First Impressions: White Album, Sora Kake Girl, Chrome Shelled Regios, Maria Holic

My Rat­ing Sys­tem Explained!

A = If you watch any­thing this sea­son, watch this

B = Very good, some­times sur­pris­ingly so.

C = If you have the time, you should check this out

D = Not my kind of thing, I won’t be watch­ing this

E = Bad. Very bad, ignore this show

F = Frus­trat­ingly awful

White Album

I won­der why do pre­views some­times. I mean, I knew White Album wasn’t going to be my sort of anime, yet I instantly down­loaded it any­way. The only way I ever like these Shonen Romances is if it’s side-splittingly funny, like Clan­nad. But nope, the girls are those moe blobs I’ve come to expect from these types of shows.

I’d find it hard to rec­comend this even to Shonen Romance lov­ers. It wasn’t exactly all ter­rible, the ‘god­dess of the day’ scene was actu­ally quite funny. But the mood just isn’t right and the dia­logue all sounds strained. It just isn’t any good.

Rat­ing: E

Sora Kake Girl

I’ve already made my thoughts clear on this show, but I sup­pose it’s worth say­ing again: This is one of the worst shows I have ever seen, and I really do mean that.

Raing: F–

Chrome Shelled Regios

I wasn’t expect­ing a whole lot from this show so I was actu­ally pleas­antly sur­prised. It’s about some sort of messed up future involving giant wood­lice and other such ugly bugs and fight­ing and so on. But the fight­ing was, sur­pris­ingly, the dull part, mainly because the anim­a­tion isn’t great. It was the char­ac­ter inter­ac­tions that was far more fun to watch.

The bal­ance is just right with the char­ac­ters. The dia­logue is well scrip­ted and believ­able. There are quite a lot of char­ac­ters but for once the plot isn’t slowed down by the num­bers. Besides, the purple haired girls makes me drool.

But there is one thing that makes this show almost unwatch­able: The music. It sounds like DDR music put into fast-forward. I’ve never watched a show where the music makes it unwatch­able but I think I may have a first. If I con­tinue to watch this I may just have to turn the volume off altogether.

Rat­ing: C–

Maria Holic

Even if I didn’t already know from doing the sea­son pre­view, you can spot the style of SHAFT from a mile away. Their style is an odd one, one which I’m still not sure whether I like it or not. Plus there’s also SHAFT’s type of humour, again not some­thing I find myself laugh­ing all that much at.

Maria Holic does exactly what it says on the tin, and what it says on the tin is very weird indeed. Yuri, traps, maids, nosebleeds, all sorts of odd stuff stacked in together that actu­ally works quite well. The trap in par­tic­u­lar is so fant­ast­ic­ally evil, I already love her…him…yeah

But I wouldn’t go out of my way to recom­mend it. I’m wary since, know­ing SHAFT, this all could get old rather quickly. I hope they can keep this from going stale

Rat­ing: C+

Yeah, not much great in this lot but don’t worry. I’ll be doing another bunch soon enough, includ­ing Ride Back and Kur­okami. And trust me, those two are cer­tainly worth watching.