There’s some­thing I’ve been think­ing about ever since Gintama men­tioned it in one epis­ode. Japan has a ser­i­ous prob­lem with an age­ing pop­u­la­tion and a dan­ger­ously low birth rate, right? There­fore you would think tele­vi­sion audi­ences aver­age age would be closer to 45 than 15. Yet here I am, writ­ing yet another sea­son pre­view where the vast major­ity of anime on dis­play fea­ture teen­agers. Something’s got to give!

So yeah, wel­come to The Cart Driver’s Sum­mer Sea­son Pre­view. Or Sum­mer Anime List. Or List of Anime air­ing this Sum­mer. Or whatever other keywords I need to put in to make sure this post shows up on search engines~

All inform­a­tion is taken from a vari­ety of places. Anime News Net­work, MyAnimeL­ist, Chart­f­ags Amaz­ing Chart, Animesuki for­ums and the respect­ive web­sites for each anime. For some other worth­while sea­son pre­views, there’s Star Crossed, Sea Slugs, THAT, Caraniel and oth­ers that I’ll link to once they release theirs.

Amagami SS

Stu­dio: AIC

Addi­tional Info: Based off romance sim­u­la­tion game

Syn­op­sis: A second-year high school boy finds him­self uneasy dur­ing Christ­mas time due to an exper­i­ence in the past. How­ever, this year at Christ­mas, he gets his last chance to ask out a gradu­at­ing female senior named Haruka Mor­ishima — or one of sev­eral other class­mates. The story of the anime will be arranged in an omni­bus format, with each heroine get­ting her own ver­sion of the story anim­ated. Each heroine will sing her own ver­sion of the end­ing theme song.

Thoughts: For­give me for being a grumpy guts, but AIC pro­du­cing yet another romance anime doesn’t quite fill me with enthu­si­asm. They have a his­tory of soft and fluffy anime that never really go any­where and get for­got­ten about as soon as they star­ted. The dir­ector has worked on sim­ilar such anime as well. Now many might say the story format is kinda inter­est­ing. The pro­spect of each arc being anim­ated will lead to people point­ing to other short romance stor­ies like Hat­sukoi Lim­ited. Thing is, it takes me a long time to actu­ally care about a romance, although at least this means we won’t get a noth­ing end­ing to this series like many pre­vi­ous AIC pro­duc­tions, so I’m will­ing to give it a shot. Otaku seem to be quite excited about this anime because one of the girls has ‘sex hair’. This is refer­ring to the state a girls hair gets in after sex, some­thing I thought otaku would lack the required exper­i­ence to pos­sess that knowledge.

Asobi ni Ikuyo!

Stu­dio: AIC+

Addi­tional Info: Based off Light Novels

Syn­op­sis: The story revolves around Kakazu Kio, an ordin­ary high school fresh­man liv­ing in Okinawa. A girl with cat ears appears before him dur­ing a memorial ser­vice for one of his fam­ily ancest­ors. The girl calls her­self Eris and claims she is an alien. Before long, fan­at­ical alien wor­shipers and a mys­ter­i­ous gov­ern­ment agency are in hot pur­suit of Eris, but Kio’s child­hood friend Man­ami — who wants to fol­low in her father’s foot­steps in the CIA — cap­tures Eris. Kio finds him­self hav­ing to pro­tect Eris from everyone.

Thoughts: A few things to clear up. First, this is not a copy of Spice and Wolf because these nov­els were writ­ten before Spice and Wolf was. How­ever the reason this rather old novel series has only now been made into an anime is because cat-eared girls are hot stuff thanks to that pre­vi­ously men­tioned title. Second point is AIC+ are basic­ally AIC except with far more fanser­vice. Con­sid­er­ing the lack of any­thing to get excited about in your typ­ical AIC anime, this can prob­ably be regarded as a good thing. Com­bine those two together and what do you get? Yup, a title that’s been green lit using neko­mini fanser­vice as its only appeal. Whatev’, at least the girl is hot

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes

Stu­dio: ZEXCS

Addi­tional Info: Based off light novel series. The title is inten­tion­ally stu­pid (it’s called humour. Con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, the Japan­ese can do it too)

Syn­op­sis: Raina Lute is a lazy stu­dent of Roland Empire Royal Magician’s school. One day, Roland Empire goes to war against a neigh­bor­ing coun­try Estaboole, and he lost his class­mates in the battle. After the war, Lute sets out for a jour­ney to search the rel­ics of a “Legendary Hero” at Emperor Zion Astar’s com­mand. And he finds out a deadly curse spread­ing the continent.

Thoughts: Epic fantasy anime? A guy with magical eyes voiced by Jun Fukuyama? Land of Hope and Glory play­ing in the trailer? I’d be pretty damn excited abouit this anime if it wasn’t for ZEXCS. They have a hor­rible his­tory of annoy­ingly poor anime. Want to take a look at this dir­ect­ors pre­vi­ous two anime? Chrome Shelled Regios and Rental Magica, two anime that break the world record for aver­age­ness. Never get your hopes up for a ZEXCS anime. Who knows, maybe they might sud­denly sur­prise us all? Prob­ably not though.

Mit­sudo­moe

Stu­dio: Bridge

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga

Syn­op­sis: Com­edy slice of life anime about 11 year old triplets Marui Mit­suba, Futaba and Hitoha.

Thoughts: Stu­dio Bridge are a totally new­bie com­pany but look­ing at the staff should tell you all you need to know. The crew for Minami-ke first sea­son have gathered together to cre­ate their own com­pany, screw­ing Asread and mak­ing Mit­sudamoe (I don’t actu­ally know why Minami-ke changed hands after sea­son 1 but this makes me think there’s a bit of dorama behind the scenes). This actu­ally doesn’t look too bad judging by the trailer and it’s in fairly safe hands with the Minami-ke crew. Seems strange for me to be recom­mend­ing a show like this but the trailer made me grin so I say go for it. Also first per­son to call this pedo-bait gets a punch in the face.

Nur­ari­hyon no Mago

Stu­dio: Deen

Addi­tional Info: Based off Shounen Jump manga

Syn­op­sis: Rikuo Nura, is 3 parts human and a quarter Demon, lives in a house of spir­its with his grand­father, The cur­rent clan head of the Nura youkai. Rikou is set to be the next clan head, des­pit the fact he dilikes his demon side. He soon come to terms with his demon blood and decides to take his pos­i­tion as young mas­ter of the Nura house. How­ever there are those who will cer­tainly not allow it to be easy.

Thoughts: Ah, the next anime adapt­a­tion to come out of Shounen Jump. Read­ing reviews, it sounds like a pretty stand­ard shounen fare, so take from that what you will. The staff behind it are solid without being excep­tional. Stu­dio Deen, while get a bit more flak than they prob­ably deserve, are not exactly the greatest stu­dio around (although bet­ter than bloody Pier­rot). You should know by now whether you like shounen or not, although please don’t assume that all shounen are Narubleach. Remem­ber that it’s a genre ran­ging from Black Cat to Air Gear to Full­metal Alchem­ist. Per­son­ally I’m look­ing for­ward to it without highly anti­cip­at­ing it either. I’ve learned to be wary of any­thing with the name Deen attached.

Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi

Stu­dio: JC Staff

Addi­tional Info: Based off light novels

Syn­op­sis: A love com­edy par­ody­ing fairy tales such as “Little Red Rid­ing Hood,” “The Ant and the Grasshop­per,” etc. Ookami Ryoko (Ookami-san) is a spunky high school girl. She is a mem­ber of a “fixer” club so called Otogi High School Bank. She fixes the school’s prob­lems with her part­ner Akai Ringo (Akazukin-chan.)

Thoughts: There’s one every sea­son eh? An anime that has some­thing about it that’s so sim­ilar to a pre­vi­ous pop­u­lar anime that it can’t be merely a coin­cid­ence. Yup, there’s a Taiga look-a-like. I’m not sure why anime do it because all it attracts is neg­at­ive atten­tion but eh. That aside, this looks to be a genre-savvy, self-aware, par­ody laden JC Staff pro­duc­tion (dir­ector of Hay­ate any­one?). In fact, this appears to be one giant wink to the fans. A shower scene in the trailer? There’s even a maid. All with JC Staff’s usual pol­ished sheen and gen­eral high qual­ity anim­a­tion they put into their shows. Yup, I can see this being an abso­lute hit in otaku circles. When I say otaku circles, that almost cer­tainly includes you read­ing this sea­son pre­view, so good for you~

High­school of the Dead

Stu­dio: Madhouse

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga

Syn­op­sis: A mys­ter­i­ous, lethal dis­ease is on the loose world­wide, res­ult­ing in a cata­strophic death rate of human­ity, and the increas­ing rise of attacks, caused by the liv­ing dead. In Japan, sev­eral high school stu­dents and a school nurse have ban­ded together to escape Fujimi High School shortly after it was attacked by zom­bies. The group now attempts to fig­ure who or what was respons­ible for this plague, and in the mean­time, attempt to sur­vive the present apo­ca­lypse. The story is ini­tially nar­rated through the eyes of Takashi Komuro, one of the stu­dents who had sur­vived in the ini­tial outbreak.

Thoughts: Viol­ence and women. Guns and boobs. Head­shots and panty­shots. Wel­come to the highest budgeted fanservice-fest to grace the anime world. Mad­house have really pulled out all the stops on this one, even going as far to get the dir­ector of Death Note on board. So turn your brain off and watch those brains fly and boobs bounce. No really, you do have to turn off your brain for this one. The guy who wrote the manga is a h-artist so he is quite lack­ing in the story-telling depart­ment. Not that I think the fans of this show will mind that much

Seikimatsu Occult Academy

Stu­dio: A-1 Pictures

Addi­tional Info: Ori­ginal anime pro­ject in the Anime no Chi­kara timeslot

Syn­op­sis: The hor­ror and school com­edy story revolves around mys­tery and super­nat­ural cases at Occult Academy, a fortress-like academy city.

Thoughts: I was quite excited about the pro­spect of a timeslot devoted to anime ori­ginal pro­jects when it was first announced. How­ever what Anime no Chi­kara has pro­duced so far hasn’t exactly been awe-inspiring. Sora no Woto was an attempt to fuse moe with plot, which res­ul­ted in a mod­er­ately enter­tain­ing anime. Then there was Senko no Night Raid, which prom­ised to be con­tro­ver­sial but ended up being pretty dis­ap­point­ing, skirt­ing around any­thing that would’ve made it even mildly inter­est­ing. Both have rat­ings below 7.5 on MAL, which is pretty darn low. In short, Anime no Chi­kara hasn’t been a suc­cess and I don’t believe there’s any other anime planned after Occult Academy. It’s a shame but it’s hard to feel sorry for them when they haven’t been pro­du­cing good anime. Any­who, Occult Academy is the usual guff. A cluster of pretty tal­en­ted staff who have all worked for a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent stu­dios show signs of prom­ise, but every other Anime no Chi­kara anime had that as well so eh. Maybe the girl will do some epic re-crossing of her legs, Basic Instinct style.

Shiki

Stu­dio: Daume

Addi­tional Info: Based off Novel series writ­ten by Fuy­umi Ono, the author of 12 King­doms and Ghost Hunt. Air­ing in the Noit­am­ina Timeslot. 22 epis­odes long

Syn­op­sis: Dur­ing a fiercely hot sum­mer in Sotoba, a peace­ful and quiet vil­lage with a pop­u­la­tion of 1300 people, a series of bizarre deaths begin to occur. At the same time, a strange fam­ily moves into a long aban­doned man­sion in the region. Hos­pital dean Toshio Ozaki can­not fig­ure out the cause of death in the deceased, ini­tially sus­pect­ing an epi­demic. As invest­ig­a­tions con­tinue between the hos­pital staff and the res­id­ents, it turns out that the vil­lage is being attacked by vampires.

Thoughts: A Noit­am­ina anime run­ning for 22 epis­odes? Hur­rah, they haven’t done that since the first sea­son of Nodame. As usual, the Noit­am­ina timeslot brings in big repu­ta­tions, this time with that award win­ning nov­el­ist I men­tioned in the Addi­tional Info bit. How­ever get­ting Daume to do a mys­tery hor­ror show seems a bit odd since their pre­vi­ous works con­sist of light-hearted, all-girl com­ed­ies like Minami-ke and Ichigo Marsh­mal­low. From what I could garner from reviews of the source mater­ial, this is a story that takes its time devel­op­ing and reveal­ing to a point of slight frus­tra­tion, although that might have just been manga fans com­plain­ing about its slow releases. It’s a prom­ising anime indeed, espe­cially judging by the atmo­sphere they’ve developed in the trailer, but I wouldn’t bet my house on it being a suc­cess. Although do remem­ber that being a suc­cess is not the same as being a good anime.

Shuku­fuku no Campanella

Stu­dio: AIC

Addi­tional Info: Based off adult game

Syn­op­sis: The story takes place in a trad­ing city Ert’Aria. Leicester May­craft is an item engin­eer belong­ing to an adven­turer guild “Oasis”. One night, he is at a party with his friends to see a met­eor stream on the rooftop of a chapel. One met­eor grazes them and hits the steeple of the chapel. There he finds a secret room and a sleep­ing girl. The girl wakes up and says “You must be my father!”. The encounter with the mys­ter­i­ous girl brings an unex­pec­ted adven­ture to Leicester.

Thoughts: Look at all that pink and sparkles and pom poms and fluffy little super deformed anim­als and little girls wear­ing pretty clothes. Why clearly this is an anime aimed at 20–40 year old men! *le sigh* This was made into an anime prob­ably because of the Touhou fan­dom explo­sion. How long until someone makes an actual Touhou anime?

Tono to Issho

Stu­dio: ?

Addi­tional Info: Based off manga

Syn­op­sis: The manga fol­lows the humor­ous exploits of gen­er­als dur­ing Japan’s tumul­tu­ous Sen­goku period

Thoughts: There is abso­lutely no info on this anime what­so­ever. ANN doesn’t even list the anim­a­tion stu­dio or the dir­ector or any­thing. Going onto moon­phase did me no good either because I don’t under­stand moon­runes. The only thing I do know is it’s a his­tor­ical gag manga. I bet it won’t even be subbed, these things often aren’t.

Sei­tokai Yakuindomo

Stu­dio: Go Hands

Additonal Info: Based off 4-koma

Syn­op­sis: The story cen­ters around Ōsai Academy, a former all-girls private high school which has recently been integ­rated for both genders. The stu­dent body is split between 524 girls and 28 boys. Takatoshi Tsuda is pushed into becom­ing the vice-president of the stu­dent coun­cil, where he is the lone male mem­ber sur­roun­ded by girls.

Thoughts: Stu­dent coun­cil + 4-koma + Go Hands = bleargh

Sequels

Strike Witches 2

Stu­dio: AIC

Thoughts: Hey guiz, I heard this actu­ally has plot and it’s not all just close up shots of 14-year old girls crotches, amirite?

Kur­oshit­suji 2

Stu­dio: A-1 Pictures

Thoughts: Really not sure what to make of this. A-1 decided for this new sea­son of Kur­oshit­suji to change to two entirely new main char­ac­ters. On one hand, it’s great that they’re not mess­ing with the excel­lent end­ing from the first sea­son. How­ever the trailer doens’t fill me with excite­ment at the pro­spect of watch­ing these two char­ac­ters. The only real draw of the first sea­son was Sebastian and Ciel any­way, the story was pretty lame. All they’ve done is basic­ally takes out the two strongest ele­ments. This sea­son will be all anime ori­ginal mater­ial. How­ever with A-1 in charge (see my notes on the Anime no Chi­kara timeslot) that’s not exactly some­thing to be leap­ing in joy about. We’ll have to wait and see I suppose.

Sekirei ~Pure Engagement~

Stu­dio: Seven Arcs

Thoughts: Ah, I can’t really hate on Sekirei. It was the sub­ject of my very first post in my anime blog­ging career. Can’t say I was too impressed by it back then. I showed my dis­sat­is­fac­tion by using a really small font!

Sen­goku Bas­ara Ni

Stu­dio: Pro­duc­tion IG

Thoughts: GET YOUR GUNS ON!!!

Movies

It’s dif­fi­cult to write sea­son pre­views for movies because it’s hard to know what’s com­ing out on dvd and when and if it will ever be subbed. My rule of thumb is that I’ll men­tion it in here if it’s already had a the­at­rical release in Japan. I was con­vinced that the Macross Fron­tier Movie should’ve come out by now but it hasn’t. Then there’s anime that seem to only get the­at­rical releases at fest­ivals and never see the inside of a dvd case, like Red­line and King of Thorn. There are some I can guar­an­tee you though. Magical Girl Lyr­ical Nan­oha and Fate/Stay Night movies are com­ing soon, and we’ll prob­ably see a proper release of The Dis­ap­pear­ence of Haruhi Suzu­miya that’s not a crappy cam­rip, some­thing I’m per­son­ally quite excited about see­ing. Eden of the East: King of Eden is the only date I know for sure, com­ing 4^th August, which should hope­fully be a lot bet­ter than the first movie. Tri­gun: Bad­lands Rumble will be amus­ing to see that hor­rid 1998 anim­a­tion in brand spank­ing lovely 2010 detail. Bungaku Shojo is a light novel series that people seem to be rather excited about and I’m sur­prised it was made into a movie instead of a tv series. Finally, there’s the epic 6 epis­ode movie series mecha extra­van­ganza of Break Blade.

OVA’s

Well the glor­i­fied music video Black Rock Shooter has been delayed until god only knows when so vocaloid fags will have to wait even longer than that (although I’m quite inter­ested in see­ing it myself because the anim­a­tion style looks so weird). Far more import­antly, and to fin­ish off this sea­son pre­view on a glor­i­ous high note, the third sea­son OVA series of Black Lagoon has finally come! Com­ing out on the 17^th of July, this sum­mer sea­son has a gem wait­ing right at the end.

Final Thoughts

I sup­pose I can’t com­plain about a good mix of anime. Intric­ate plot­ting and mys­tery of Shiki. Otaku com­edy of Ookami-san. Fanservice-action fest of High­school of the Dead. Shounen hit with Nur­ari­hyon no Mago. Fangirl squees of Kur­oshit­suji. Pedo-bait with Strike Witches. Seinen romance with Amagami. Occult academy could be bloody any­thing. Prob­ably what’s bug­ging me with this sea­son is the higher per­cent­age of fanser­vice shows. High­school of the Dead fills any fanser­vice crav­ings and Amagami should fill any romance sec­tor. See­ing Sekirei, Strike Witches and Asobi ni Ikuyo in there as well just bugs me, espe­cially since the num­ber of these types of shows had really looked to be on the down­turn. I guess the reason I’m feel­ing a little bit down about this sea­son is that High­school of the Dead is being touted as the next big thing, when it’s essen­tially just gun pr0n and soft­core pr0n. With both Dur­arara and FMA:B end­ing this sea­son, there just doesn’t look like any­thing even remotely close to that level. I dunno, maybe the Anime no Chi­kara timeslot could sud­denly deliver on it’s prom­ise. Maybe ZEXCS could sud­denly stop suck­ing. Maybe I’ll totally under­es­tim­at­ing the heart-wrenching storyline of Shufuku no Campella. Or maybe, just maybe, I have dif­fer­ent tastes to you.

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