive Yak­umo if the oth­ers turn out really poor.

 Loading …