October Roundup

There’s no way around a the fact that this sea­son is just not very good. Thank­fully we have plenty of anime still con­tinu­ing on, and in the case of Cross Game and Umineko, two anime that are not only con­tinu­ing on but also improv­ing dra­mat­ic­ally. The thing is, even with all these anime I’ve been drop­ping, I still haven’t had time to get back to Gintama. I watched the Jump Festa OVA, which is fant­astic and I highly recom­mend it to any­one who’s won­der­ing if they should start watch­ing Gintama, so I’ve really got to get back into it ASAP. I’m about 100 epis­odes behind at this stage.

A note about my rat­ings: The rat­ing that’s given is a reflec­tion of how that anime has per­formed this month alone. For example, while Hetalia is a bet­ter anime than  Umineko over­all, this month of Umineko has been bet­ter than Hetalia.

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

A– Full Metal Alchem­ist: Brotherhood

This month hasn’t been quite as awe­some as last month but who bloody well cares! FMA con­tin­ues to pro­duce the good week in, week out. It has finally reached the stage where I’ve had to finally admit that Broth­er­hood is now, in my eyes, equal to the ori­ginal FMA series. Yes, it may have taken almost 30 epis­odes to reach that stage but I think Broth­er­hood has proven itself worthy. Now it’s a ques­tion of will it be able to keep this form up until the end.

A– Darker than Black: Comet of Gemini

Yet to watch epis­ode 4 but leav­ing that aside for a second, what a start this sea­son of Darker than Black has had, eh! Espe­cially when you com­pared to the pain­fully con­fus­ing first few epis­odes last sea­son had, this time it’s man­aged to com­bine con­fu­sion with awe­some­ness far more effect­ively. 12 epis­odes really isn’t enough for this series…unless a sea­son 3?

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

B+ Book of Bantorra

The most under-rated show of the sea­son in my book. It’s dif­fi­cult to say what exactly it is I love about this series. It proves that one can do fant­astic fight scenes with a lim­ited budget if you cho­reo­graph it well. It’s a shame what happened in epis­ode 4 since I thought the ever-laughing witch storyline would con­tinue for sev­eral epis­odes longer. Maybe we’ll see a return from her later on, Laugh­ing Man style…hey, a man can hope can’t he?

B Cross Game

The best month Cross Game has had by far. Those base­ball games were sur­pris­ingly tense, even though I pretty much knew exactly what was going to hap­pen (Cross Game sucks at subtle fore­shad­ow­ing). Even the recap epis­ode, which I basic­ally fast-forwarded through made me sniffle…Wakaba *sniff*. Plus, the twist that the next epis­ode pre­view showed was some­thing I did not expect. A Wakaba lookalike eh? This could get very inter­est­ing very quickly.

B Trapeze

I still can’t quite make up my mind in regards to this anime. Epis­ode one was so wacky and wild that I roared with laughter the entire way through. How­ever epis­ode 2 lacked the shock tac­tics of the pre­vi­ous one and ended up being an unin­spired lump of penis jokes and I star­ted to won­der whether this anime was all art and no depth. Epis­ode three proved that instantly wrong with a fant­ast­ic­ally poignant point to prove. No idea what the rest of this series has in store though.

B– Let­ter Bee

In its own quiet way, Let­ter Bee has been one of the rel­at­ively few impress­ive anime to come out this sea­son. In a world where unori­ginal ideas, crappy sequels, even more fanser­vice and Hetalia rip-offs have dom­in­ated the scene, it’s a breath of fresh air to watch Let­ter Bee in all it’s sim­pli­city. It’s not an amaz­ing anime by any stretch, but you can’t help but love them anyway.

B– Umineko

I had writ­ten some­thing here but then I decided I should watch epis­ode 18 before I post this. Basic­ally, everything that happened in the last game has been thrown com­pletely out the window. It was by far the best arc of the series so far but.…I dunno, I can’t work this series out.

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

C+ Hetalia Axis Powers

It’s still mak­ing me laugh consistently, but this has still been a poor week for Hetalia by its usual  stand­ards. But what’s really made it drop down to C ter­rit­ory is the return of Chib­italia. I know the have barely taken up a minute so far but they’re pres­ence can be felt by the rest of the cast and it casts a shadow over the entire series. Damn you Chibitalia!

C– Sac­red Blacksmith

It’s remark­able that I’m still watch­ing this series. There doesn’t appear to be a shred of ori­gin­al­ity of ima­gin­a­tion in the plot or the dia­logue. But I can’t bring myself to drop it. I actu­ally quite enjoy watch­ing the series, espe­cially Luke in all his grump­i­ness. I wouldn’t be sur­prised in the slight­est if this ended up in the D sec­tion next week though.

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

D Nyan Koi

Over the course of the past month I’ve been a pretty busy bloke. I’ve been try­ing to fin­ish the second sea­son of Honey and Clover and from there move onto watch­ing Gintama again. The thing is, I don’t think there’s been a time this month where I haven’t had at least two unwatched, weekly air­ing epis­odes sit­ting on my com­puter. So I’ve had to cut down my list. Hence, Nyan Koi is dropped. It wasn’t that bad…but it wasn’t really any good either.

D– Kobato

Now really Clamp. Yes you’ve cer­tainly dabbled in moe before and I can cer­tainly stand a little bit of moe in my anime. Heck, I might even go so far as to say a little bit of moe can be a good thing. But this has been no more than K-ON. Actu­ally, K-ON was bet­ter than this. If you say that you dis­liked K-ON but like Kobato then you are a raging hypo­crite. Please pick up this anime Clamp. I don’t want to lose faith in you guys.

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

E+ Natsu no Arashi

What a load of abso­lute bull this sea­son has been. It’s basic­ally repeated the exact same fuck­ing thing for every epis­ode so far. What the hell is the point in these epis­odes any­way and why on earth do they have to spread out this plot point over the course of 4 fanser­vice laden epis­odes? The only reason to watch this anime any­more is the salt guy. Screw you Shaft, you guys ser­i­ously suck at sequels. I’m not sure if I want a second sea­son of Bake­monogatari anymore.

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

Since I don’t include anime I’ve only watched the first epis­ode of in here, you won’t see any F grades today. In fact I only watched one F grade anime this sea­son and that was Kamp­fer. Then again, I never watched the fly­ing panties one. Oh wait, Mir­acle Train. That was pure F grade mater­ial, how did I for­get about that one.