There are a large number of very classy anime coming up this season.

Welcome to The Cart Driver’s world famous seasonal anime season preview, Summer 2015 edition. And by god do I hope it’s better than the Spring edition because boy did last season drain my enthusiasm for anime in general. I had to go back and rewatch the anime this blog was named after for a little pick me up. But hey this season has a brand new anime from Gen Urobuchi of Madoka Magica, Nasu of Fate/Stay Night, and Narita of Baccano/Durarara. So that’s at least 3 new anime worth checking out already, right?

…oh, they’re all working on the same one? Welp, never mind then.

TV Shows

Snow White with the Red Hair

Shoujo that’s not more bloody high school romance in which entire ruddy episodes are spent on a character declaring they are not pure because they want to hold hands! OK shoujo fantasy about princes liking the red haired female lead is not exactly new either. There was literally one less than 6 months ago. But baby steps people. Snow White with the Red Hair is a highly acclaimed shoujo fantasy manga being adapted by the good people at Bones. It has some impressive staff behind it, with the director being Sword of the Stranger’s Mashiro Ando (thankfully now out of the clusterfuck that was the Under the Dog anime kickstarter). I did read some of the manga myself and I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about. Then again, the genre I will tentatively call ‘shoujo fantasy’ has never really been something I’ve got into. Escaflowne, 12 Kingdoms, Akatsuki no Yona, all of them have failed to grab me. But hey if you like those sorts of anime, this seems like the next installment.

Aoharu x Machinegun

The original publication that a manga adaptation runs in is something I have increasingly been paying attention to for anime adaptations when it comes to predicting what kind of manga it will be. For example, Aoharu first began life as a one shot that ran in Gangan Online. The stuff turned into anime from Gangan Online so far include Daily Lives of Highschool Boys, Watamote, Nozaki-kun and Barakamon. Perhaps not all of them might be your thing, but they are all undoubtedly hits with various types of people without any of them being because hur boobs. So I’ve learned to take extra interest when that publication is involved. I read the one shot and it was decent. It’s about two failed soccer players with one turned host and other turned shitty light novel author (title of his novel was “My Little Sister is a Predator” wit the tagline being “I want onii-chan to be my prey”), and then the two of them get involved in survival games. It’s bizarre but certainly original and entertaining.

However this is where things take a little turn. One thing that’s worth pointing out about the one shot is it was fairly homotastic. The two guys have a fairly strong bond together and do the whole lean close to each other’s faces where it looks like they’re about to plant big soppy ones on each other. Gangan Online is a seinen publication. Perhaps not quite standard seinen when you’ve got things like Nozaki-kun in it, but when reading the one shot I did find it a touch odd it ran it Gangan Online. But then it was picked up for regular serialisation by GFantasy, the publication that runs Kuroshitsuji and suddenly you know which direction the full version will go in. This all said, that doesn’t mean it can’t be good. Who doesn’t like a bit of homolust in their anime anyway? Brains Base are doing the adaptation with some decently talented but inexperienced staff on it. It could still be quite good. I like being optimistic.

Chaos Dragon: Red Dragon Company

Gen Urobuchi, Nasu and Ryohgo Narita walk into a bar. There they meet Makoto Sanda and they all laugh at him. Gen wrote Madoka Magica and Psycho Pass, Nasu wrote the Fate series, and Narita wrote Durarara and Baccano. Meanwhile all Sanda wrote is Rental Magica. One of these is considerably worse than the other (it’s the Fate verse BOOM didn’t see that coming). There they team up with some shitty light novel author and a guy who draws shitty character designs for shitty light novels and they decide to play Dungeons and Dragons together. They have so much fun doing this that they decide to turn it into an anime.

No really. Nasu, Butch Gen and Narita D&D campaign turned into an anime. This might be the dumbest\greatest anime idea ever. Basically they all have a character of their own, and going down through each one you can often tell without looking who created which character. The noble ancient knight is obviously Nasu. The religious assassin is obviously Butch Gen. The weird wooden immortal doll is obviously Narita. The shitty looking wolf girl loli is obviously the light novel author. The actual anime adaptation is being done by Silver Link, who aren’t great, with some relatively newbie staff on it. Oh and Shou Aikawa, the guy who wrote the original Full Metal Alchemist anime and Un-Go anime. Because let’s throw another name in there. Too many cooks spoil the broth and all that, but the inherent idea of getting talented creative minds and Nasu playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons and then animating the results is so ridiculous I can’t help love it.

Charlotte

Jun Maeda is back! The head writer behind Key, probably best known for Clannad After Story, although honestly through all the different routes on different Key games being by different writers I lose track on which are attributed to him. This time he’s writing the story for an anime original property called Charlotte with PA Works backing him up, the same group that teamed up to make Angel Beats. The anime scene has had quite a long time for everyone to get over him (Little Busters happened somewhere in that gap but it seemed that anime made fuck all impact, which was nice). Now though he’s burst back in the door, holding a small, mentally disabled girl in his arm, slowly breaking each one of its fingers while cooing “who’s the perfect little image of a woman, yes you are, yes you are”. I want nothing to do with him thanks.

Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace

First off, the positives. Game of Laplace is a Noitamina original anime ‘inspired’ by the works of the famous Japanese mystery author Conan Edogawa err no I mean Edogawa Rampo. The last time we got an original Edogawa inspired Noitamina anime was the criminally overlooked Un-Go, which I really liked. Given Noitamina’s output for the past year has been a load of old wank (How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend and Punchline being the latest in this line of wank), it’s nice to see something that at least looks on the surface like it’s trying to remain a little more true to Noitamina’s original screed of trying to appeal to an audience outside of the usual young adult male demographic late night anime traditionally target.

The negatives: The staff aren’t inspiring. Our old buddy director Seiji Kishi along with his usual writing crew make a show stopping appearance. He has developed a nice habit of doing minimal work when doing adaptations and usually degrading them in the process, from Danganronpa to Devil Survivor 2 to Arpeggio of Blue Steel to Persona 4 to Assassination Classroom. Even anime from him I find myself liking such as Humanity has Declined I can put more down to the source material than him. He’s brought along Lerche too, a new upcoming animation studio who stand out from other new upcoming animation studios such as Mappa, Trigger and Wit by having shitty animation. But instead of focusing their efforts on trying to animate better, they’ve instead gone “fuckit” and are animating 3 TV anime this season! Yeah this will turn out well.

Gakkou Gurashi!

My thoughts upon first looking at Gakkou Gurashi (that it was some bullshit noseless cute girls at high school everyday s’life boring fest) was vindicated when I started reading the manga. Cute girl with no nose faffs about doing cute shite at a school while she says how wonderful everything and everyone is. “Boy” I thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out she was just hallucinating and she was actually in a post apocalyptic wasteland or something”. Then I turned the page of the manga and…yeah. It was after when I found out the names of various Nitroplus people, the studio Gen Urobuchi first started out, were on Gakkou Gurashi that it started to make more sense.

The easiest point of comparison for this would be Higurashi. Not the story, but more the idea of deliberately contrasting the cutesy girl bullshit with the horror that unfolds. It almost feels like a commentary on anime fandom and their desire to keep their weird dream ideals of highschool life even while the world is falling apart around them. Unfortunately, much like Higurashi, the cutesy part is so awful that while you might understand why it exists, it doesn’t stop it being an incredible chore to sit through. I have my doubts it will be good. Director of Muv Luv Total Eclipse isn’t exactly promising and this is one of the three the stretched team at Lerche are doing. But it definitely has something going for it.

Gangsta.

Drugs! Prostitutes! Mafia! Dirty Cops! Sex! Violence! Asses! Guns! Swords! Blood! Dirt! Grit! Dark! So gangster that we don’t even spell ‘gangster’ properly in our title! While it can  be easy to make fun of these sorts of titles because they and their fans take them so seriously, it’s still nice to have variety in the type of anime we get and I would be lying if I said I didn’t look forward to these sorts of shows. Admittedly these types of gritty realistic modern day crime and pirates in a dirty city full of crooks inevitably gets compared to Black Lagoon. And like almost every anime out there, it doesn’t come out that fight the winner. But hey, Jormungand was similarly compared unfavorably to Black Lagoon and that show was all right. It had Koko being loco (I say oh no) and that’s always fun.

Right off the bat, the trailer wins me over by having silly dubstep. I’ve noticed anime fans seem to have an intense dislike for dubstep, which I’m guessing is probably because dubstep is liked by cool people who go to clubs and have sex with attractive people while anime fans are introverted losers who sit in front of computers all day. Or alternatively it’s because dubstep sounds like somebody hitting the side of your head with a hammer, but for me the reason I like it is because it says something about the type of show they plan to make. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure had dubstep to make moments suitably dramatically ridiculous so hopefully there’s at least a touch of that to Gangsta. The staff is reasonably promising. Manglobe may not be the greatest animation studio around, with their latest two anime being Karneval and that Unlimited something or other anime nobody remembers. But the fact they’ve got the director of Ergo Proxy and some of the music talent behind Samurai Champloo on this shows that perhaps they are trying to return to something closer to their glory days.

Gate: The Self Defence Forces Fight Like This in Another Land

Oh man am I excited for this! Gate is talked about in light novel circles in hushed tones as though people are even scared to mention its contents. When Mahouka was tearing up the charts as people tore their hair out while watching such utter batshit uber right wing lunacy, the denizens of the light novel world tentatively mentioned “oh man, you’ve seen nothing yet, wait until Gate gets adapted” before disappearing under their trenchcoat as they slipped back into the darkness. When you hear about the truly psychotic 2chan patriot who spend their time burning Korean flags, this is the kind of novel you expect to come out of there.

The first chapter for the manga adaptation alone already has the government convening to decide that the magic portal that opened in Japan must be captured, as must all the land on the other side because since it’s close to Japan it obviously belongs to them. Throw in some military tech wank crushing the infidels in a manner even modern warfare games think “hey now this is a bit one sided”. And supposedly it doesn’t get truly batshit until later on. Considering the entire premise is how the Japanese military needs to be built up again so we can crush our neighbours, you can start to see where all this is going. And I can’t wait. I hope this gets even worse than Mahouka, and that thing got pretty bad. I hope all the batshit stuff survives the transition from novel to anime. Because without that bile fascination, there really is no other point in watching it.

Actually I am a…

Brought over in English as My Monster Secret, in Japanese is Jitsu wa Watashi wa, in English means Actually I am a…vampire. She’s a vampire. There I spoiled it for you. Now you don’t need to watch it. Also Mami loses her head, Lelouch is most definitely not the cart driver, and Guillotine Gorilla.

Except maybe you should still watch it. The manga reminds me a touch of Yamada kun from this season. Not necessarily in content, but more in genre and quality level. It’s one of those shounen high school rom com anime that isn’t complete drivel, gives the main character a bit of personality (he’s an honest dude who can’t keep a secret to save his life, which is at least something) and the female characters actually have noses. If anything they’ve given them even less noses from the manga. I’m a touch disappointed actually since the rough character designs from the manga were quite endearing. There’s really nothing to say about the staff on it, but I feel like this will probably be OK. In the same vein as Yamada kun is OK. Yeah sure it will be forgotten in a year but will otherwise be totally fine.

Castle Town Dandelion

When this was first announced, I did have some hope because there was something to the premise. It was about a super powered family living in a mansion with security cameras everywhere as their lives are broadcast as a reality show. There’s a lot of things you can do with that premise and take it in all sorts of interesting directions. But then everything else I read about it put me slowly but steadily off it. It’s based off a 4-koma (one point off right there already) from Manga Time Kirara, the publication that includes amongst its most famous works Yuyushiki, Acchi Kocchi and, the big one, K-ON. Which I imagine for some of you people out there is great news, but for me that is about as far away from the kind of material I want to watch as you can get for anime. They cause me physical pain to view. The animation studio have previously worked on Man It Feels Good To Be A Twintail and Testament of Sister New Devil or whatever those bloody things are called. The director however did do the episode of Code Geass where a giant robot dropped the worlds largest pizza on a tree so maybe there’s hope for this thing after all.

Prison School

Do you ever read the opening chapter of some new manga or light novel and find yourself thinking maybe the creator is being constrained by editor demands? Like maybe if the author of Seraph of the End wasn’t required to make the main character go to school and get a shitty rival then maybe it wouldn’t be so tedious? Prison School might be the manga that forces me to go back on that belief. It’s by the author of the multi award winning manga Me and the Devil Blues, which is about an American black blues singer. Meanwhile Prison School is about 5 guys in a school full of breasts and get molested by the breasts. In describing the plot you realise how trashy and awful it should be (and honestly kinda is) but when you put it in the hands of a talented mangaka, something truly amazing happens.

Within about 20 pages of reading the manga I went from “oh well might as well check this out” to “oh my god I need all of this in my face all of the time”. Something about the artwork and the extreme level it goes to that just make it work. Which is why I would be very wary of seeing it turned into anime because a shitty studio and staff list would completely rob it of what makes it work. Indeed my fears seemed to be coming true when it was announced JC Staff were the studio. I broke my ‘no JC Staff rule’ last season when I watched both Souma and Dungeon Pickup Artist and within a few episodes I sorely wished I hadn’t broke that rule. But then they only went and announced the director would be none other than Mizushima, the guy behind the wonderful Shirobako and the big surprise that was Girls und Panzer from a few years back. I trust him to be able to translate the mangas truly wonderful sense of humour over to anime form. I do have some doubts its style of humour will just wear off after a while, but one can still be hopeful.

Monster Musume

It wasn’t until I read the first chapter did I feel like I actually understood Monster Musume. It’s just Urusei Yatsura. There’s a bit more boobage on display (although not that much more), it becomes more harem focused and more pandering in general, but the style seemed pretty similar. She even calls him darling. The plot is about a guy who gets a parade of monster girls who all want his dick but he can’t fuck them because one of them might be his sister oh wait no sorry I just got confused between this and WHO IS IMOUOTO. He can’t bone them because it would cause an international incident between the world of monsters and humans. He also can’t bone them because a lot of them don’t appear to have vaginas. Therein lies a sort of appeal to Monster Musume, at least from what I read of it. The general content is very trite and bog standard harem romcom, but take a step back and you get this weird scholarly interest in how these cross species relationships work. For the snake girl you can get her off by jerking off the end of her tail, so to have sex would she wrap the end around the human male’s penis and then…yeah I thought a bit too much about this.

Overlord

Being trapped in a video game world isn’t necessarily a new thing in anime, but it has definitely gotten extremely popular lately. The appeal of them though is not necessarily just because vidya gaems r kul, but more specifically this appeal of being given a second chance in another world. Video games are an obvious touchpoint for this for how you recreate yourself in a video game setting, particularly with anything role playing. It’s this idea of reincarnation, giving you a second chance to be a cooler person, the kind of person you were in your video game. Not necessarily a good person either, it’s also the chance to act out your power fantasy. Many anime are certainly escapism power fantasies anyway. You too could be a ninja or a shinigami or whatever. The stories such as No Game No Life, Problem Children or Sword Art Online are just more direct about it. If you look at popular light novels lately, you see this reincarnation trend really ramping up.

So, Overlord then. You are a loser who plays a MMORPG as an evil skeleton boss with his lair that he and his online buddies all designed in overly elaborate fashion. Problem was they were the only people that cared and eventually they all left apart from him. That is until he woke up in the game as the evil skeleton boss unable to log out, so now he has this crew of minions ready to do whatever he wants from him. Including suck his skeleton dick, as is heavily implied in the part of it I read. It’s genuinely well written and there’s more of a hook here than I thought Sword Art Online ever had. Maybe it’s just me but there’s something weirdly relateable about this guy spending all this time designing his video game character that nobody else ever sees and wanting to meet those people to have drinks or whatever. I can see this getting incredibly popular, particularly with English speaking fans. Madhouse doing the animation so it will at least look good. But my ultimate problem with it is that at its core it’s too power fantasy wish fulfillment with no apparent drawback. But maybe there will be later on? Knowing the genre I don’t have much hope.

Ushio to Tora

I really don’t understand this one. Alright so adapting a manga from the early 90’s with more modern animation worked pretty darn well with Parasyte recently. But that one made sense. The weird licensing hell it was in ended and it could finally be picked up by other companies and adapted. Plus it was an international multi-million selling hit. Adapting Parasyte made sense. Ushio to Tora though? It did win a Shogakukan manga award for shounen manga in 1992 and got a short OVA back in the day, but it was hardly the hot property that was begging to be revived. I guess maybe someone at Mappa knows the author or just really likes the manga or something? I read the manga at it’s pretty bog standard 90s high school supernatural fluff. The director did Trigun back in the day so he’s been around a while. I dunno, something about this irritates me. We have the hugely talented Mappa studio taking a chance on an older manga and out of all the things they could have picked, they picked Ushio to Tora? I don’t get it.

Rokka: Braves of Six Flowers

I find myself wanting to be nice to Rokka. Sure it’s a light novel, but it’s not a trashy light novel. There’s no boning little sisters or reincarnated in video game world where you can bone little sisters. It’s pretty straightforward fantasy. But a fantasy story, judging by the trailer, with no tits n ass focus and no harem bullshit. There’s not even a magic high school where someone can go be irregular at while having really lunatic nationalistic viewpoints while boning their sister. So I want to give it points for trying. And yeah I could be excited and go “wooh it’s by the director of Spice and Wolf”. Thing is, everything else the director of Spice and Wolf did is absolute poop on a stick made of more poop. Cosprayers, Love Love, So I Can’t Play H, Aki Sora, Yosuga no Sora, Maouyu (that last one deserves extra credit for appearing on the surface like it should be the next Spice and Wolf but instead being really boring with giant breasts). Oh, and the same studio whose only previous work was Rail Wars. So I remain highly skeptical. Open to giving it a shot certainly, because I do want to allow it the opportunity to impress given that it has abandoned all the things I typically despise about light novels. I’ll even roll with that bunny girl in the promo art because hey she looks like she’s having a good time.

A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist

I mentioned all the ways back towards the start of this preview about how paying attention to the publication a manga runs in can tell you a lot about it. The same is partly true with light novel publishers, although I must admit this is a subject I don’t have much knowledge in. For example I know that if it runs in Dengeki Bunko then I know it will probably contain all the things I hate about light novels. You just need to look at their fighting game they put out and the character roster to see what I mean. All right yeah I know they have Narita’s two novels, Baccano and Durarara, but you just have to see how completely out of place Shizuo looks in the trailers for it to understand how weird it is that Narita’s novels are part of Dengeki Bunko. Oh yeah and before some smart alecs decide to say “nyer what about Kino’s Journey and Boogiepop Phantom nyer”, they were long enough ago that they’re not really relevant to what Dengeki Bunko is. Oreimo, Sword Art Online, Mahouka, Shana, so on and so forth.

So, we all cool know that Dengeki Bunko is the worst and never to watch anything from it, right? Cool, now forget all that because A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist isn’t Dengeki Bunko. It is a light novel. It wouldn’t have a name like that if it wasn’t. It instead is run by Gagaga Bunko, a publisher that is rather more happy for its light novels to be a bit more out there with their ideas. Sure there’s still plenty of trash too, but when you’ve got something like Humanity has Declined in your roster, you know you’re happier to be weirder. Stuff like Sasami san and Gonna Be Twintails, while not necessarily good, again show the desire to run weirder stuff. I like weird Japanese stuff, and this Dirty Jokes anime is definitely that. It’s about a world where all references to anything rude and dirty has been outlawed but now there are terrorists who break into shopping centres distributing porno magazines and shouting “DICK IN THE PUSSY” at police so they get too scared to try capture them. It’s super clear criticism of the Tokyo Youth Ordinance Bill that came out a few years ago attempting to stop publishing obscene materials. I have doubts about the staff and studio, since it’s bloody JC Staff again, but I love Japan when it gets all weird and satirical like this so I am more than happy to check it out.

God Eater

I’ve seen a number of people express hype for this, apparently oblivious to the fact that it’s a video game adaptation and those are never good. But I can understand where they are coming from to a certain degree. This is being animated by Ufotable, the people behind Garden of Sinners and the latest Fate series that seem to be so popular. I can’t say I’m a fan personally, but that’s more me disliking Type Moon than Ufotable (although they can take some blame for choosing to have extended scenes of people walking around in circles talking forever in between the maybe one cool fight scene every hour). Sure you can see their calling card of shiny character designs in the trailer. In fact it looks so Ufotable that I instantly starting categorising them by Fate class, such as Archer or Rider. But back to the whole video game thing. God Eater is a video game series and this appears to be based off that. These never turn out good for all involved. The one exception is if they do a totally original story, which doesn’t appear to be the case here. By all means get yourself excited. I won’t be though. Video game adaptations just aren’t good. Ever.

*whispers* Gungrave was all right though.

Classroom☆Crisis

Original anime are cool! They give creators a chance to do their own thing. Stretch their creative talents and bring their own ideas to the world. This is a brand new studio too. Lay-duce, whose only previous works have been shorts for a phone game and a Magi OVA. The director did the generally well received Gundam Build Fighters so I’ll watch his original idea. And what did he come up with? A bunch of highschoolers in their everyday lives.

….JAPAAAAAAAAAAAAN!??! I don’t get it. Like fine, whatever, slice of life will always sound dull because it’s not strictly about something exciting. But perhaps a new viewpoint would be nice. The catch in Classroom Crisis is that they have part time jobs. Fucking whoop de doop, original ideas all round here. Why more high schoolers? Why not literally anything else? Are you actually incapable of drawing different age brackets or something? Like sure, I’ll still give it a go because it’s one of the few anime original titles coming out and they’re always worth a shot. But really guys.

Aerial Combat Wizard Candidates’ Instructor

Light novels. There’s something about them that sucks the life out of any original idea. The world in Magical Wizard Combat School Fighter Potatoes has giant bugs who when they kill someone, they wipe the memories of everyone who knew them so it’s as though they never existed. The only people who remember are these magical soldiers who are trying to hunt them down. That is a truly fascinating premise with tons of things you could explore. But it’s a light novel so instead we get an irregular guy going to a magical high school with all girls (at least from what I could tell, there wasn’t even a pervy wingman in sight) and he bumps into a cute girl with toast in her mouth and gropes her by accident and panties are involved and the student council runs the school and argh argh help my eyes are caving in on themselves in an attempt to stop reading this help argh the pain argh argh.

Venus Project Climax

This thing is some idol anime that will be 6 episodes of actual anime and 6 episodes of Japanese variety show bullshit intended to promote the latest soulless idol creations coming through their relentless marketing scheme. It has about as much chance of being good as I do becoming an idol in Japan.

Shorts

I’ve decided to split shorts into their own little category. There are so many of them now it’s silly to ignore, especially since the odd gem like Tonari no Seki-kun can be hidden amongst them. But they’re still shorts so they will mostly be completely forgettable with very little worth previewing. Hence I will keep these short.

Danchigai

Following the everyday life of a bunch of kids, so says the plot description for the manga. Unless they also turn out to be hallucinating and they are actually in the zombie apocalypse, I am not interested.

Himouto! Umaru-chan

Someone read the plot description for OreImo about a younger sister who was a perfect girl at school but dirty otaku at home and thought “oh boy I should totally write something exactly the same” and so we got Himouto.

Pillow Boys

An anime that’s basically about anthropomorphised male dakimakuras that speak to you to help you sleep. What a time to be alive.

Million Doll

This is probably the closest we have to something that people would be interested in. It’s based off a web manga about an idol otaku who tries to use her power as a blogger to make a tiny idol group popular. What makes it feel different from other idol crap is it feels very much like a shoujo manga. Between the earnest tone and “eww dumb boys are icky” part, it has a very different feel to every other idol anime out there. Perhaps the best way to put it is the main character is very similar to Tomoko from Watamote, but while Tomoko was portrayed as the biggest, most pathetic loser around with the looks to match, the main character here still comes off as cute and looks not horrible. I have no interest in it personally as it’s shoujo, idols and a short, but it’s the closest here to being a thing that’s actually worth checking out.

Sore ga Seiyuu!

Meanwhile, back in boring shorts land, here is another anime about voice actors only really notable for being animated by the protracted death rattle that is Gonzo. Poor Gonzo, why has nobody put them out of their misery yet? Did they not bury Gonzo a few years ago? All that’s left are zombies in the offices, drawing key frames while devouring brains.

Wakaba Girl

“By the author of Kinmoza” which is to say all these supposedly teenage girls look 6 years old. Which is also to say it’s about the everyday life of a bunch of supposedly teenage girls as they go about their boring life. Once upon a time I was falling into an increasingly large pit of despair over the number of these cute girls doing nothing anime. However if the future is that they will all be reduced to 5 minute things, I believe I can live with that.

Wakako-zake

It’s about Miyuki Sawashiro going to various pubs late at night to eat food and get wasted alone. Got an unusually talented staff list for a short which is why I’m at least mildly interested. People from all over the shop, from Mappa staff to people who worked on Casshern Sins. Not sure what to make of it besides that, but I suppose at least it’s not idols nor cute supposedly teenage girls.

My Wife Is the Student Council President!

BY THE AUTHOR OF CHU-BRA screams the tagline. I scream in return, but it’s more of a primal scream of fear.

Bikini Warriors

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Sequels

Dragon Ball Super

There are no good promo material out for this new Dragonball yet so instead enjoy this Vegeta angel fanart.

Every other sequel this season wilts in the face of how giant Dragon Ball Super is. And the fans of Dragonball will also wilt when they are faced with the inevitable disappointment OH SNAP! There is totally precedent for this too. I know Dragonball fans are super excited for this and for understandable reasons. It’s the first new Dragonball TV series in 18 years, barring all that rebranding that was Kai. It’s a proper sequel to the last series after the Buu saga ended. Plus it’s being written by Toriyama himself. But to say Toei’s form lately has been spotty would be a massive understatement. Asides from the shockingly awful shounen World Trigger, there was the other return of beloved 90s Toei kids show that occurred recently, and we all know how Sailor Moon Crystal turned out. There hasn’t been any trailers nor really any promo art revealed yet. It’s as if Toei know they can just fart out any old thing and then sell a load of merchandise and make the real money there. You know, like they did with Sailor Moon, cashing in on that nostalgia. Yeah I know I’m being super cynical here, but Toei have earned that cynicism from me.

Aquarion Logos

This is where I insert my now regular reminder than Aquarion EVOL is amazing and you should all totally watch it even if you have never seen the original Aquarion. ESPECIALLY if you haven’t seen the original Aquarion because it retcons a load of things. It’s set 12,000 years after the original so it’s hardly relevant. It’s a glorious bag of ridiculous cheese and makes me cry with laughter. So surely I would be incredibly excited for Aquarion Logos too, right? Not really. This is not really a sequel to EVOL in much the same way EVOL wasn’t really a sequel to Genesis. So different tone to be expected. Also the staff have all changed. While we are still at the animation studio Satelight, we now have the director of Nobunaga the Fool and the writer for Galilei Donna and Psycho Pass 2. No Yoko Kanno doing the soundtrack either, although she’s compsoing the OP. EVOL feels like a weird lightning in a jar moment anyway and trying to recreate that would be next to impossible so it’s not the end of the world if Logos fails to recapture the magic again.

Durarara!!x2 Ten

Yay DRRR is back for the middle part of this trio of split cours. Hopefully they animate the entire show this time instead of accidentally leaving out all the in betweens for a few episodes.

Working!!!

Boy I sure didn’t expect this thing to get 3 seasons worth of material. Even fans of the show seem a little perplexed by its continued existence.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 2wei Herz!

For people who like the Fate franchise but felt it wasn’t pedo enough.

Hetalia The World Twinkle

Boy does this take me back. When I started blogging I didn’t get any readers or commenters for ages. Which is the fate of all new anime bloggers. That is until I decided to pick up Hetalia to write about because it was sufficiently low effort for when I was taking my school leaving exams. I picked up a huge audience from covering it and for a solid year or so I was known as the Hetalia blogger. I’ve gone off it in recent years though. I’m normally not the type of person to say a fanbase ruined a thing for me since I’m not so easily swayed, but when a fanbase includes not an insignificant number of Nazi apologists and holocaust deniers then that will turn me off.

Gatchaman Crowds insight

Are yooOOOUUUuuu all ready FOOOOOorrr another season of HajimAAAAAAAsuu? Because I suuUUUUUUuure know I’m notsu. Her way of draaAAAAgging out words and raAAAAAaaising her voice at random interludes graAAAAAAated on my nervesu. So much so I deveeeEEEEloped a nervous twitch at EEEEEeeven the sound of hersu.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX: Believe in Justice and Hold a Determination to Fist.

I love Symphogear season names. Because I too hold a determination to fist.

Junjou Romantica 3

Yay more gay rape. Because obviously all homosexual romances must be rapey. So goes the yaoi adapted to anime rule.

Non Non Biyori Repeat

Non Non Boring more like dohohohoh. Inushinde will at least be pleased, but he likes boring anime so.

THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls 2nd Season

IdolF@RTster more like. Dohohohoh I am on fire today.

To LOVE-Ru Darkness 2nd

To Love Ru FARTness more like dohohohohoh see you can be dismissive about anything if you just put fart into its name. Watch a master at work: Sword Fart Online. Fartmetal Alchemist. Soul Farter. Farty Tail. Bakemonofartari. Clannad Farter Story. Fart/Zero. Fart Metal Panic. Farts Basket. Infartnite Stratos. Pandora Farts. Monthly Girls Nofarti-kun. Your Fart in April. Fartnoah Zero. Cardcapter Fartura. Nagi no Fartsukara. Fartantia on the Verdous Planet. Grave of the Firefarts. Arafarta under the Bridge. Mawaru Penguinfart. Black Fart Shooter. Nodame Fartabile. Amagi Brilliant Fart. Fart Rei Zero. Millennium Fartress. Fart of the North Star.

…ok I’m done.

Yokai Watch 2

Even though I’ve shoved Yokai Watch 2 right down the bottom of this preview and practically nobody who speaks English will watch it, it’s probably the biggest show of the season. The kids show has been the kind of earth shattering success that brings to mind Pokemon. Its first movie blew apart the box office. The trading card game sold millions. It has yet to have that international appeal just yet, possibly in part because it’s called Yokai Watch. It will be pushed abroad soon though, so expect to see Yokai Watch toys dominate your local stores sooner rather than later. I do not know if it will be an international hit as I really don’t have the background knowledge to know what to look out for in predicting successes. But in Japan it is a hit that will last years, possibly decades. Expect to see many more Yokai Watch sequels to come for a while yet.

Shorts Sequels

Wooser no Sono Higurashi: Mugen-hen and Miss Monochrome – The Animation 2. I can’t be arsed to write anything about them. I should instead make more fart jokes.

Movies and OVAs

Only one this season. Perhaps you should go back and watch Gundam the Origin or Code Geass Akito the Exiled while you’re waiting.

Psycho Pass Movie

Release date: 15 July

After the embarrassing awful mess that was the second season of Psycho Pass, I was ready to wash my hands of the whole thing. Sure that first season was pretty great, but it had changed hands. No Butch Gen, no go. Until that is a little birdie sat on my shoulder and said “wait wait, there’s this Psycho Pass movie. It has no connection to that awful sequel and Butch Gen is back on board again”. So yeah I’m back on board. I’m ready to love again. The movie sure was a hit in Japan too, although so was Gen’s awful Expelled from Paradise movie so frankly I’m not sure I trust the Japanese tastes either.

And if this season sucks

there’s always next season

…oh right yeah I don’t do these charts anymore.