Yes, the new sea­son of FMA is on it’s way!

Full Metal Alchem­ist Sea­son 2

Stu­dio: Bones

Syn­op­sis: Human­kind can­not gan any­thing without first giv­ing some­thing in return. To obtain, some­thing of equal value blah de blah you know the drill.

Neon Genisis Evan­gelion, Cow­boy Bebop, Full Metal Alchem­ist, Death Note and The Mel­an­choly of Haruhi Suzu­miya. These 5 shows are what I con­sider the ‘Big 5′ of anime. Nearly every­one has seen them and they are the 5 you will see most often in dif­fer­ent people’s favor­ite anime. You can prob­ably judge what type of per­son someone is simply by which of these they include in their top anime.

So what I’m try­ing to get around to here is that Full Metal Alchem­ist is BIG. There is noth­ing really new I can say about this series, bar the fact I’m 99.9% sure that this series will fol­low the manga ver­sion of events. You’ll have made up your mind long ago whether you are watch­ing it or not so there really is noth­ing I can see. Am I watch­ing it myself? Of course I’m bloody watch­ing it!

Shangri-La

Stu­dio: Gonzo

Syn­op­sis:The story takes place in the middle of the 21^st cen­tury when global warm­ing has turned Tokyo into a trop­ical city. To reduce the tem­per­at­ure at the heart of the city by 5°C (9°F), the city is being reborn as the world’s largest forest city. How­ever, des­pite the flow of refugees to the new city of Atlas, there are not many res­id­ents who can actu­ally live there. Moreover, anti-government guer­ril­las are attempt­ing to stop the forestation

Yes, I know it says Gonzo, but I think this may be their return to glory. They’ve got some fant­astic staff behind the show and I already love the promo pic­tures, as little as I’ve seen. So whatever you do, do NOT dis­miss this because of the Gonzo tag, I think this might just be their ticket back into suprem­acy. Remem­ber, they made Last Exile, any­thing is possible

K-ON!

Stu­dio: Kyoto Animation

Syn­op­isis:K-ON is about four girls try­ing to save their school’s music club; des­pite being total noobs at play­ing musical instru­ments or read­ing music

Sorry, but I am not a fan of much of Kyo-Ani’swork, except when they decide to work on some­thing comedic. Thank­fully, that is exactly what K-ON seems to be. It’s a story about a music club full of people who can’t actu­ally play any music. On the other hand, I can’t find much info on the actual manga itself so I have no idea if it’s any good. Still, I’d be slightly optim­istic for this one.

Eden of the East

Stu­dio: Pro­duc­tion IG

Syn­op­sis:On Novem­ber 22, 2010 ten mis­siles strike Japan. How­ever, this unpre­ced­en­ted ter­ror­ist act, later to be called as “Care­less Monday,” does not res­ult in any appar­ent vic­tims, and is soon for­got­ten by almost every­one. Then, 3 months later… Saki Mor­imi is a young woman cur­rently in the United States of Amer­ica on her gradu­ation trip. But just when she is in front of the White House, Wash­ing­ton DC, she gets into trouble, and only the unex­pec­ted inter­ven­tion of one of her fel­low coun­try­men saves her. How­ever, this man, who intro­duces him­self as Akira Tak­iz­awa, is a com­plete mys­tery. He appears to have lost his memory. and he is stark naked, except for the gun he holds in one hand, and the mobile phone he’s hold­ing withthe other hand. A phone that is charged with 8,200,000,000 yen in digital cash

When you do a pre­view, you check each anime’s source mater­ial. So Eden of the East is based off a novel by Nobel Prize win­ning author JonhStein­beck in 1952. You know, John Stein­beck, the fel­low who wrote Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, pretty big stuff. Any­who, accord­ing to Wiki,  ‘Accord­ing to his last wife Elaine, he con­sidered this to be a requiem for himself—his greatest novel ever’. So I don’t think there’s a prob­lem withthe source mater­ial then! The staff work­ing behind this are…epic. I mean, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note, the music behind Gun­dam 00. They even planned to make a movie and everything. Pro­duc­tion IG seem to think this will be a hit. The sum­mary looks damn inter­est­ing, the promo pic­tures look…odd. Actu­ally I’m not so con­vinced on the promo pic­tures but otherwise…wow. Keep this on your to-watch list

Guin Saga

Stu­dio: Satelight

Syn­op­sis:The story cen­ters around a mys­ter­i­ous war­rior named Guin, an amne­siac with a leo­pard mask magic­ally affixed to his head. Remem­ber­ing noth­ing but his fight­ing instincts and the word “Aurra”, he con­fronts a world laden with danger, intrigue, and magic.

From that good old reli­able source of ‘a post a read in a forum’ said that the mangaka from Beserk got a lot of his inspir­a­tion from the ori­ginal Guin Saga nov­els. From ANN  ‘100 volumes in length, Kurimoto’sGuin Saga has sold over 25 mil­lion cop­ies and reg­u­larly made Japan’s best seller list’.On the other hand, Satelightare a bit of a hit-or-miss stu­dio but they seemed to have picked up a poten­tial win­ner with­this. The style and stu­dio tell me ‘meh’ but you don’t sell 25 mil­lion cop­ies without being pretty damn good. It’s worth a pop at least but I hope they make it long enough to prop­erly cover the full story

Sen­goku Basara

Stu­dio: Pro­duc­tion IG

Syn­op­sis:Sen­goku Bas­aratakes place dur­ing the Sen­goku Period, or War­ring States Period, dur­ing which Japan was split into many minor states bat­tling over power and land. The game fea­tures two his­tor­ical war­lords as the main char­ac­ters: San­ada Yukimura and Date Masamune.

This is another one of those game fran­chises that never turns out into a decent anime but pleases the fans of fran­chise. Game-based anime very rarely ever (the only reason I’m not say­ing never is because there must be well over 100 anime based off games and at least one of them must be vaguely enjoy­able) become a good anime, so I don’t think I’ll bother with this one at all.

Gal­lian Chronicles

Stu­dio: A1 Pictures

Syn­op­sis:Valkyria Chron­icles is set in a fic­ti­tious con­tin­ent remin­is­cent of 1930s Europe — divided in two and ruled by the Empire and the Fed­er­a­tion. The Empire has set its sights on invad­ing a small neut­ral coun­try called Gal­lia, which is situ­ated in the middle of the two great empires. The story fol­lows a hero named Welkin and his fel­low sol­diers of the Federation’s 7^th Pla­toon as they engage in a series of epic battles.

Another game-based anime. I prefer the syn­op­isis to Sen­goku Bas­ara but oth­er­wise this really doesn’t inspire much con­fid­ence. The staff are rather inex­per­i­enced. But A1 are a good stu­dio so we might get some fancy desert battle scenes. Heck, what am I doing, this won’t be great. Why am I try­ing to say a game-based anime will be any good? It will please the fans of the game and do very little more

Pan­dora Hearts

Stu­dio: XEBEC

Syn­op­sis:Oz Bez­arius, heir to one of the duke houses, has just turned fif­teen. His life is rich and care­free, darkened only by the con­stant absence of his father. At his coming-of-age cere­mony, how­ever, everything changes. For no reason that he can dis­cern, he’s cast into the prison known as the “Abyss”, only to be saved by a “chain” known as Alice, the blood­stained black rab­bit. Why was he cast into Abyss, how does Alice factor into it all, and what does the organ­iz­a­tion known as “Pan­dora” want with him?

Urgh…XEBEC.  I watched the trailer and it looks like Soul Eater if Soul Eater wasn’t done by Bones. Which basic­ally means you take away the best thing about Soul Eater and you’re left with a rather point­less mess, that being Pan­dora Hearts. Sorry, but I really don’t like XEBEC

Saki

Stu­dio: Gonzo

Syn­op­sis:Miy­anaga Saki is a very skilled mah­jong player. One day she gets dragged into the Mah­jong Club and sur­prises some of the other mem­bers by being able to break even after every round, a play style that developed due to the fact that her fam­ily would get mad if she won whenever they played so she would care­fully lose on pur­pose. But here’s the catch, she hates mahjong.

Strike Witches with Mah­jong. Actu­ally no, Strike Witches appar­ently had a fairly good story behind all the lol­ita fanser­vice. But if Shangri-La shows the good side to Gonzo then this will show their crap­side. On top of all that, the dir­ector also dir­ec­ted that well known mas­ter­piece, Dragonaut…

Cross Game

Stu­dio: ?

Syn­op­sis: Cross Gameis the story of Kō Kit­amura and the four Tsuk­ishima sis­ters, Ichiyo, Wakaba, Aoba,and Mom­iji. The Tsukushi­mafam­ily runs a bat­ting cen­ter with an attached cof­fee shop, and Kō’s father runs a neigh­bor­ing sport­ing good store.^[1][2]Wakaba and Kō were born on the same day in the same hos­pital, and have been close friends since childhood—close enough that Wakaba treats Kō as her boy­friend, even though noth­ing is offi­cially declared.^[1]Aoba, who is one year younger than Wakaba and Kō, doesn’t like how Kō is “tak­ing” her sis­ter away from her and claims she hates him.

This mangaka is one of those legendary fel­lows who makes prac­tic­ally every single good sports manga there is, such as Touch. Unfor­tu­nately he had to make it out of eff­ing base­ball! Ser­i­ously, why Base­ball? You could pick soc­cer, rugby, bas­ket­ball, Aus­tralian foot­ball, Olympic hand­ball, hockey, ice hockey, gaelic foot­ball, any­thing but base­ball (except golf). But if this mangaka is so legendary it’s cer­tainly worth check­ing out any­way. One Outs has given me a slight tol­er­ance towards base­ball, at least more than I ori­gin­ally had. Oth­er­wise, there doesn’t seem to be any info on this show at all, not even what the bloody stu­dio is or even a website

Queens Blade

Stu­dio: ARMS

Syn­op­sis: A com­pet­i­tion to decide the next Queen. The strongest war­rior will rule the coun­try and expand it. The con­test­ants need to be older than 12. They need not be human, intel­li­gent or even of that coun­try. The rules for the tour­na­ment: murder is allowed. Any weapon can be chosen.

From the cre­at­ors of Ikkit­ousen comes the next great mas­ter­piece. Like a cross between Cow­boy Bebop, Mushishi and Akira comes Queens Blade. All anime from here on will simply be known as pre-Queens or post-Queens. The next mas­ter­piece is on it’s way and it’s name is…lol, can’t keep a straight face any­more. It’s based off a set of hen­tai manga  and fig­ur­ines, what do you really expect?

Hay­ate no Gotoku 2

Stu­dio: JC Staff

Syn­op­sis: Hayete is a ter­min­ally debt-ridden teen­age boy cur­rently try­ing to pay off his debt by work­ing as a butler.

One of the very few sequels to air this sea­son, the first series of Hay­ate was fairly funny for about 12 epis­odes then it got bor­ing very quickly. How­ever for some people, 50 epis­odes of this debt-ridden but­ler wasn’t enough(!?!) so JC Staff pop along a make a sequel.  It has it’s fair share of fans though so a sequel is prob­ably jus­ti­fied, unlike other sea­sons where they seem to make sequels out of prac­tic­ally anything.

Tay­utama ~Kiss on my Deity~

Stu­dio: Sil­ver Link

Syn­o­posis: The story cen­ters on Yūri Mito, a stu­dent at the Sōsei Academy and the only son of the man who runs the Yachi­mata shrine. At Yachi­mata, there is a legend of a deity named Tayutayu-sama who pro­tec­ted the area, but this deity and other so-called “Tay­u­tai” have been lost in time. Mitoand his friends dis­cover a relic on the school grounds with mys­ter­i­ous pat­terns on them. Then, at the open­ing cere­mony of the new school year, an equally mys­ter­i­ous girl named Mashiro appears before Mito. Mashiro is some­how tied to the relic and the legend of Tayutayu-sama.

Look, I won’t even bother insult­ing this one. It’s just for little girls and really creepy otakus.

Asura Cryin’

Stu­dio: Seven Arcs

Syn­op­sis: The semi-serious school action story revolves around Tomo­haru Nat­sume, a boy who has been haunted by a ghosty girl who was a child­hood friend

I wasn’t all that sure what to expect of this until I looked at what else the dir­ector has dir­ec­ted. Inukami and Sekirei. Now Inukami isn’t what you’d call your typ­ical fanser­vice by any stretch of the ima­gin­a­tion but they both fall roughly into the same cat­egory. I doubt it will be any good but I’ll prob­ably check it out to see if there’s any worth­while com­edy. But the phrase ‘semi-serious’ turns me off a bit

Hat­sukoi Limited

Stu­dio: JC Staff

Syn­op­sis:The manga depic­ted many vign­ettes in the every­day lives of a junior high school girl named Ayumi and seven other junior high and high school girls

Back when I first star­ted watch­ing anime I gen­er­ally looked towards any­thing that had ‘ecchi’ lis­ted as one of it’s genres. AS a res­ult I ended up watch­ing an awful lot of rub­bish. How­ever one of the few good manga’s I read dur­ing that time was…wait for it…Ichigo 100%! Now the anime may have been a dis­aster but the manga was actu­ally very enjoy­able. Any­way, my point is that this is done by the same Mangaka. I’m going to watch it, out of respect for the Ichigo 100% manga (this is actu­ally the only time I’ve ever said or writ­ten how much I liked that manga) but I’m cer­tainly not going to guar­an­tee you a good anime. It will prob­ablydef­in­itely have a fair amount of ecchi

07 Ghost

Stu­dio: Stu­dio Deen

Syn­op­sis:Set in a gothic fantasy world, this is the story of Teito Klein, an orphaned slave who became the top mil­it­ary academy stu­dent. How­ever, an unex­pec­ted turn of events left him pur­sued by the forces of the Bars­burg Empire. Now an escap­ing con­vict, Teito’s sheltered by the church and it’s law of sanc­tu­ary. Here, he dis­covered many mys­ter­ies sur­round­ing him­self, the church, and the Empire itself. The fact that he might be con­nec­ted to a dethroned king and the mys­tical stone of god, ‘The Eye of Mikhael’ made him the tar­get of the empire more than ever. For­tu­nately the church is under the myth­ical 7 Ghost pro­tec­tion. But who are the Ghosts really. Will Teito be free from the military’s clutch, And what of his said mis­sion to uncover the his­tory. And who is the military’s Chief-of-Staff Ayanami exactly. Teito’s future seems to have spiraled into an unex­pec­tedly per­il­ous path.

Sounds vaguely prom­ising, but sur­pris­ingly these Harry Pot­ter styled shows never quite appeal to me. How­ever the manga has some decent rat­ings and Stu­dio Deen are a fairly reli­able stu­dio. I’m most cer­tainly not expect­ing a mas­ter­piece but it may be enjoy­able enough to escape my vicious drop­ping routine.

Tears to Tiara

Stu­dio: White Fox

Syn­op­sis: In a world resem­bling the middle-age. A girl, Rian­non, is set to be sac­ri­ficed to appease a resur­rec­ted demon lord, Arawn. As her brother Arthur attempts to res­cue her, Arawn defies those who resur­rec­ted him and frees Rian­non from her captors, which leads to Rian­non admir­ing him

Well, it’s the same game com­pany that made Utawar­u­monononoonowru­mono and the premise sounds sim­ilar and they even have the same director. Utawarewhatever actu­ally got a fair amount of good reviews, which is amaz­ing for a game-based anime. So it would be fool­ish to write this off. Mind you, chances are it still won’t be any good. When I went to the web­site they showed me some lov­erly lus­cious girl witha cookie in her mouth with’Happy Valentines’ writ­ten beside it. And judging be that skirt-less girl in the promo pic­ture, this may be stick­ing slightly closer to it’s eroge form. Although Tears to Tiara has a nice ring to it, kinda rolls off the tongue

Hanasekeru Seishounen

Stu­dio: ?

Syn­op­sis: A very power­ful indus­tri­al­ist dir­ects his daugh­ter to pick a hus­band from three can­did­ates he have chosen for her. They are to come into her life, and their unique­ness would cause her to recog­nize them imme­di­ately. The story evolves alone the lines of a power polit­ical mys­tery involving a small middle east­ern country.

Oh dear lord…reverse harem, bish­ies, sparkles and roses. RUN AWAY, FAR AWAY!!! At least I will. Maybe some fangirls will be all over this but frankly I des­pise these shows, I couldn’t stand Ouran for christ sake, do you really think I’d like this?

Basquash!

Stu­dio: Satelight

Syn­op­sis: Bas­ket­ball played by giant robots. Need I say more?

The guy who wrote Macross decided to take a wee break from all that ser­i­ous stuff and make this. Look, it’s giant robots play­ing bas­ket­ball, what’s not to like?

Requiem for the Phantom

Stu­dio: Bee Train

Syn­op­sis:A spate of mafia assas­sin­a­tions occurs in Amer­ica, the work of the mys­ter­i­ous organ­iz­a­tion named Inferno. “Phantom” is their most strongest and cap­able assas­sin, how­ever a lone tour­ist wit­nesses Phantom’s latest act of murder. He unwit­tingly exposes the top assassin’s true iden­tity, a young girl named Ein. Wit­nesses are usu­ally killed, but the man is cap­tured and taken to be brain­washed into “Zwei”, Inferno’s new­est assas­sin, with no memory of who he is. From this point on, Zwei is drawn into a world of con­spir­acy, deceit and violence.

If you’re a well-versed anime fan, you should know by now whether you like Bee Train or not. Beau­ti­ful, mel­an­cholic yet com­pletely devoid of  humour or any sense of urgency is what you would asso­ci­ate with Bee Train. Stuff like Noir, Mad­lax, .Hack//Sign and so on. Even if you haven’t heard of Bee Train, any title (anime or not) with the word Requiem in the title should make you think of that sort of stuff. I actu­ally have watched very little Bee Train but I did enjoy Noir so I will cer­tainly give this a shot.

Natsu no Arashi

Stu­dio: SHAFT

Syn­op­sis: Thirteen-year-old Yasaka is a boy stay­ing at his grandfather’s house dur­ing his sum­mer vaca­tion. One day he entered a store and met Arashi, a beau­ti­ful sixteen-year old girl work­ing there. After try­ing to pro­tect her from a man who claims to have been hired by her fam­ily to take her back by force, Yasakaran away with­her and now she stays at his grandpa’s place with him. It didn’t take much time for Yasaka to fig­ure out that his new friend is far from an ordin­ary girl, as she pos­sesses mys­ter­i­ous powers. The plot thick­ens when he finds a sixty-year-old pic­ture of Arashi and another girl named Kaja, and to the sur­prise of all Kaja sud­denly appears, and just like Arashi, her appear­ance hasn’t changed at all since then

Take the Mangaka fom School Rumble. Give him lots of angry let­ters from fans say­ing they wished he con­cen­trated more on the romances he cre­ated rather than being a gag manga. Now tell him to make a new manga.This time he focuses more on the rela­tion­ships yet you can keep his abil­ity to cre­ate amaz­ing char­ac­ter and his knack for the hil­ari­ous. Now com­bine this with Shaft, who I amn’t a huge fan of but even I notice qual­ity anim­a­tion when it hits me in the face with a wet fish, and what you get is this: Natsu no Arashi. Keep your eye on this

Ris­tor­ante Paradiso

Stu­dio: David Production

Syn­op­sis:The manga’s story is set in a res­taur­ant in Rome that the heroine Nicolettav­is­its from the coun­tryside. Her par­ents divorced when she was young, so her grand­par­ents raised her while her mother tried to remarry. Unfor­tu­nately for Nicoletta, her mother aban­dons her even after remarry­ing. Nicoletta goes to the res­taur­ant that is now owned by the new hus­band of Nicoletta’s mother, and ends up appren­ti­cing there among a kit­chen staff of col­or­ful characters

I can’t find much on this at all and David Pro­duc­tion…? I do like the art­work and it’s about fant­astic Italian food, which may I just take a moment to say is by far the best in the world. I’ll check it out any, it’s only 11 epis­odes long.

And so on…

There’s a bunch of other shows, most of them are just kids shows. There’s a few OVA’s as well which may delight but more likely will dis­s­a­point. Also soon enough the new Gur­ren Lagann movie will come, as will the Eureka Seven movie so there’s always a few more stuff to look for­ward to.

Final Rat­ings:

F:Tay­utama ~Kiss on my Deity~, Queens Blade

E:Hanasekeru Seishounen, Saki, Sen­goku Basara

D:Tears to Tiara, Asura Cryin’, Gal­lian Chron­icles, Pan­dora Hearts

C:Ris­tor­ante Para­diso, 07 Ghost, Hat­sukoi Lim­ited, Guin Saga, K-ON

B:Natsu no Arashi, Requiem for the Phantom, Basquash, Cross Game,

A:Eden of the East, Shangri-La

(FM)A: Full Metal Alchemist!

To all those folk who actu­ally read down this far, I just have one ques­tion for you:

What are you going to watch?