News this month? Who cares, it’s moustache time!

A Grade

Nothing

B Grade

B Persona 4

Episodes 5–8

I was under the impression that I would be watching something akin to Steins;Gate. A gradual mystery building under the surface of character interactions that eventually spirals into something crazy. Instead, Persona 4 has gone more in the direction of School Rumble of all things, having characters play off each other in a variety of new settings while constantly introducing more characters to the fray. What’s more surprising is how I am Totally OK With This because the characters are inherently fun to watch. Even the one episode where they did enter the Persona world was lacking in dark and grittiness, yet (or possibly because of this) it was the best episode of the series so far. Not all the jokes hit, it has to be said, but the more time I spend with these people, the more they grow on me.

B Children Who Chase Voices from Deep Below

I was prepared for another Makoto Shinkai borefest and instead got a Ghibli knock-off that did a bang up job of copying Ghibli too. Yes it got a bit silly at times, and took an awful long time to get going. But once it did, it was a fantastic adventure story with endearing flawed characters and themes woven expertly into the overall picture. So bravo Shinkai. If your next film follows a similar format instead of the usual two dullards with no personality narrating over pictures of clouds (not that there weren’t still an abundance of cloud shots in this movie, but whatever) then you may even go so far as to call me a fan of your work.

B Mawaru PenguinDrum

Episodes 16–20

I will miss PenguinDrum a lot. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it, especially when it weaves metaphors in with apparently real events with nothing to distinguish the two, but over these past few episodes I’m finally beginning to see a purpose to the story. OK, there’s a lot of themes, from loneliness and abandonment, to the message of not letting other people define your lives or how you see other people, but you can’t fault a series for ambition when they’re still able to juggle these themes as well as PenguinDrum does. What I am a bit disappointed at is it’s seemed to have lost its fun side. Episode 16, the one with the granddad with a piece of paper over his face, was the last I’ve seen of the hilariously nutty PenguinDrum, with every episode from then heaping on the melodrama. It’s well done melodrama, which is rare enough as it is, but I do miss that fun side of PenguinDrum.

B Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing

Episodes 4–7

That’s more like it Last Exile. Episode 4 still had one of those blasted scenes where characters sit around eating food and talking about fuck all that seem to be all the rage in cutesy anime these days, but that has thankfully been the last of that. Even the maid-costume scene was both cute and yet depressing because it was a sign of desperation on the part of the princess in trying to restore her Turan government. The part I’m probably enjoying the most this season is how they’re taking the Gundam approach of characterising the villains, something even the original Last Exile didn’t really bother with. It’s actually a damn good example of how to approach war anime. Focus on a small group of characters on both sides of the conflict who have their own small personal problems that reflect the political situation in the world picture. I just wish Fam wasn’t such a dull character.

B Un-Go

Episodes 4–7

Un-Go is deep. Unfortunately, ‘deep’ is a word that has been tainted with the air of pretentiousness and snobbery, with phrases like LOLDEEP being tossed around whenever entertainment attempts to wax philosophically. But Un-Go manages to be deep without being pretentious. It’s such an incredibly clever series, working in so many pieces of social commentary and character depth while wrapping it all in perfectly with the token mystery of the episode. I just wish it could take the hint and stop trying to cram an entire mystery and messages into single episodes. It doesn’t work, and it just makes me feel lost and stupid. Episodes 3 and 4 were a single mystery, and as a result, episode 4 was one of the best episodes of anime I’ve seen all year. Episode 7 did a similar thing, and it was brilliant too, albeit utterly baffling. I really hope it keeps to this format, because that’s when Un-Go has the space to shine like it deserves.

B– Future Diary

Episodes 5–8

I really do like Future Diary a lot, but I also have to be honest with myself here. Two episodes this week were just not very good, and I can’t in good faith give it anything higher than a B– with that record. Fair enough, I get what they’re going for. There’s an underlying sense of danger to these otherwise harmless high school romantic hijinks. But that doesn’t excuse them for being incredibly stupid. Episode 8 was the worst offender at this, what with accidental trip and de-robing entering the fray. The other 2 episodes this week were brilliant, from psychotic craziness to surprisingly heartfelt pieces of character backgrounds that humanised their actions all while playing to this continuous story of how Yuki is being forced to devote his life to Yuno to survive. I just hope the rest of the show is more of that.

B– Fate/Zero

Episodes 6–9

The Lancer, Kayneth and his waifu has caught my interest, only the second of the stories in Fate/Zero to do so. The rest of them, from Saber to Kirei to Caster to Kititsugu to Irisviel to Tokiomi to Gilgamesh, I just do not care. I want this show to be about Rider and Waver, and only Rider and Waver. I know I said this before, but that desire has only increased the more I watch this show. Their story is perfect, the father figure teaching the frightened, cowardly yet proud and determined child. Their story is better than any of the other dullards in this blasted show, and they do this while also being the comic relief. You might as well try finding comedy in the bible than from any of them. Even the Kayneth/Lancer/Waifu story I’m really only interested in because of how Kayneth was a large reason why Waver developed this inferiority complex, and it’s nice to see him be shown up for the giant prick that he is. I really mean it, if this show was really just Rider and Waver, it would be top 30 material. The rest of the characters in this show are just obstacle to sit through until I can get more of that duo.

C Grade

C+ Invasion Squid Girl

Episodes 5–8

Eh, it’s Squid Girl. It’s harmless fun that somehow still manages to make me laugh, even when the jokes are incredibly obvious and I feel like I should have seen them coming a mile away. In a sense though, that’s the mark of a good comic. When you don’ see the joke coming but it’s incredibly obvious afterwards, similar to how plot twists work. They’re obvious in retrospect, but still surprise you when they come around. That all said, Squid Girl has always lacked the spark to make it a truly memorable comedy. It occasionally hits that sweet spot, such as the first Mini Squid Girl segment last season, but for the most part it’s too safe and aims too low to get me excited.

C+ In the Forest of Firefly Lights

Short, simple, charming and completely forgettable. Perhaps I’m being overly harsh on the movie, but setting your bar low and achieving it doesn’t really excite me personally. Oh sure, it’s functional, watchable and tells its story perfectly fine. There are some issues with length and drawing out their interactions a bit longer than was necessary, but it’s hard to find any genuine faults with it. But entertainment does not start from a perfect 10 and then take points off for every flaw. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but yeah, I’m just repeating myself. See? It’s so light on content that I can’t even fill a proper paragraph here without repeating myself.

C– Hunter X Hunter

Episodes 6–9

We’re starting to see the so-called darker side of Hunter X Hunter that all you “it gets better, I swear!” crowd have been loudly proclaiming since the off. And you know what? I’m not so sure I want to see that. It’s feels almost silly, trying to insert these grimdark stories into a shounen series as goofy as Hunter X Hunter. Watching those two goons explode when they walked by Killua on the ship was nonsensical, the two sides don’t gel. Again, this show is never a chore to watch, and the face off between the main characters and the prisoners has actually been kinda fun, with its imaginative challenges. But now that I’m seeing this grimdark ‘better’ side, I’m not so sure I really want to be in this for the long haul.

C– Guilty Crown

Episodes 4–7

While I’ve dropped Guilty Crown from episodic blogging, I’ll probably keep watching for at least a few more episodes (if only to keep up with the cool kids). I dropped because it was stupid and stupid in ways I was struggling to find anything new to say about. Besides, episode 7 was genuinely entertaining. A lot of the same problems with Guilty Crown were present, but you have to respect any anime with Dan Eagleman in it. It’s still a fairly awful show though. I bet Guilty Crown will become one of Those Anime that I keep referencing points to as things anime do badly and other anime shouldn’t follow suit. I’ll call it Don’t Do A Guilty Crown or something like that.

D Grade

D Chihayafuru

Episode 5

It’s almost as though Chihayafuru saw me struggle through the first 4 episodes and took pity on me. Hence, in episode 5, it strode in and held up a big sign say “turn back now Scamp. You know you don’t like this sort of stuff. Why are you even bothering? Oh sod it, roll with the awful shojo nonsense”. And so we got awful melodrama with characters being apparently incapable of experiencing more than one emotion at a time, yet they feel like expressing that emotion with incredibly simplified yet dull and drawn out nonsense. I may have been fooled by Chihaya’s exuberance in the opening episodes, but I’ve got to stop kidding myself. The gormless ignorance of her surroundings and eternal niceness mean that this is just another Tohru Honda. So I gave in. Cool for you guys who like this kind of stuff. Elsewhere Chihayafuru has been getting great reviews. I just can’t do shojo.

D Macross Frontier: Wings of Goodbye

I think I’m a month late with this. Anyway, I saw the first movie when it came out, but I had such a non-reaction to it I ended up fast-forwarding through the final half hour. I wasn’t planning on picking up the second movie, but the Bakacast people were watching it (did I mention I’m on the Bakacast this season?) so I had to watch it or else be left out of the conversation. I really don’t understand why I and Macross Frontier don’t click. I liked the prison break scene for the sheer absurdness of it, but everything else was a sea of pop music and technobabble which swept me along like an uninterested piece of driftwood, occasionally being awakened by a particularly nice bit of mecha conflict. Maybe it’s because I don’t like the pop music. Maybe it’s because it’s all too naff for me. Maybe I just need to be in a very specific mood for this series to get to me. It did take me two attempts to get into the TV series, so catch me on the right day and I might have enjoyed this film. As it is though, I blanked again.

E Grade

Nothing

F Grade

F– Ore no Moustache

Cheers to all those who donated for my Movember challenge. I said I would post a picture of my moustache if I reached $20, which I was honestly worried about ever reaching. The total donation amount ended up being $130, so thanks to you guys for totally shocking me (even if $10 of that was my mum, but still). So instead of posting a picture of me looking self-conscious about my facial hair, you get one of me looking like a self-absorbed prat.

={D

Ya’ll ready for another round of Senjogahara Fascination?

Welcome to the world famous (not really) Cart Driver Season Preview. I usually kick off these posts with some sort of satirical mocking of the ‘everything sucks’ crowd, but since I shall be making a similar statement throughout the course of this post, it would perhaps be a touch hypocritical. So buckle in for this 6000 word long no wait come back you don’t have to read it all in one go!

Nisemonogatari

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You almost forget that, before the massive success of Madoka Magica, Shaft had another anime that embarrassed everyone else in sales. Now that Shaft have a considerable amount of dough in their vaults, they can finally focus on one project at a time instead of producing 2 anime every single bloody season. What also helps is that Bakemonogatari is, you know, actually very good. So hurrah for a sequel then? Well…hmm…you see, Shaft sequels, from Arakawa to Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei to Natsu no Arashi, have done nothing more than stagnate their respective franchises. Then there’s the fact Nisemonogatari’s story is based off Arararararagi’s sisters, who I felt only worked in the original because they were kept out the main story. They acted as a tool at the end of each arc to wake Arararararagi out of his ideal world where all the girls fell in love with him. Making them the main focus ruins that effect. Also from that trailer, I’m not sure how I feel about Senjogahara with short hair. That said, it is still Senjogahara, and there’s a guaranteed level of quality that comes with her brilliance. Ultimately I’m just being cautious, because Shaft sequels have burned me in the past, but this is still my most anticipated anime of the season.

Recorder and Backpack

A 4-koma adaptation eh? I’ve never really liked 4-koma adaptation myself, being barrages of repetitive jokes broken up by the occasional segment of girls being cute with no sense of narrative structure. But can Recorder and Backback break this trend? Firstly, does it have more than one joke? The premise is about a 12 year old boy who looks much older, and a high school girl who looks much younger. That’s a full two jokes! OK, good start. Is it more than just cute girls doing cute things? Yes, only half of the series is a cute girl doing cute things. The rest is big man doing cute things. OK, things are looking good, what else is there? Is it capable of breaking out of the 4-koma format and constructing a narrative? Hard to tell without actually watching the anime in question. The studio and staff aren’t much help either. The animation studio is called Seven, who have only previously made that dull 5-minute per episode skit Morita-san. The director has worked on quite a variety on different anime, from Haibane Remnei to Dance in the Vampire Bund, but he’s never directed something by himself, so not much help looking at his past portfolio. Honestly, not expecting much from this, and I doubt anyone else is, but sometimes these kinds of series can surprise if the creators really go crazy with their concept.

Daily Lives of Highschool Boys

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Seriously? This is a thing now? Cute boys doing cute things? Turns out Kimi to Boku was not just an unusual once off . Except it’s not really. It’s the exact same thing as cute girls doing cute things, except the target audience has changed. You know, I could respect fans of these types of anime if it was the relaxing nature of ordinary life that they enjoyed. If it was the cuteness of human interactions that they found appealing. It’s not my sort of thing, but I see the appeal. But that’s not it, is it? The only people I’ve seen who are fans of Kimi to Boku are girls and gay men. The K-ON/A-Channel/Lucky Star fans aren’t watching Kimi to Boku because it has cute men instead of cute girls, and vice versa. You’re all a bunch of fucking shallow morons, kept glued to your screens by nothing more than your most primal of instincts. You disgust me, I don’t even know why I—woah woah calm down Scamp calm down, forget to take your medication again, did you? Let’s try to be fairer on this new anime, right? OK fine. There’s actually a legitimate reason to be interested in this too, beyond the cute guys you bunch of vagina driven shallow twats ok that’s enough of that Scamp, calm down there lad …sorry. The director of Gintama and School Rumble is on this, which is pretty darn impressive as far as comedy resumes go. Of course, there’s no cute girls here, so you bunch of fucking halfwit shitfaces ok never mind moving onto the next anime

Black Rock Shooter

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Black Rock Shooter was originally nothing more than a Vocaloid song by Supercell with some accompanying artwork drawn by Redjuice Huke. The artwork inspired a crazy fan following, probably due to the fact it looked like a Dark and Edgy re-interpretation of Hatsune Miku. The popularity of it was so great that an OVA of Black Rock Shooter was produced, headed up by GREATEST ANIMATION DIRECTOR EVER YAMAKAN (actually according to ANN it was directed by a different bloke altogether and GREATEST ANIMATION DIRECTOR EVER YAMAKAN was just supervisor). It was 25% mute girls in black string bikinis having beautifully animated fights in a post apocalyptic bathroom, and 75% incredibly dull angtsy moeblob s’life. It didn’t exactly set the world alight, but Black Rock Shooter fans still hoovered it up, prompting the creation of this TV series. This time there’s no GREATEST ANIMATION DIRECTOR EVER YAMAKAN on board, but they instead decided to hire the rest of the key staff who worked together on SAVIOUR OF ANIME FRACTALE, including Mari Okada, the scriptwriter. Heck, even the director of this new incarnation of Black Rock Shooter was the same guy who directed the OVA. It does have Imaishi, the Gurren Lagann mastermind, doing the fight sequences. Which is cool and all, seeing his influence in the trailer, but it wasn’t the fight sequences that was the problem with the OVA. It was absolutely everything else.

Ultimately though, Satoshi Kon could rise from the dead to direct Black Rock Shooter and I’d still be inherently biased against it because it’s in Noitamina. Noitamina used to be a stronghold of anime that specifically weren’t aimed at the stereotypical early 20’s otaku male. But with Fractale, Ano Hana and Guilty Crown, the amount of anime in which a high school male lead has magical girl enter his life has been gradually on the uptake in that timeslot (for comparison, not a single Noitamina anime prior to Fractale had a high school male lead). Black Rock Shooter is the last straw. Everything the Noitamina timeslot had previously stood for is dead. Fuck this show.

Natsume Yuujinchou Shi

While I’ve been harsh on Natsume in the past, I suddenly find myself feeling charitable towards it. In a season as barren as this one looks like it will be, it’s nice to have something as reliably solid as Natsume poking around. Besides, the only reason I’m harsh on it in the first place is victim of circumstance. Because Brains Base are making Yet Another Bloody Natsume, that means they aren’t making sequels to all their other anime that need it more, most notably Durarara. Well OK, Natsume could be a better series. The characters, apart from Nyanko, are all rather dull, and Natsume himself still has this irritating tendency to break away from conversations to talk about the weather. But, behind all that, it still has an incredibly good sense of how to tell a story. So long as it doesn’t retread points it already finished up in previous seasons, then I’m more than happy to have Yet Another Bloody Natsume.

New Prince of Tennis

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Once upon a time there was an anime called Saint Seiya (bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this). Despite being a shounen anime aimed at teenage boys, Saint Seiya proved to be a massive hit with girls due to its cast of beautiful angsty men dressed up in skin tight leather plugsuits. It was then that anime producers realised that there was a female audience for shounen material. I’m sure Prince of Tennis wasn’t the first of these, but it’s certainly the most infamous. A shounen with absolutely no intentions of appealing to men and focusing its aim squarely at squealing fangirls.

I’ve had two experiences with this franchise in the past. My sister bought the first volume of the manga once, as a blind buy, and I can unequivocally say that it’s the worst manga we have in our rather large collection. Page after page of emotionless drivel as the main character has tennis matches while scores of bishies proclaim aloud how is this kid so good, with an added female character who serves no purpose for the (admittedly non-existent) narrative and is probably only there to give female fans a character to project into. My other experience was with the movie, which I’ll admit I only watched for terribad material. Suffice to say, with scenes like the above dinosaur apocalypse, it was several times more entertaining than that first volume of manga. Oh right, this new season? I think it’s a sequel. Whatever man, you guys don’t seriously watch Prince of Tennis, do you?

Rinne no Lagrange

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Did you know that, once upon a time, Xebec had ambition? Yeah I know, shocking isn’t it? Nowadays they are more well known for anime like To-Love-Ru and Ladies vs Butlers, but apparently producing Rio Rainbow Gate led the staff there to realise how low they had truly sunk and decided to actually try produce something of worth. So here we are, Rinne no Langrange. An anime original production with an admittedly quite interesting team behind it. Director Tatsuo Sato is most well known for Nadesico he made waaaay back in the day, as well as some other early 00’s series like Stellvia and Shingu. Thing is none of these series are…umm, particularly great. His proof of quality, Nadesico, is a full 16 years old by this stage. Plus he’s also directing Mini Skirt Space Pirates this season, so maybe his attention will be divided. That is, if you expect him to be actually expressing much creative control over this. He’s listed as ‘chief director’ with actual normal director being the guy who directed Heroic Age. Haven’t seen Heroic Age myself, and reviews have been kinda mixed (I believe it was the last time Xebec went all out and tried something ambitious). But since then he’s worked on some interesting stuff, most of which being Good Shaft Anime like Bakemonogatari and Arakawa. The script guy is top drawer too, working on everything from FMA: Brotherhood to Eden of the East to Darker than Black to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. If anything, the most off-putting part of this anime is the trailer. Why the pantyshots? Why does this feel like it’s inspired by Strike Witches? Why oh why the lack of noses on some of the characters? Are noses not considered moe or something?

Zero no Tsukaima Final

The fact that I can use the phrase “The original Shakugan no Shana clone” without irony goes to show how deep this problem runs. I’ll admit straight up here that I haven’t any of seen Zero no Tsukaima yet, but I’m going to hazard a guess at what it’s about. High school male lead with no distinguishing characteristics beyond the fact he’s kinda nice has tsundere girl with small breasts fall into his life and the male character gains some sort of special power because of this, that doesn’t, funnily enough, result in him gaining any more personality. Am I right? Actually no, from what I’ve heard, the main character here is a massive perv rather than being just kinda nice. Fucking swimming in originality here guys!

Tantei Opera Milky Holmes 2

I wonder why I cover sequels in season previews? There isn’t really any point. If you have seen the first season, you know what to expect from the second and don’t need me explaining what the deal is. If you haven’t seen the first season, there’s no point in reading previews because you will need to have seen the first season for context. I haven’t seen this anyway, so I don’t have anything to say, beyond perhaps marvelling that JC Staff are making an anime that isn’t a Shana clone!

Amagami SS+

I wonder why I cover sequels in season previews? There isn’t really any point. If you have seen the first season, you know what to expect from the second and don’t need me explaining…well this is eerily familiar. Besides, there is a point in explaining what the deal is here with this new season of Amagami, because the last season followed the unusual format of completely new timelines for each girl the main character chased. Copypasting from ANN “it will be an omnibus in which each heroine gets two episodes devoted to her. However, [the new season] will include more original story elements set after the events of the first season.” So there you go. No interest myself, I bailed after the first episode of last season, but good for all you guys who like this show. I at least appreciate the unique format this series attempted.

Mini Skirt Space Pirates

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The other anime Tatsuo Sato is working on this season, apart from Rinne no Langrange. The actual name is Moeretsu Pirates (which ANN is nice enough to inform me translates roughly to Bodacious Pirates), but the story is based on/inspired by the novel ‘Mini Skirt Space Pirates’, and that name is just so much cooler. This is the anime Sato is much more focused on rather than Langrange, where his job appears to be run into the office, yell at everyone for 5 minutes, then leave again. He’s full proper director on this one, as well as series composition. This series has been in production for a bloody long time too. Satelight announced they were animating this a full 4 years ago or something. I’m not sure whether this delay means they had extra time to iron out a perfect script, or if it’s because of disagreements that resulted in a botched production. There’s an almost old-school feel to this series, probably helped by the fact the original novels were written by one the guys who worked on Dirty Pair. It’s that kind of goofy anime space opera where you’d have to be a jaded cynic not to find the concept charming.

Taking a step back and looking at this season overall, the swing between memorable to barren really relies on whether Sato still has it. He has directed an anime more recently though, which I didn’t mention until now because it’s very different from his other space-themed series. He directed the 2008 anime Shigofumi. It was a bit full of itself and a touch pretentious, but it was otherwise a really well directed anime. If Mini Skirt Space Pirates and Rinne no Langrange can deliver, any talk of this season being lacklustre will be gone.

Dog X Me SS

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Based off a manga called (for those weaboos out there) Inu X Boku SS. So, as I always do, I checked out the first scanlated chapter of the manga. For some reason, I was under the impressions with would be a fanservicy comedy, as it runs in a shounen magazine. Which it is, but I mistook which fanservicey side it would be aiming at. The Dog in the title is the man, a butler who bows to his masters every whim, a generic female lead with some self-confidence issues. Yup, it’s shojo time! Reverse harem shojo time at that, as this girl has a variety of pretty boys protecting her. They’re all magical spirits or something. It is by David Production, that spin-off Gonzo studio who have done stuff like Ben-To and Level E, whom many people seem to like, but I’ve never really been able to get behind any of their works.

Listen to Me, Girls

I Am Your Father!

I remember when this anime was announced. It was at the time when Bunny Drop was airing. The synopsis was about a college student who has to raise his sisters’ children after she went missing on a downed plane. Sounds fairly similar to Bunny Drop, so maybe this too will be about the strong connections of family and the trials, difficulties but ultimately rewards of parenting. At least, that’s what I thought, until I saw the artwork. And I saw that the light novel was written by the same author who wrote Mayoi Neko Overrun, who also wrote for a few episodes of the Queens Blade anime. And my heart sunk. It’s the token pedobait anime of the season! They show up every 6 months or so. I mean, I’d like to believe that this anime won’t have a scene in which the main character walks in on his niece changing where upon she calls him a pervert and blushes profusely, but I’m not holding out hope.

BRAVE10

The bad: The synopsis includes the phrase “in Japan’s tumultuous Sengoku Era”, a line so tired and dull that Sea Slugs season previews have taken to ignoring the existence of any anime set in that time period. The good: The trailer indicates that this will be far from an accurate portrayal of said era. The only time I ever enjoy these kinds of anime is where they aren’t as dry as that one place in Chile where it hasn’t rained for a bajillion years. Stuff like Samurai Champloo. The bad: It’s fujoshi bait. I swear I saw half these characters in Hakuouki. What’s the bet that the person with the white hair in the promo pic is just an incredibly girly man? The ANN page for the manga has this hilarious picture of a man swinging a sword while proudly baring his smexy toned midriff. The director’s main previous work was the Vampire Knight series. The good: It would be rather hypocritical of me to dismiss an anime due to its sexual appeal not being to my own, especially after that rant earlier in this post. Besides, as I’ve said before, I often fare better with fujoshi anime than male otaku bait. The meh: Animation studio is a total newbie to the game. Gut feeling points to be a dull Hakouoki clone, but my gut feeling is normally wrong so it’s probably going to be the next Samurai Champloo or something.

Senhime Zesshou Symphogear

With the earth-shaking success of Hatsune Miku and the wave of popularity AKB48 are enjoying right now, idols are totally in with otaku culture. Symphogear is about two idols fighting of a mysterious bad guy using the powers of their voices, but really this is a platform for two aspiring idols to propel their careers. It’s not like this is the first time this has happened. I’ve done enough of those retro season previews to see this kind of stuff pop up time and time again through the ages. It’s not like this sort of stuff can’t end up good. That’s essentially part of how the Macross franchise was set up, and they work idols into their stories pretty well. But still, Symphogear is…well, total newbie studio, half of the staff members never having worked on anime before, nonsense sounding premise. My terribad antenna is responding.

Another

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Oh dear, not Another anime. Do we really need Another anime like this? I would recommend you watch Another anime rather than Rio Rainbow Gate.

Obligatory mucking about with the name out of the way, this is one of the few genuinely interesting anime out this season that isn’t a sequel. A quick check of the manga it’s based off (well, it’s based off a set of novels first, but there’s a manga too) and it’s that classic Japanese type of horror. Where everyone around you acts in slightly off and you get this feeling that you are completely alone. Animation studio is PA Works. Their works are limited to True Tears, Canaan, Angel Beats and Hanasaku Iroha. Asides from Canaan, which was a mess, all their works have been decently entertaining. Horror is new ground for them, so I’ll at least give them credit for experimenting. Director is Tsutomo Mizushima, director of…well, quite a lot of stuff. Hare Guu, XXXHolic, Squid Girl, Dokuro-chan, Big Windup, Genshiken OVA, a whole fuck ton of Shin-chan movies and so on and so forth. He’s better at comedy and, in my humble opinion, has never managed to come anywhere near close to his work on Hare Guu, which is over 10 years old now. What’s the most worrying thing here is his last attempt at directing a horror anime was the near universally reviled horrific mess that was Blood-C. But fuck it, let’s put that aside and be optimistic that he’ll work his…err, magic on yet Another anime. OK I swear I won’t use that wordplay again.

Ano Natsu de Matteru

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Over the course of the next month or so, plenty of other anime blogs will be releasing season previews of their own, and they may rank this as one of the more interesting anime of the season. Fair enough, it’s an anime original, which we could always do with more of. But everything about this just rubs me the wrong way. The creator is the same guy who wrote Onegai Teacher. At least, that’s what all the promo material has been proudly declaring. How about mention the fact he wrote the script for anime like Trigun or Honey and Clover or Big Windup or Infinite Ryvius? Why highlight the one massive turd on his resume? Also, it’s an anime original that went for the crazy new idea of being an adolescent romantic comedy. Thrilling stuff. Plus the last anime original that fell roughly into that category was Ano Hana. I know a lot of you like Ano Hana, but if you did you’re probably the kind of person who, if the anime consisted of a blue screen with the words “cry, you easily emotionally manipulated bitch”, would declare it a masterpiece and call people who didn’t cry to have no souls. Then there’s the watercolour promo artwork, which always rubs me the wrong way. Watercolour promo artwork means you might be kinda funny, but you’re really trying to be heartwarming and touching and will tug at your heartstrings and bleargh. I remember Sora no Woto did this, as did SAVIOUR OF ANIME FRACTALE. The cast list was released before who the director would be, always a sure sign that the creators of this have their priorities wrong. And then there’s JC Staff. What’s to bet the guy on the right is an ordinary bloke, maybe kind of nice, who happens to be really good at camerawork, while the girl on the left has some kind of magical power and appears into his life at the start of the story. But wait, instead of being flat chested, she has massive tits! Boy, we are sure swimming in fucking originality here!

Kill Me Baby

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Oh hi there JC Staff. What’s this? Another anime that’s not a Shana clone? Are you sure you guys are OK? Woah, it’s a 4-koma adaptation, is it? Trying to recover the respect you guys used to have back when you made Azumanga Daoih? Well, cycle through the 4-koma rules and requirements. Is it more than just cute girls being cute? It was serialised in the same magazine that ran K-ON and A-Channel, so that’s a nope. Does it have more than one joke in its repetoire? The story is about a girl who is a crappy ninja and her partner in crime. So nope, just one joke. Will it break free of the 4-koma format and be able to construct a cohesive narrative? Of course it won’t, because JC Staff are shit. Look, this is just kind of sad. JC Staff have 6 anime running next season. Bakuman and Shana are continuing from last season, along with the new Zero no Tsukaima, Milky Holmes, Ano Natsu and now this. Plus this will be the anime they put the least budget into, which must be pretty fucking embarrassing when you get a smaller budget than Bakuman. Bleh, JC Staff. It’s gotten to the stage where I’m more interested in Xebec’s new anime than yours.

High School DxD

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Boobies!

Welp, my work here is done.

No really, what do you want me to say? It’s a light novel adaptation about a pervy guy who gets embroiled in a situation with a large breasted and incredibly pretty magical girl. Along the way he shall meet various females, all of whom want to chomp on his meat and two veg, and there’s no point in watching it as it airs anyway because you’ll have to wait for the BD release to get rid of the censorship. Plus the animation studio doing this are the same guys who did Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka and, as I believe I’ve said many times before, there are few lines in existence more depressing than ‘from the creators of Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka’.

The Knight in the Area

Looking back over this post so far, I’ve made myself rather depressed. Do I even like anime anymore? Of course I bloody do. I’m just bummed out that my most anticipated anime from last season, Guilty Crown, turned into a pile of poo, so I’m scaling back the optimism this season. But let’s be happy and stuff for this new football anime. Sorry, I mean saawwcuurr. It’s based off a popular shonen manga that’s been running for 6 years now. It’s being adapted by Shin-Ei Animation, the guys who make all those ever-lasting series like Doraemon, Oishinbo and Crayon Shin-chan. Not quite sure what that means for this anime, maybe plans to be everlasting too? I checked out the manga and it was pretty good. A bit formulaic and shounen-y and, as psgels points out, does seem to be inspired a touch by Adachi (Cross Game, Touch). Far from a bad thing mind you. If you’re going to copy a sports mangaka, copy Adachi. Director isn’t up to much, even if he did work a bit on Gintama. Then again, these kinds of series tend to bring in new staff for each arc. My biggest worry is that nobody will sub the blasted thing, especially if it isn’t picked up for legal streaming. Anime fandom are a bunch of hopeless nerds who react to the sight of sports like the wicked witch of the west reacts to water, despite the fact they invariably end up enjoying the one sports anime they ever end up watching.

Aquarion EVOL

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Let us pretend for a second that there has never been an anime called Aquarion before. What we have here is an original mecha anime by the director of Macross Frontier, team up with some talented writers (and Mari Okada), with animation by Satelight and Yoko Kanno doing the music. Superstar line up if there ever was one. Problem is there has been an anime called Aquarion before. I’ve never seen it, and rather surprisingly never hear anyone talk about it either. Is it one of those early 00 classics like Infinite Ryvius or Wolf’s Rain where people have just sort of stopped talking about it because all that was needed to be said has been said, or does nobody talk about it because it was shit? So I went searching the internet for impressions and opinions and came to the conclusion that yes, Aquarion was shit. Bland, totally forgettable, mess of cliches without a single new idea. Sort of like Guilty Crown then oh ho ho. Good thing is this is a sequel in the same sense that Macross Frontier is a sequel. It’s set 12000 years after events of the original, which I found rather funny. Do you really have to go that far ahead in time to get away from the stink of the first season? Dissappointing perhaps to that one Aquarion fan out there who wanted to see the original characters, but a godsend to the rest of us who wanted to see if this team can produce something worthy of their names.

Movies and OVAs

Obligatory reminder that getting excited for movies coming out in Japan now is pointless as the rest of the world won’t see them until they are released on BD/DVD almost a year later. So all you gamers excited for the Dragon Age movie, all you cool people excited for the new Berserk movie, and all you losers excited for the K-ON movie, will have to wait. Instead, I’m going to highlight the anime movies that are coming out on BD/DVD over the next 3 months. Usual rules apply to OVAs too. No covering of simple DVD specials because there’s nothing more to say. If you really liked the Infinite Stratos anime, then the OVA is a little bit of extra fanservice for you.

Children Who Chase Voices

from Deep Below: 25/11

Definitely the most interesting movie of the lot. Shikai’s movie, coming out 25th November, so it’s probably already out for all you slow munchkins who aren’t subscribed to this blog on google reader yet (and now is the perfect time to learn how!). Speculating on whether it will be any good or not is a bit silly since as I’ve already seen it at a movie festival. It’s Shinkai abandoning his old formula (thank god) and trying to do a Ghibli. The big surprise is he does a rather good job of it, even though his fascination with clouds came along for the ride.

Lupin III: Blood Seal

Eternal Mermaid

Same TV Special episode that I talked about in the last season preview. Coming out 2nd December. No staff list in sight as of yet, although they did hire a bunch of new people for some of the characters voices. Most importantly was hiring a new person to voice Fujiko, because it was getting a bit silly when the voice of what was supposed to be an incredibly sexy lady was voiced by a 70 year old woman. She’s now voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro, probably most famous for voicing Celty in Durarara (a rather amusing person to be known for voicing considering Celty doesn’t exactly have a voice). I guess it’s a good fit, Fujiko is meant to sound sultry and sexy and her voice fits the bill fine. Oh what am I doing? You know I really have nothing to say when I start talking about the voice actors. Look, just watch Castle of Cagliostro if you want to check out the Lupin III franchise. I’ll give you a call if this TV Special turns out to be any good.

Kyousogiga

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There’s been some confusion surrounding this because it was listed on those charts that this is a TV Series. It’s not, it’s just a single episode web release thing. . The reason I’m giving it it attention is because the trailer looks awesome. It’s one of those imaginative short animation pieces that studios toss out every now and then. It’s being made by the Toei staff that normally make Precure stuff, except with a Yuasa inspired art style crossed with Summer Wars. No idea what to expect from it, and there’s always the chance it could be another Cencoroll where the trailer shows all the cool bits and the rest is dull, but these kinds of things are always worth checking out.

Ai no Kusabi 2012

Perhaps I should make a separate season preview for hentai one day. I know very little about the subject, but since when has that ever stopped people making season previews oh ho ho. The reason I bring this up is because Ai no Kusabi is a yaoi OVA, which is basically just porn for girls. I probably wouldn’t cover this sort of stuff, except Ai no Kusabi is kind of interesting. It’s a remake of the classic(?) 1992 yaoi OVA by the same name, except this time they’re extending it to 13 episodes long. That’s pretty big scale for a yaoi OVA. Plus the director also did an episode on Legend of Black Heaven, so clearly this will be the greatest yaoi series ever to grace the earth.

Ufotable OVAs

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These are the sort of projects animation studios throw up every now and then. There was the Young Animator Training Project that showed up earlier this year, which most people remember for the Oji-san no Lamp segment. There were also those two Sunrise CGI pieces, Koisento and Norageki, which weren’t particularly popular, but I liked them a lot. Now it’s ufotable’s turn, the studio who made Kara no Kyoukai and are currently working on Fate/Zero. First piece is Minori Scramble, the one featured in the trailer, about a girl who is afraid of penguins so her father builds a robot penguin to help her get over her phobia. It’s that kind of batty anime idea that I have a real soft spot for. Second piece is Gyo, which I know nothing about, but that single promo image that exists for it is striking enough to warrant checking out. Third piece is something called Yuri Seijin Naoko-san, which had a 10 minute OVA earlier this year and made hilarious jokes about how great child molestation is (hint: it wasn’t hilarious). There’s not a whole lot of info on them, but apparently the Gyo piece is meant to be an hour long, so hopefully that means the rest of them are that length too. We’ll see though, don’t quote me on that.

Sora no Kiseki

An OVA based off a JRPG. They show up every now and then. There’s also the continuation of the Tales of Symphonia series, another one of those JRPG adaptations. Because it’s just a OVA, they tend to be just for fans only. So I don’t really have anything else to say.

There are some other movies coming out, but they’re franchise movies that don’t hold my interest quite as much. Sengoku Basara is getting a movie, coming out 7 December. Rather more excitingly, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is also getting a movie, coming out 8 February. Although from what I’ve heard, it’s just a boring old shounen flick where it has no effect on the personalities of the characters in question. Still, it’s FMA. There’s also the movie In the Forest of Firefly Lights coming out 22 February. This is technically a totally new film, but after watching it at the aformentioned movie festival, it’s basically a franchise movie for Natsume Yuujinchou. There’s also a brand new ToHeart OVA, but there’s always a new ToHeart OVA.

On a final note, ANN says that the new Code Geass Gaiden OVA is supposed to be airing on the 27th January. However that is because ANN are dirty liars. There has been no confirmed date for that eternally delayed OVA. Which is a shame, because I NEED TO KNOW IF HE REALLY IS THE CART DRIVER DAMNIT not really.

Since I spent the opening of the last Guilty Crown post complaining about the OP being a whole load of tuneless noise and yelling, I should probably also mention how I quite like the Future Diary opening. Again there’s a whole load of noise, but it has a beat, while the vocals are loud enough that they don’t get drowned out by the background instruments. The imagery is neat too. Much like a zebra that has just met the business end of a submachine gun; it’s black and white and red all over. The whole crazy effect keeps in tune with the tone of the show too. Still prefer the Persona 4 OP and the Un-Go ED though. Oh look at me, pretending I know anything about music~

This episode of Future Diary has every nerds favourite plot element: Tragic Rape Backstory! That is, every nerds favourite subject to get pissy about the representation of. Parents brutally murdered in front of their eyes as a child? Meh, pretty regular backstory. Get raped when you’re younger? Oh dear, touchy territory. In all seriousness, rape does tend to be thrown in as a lazy method to create tragic backstories with minimal thought put into why it happens. Seeing Future Diary going that method was a bit worrying, especially since it’s not exactly the type of show that treats touchy subject matter with much delicacy. Mind you, if Black Lagoon, a story so pulpy that if it were orange juice it would be practically a solid, can do a story about what happens to the victims of child molestation with the level of brilliance it did, then we shouldn’t be holding Future Diary up to any lower level of scrutiny.

One of the reasons I loved the Hansel and Gretel arc of Black Lagoon was the idea of Sympathy for the Monster. These kids had their minds broken by what they had experienced and now this was the only way they could view the world. You can feel sympathy for how they reached that stage, but as they are now, they are monsters. Rock tries to get through to the kids, only to have his sympathy responded to in the only way the kids understand. It’s both a powerful and fucking creepy scene. Future Diary has something similar to this. Fifth is a broken person, her only wish now to rewrite the world to remove what she doesn’t like. But, right at the end, she gets a glimpse of the life she had forgotten with the little ball thrown by Yuuki. It’s a little bit convenient that Yuuki was able to find that very ball, but the scene shone that little light of humanity on her that had been erased through years of abuse.

Where Future Diary is perhaps a bit less impressive is how Fifth has grown up as a result from these years of abuse. Sorry to keep going back to Black Lagoon for those of you who haven’t watched it, but Hansel and Gretel’s new personalities make perfect sense in the context of what they had experienced. They had to teach themselves to enjoy killing, or else they wouldn’t have been able to go on. That’s the only way they know how to look at the world. Not so keen on Future Diary’s idea that Fifth now mocks people for their virginity and has sloppy erotic kisses to prove her point. The cult saw her as a tool, not something to be flirted with. It’s not like she was forced into prostitution and had to become slutty for the sake of keeping her sanity.

Back to rape again though, I understand where the nerd anger force comes from with that. The depiction of rape is often seen as something almost desirable, or that a female character deserves it because of how she dresses or how she acts. It’s good that that mindset is being attacked. But, like any counter movement, the reaction has shot too far in the opposite direction, to the point that the sheer mention of the subject gets everyone’s hackles raised. I’ve seen it introduced in incredibly lazy and slapdash fashion, such as Fractale, but I can’t think of any incredibly offensive portrayals I’ve seen of it off the top of my head. But that’s probably because I don’t read shoujo or yaoi, where the ‘rape = love’ thing is more prevalent. Actually wait, I take it back. I have seen one. Honey X Honey Drops. A goddawful shoujo OVA that is a prime target for a terribad video if I ever got around to making them again.

Just to finish off, the post-credit scene with Sixth was the highlight of the whole episode. Speaking of Sympathy for the Monster, I loved how they characterised him as someone who just wanted to help society in the only way he knew how. Once you get this revelation, his part in the story suddenly becomes a lot more tragic. He was genuinely only trying to help people; albeit in a not particularly moral way (turning people into zombies strikes me as being rather low down on the moral ladder). Plus it was all done via crudely made puppets, Asread showing the real extent of their budget limitations. It’s becoming a running trend in Future Diary. No matter how psychotic, each of these characters has something that makes them sympathetic.

A Grade

A– Future Diary

Episodes 1–4

I have been trying to hold back my rampant fanboyism in my Future Diary episodic posts, so I’m not sure if the extent to which I fucking love this show is apparent. It’s the perfect blend of fast paced, over the top, thriller/horror that made me fall in love with Death Note so much. It has a cast of memorable characters so psychotic they’d put the cast of Baccano to shame. This isn’t the Deadman Wonderland kind of psychotic either, where they like killing a lot and have a stupid catchphrase. No, these characters have motives and driving morals behind their particular brand of insanity. Perhaps an A– is a bit high, but I’m so glad this show exists that it can get me by the small niggles, like some dodgy animation and some completely ridiculous plot twists.

B Grade

B Persona 4

Episodes 1–4

It’s a shame my two favourite anime from the season appear to have rather minimal budgets. While Future Diary gets by with some masterful directing, Persona 4 overcomes its budget deficit by just being really damn cool. I’ve never considered yellow to be a cool colour, because it’s the same colour as bananas and there’s nothing in the world as uncool as a banana. But Persona 4 has won me over to the lemon hued tone of the world. But it’s more than the sulfur shaded tint that I like about Persona 4 (ooh look at me, I can look up synonyms on the internet!). It has surprisingly sharp sense of humour, a rather agreeable approach to confronting your less likable parts of your own personality, and best of all, the greatest opening song of the year by far.

B– Mawaru PenguinDrum

Episodes 13–15

While PenguinDrum still can hold the claim that it is never boring, this last batch of episodes have gotten on my nerves a touch. Compare them to the Ringo arc from earlier this season. Each episode there felt like it was building up, the shocks at the end of the episodes getting greater as it progressed. The twists now simply feel like PenguinDrum is desperately trying to hold our attention by adding shock value, with no build up to these twists. You don’t need to shock me PenguinDrum, I’m plenty entertained by your story as it is. Also the Ringo arc slowly built up several stories at once, revealing more of the characters motivations. PenguinDrum has now lost that touch, choosing the focus on characters in a totally random fashion. It’s still entertaining, but it has lost its structure.

B– Invasion Squid Girl

Episodes 1–4

This season of Squid Girl is largely the same as the previous season, but there are a few squiddle differences. One new aspect I don’t like is the apparent desire to add a moral to every story. The power of friendship, the love of saving people, and so on and so forth. I like Squid Girl best when its goofy stories have messages along the lines of ‘giving up an addiction is futile because you will just fall back into the habit again’ or ‘you will die before your pets, leaving them alone and unloved forever more’. This season does seem to be making me laugh easier than last season though. Whether this is down to sharper jokes or me just being in a better mood is up for debate, but no anime has made me laugh harder this year than episode 4 did.

B– Fate/Zero

Episodes 1–5

Fate/Zero is a really mixed bag. I could write an entire post on the negative parts of the show. The  Dragonball Z– esque dragging out nature of their fights as the characters spend their time waving their egos around is dull, as are the exposition dumps, which have thankfully disappeared after that first episode for the most part. On the flip side though, the characters are varied and entertaining with enough depth to make me care about then. The animation is glorious (that is, when the characters aren’t just staring at each other from across a shipyard). I’d like to think the more we go on, the more of the kinks get ironed out, because Fate/Zero does have the potential to be a great show. Just please less of the exposition and dull willy-waving duels.

B– Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing

Episodes 1–3

Gonzo haven’t shat the bed…yet. Which I guess is something we should be pleased about, but it hasn’t exactly been riveting stuff either. Oh sure, the animation upgrade is wonderful and the political scenario on display is intriguing. But the attempts at characterisation have been shallow. Fam is the dullest so far, a worrying factor considering she’s the main character and all. There’s no depth, she just charges into everything. If we take the Persona 4 character personality eyecatch stat meter, Fam would have full Courage and nothing in every other area. The white haired villain is already a more interesting character. Funny how Last Exile did the Char-esque character better than the token Gundam series of the season did.

C Grade

C+ Un-Go

Episodes 1–3

Episode 3 was a massive improvement on the first two. It did everything I wanted Un-Go to do. Introduce us to the scenario, a small set of characters and each of their potential motives for the murder. Give us time for the mystery to stew in our heads, letting the characters argue amongst each other as small bits of evidence comes to the table, tieing up the mystery with the overall world story. Allow us to suspect each and every one of the characters before totally blindsiding me with the actual answer, yet one that makes perfect sense in context. But apparently the answer to episode three was really obvious to all you genre savvy clever clogs out there? I guess I’m just thick because I haven’t been able to predict the answer to any of the mysteries so far, despite every single episode having several people say the answer was totally obvious.

C Chihayafuru

Episodes 1–4

I thought I would like Chihayafuru a lot more than I do. I quite liked the main character after the first episode, but she quickly became irritating with every eternally good-natured line of dialogue that sprouted from her. The problem with all her good natured lines is they simply cover the exact same point that had already been established. Even when she grew up, this nature of the show didn’t change. It’s not just Chihaya either. We get it, bishie childhood friend. She fucking loves Karuta. We’ve spent quite literally the entire episode establishing that point. This may sound like me hate-mongering, but the reason I’m not getting into Chihayafuru is because it’s more shojo than josei. It’s not bad by any stretch, I just wish it would stop having so much redundant content.

C– Hunter X Hunter

Episodes 1–5

I’m being patient with Hunter X Hunter because I’m still waiting for the apparent “IT GETS BETTER I SWEAR” part. Thankfully it hasn’t been a chore to watch, but I’m still not seeing anything that makes it worthwhile. The varied character designs might be interesting to look at, but it means this show has no coherent aesthetic. There’s no ‘Hunter X Hunter look’ that draws you into the show. The total randomness of the rules of the world means its impossible to predict what’s going to come, which makes every twist feel like the author pulled it out of their ass. So many characters randomly dying reduces the effect of any scene that’s apparently meant to be thrilling and dangerous.  At the moment, the only part I like is the flamenco music that kicks in whenever Hisoka takes the stage, because I keep imagining him whipping out the castanets.

C– Guilty Crown

Episodes 1–3

There is some genuine promise in Guilty Crown’s story. The main problem is episode 2 happened. That episode was one of the most head-smashingly retarded pieces of anime I have ever seen and every episode from henceforth will be tasked with fixing the numerous problems that episode threw out. Episode 3 did a decent start, fixing up why Gai knew Shu would drag out a shield gun thing, but the problems still outweigh the plus points. Why does the power that seems to symbolise friendship require the character to metaphorically rape them to reach to their heart? Why is Inori such a bland dull blob of ultimate servitude? Why did the writer decide a Geass knock off would be sufficient to drag in a new audience? Oh well, at least it still looks pretty.

D Grade

D+ Phi Brain

Episodes 1–3

Despite its ridiculous premise, I can almost hear an editor from Bakuman standing over the production. “We need a rival here. Yes, he looks good, but make his hair spikier. Ooh, we also need a love interest. What does she do? Well she’s a girl so obviously she can’t solve the puzzles because girls are stupid, so just make her follow the main character about a bit”. The grandstanding with dramatic puzzles might be over the top, but it only lies over an incredibly bland core story. It feels like a DS game adaptation, one of those ones where you speed over the dialogue so you can get to the next puzzle. In short, the puzzles are what we’re here for, and Phi Brain doesn’t have the courtesy to show us the damn things.

D+ Ben-To

Episodes 1–2

I liked the lingo introduced in episode 2, with the boars and the storm of rugby players, but Ben-To just doesn’t have enough else going for it to make it worthwhile. The female characters have apparently nothing to do with the actual show, simply being there so we can stare at their thighs. It seems silly to have this much focus on the females clothed bodies without any actual service for the viewers, but whatever. Then there’s the main character, who falls into the ever growing pile of Yuji Everyleads, reacting to his surroundings like a ‘normal’ person would. That’s not a personality damnit, that’s just letting the surroundings define his actions.

D– Gundam Age

Episodes 1–3

You know, making a child friendly version of Gundam is cool by me. But making something child friendly does not mean dumbing it down and removing the depth. This is Gundam without any of the messages that come with the franchise, reducing the action to a bunch of measly spectacles held together with bland stock characters. Speaking of action, the directing is incredibly dull. I wish Gundam Age just gave up now and handed its budget over to anime with some desire for interesting direction, like Future Diary or Persona 4. For all the smooth movement, the scenes feel dull and lifeless. It doesn’t even feel like a kids show, what with all the Death and Angst. This is Gundam stripped of all the things that made it interesting, and I’m not even that much of a Gundam fan.

D– Maji de Watashi blah de blah

Episodes 1–3

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a fanservice anime that doesn’t insult your intelligence? I had these thoughts after the second episode, partly because it didn’t insult my intelligence (much). The girls were all falling over the main character to get at his meat and two veg, but at least the main character had charisma and good looks and other reasons that would make a gaggle of girls fall for him. Isn’t it also nice that the girls in question have personalities instead of being a string of submissive statements stapled together with catchphrases? But then came episode 3 and thew all those out the window. Two short stories where girls sit around doing absolutely fuck all and reveal they like the main character for completely retarded reasons while filling the screen with censorship hexagons. Blegh

D– Bakuman Season 2

Episodes 1–3

I wasn’t sure if I was going to bother with a whole new season of Bakuman, but the first episode was quite good. “Hey, maybe the entire season will be like this and the cries of “IT GETS BETTER I SWEAR” will be legit for a change” I found myself thinking. But no, episode 2 saw the glorious return of Bakumans hilarious sexism while episode 3 reduced one of my favourite characters from last season into a blubbering idiotic slave for some girl he liked, totally destroying the carefully worked out motivations they set him last season. Pah, dropped. I’m quite relieved I don’t have to watch anymore of you Bakuman. Good riddance you sexist piece of badly animated shit.

E Grade

E+ I Don’t Have Many Friends

Episodes 1–2

I do sorta respect I Don’t Have Many Friends. I hate what it represents, but there’s something amazing about how well constructed the level of loser male nerd pandering they put together is here. There’s nothing in here that isn’t aimed straight at the gut and the penis of the loser male otaku crowd. Even the entire premise of the show is warped beautifully to hit this crowd. It’s like the Nuremberg Rallies (OMG GODWINS LAW NOOOO). I hate what they represent, but I can’t help but respect how well put together they are.

F Grade

You may have gotten the wrong impression of what Kimi to Boku would be about from the previews pre-season. I too was under the impressions that this would be an anime about a bunch of boys being insufferably nice to each other. It’s not about that at all. Heck, not all of them are even male. It’s about a pair of autistic twins trying to fit into school with the ‘help’ of two classmates.

The main character is Shu, the Tohru Honda female lead. You know the type. Eternally nice to everyone, with the idea of anyone not being nice being a concept her tiny brain can’t handle it. Constantly trying to break up the fights between the men by simply being nice, but with a shaky voice. A few episodes in and I bet she’ll be in some sort of trouble after running away from the male romantic interest, only to be saved at the last minute by said romantic interest, because clearly being a girl means she can’t take care of herself without some Strong Man there to save her. You know, standard shojo female lead types.

Then there’s her romantic interest, Shu. The bishie flavour of the day we’re getting here is the haughty, easily aggravated megane type. Think Chiaki from Nodame Cantabile. Slightly uptight about his appearance. Gets annoyed when others aren’t as up to scratch (which ties in nicely with the difficulties of dealing with the autistic twins, as I’ll talk about later). There’s not much in the way of chemistry between him and the female lead so far, but they’re already laying the foundations for that, what with him being all nice to her when they were kids. Setting up the Childhood Friend flag for later exploration.

Then there’s the autistic twins, Shu and Shu. It was a fairly realistic approach to autistic children I felt. For example, the twin wouldn’t pass to anyone else in basketball, failing to understand the team game aspect of it. Then there was how the other twin never mentioned his hobby of anime and manga, because he didn’t recognise there was a need for this. All in all, I’m impressed that the anime had the balls to attack a subject like autism, although I’m a bit annoyed they had to push it into the generic shojo romance nonsense.

Noitamina has only been around since 2005, so it’s not like it’s a massive stretch to include them all. The only Noitamina anime I haven’t seen are Antique Bakery, Tale of Genji, Hataraki Man, Ayakashi and Hakaba Kitaro. Anyway, to answer the actual question, my favourite Noitamina anime is Eden of the East. Yeah, the movies don’t live up to the series, but it’s still one of the most thrilling and entertaining anime I’ve ever seen. It was also the anime that made me pay attention to the Noitamina timeslot in the first place. Other than Eden, my favourites from Noitamina are Moyashimon, Nodame Cantabile, Jellyfish Princess and Bunny Drop.

Here is where I admit I’m such a humongous weeaboo that I don’t watch any TV drama. I watch comedians, whether in panels or stand up, or I watch sports. However I did catch a couple of episodes of an American TV show called Pushing Daisies a few years ago. Apparently the show was cancelled, but I loved the mad style it had. That’s something I think could be improved in animated form if the animators really went all out with the wacko style it already had in live action form.

Casshern Sins instead of Michiko to Hatchin. Twas the Autumn of 2008 and one young blogger, who had dubbed himself Scamp, had gotten himself all excited for the Next Cowboy Bebop/Samurai Champloo. But then came Michiko to Hatchin and it was a barrel of frustration and disappointment. I wish I’d covered Casshern Sins instead. Each episode had a story to tell that wore it’s intentions and meanings in a very clear fashion so there was always something new to talk about. Also, because of how seriously it took itself, there was a lot to make fun of. Well, mainly the CASSHERN KUROSE’s. I enjoyed that show a lot and I really would have enjoyed covering it.

Yup. My idea of a happy relationship is now one who can sing the Pokemon theme song along with me.

Tough, because my opinion changes over time depending on what series the person is covering or what their newfound subject of interest is. For now, I guess my top 5 would be Ogiue Maniax, Unmei Kaihen, Mecha Guignol, 2-D Teleidoscope and Star Crossed. Just look at the blogroll though if you want all the ones I’m currently enjoying reading.

Besides from the Studio Rikka 24 episode sci-fi series? I’d like to see Brains Base staff that do Baccano/Durarara/Natsume/Jellyfish Princess do an anime original production. Some kind of deathly serious psychological horror that quotes philosephers and can be interpreted in a bizillion different ways. Since most of his works so far have been fun, I’d like to see him spreading his wings and trying out something with a darker tone.

Read this, this and this. If you plan on starting a blog, wordpress.com is definitely the best way to go if you don’t know the first thing about building websites. It’s free and relatively easy to work out how to post stuff. There are other free blogging sites, like Blogger or Livejournal, but I’ve used all 3 and I think wordpress is far and away the best of the lot. The only problem is you’ll be stuck on the same handful of decent blog layouts that everyone has, but that’s just tough shit. You’re getting it for free. Hosting costs a lot of money.

Griffith from Berserk. Why he broke the way he did and what it was that caused him to act in such an irrational manner. That segment from the anime is one of the most fascinating pieces of character development I have ever seen, but what made it so fascinating is how none of it was ever mentioned by the characters themselves. We had to piece everything together ourselves. I really need to write a proper Berserk post one day. All I ever managed was this stupidly gushing fanboy post.

HELLO EVERYNYAN!

No, but that one episode did play over and over again in my nightmares. Does that count as watching a full season?

Including these two questions together because the first part can be essentially be put as “do you liked Redline”? Redline is all style. It does has the capability to tell stories, but these stories are only sent to further increase the style of the show rather than add anything resembling depth. Heck, Redline doesn’t even attempt to add depth, even poking fun at any audience member who might have tried to do otherwise. But the style is the substance. That’s sort of the point of Redline. It’s also the point of a few other anime, like Panty and Stocking. So the question is a bit of a misnomer.

Also, I’ve watched Redline 3 times. Twice in the cinema, once pirated. Still love it.

Part of the point of Madoka was that it showed what would truly happen if a girl gave up her life for a wish to become a magical girl. Same way Evangelion showed what would really happen if a wimpy teenage boy was put in charge of piloting a giant robot with the responsibility to defending humanity on his shoulders. In that sense, Madoka needs the magical girl part to work. Although I suppose you could twist the story to be about idol singers or something. Sell your soul to the studio, they hollow out your talent and market it. You live a year or two of dreams before being cast aside once your use is no longer needed.

There’s a big fucking difference between animation and manga/comics (if I’m understanding you right by sequential art). Animation has more in common with live action directing than manga, what with music and timing and direction and what not. The static form of a comic/manga cannot hope to achieve what an actual moving, talking picture can do. The diplomatic me would say that there are aspects each one does better than the other, but I’m no diplomat. Anime > Manga. It can move. It can make sounds. It can do stuff like timing. It gives the creators more control, rather than the consumption method being left to the whims of the consumer. People who prefer manga and books over moving pictures are stubborn who want to consume the material in their own preferred method rather than handing over the reigns to the creators.

Mass generalisation there, but whatever.

A bit too obsessed to the point that they put themselves in one of those car crushing machines so they too resemble a 2D person? Yeah, that’s a pretty worrying level of obsession there.

I have had dreams involving Holo, C.C. and Sheryl Nome but I’d prefer to keep those dreams to myself.

I don’t dislike manga. I just prefer anime. Same with books vs live action stuff. There’s just so much more you can do with the moving form than a static page. So recommending me manhwa is kinda redundant. Recommend me some movies though. I’ve been trying to plough my way through them recently.

One thing I’ve found interesting about shotacon is how much of it is aimed towards men. Take the infamous anime example of Boku no Pico. It’s drawn by a hentai artist who normally draws male aimed stuff. I guess a lolicon is more attracted to the nubile cuteness of young people than any feminine properties. It’s only once you hit puberty does any difference between the genders really become apparent. Before then, girls and boys are fairly indistinguishable, so I guess to a lolicon it doesn’t really matter. I’m not an expert on the porn side of otaku fandom though, so you’re better off asking someone else about this subject.

Sci-fi crossed with the Powah of Love!

No rape stories please. More the case in shojo and BL stuff rather than seinen, so it doesn’t effect what romance anime I watch. But seriously. No rapey stuff.

Woah woah calm down there. So far all White Fox have made are Steins;Gate, Tears to Tiara and Katanagatari. Tears to Tiara is a thoroughly generic fantasy series, but it was their first series so I’ll let that slide. I think Katanagatari is a pile of poop, but lots of people like it. Then there’s Steins;Gate, which is proving to be incredibly popular. Good start there, but the directorial and writing staff in White Fox are a bunch of journeymen. It’s not like Shaft or Gainax or Brains Base where it’s the same core group of people working on their projects. None of the main folk who worked on Katanagatari is now working on Steins;Gate, and again none of them worked on Tears to Tiara. It’s a studio of journeymen with no underlying similarity. Maybe with the money Steins;Gate is raking in, they’ll try to stick together to see if lightning strikes twice, but for now they barely count as an animation studio.

You do know I will probably die if I watched Aria? Or is that why you’re asking me to watch it? Well, you did say please, so I guess I have no choice. But if I mysteriously stop updating sometime next week, you know who to blame.

Well I’m currently writing this while on the toilet, so I hope I’ll have upgraded my position in a few years from now. But if I’m willing to keep writing while taking a dump, that shows my devotion to blogging, so clearly The Cart Driver will still exist many years from now.

I’m as much of a fan of video games as I am of movies. That is, I don’t make any particular effort to keep up with what’s coming out. I take an interest and I like to watch/play them quite a lot but not nearly as much as I’d like to. I’ve never owned a current generation console. I had a Sega Megadrive (Genesis for you Mericaw folk out there) while all the cool kids were getting Playstations. I only got an Xbox after the 360 was out for a few years. My laptop is incapable of playing games less than 6 years old, and even then it can still sometimes complain. So I take the ‘several years behind’ approach to gaming. As for genre, I don’t think I play enough to have decided what I like or don’t like. My favourite games range from Portal to Pokemon to Sims to Halo to Might and Magic to Command and Conquer and so on. Probably the game I’ve sunk the most time into and gotten the most emotionally invested in is Football Manager, but I’m not sure I’d call that my favourite. Just worryingly addictive.

Second part: I have a post prepared on that, so look out for it in the future.

The girls are hot.

1) Because I hold the door open for people.

2) Yes. They provided the funds for this blog when I started it up, although I’ve had to fund it myself from then on.

3) I was originally pretty dismissive of cosplay, but I’ve since warmed up to the idea. Never done it though, although I do have some ideas of what I’d dress up as. I’m tall and thin, with a physique like an Irish noodle. I have fairly close proportions to a typical Clamp character design. So if I was going to cosplay, I’d like to do something Geass. Maybe Suzaku in either is royal robes or his Lancelot skintight armour (kyaa~).

They write a blog about anime, it’s still being updated, and I know it exists. Not particularly difficult. If you’re on anime nano, then I know it exists. It’s not like I run some sort of screening so only blogs that pass my strict quality check can pass. Although if I had my way, any blog with centre aligned text would be automatically disqualified.

I have. I put in on my college application form. All 5 colleges I sent it to accepted me, so I guess it worked. Or at least, it didn’t put them off.

It’s characterisation is poorly done because the motivations of the characters are obscured to the point that I can’t follow their train of thought, leaving their actions to appear irrational. The plot isn’t great either when the reason why No.6 is an evil totalitarian city is because, as revealed in episode 8, they’re an evil totalirarian city. Great explanation there guys.

Also it’s gay.

Well not Chibitalia anyway.

There’s a difference between the soundtrack in-show and listening to it outside of the anime itself. Especially in the case of techno music. The BGM in both Eureka Seven and Redline are some of the best I’ve ever heard, but listening to them outside of the show itself is a bore. On the other hand, I think the soundtrack to Shigofumi is amazing, but it’s really not used well in the show itself. Best overall would probably be Cowboy Bebop, as boring an answer as that is.

Because Scamp is a common username and is normally taken when I try to register somewhere. 5camp, on the other hand, is almost never taken. But please, never pronounce my name as ‘Five Camp’.

The guy in my profile picture is the main character from Legend of Black Heaven. You know, that anime I’ve been banging on about for the past 6–8 months. Ring a bell?

This upcoming anime season sucks compared to my ridiculously high standards.

The only ones I’m looking forward to is this adaptation of a manga I’m reading that isn’t finished yet so I’ll complain about the adaptation having an original ending, and a sequel.

Is it my imagination, or has every season been getting worse since I started to become aware of every title coming out instead of the single stand-outs each year?

Copypaste this into every forum whenever you see someone complaining about the latest anime season being rubbish. Once you’ve done that, come back here for a less pessimistic and more in-depth surveillance of the upcoming season.

Chihayafuru

Madhouse have had their reputation dragged through the dirt recently. As if the Madhouse X Marvel fiasco wasn’t bad enough, their failure to create something worthwhile from Chaos;Head has been compounded by the quality White Fox have achieved with Steins;Gate (even though the chief director on Steins;Gate is a Madhouse veteran, but whatever). With that tumultuous period out of the way, here comes their latest anime about children playing card games AARRGHHH OK not quite. Chihayafuru is a josei manga about a classic Japanese card game where you match cards to poems. I read a bit of the manga and it feels less josei and more a girlier version of Hikaru no Go, which isn’t really a bad thing. They’ve brought aboard the director of Nana and Chobits aboard, so I’m quite looking forward to this. It’s nice to see Good Madhouse return.

Tamayura ~Hitotose~

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There was an OVA of Tamayura a few months ago and I avoided it like it was the latest issue of Bestiality Monthly. This is director Junichi Sato, guy who did Aria, trying to replicate that feeling of ~healing~ anime, involving a bunch of girls being insufferably nice to each other while doing fuck all. I would probably die if I tried watching this, but good for you guys who like ~healing~ anime. Your only problem is Junichi Sato is directing a few anime this season, so a giant robot/mutant space creature/something fucking interesting might accidentally slip under his radar and into Tamayura.

Last Exile

Fam: The Silver Wing

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Do I need to have seen the previous season?

No. This is going to be set in the same world but with different characters and new story

If I am to believe my own Top 30, the original Last Exile is my 12th favourite anime of all time. So obviously this paragraph should be nothing more than incoherent fanboying at the prospect of a new season, right? Well, not quite. You see, one of the best things about Last Exile was how complete it was. It covered every character, every aspect of the world, and explored the adventure from little kid with big dreams to world changing hero. There was nothing that needed to be added. Gonzo returning to Last Exile strikes me more of a studio desperately scrounging through their backlog to find something of theirs that is guaranteed to turn a profit. Now this obviously isn’t entirely true, otherwise they’d just stick to pumping out Strike Witches iterations over and over. They brought back most of the original staff, and I have faith that those guys wouldn’t return to Last Exile without having a good story to tell us. The trailer looks good too, capturing the fantastical adventurous element to the original I liked so much. Well, it did, until that generic J-Pop song started playing. I know people like Maaya Sakamoto and the prospect of her warbling fills you with so much glee that your ears start melting, but the original Last Exile opening song is one of my favourite of all time. To have that replaced with generic upbeat J-Pop is so… *le sigh* I’m just being nitpicky. I’ll remain upbeat about this new iteration for now. Cautious, but hopeful.

Phi Brain: God’s Puzzle

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When I checked the Phi Brain ANN page, I was shocked to discover how much the original concept creator, Hajime Yatate, had done. Every from Cowboy Bebop to Code Geass to Mobile Suit Gundam to Votoms to Infinite Ryvius to Mai Hime to Escaflowne to…and then it finally dawned on me that Hajime Yatate is simply the name given to that den of pure evil that is the Sunrise boardroom. Anyways, Phi Brain is an original anime by Sunrise airing in NHK’s Educational TV station. That doesn’t means it will be simply educational fluff, the timeslot has previously held Dennou Coil amongst other things. Sunrise original in timeslot that veers away from otaku pandering sounds like a good combo to me. Then why am I not more excited? Maybe it’s the uninspiring trailer. Maybe because it’s Junichi Sato again, and I can’t help shake the feeling he’ll be concentrating more on his beloved ~healing~ anime Tamayura then he will on Phi Brain.

Un-Go

There’s a misnomer in anime fandom that says ‘because it is in Noitamina, it will be good’ (mainly a line touted by myself, but shut up). Un-Go is an anime by Bones with the key staff from the original Full Metal Alchemist, doing an adaptation of an old classic novel with their own modern take on it. I would be excited for this whether it was in Noitamina or not. If anything, the fact it is in Noitamina is irritating because that means it’s stuck to 11 episodes. On the flip side, no Noitamina would mean that these kinds of anime wouldn’t be produced in the first place. Anywho, after a stumbling start to the year with Fractale, Noitamina have regained their strength somewhat with No.6 and Bunny Drop, so I’m hoping they finish this year off with a bang (especially since 2012 gets instant flop status with Black Rock Shooter). Mind you, it’s the other Noitamina show this season I’m more interested in…

Guilty Crown

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I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating again: Guilty Crown is like God came down and asked me what anime I want to see made (but only after he rejected my proposal for a 24 episode TV series by Studio Rikka). A story by the two key guys at Code Geass, being directed by the man who directed Death Note, with animation by Production IG who, by the trailer, appear to be channelling the work they did on Eden of the East. Awesome multiplied by Glorious to the power of Fuckwin. Unless you are the kind of individual who prefers more down-to-earth series with simpler aims, you boring sods. The only problem is this is in Noitamina, and therefore restricted to that accursed 11 episodes again. Or maybe they’ll let Guilty Crown run for 2 cours, seeing as they haven’t announced the second of winter’s Noitamina duo yet. “Hey guys, instead of letting Guilty Crown run for 2 cours, let’s go against the entire philosophy of this timeslot and run Black Rock Shooter!” Yeah, I’m totally not bitter or anything.

Mirai Nikki

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Mirai Nikki is an insanely popular manga about a diary that you can write the future in and YANDERE YANDERE YANDERE. Yeah, the fact that it has a yandere in it is all I ever seem to hear about it. So, for all you Mirai Nikki manga fans, prepare to weep tears of rage as you discover who is adapting it: asread. An animation studio so shit they don’t even capitalise their own name. Previously producers of  Kiddy Girl And, the two Minami-ke sequels and both seasons Shuffle. Oh, and they brought back the director who did all those shows to adapt Mirai Nikki. Yes, the tears of you fanboys are delightful, if it wasn’t for the fact I was actually quite looking forward to this myself.

Bakuman Season 2

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes

[sigh] Bakuman. When making that picture, I thought I would be oh so funny and scribble out that shitty female character. Then I realised I was probably scribbling out the wrong character, and should take my paintbrush and subject it’s digital ink all over Mashiro, the real reason I got sick of Bakuman. But then I might as well scribble out Takagi as well for adhering to Mashiro’s pratty ways. And then keep scribbling over the entire picture until all that’s left is Nizuma. I might as well check out this new season, in case some kind of miracle occurs and the Death Note creator I once knew and loved actually makes his appearance, but I might end up dropping it like an angry hedgehog. That has diarrhoea. And is on fire.

Mashiro-iro Symphony

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Once upon a time, an animation studio with grand ambitions formed and tried to recapture the popularity of Cowboy Bebop, by making Samurai Champloo. Champloo was a pile of fun, ingenuity, wit and sheer unbridled coolness, and one of my favourite anime of all time. That was 2004. In the following years they tried to keep up this ambitious high quality, with anime like Ergo Proxy and Michiko to Hatchin. After 2008 though, they discovered this method wasn’t earning them enough money, so they gave up all pretence of quality and pumped out Sacred Blacksmith, a banal and dull fantasy show with the only redeeming factor being how hot the female characters were. Afterwards they adapted The World God Only Knows, an otaku in-joke panderfest manga with aspirations of  parody but was really just another bland harem. Afterwards they made House of Five Leaves, a laid-back samurai anime for Noitamina, but it sold fuck all so they made another TWGOK. Next season, they’re doing Mashiro-iro Symphony, an adaptation of a visual novel by the man who also wrote Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka. You are dead to me Manglobe.

Mobile Suit Gundam Age

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Do I need to have seen the previous seasons?

No. This is a totally new story, world and characters

This latest Gundam doesn’t have the Gundam fanbase out there too happy. This is largely because…well no, it’s entirely because of the rather childish character designs. Apparently having a 14 year old Gundam pilot actually looking like a 14 year old boy is license to lose your shit. I couldn’t really care what the characters look like, but that’s mainly because I’m not a Gundam fan. Mind you, I can see where both sides are coming from. From the director of Sergent Frog movies, to the story being penned by the creator of Inazuma 11, to help from the animation studio and staff who made Danball Senki, Gundam Age has a younger audience set firmly in its cross hairs. DVD/BD exclusive Unicorn/IGLOO and fujioshi-bait Seed/00 have obviously not done much to bring in the younger generation. I’m certainly interested in seeing what a Gundam with a younger skew while trying to retain the shows largely serious tone looks like, but I can’t say I’m bouncing in my seat in anticipation either. It is 50 episodes long though, and I always like seeing big ambitious mecha anime. I just wish it wasn’t always more bloody Gundam.

I Don’t Have Many Friends

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Prediction time! ‘I don’t have many friends’ will be touted as a a potential hit by certain light novel fans, while large swathes of the more elitist audience will remain sceptical. However, once the first episode airs, the more adventurous of anime fans will check it out and declare that, apart from a few kinks, ‘I don’t have many friends’ is a quality title about the loneliness of high teenage life and the anxiety and desire to fit in. Soon everyone jumps on the bandwagon, only for little things to start going wrong. As the anime proceeds beyond the first novel material, the original intent of the story starts to get lost. New female characters are introduced, and each one becomes less interested in being friends and more about wanting the male lead’s juicy manpiece. Soon the show starts introducing beach and hot spring episodes, leaning further and further into fanservice harem. The male lead starts accidentally undressing the female characters while falling onto them. Each character falls further away from what makes them unique and delve into cliche and stereotype, until finally the anime ends with some crowbarred attempt at conflict, no resolution and possibly some censored nudity. Call me back at Christmas when I’ve been proven correct.

C³

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Wait! Before you go running off at the sight of Yet Another Shana Clone, take a look at the trailer. The animation is from Silver Link, whose previous outings have only been the Baka to Test series. Not exactly world beating material, but the animation style was certainly imaginative. Silver Link are a spin-off from Shaft, with the director of Natsu no Arashi and ef, so they’re a studio willing to actually use what animation is capable of doing. The other interesting fact is the guy in charge of the script also wrote the script for 8 episodes of Cowboy Bebop of all things, as well as plenty of other quality series like Hare Guu and Big Windup under his belt. Obviously you have to remind yourself that, yes, this is another Shana clone, and bears all the annoying fan-pandering near-pedo tropes that such a series often has. I read the first chapter of the manga, and it included an accidental falling onto childhood friends boobs. That all said, keep your eyes on this. Just in case.

Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere

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Between Gundam Age, Phi Brain and this, Sunrise sure are busy this season. Mind you, they’re really only Sunrise in name, with none of the usual Sunrise staff apparently working on this. It’s based off a light novel, but with stuff like giant robots and fight scenes and fantasy setting, I started to get my hopes up. Then the trailer included bouncy boobs, absurdly large spiral twin tails, and a curious lack of noses. Worried, I checked the staff list and found the series was being directed by the people behind Dragonaut, Saki and Strike Witches. The cast of prats who produced Gonzo’s dying breaths! Argh nooooo, fuck these guys and their phobia of animating noses!

Invasion?! Squid Girl

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes. It hasn’t got much of a plot, but it will assume you already know the characters

I’ve seen in season previews that people like to have a little whine about sequels to shows they’ve never seen before. Which always struck me as a bit of a silly complaint. Unless the show is ridiculously long to get through, why don’t you just watch the first season before the new version? You only have the right to complain about sequels when you’ve seen the previous season of unambitious trivial anthropomorphised  moeblob anime and know how crap it is. Ah shucks, I’m joking. I like Squid Girl. It’s nothing special, but it has a good sense of comedic timing de geso~

Kimi to Boku

JC Staff doing an anime about cute boys doing cute things…wait, what? What is this madness!?! Talk about crazy new ideas. However, from checking out the manga, in reality this is less a genderswapped Azumanga and more a generic shoujo with the bland eternally nice/shy female lead removed. It really was incredibly bland, but then I’ve been well documented to dislike shojo so take that with a pinch of salt. Director isn’t half bad, having previously done Elfen Lied and Sound of the Sky (Sora no Woto for you weeaboos out there), so I guess if bland shojo is your thing then you might as well check this out.

Persona 4 The Animation

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And the award to the most stylish anime trailer I have ever seen in my 3 years of season previewing goes to. Wow, does that ever look awesome. Persona 4 is based off a rather popular video game by the same name. No matter how many people try to assure me that the game has a great story, the words ‘video game adaptation’ send warning lights flashing everywhere. Asides from often paper-thin plotlines, trying to adapt the unique story-telling environment in video games to anime is a daunting and difficult task, one that often requires ignoring parts of the source material, much to the annoyance of the fans. So upon whom has this task of adapting this most daunting of games fallen on? Seiji Kishi, previous director of Angel Beats, Sunred, Kamisama Dolls and Seto no Hanayome. Now many people don’t like Kishi for his total ignorance of tone, but to my ADD addled mind, it’s something I’ve never really minded in his works. I personally like him, but I think he’s better suited for comedies, where his leaping between tones is best used for humour. That said, the trailer should show that the man also has a keen sense of style. Give him a game that is already stylish game to adapt and we have one of the most interesting anime of the season.

Ben-To

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Ben-to is about…oh look, I’ll just copypaste the synopsis

Satō goes to the supermarket one day and discovers a bento on sale at half price. Just as he reaches to grab it, he ends up on the floor unconscious. Satō has just entered the fierce, no-holds-barred “supermarket survival battle” for half-price bento

Yeah. It’s one of those nonsense school setting anime, like Baka to Test except without the promise of at least some neat animation. The studio doing this are David Production, whose previous works consist of Level E and Book of Bantorra. Neither of which are bad, I’ll grant them that. But in neither case did I feel they were improved significantly by the anime version. Of course, I’m speaking out of my ass here, not having read the source material for Bantorra or Level E, but whatever. I really have no idea what to make of this.

Fate/Zero

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Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Probably yes. It’s a non-canon prequel, but will probably require knowledge of the characters to understand the importance of their actions.

Now this is a genuinely interesting project. The Fate/Zero novel is essentially a piece of professional fanfiction from the Fate/Stay Night universe. Not that your average fanfiction writer could get their work adapted into an anime with animation by ufotable (Kara no Kyoukai) and music by Yuki Kaijura. It’s written by Gen Urabochi, the Nitro+ VN games writer and recently famous for coming up with Madoka Magica. All this comes together in this one big budget production Fate/Zero The Anime. So in anticipation for this, I started watching Fate/Stay Night and was shocked by how incompetent it was. I lasted a measly 2 episodes. I’ll probably still give Fate/Zero a whirl though. It’s meant to be a prequel of sorts, so you can probably jump in with no knowledge of the canon. Also, Urabochi is a much more succinct and capable writer than nasu, the Fate/Stay Night writer, in my totally biased opinion, so I’d prefer to see his iteration of the story.

Working’!!

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes. Again, not much of a plot here, but it will assume you know the characters

Stop making sequels to anime I don’t like. Why don’t you make a sequel to this anime I like that has nothing to do with the creators of anime that did get a sequel, and didn’t sell very well anyway etc. etc. Yeah, I don’t like Working. Or Wagnaria, if we feel like reverse-weeabooing the name. Funny how the American title sounds more weeaboo than the Japanese title.

Maji de Watashi

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The game I play with eroge adaptations is find out how it is connected to Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka so I can justify never having to watch it. Right, eroge company is MinaSoft. Their only previous eroge turned anime was They Are My Noble Masters, which I honestly thought wasn’t half bad. How about the animation company? Err, Maji de Watashi is made by Lerche, whose previous productions include nothing else whatsoever. Well huh, maybe this won’t be so bad after all. How about the director Keitaro Motonaga? Aha! Here we go. Director of Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka, both TV series and OVA. Oh well, so much for that~

Shakugan no Shana III Final

Do I need to have seen the previous seasons?

Yes

Well, at least JC Staff have stopped pretending. Instead of simply releasing yet another batch of Shakugan no Shana clones, they’ve finally gone back and made the actual Shakugan no Shana. I notice they’re calling this Final. I wonder if that means that this will be the end of JC Staff produced Shana clones and they’ll start innovating and producing new and excitin-BWAHAHA ok I couldn’t keep a straight face typing that.

Maken-ki

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So, how many pantyshots did you count? I got 12. Pretty impressive for a trailer that’s less than 2 minutes long. Once you go beyond 3 in a trailer, that says all you need to know about the anime in question.

Hunter X Hunter Brotherhood

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

No. This is a totally new remake

Madhouse took a look at Bones remaking Full Metal Alchemist and though “hey, we can do that too”. Now if you had told me Madhouse were remaking a manga adaptation that never finished, I would have leapt out of my chair and proclaimed “CLAYMORE!?!”. But nope, that would be far too obvious and make them far too much money. Instead they’re giving the Brotherhood treatment to Hunter X Hunter. They didn’t even animate the first season to this. Oh well, at least it’s a remake, which means I can jump straight in. I tried watching the original TV series but I couldn’t get past the first episode.

World’s First Love Season 2

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes

Hey girls, isn’t rape adorable~! Forcing yourself onto a weaker individual is totally OK because they can’t control their emotions, and it’s OK so long as the receiver enjoys it in the end. That’s what true love is all about!

Lupin III Thing

Do I need to have seen the previous seasons?

No. Every Lupin III special is written to be accessible to newcomers

There were some people saying this would be a new Lupin III reboot TV series. It’s not, stop getting your hopes up. It’s just another one of those specials Lupin III has every year. There were some other rumours going around that it would be headed up by a combination of Takashi Koike (the Redline director) and some Gainax folks, but again that’s just more wishful thinking rather than being based off any concrete evidence. I am a Lupin III fan, but the prospect of a new special doesn’t fill me with delight when there’s still 30-odd specials and the TV series I’ve yet to watch. While the good thing about the Lupin III franchise is that every one of these specials are made to be instantly approachable, the bad thing is that which ones are good and which aren’t are total crapshoots. Wait until reviews of this come out before you think about jumping in. For now, just go watch Castle of Cagliostro.

Busou Shinki Moon Angel

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Do you have a fetish for 6 inch high young teenage girls with robot joints wearing one-piece swimsuits? Well Japan has the cartoon for you! Oh Strike Witches, look what you’ve wrought.

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Battle Spirits: Heroes, Digimon Xros Wars – Toki wo Kakeru Shounen Hunter-tachi and Cross Fight B-Daman. I’m including them simply for completions sake. Yeah I know some of you folk out there like Digimon and are probably watching/watched Xros Wars. But I know fuck all about the franchise, so you’re better off searching elsewhere for information on it.

Movies

Normally I devote a measly single paragraph to movies, but this year I want to give some of these a bit more lipservice. Remember, while there are anime movies coming out in Japan this season, the rest of the world won’t see these until they come out on DVD/BD. With that in mind, I’m covering the anime movies that are coming out on DVD/BD over the next 3 months.

Towa no Quon

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This has been out for a while now, but nobody has subbed the blasted thing yet. Towa no Quon is a movie series in the same vein as Break Blade. 6 episodes, each 50 minutes long and getting a theatrical release before being released on home video. Like Break Blade (and Kara no Kyokai before it) these are beautifully animated big budget productions. It’s animated by Bones and directed by Umanosuke Iida, who passed away before he could see the movie reach the big screen. Shame, he was a really talented guy, working on Cowboy Bebop to The Big O to Hellsing to 08th MS Team. Admittedly a lot of the trailer and from what I’ve been hearing about it sounds awfully generic, but deliver tried and true concepts with enough flair and care and you’ll have a quality productions. Now we just need someone to sub the blasted thing…

Mardock Scramble

First Compression

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24th August

Feels like I’ve been writing about this thing’s release for ages now. Mardock Scramble is another one of these movie series projects. 3 movies long, it’s an adaptation of a novel by the same name. I’ve seen the movie already at a film festival and I really wasn’t that taken with it. It was all right, but delved into the unintentionally hilarious and stupid more than once. However the novel it’s been based off has gotten many rave reviews, so maybe I’ll turn out to be in the minority on this one.

There’s also Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha coming out on the 9th December, but that has gotten awful reviews so far, so I’m not particularly looking forward to that. There’s Fafner Heaven and Earth coming out on 21st September. So hurrah for that massive Fafner fanbase that exists out there…somewhere.

Man, the news in these monthly updates are always depressing. I suppose that’s because the actual good news from this month is stuff like top quality directors announcing they’re working on new anime, and that news will show up in the relevant season preview anyway. Ah well, onto the proper part of the post.

A Grade

A– Madoka Magica

Epis­odes 5–8

The one thing holding back Madoka Magica until now was I didn’t care for the characters. They were more a collection of plot points than people. This led to my reaction to a lot of the scenes being “I see what you did there” rather than getting emotionally attached. That problem hasn’t really been solved, but instead I’ve found myself getting really into each characters story. I don’t care about them as people, but lordy me am I ever emotionally invested in watching Madoka’s constant battle with her wimpyness. Plus this show has Kyubey, who has reached Johan Liebert levels of awesome villains. A lot still hinges on the ending, but I’m finally convinced that Madoka Magica has the makings of a classic.

B Grade

B Break Blade

Episode 3

Pretty much ‘as you were’ in terms of quality for Break Blade. Plot’s kicking along nicely. Sure, some of the scenes are clunkier than the very mecha they pilot, but the show mainly thrives on the battlefield. It’s there where the significant plot twists occur. It’s there where everyone goes through significant character development. But most importantly, it’s there where those fantastic mecha duke it out in those brilliantly choreographed fight sequences. Looking forward to see how they handle the second half of this series. Just so long as they don’t finish without completing the plot. You don’t make six movies solely to advertise a manga.

B– Level E

Epis­odes 4–7

Episode 4 was crap and I don’t understand why people said otherwise. The story was dull and went nowhere and if putting a grainy filter over everything counts as good animation, then I’m going to sit in a corner and cry. On the other hand, I loved the whole colour ranger arc. One of the aspects that made it work was how each of the kids had their own clear personalities. Considering they only had 3 episodes to convey their personalities in, that was quite an achievement in it’s own right. I’m still not as big on this series as many other people are, but it’s a solid comedy and one of the few genuinely good shows this season.

C Grade

C+ Fractale

Epis­odes 4–6

I honestly think people are too harsh on Fractale. Ignore what’s going on outside of the show itself, what we have here is a decent whimsical adventure with some funny morals and an annoying tendency to make ecchi ‘jokes’. It’s not going to win any awards and neither is it particularly memorable, but it produces some quality moments and is a fairly enjoyable way to spend 25 minutes a week. That said, when you air in Noitamina and your director claims this show will be loved by anyone, I really shouldn’t find myself giving this show the same type of scores I was giving Highschool of the Dead.

C Welcome to the Space Show

In the words of Sven Goran Eriksson, “First half good, second half not so good”. Welcome to the Space Show is a magical space journey about a bunch of kids being brought to a moon colony by a talking dog. Apart from the gorgeous animation that one would expect from a studio trying to pull a Ghibli, one of the things that really stood out was the little winks at larger society messages through little things the kids said or did. Which makes it all the more disappointing when they threw aside all those messages in the second half and made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The plot went mad, introducing concepts and characters out of nowhere. Nothing came together, nothing made sense and the whole thing was a gigantic mess. I’m genuinely pissed off at this movie that it threw away it’s awesome first half to descend into such crap. Ah well, at least it still looked pretty.

C Bak­u­man

Epis­odes 18–21

Bakuman has fallen into this strange state of being laughed at rather than with. There’s a silly, self-mocking side to it now, not all of which I’m even sure is intentional. Maybe that’s just my brain searching for ways to entertain myself while watching this anime. It’s a self-defence mechanism my mind has created to enjoy anime I don’t really like. Usually I attempt this by looking for fanservice. Now it’s looking for when the show makes fun of it’s own dreadful romance and laughable rivalries. But hey, I’m enjoying Bakuman more because of this approach, so I’m perfectly OK with this new arrangement.

C– Wan­der­ing Son

Epis­odes 4–6

When I said before this show aired that I thought it might be too fluffy for my tastes, people commented saying that the manga wasn’t fluffy at all and was actually quite harsh. I wish you people were right. When this show focuses on that wry sense of humour it has, it’s great. It’s brilliant at these little subtle jabs that you know has mucked up a kids head but never directly tells you that it has. But then it’s all “oh dear, we might have been too harsh there. Quick! Play more tinkly piano music!”. It’s as frustrating as hell when you can see a good show in the making but it keeps shooting itself in the foot. I guess I’ll have to mark this down as an off-season for Noitamina.

D Grade

D– Suite Precure

Episodes 1–4

Heartcatch Precure got a lot of praise from the anime community, more so than any of the Precure franchise I’d certainly ever seen. Heck, I’d barely ever seen Precure talked about until Heartcatch burst on the scene. My automatic bias towards magical girl series, what with all the pink and them having silly names like Magical Musical ~Chu~ ~Chu~ Lyrical Heart and Soul Puni Puni Girl SOS, kept me away from Heartcatch, but that bias has been dropping steadily ever since.  So when the first episode of Suite showed up, I decided now is as good a time as any to jump on the Precure bandwagon. That said, Suite Precure is pretty bloody awful. I’m mainly just waiting to see how long the combo of bitchin’ transformation sequences and CGI dancing endings can keep me going. Probably not for that much longer.

D– Ore no Imouto True Route OVA

Episode 12

Blogging Ore no Imouto was incredibly fun, inspite of (or possibly because) of all the raging I did. Because of that, I was planning to blog the True Route OVA’s as well. However the changes between the original episode 12 and this were so minimal it wasn’t worth my time writing anything. The changes consisted of:

1. A man playing porn games in the street
2. Kyousuke riding a bicycle
3. Kirino not headbutting Kyousuke
4. Kuroneko saying Senpai.

I think I’ll wait for more episodes to come out before I say anything. Or maybe I’ll just not write anything at all. It would be hard to top my tsundereview from episode 12 anyway.

D– Hiyokoi

Considering this is the shojoiest shojo OVA possible, it wasn’t nearly as painful to sit through as it could have been. It was rather lacking in sparklespace, even if the female lead was one of those ones you’re meant to d’awww at because she’s so small and cute and bleargh. I did get a massive guffaw when the male love interest was so bishie he could make it snow at will! One day I hope to be as beautiful enough that I can control the weather.

E Grade

E+ Rio Rainbow Gate

Episodes 1–8

Forgot to include this last month. My brain apparently tried to wipe this series from my mind. Which is probably why I come back every week, right? Nope, I come back every week because this show is horrendous. It’s awful on so many levels in so many ways that you simply can’t look away. I’d like to call it ‘so bad it’s good’, but Rainbow Gate doesn’t achieve that level often enough to warrant watching it. The drama in episodes 7 and 8 have been particularly amusing/horrible. The ‘best’ scene by far was Rio riding a holographic shark while dodging meteorites. That will be something for a twelve days post at the end of the year.

E Afterschool Pleiadas

It wasn’t that I had placed unrealistic expectations on this or anything. It’s nothing more than an advertisement for a car company featuring magical girls. I went in expecting nothing and came out getting less than I hoped. Basically, I was bored out of my mind watching this 20 minute thingamabob. You’d think a studio like Gainax making an advertisement would use that as an excuse to go a bit mad with their animation, but there was nothing in here. Boring as fuck, I hope Subaru make no money out of this whatsoever.

F Grade

You can tell how ‘into’ anime I am at any given time by counting how much crap I persist with. As you can probably tell, my obsession with these cartoons has been reaching dangerous levels recently. Still no F’s though.

It was then that I realised the mistake I was making. A season preview is not about information. How silly of me to think such a thing. The real driving force behind what makes a great season preview is opinions. Informed opinions, yes, but opinions never the less. A chart is no place for my opinions, they are merely information storage houses. But I love opinions, especially my own. So with that revelation, it’s back to doing what I do best: Informing the world of my totally biased views on anime!

TV Series

Fractale

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First of all, Fractale is airing in Noitamina, a timeslot devoted to hosting anime that doesn’t suck. Being in Noitamina alone means it’s worth checking out, regardless of anything else. The series is directed by Yamakan, a guy who’s reputation far exceeds his few achievements. He storyboarded a few episodes of Haruhi Suzumiya, got kicked off Lucky Star after 4 episodes for sucking so much, directed that dull Black Rock Shooter OVA. In fact, the only real worthwhile achievement he has to his name is him directing Kannagi. I’m a little bit worried about his moe reputation, but Noitamina wouldn’t host pure moecrap. Yamakan did say that if this anime isn’t a hit, he would retire. However he is a bit egotistical so take all that with a pinch of salt. Trailer looks slightly Ghibli-esque and I love some of the steampunk artwork I’ve been seeing of the series. Sorry, I’m really just babbling by this point. Definitely optimistic, if not overwhelming so.

Kimi ni Todoke 2

Stupid shojo. I don’t think my problem comes fundamentally from the shojo genre as a whole. It’s the stereotypical shojo fair that I have no time for. That is what Kimi ni Todoke is, and I simply have no patience for that at all.

Gosick

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First off, it’s by Bones. While their original productions often fill me with rage with their pitfalls, they’re generally pretty good at bringing out the best in adaptations (FMA and Ouran, as case points). Second case for Gosick is the high praise I’ve seen the novels get. It’s a proper detective story, true to the style of Sherlock Holmes, which can often be hard to find in anime outside of Detective Conan. The case against is a bit damaging though. This is far from a star studded staff listing from Bones here. Warning signs alone come from seeing the Heroman director on board. Still, he’s working with better material here, so it should be worth a shot at least.

Beelzebub

I know there are many people excited about this. These people have already expressed surprise at the apparent lack of enthusiasm expressed by the rest of the aniblogsphere towards this hit manga. Want to know why, all you Beelzebub fans out there? Fairy Tail, Letter Bee, Nuaridgyaoean no Mago Nurarara. Time and time again we get the latest Shounen hit manga getting adapted into an anime, getting hyped up by the shounen manga fans, only for it to be yet another disappointment. Seeing Pierrot at the helm as well (they did Letter Bee and Nurarara, along with Naruto and Bleach) doesn’t fill me with excitment either. I mean, it sounds like a pretty cool story. Teenage delinquent in charge of demon baby. A combination of the shounen formula with the new parent comedy, it sounds promising. But I’ve been burned too many times in the past to get excited for whatever the latest shounen hit anime is.

Wandering Son

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Noitamina again. Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the timeslot and think I’m hyping these titles up for nothing, here’s a quick snapshot of what anime it’s hosted in the past 5 years: Eden of the East, Moyashimon, Nodame Cantabile, Honey and Clover, Tatami Galaxy, Trapeze, Jellyfish Princess…I think you get the gist. Even when the studio attached is AIC, whose previous anime have included Ore no Imouto, Amagami SS and the Strike Witches sequel, the call of Noitamina has caused them to produce probably the most original looking anime of the season, at least in terms of the artwork. Admittedly, Wandering Son doesn’t look to be my sort of thing. A bit too airy fairy/fluffy/lovely/beautiful and I generally don’t react too well to these sort of anime. But hey, good for the people who do like this sort of stuff, and good for AIC that they’re not doing fanservice crap yet again.

Merry Dream Eater

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To be fair to JC Staff, they have been branching out a bit lately. Most notably of which is their careful stepping into the generic shojo genre of Maid-sama. So hey, good for them that they’re finally diversifying from the typical ‘flat-chested highschool girl, possibly  with super powers, meets generic male lead’ that they always put out. Merry Dream Eater is about a generic teenage boy and the  flat chested girl who falls into his lap one day. JC Staff being JC Staff. Shakugan no Shana, Raildex series, Ookami-san you know the drill by now. They put out something resembling a plot while the fans fawn over the moeness of the female leads. The Light Novel adaptation has very low profit margins and I guess these series are sorta par for the course for JC Staff. A way of giving their staff some experience on working on anime. It’s just it’s starting to feel like a while that they made an anime I liked that isn’t called Nodame Cantabile.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica

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The wildly erratic but occasionally brilliant Shinbo, along with his equally eratic studio Shaft, are producing this anime original product. There’s been a bit of hype surrounding this due to an apparently godlike staff list, which I had gone along with until I actually took a look at the staff list. Err, this is godly? The actual good staff are on stuff like music and character design, which is a pretty useless place to put good staff if the actual prodict they’re making stuff for isn’t well written. The actual main bulk of the writing staff are a few Shaft folk (although the director of Arakawa Under the Bridge makes me happy) and a bunch of nobodies who only previously worked on the forgettable Gonzo anime Blassreiter. Essentially, this anime boils down to what Shinbo has cooked up in his brain, never a good thing to rely on. My feeling is Shinbo is aiming for a true Magical Girl series, based on wha the promos have shown. Absolute purity and goodness in an unabashed, totally serious way that leaves the old school magical girl fans declaring the glory days have come back. Sorta like Gurren Lagann for the Magical Girl genre. Which I’m afraid I just can’t get excited for. Magical Girl anime just don’t do it for me (he says, basing this prejudice solely off Princess Tutu and the fact they have stupid names like Magical Musical ~Chu~ ~Chu~ Lyrical Heart and Soul Puni Puni Girl SOS).

Wolverine

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Oh Madhouse, what on earth has happened to you? I was one of the few that originally kinda liked Ironman, but eventually the stupidity got to me and I dropped it. Actually no, it wasn’t the stupidity. I watched and enjoyed the entire of Cobra. The problem with Ironman was you could tell the creators simply did not care about the product they were working on. Which makes it even more baffling that they decided to take on these projects when they clearly had no interest in them. Why Madhouse? To any anime fans reading this: Don’t bother with Wolverine or Ironman. If you want some Madhouse goodness, wait for Redline to finally come out on DVD. That will be the next big thing to hit the anime scene from them.

Level E

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First off, actually watch the trailer the full way through. Pretty cool looking eh? Level E is your token low budget, high concept anime of the season. The sort of minor hit that will never achieve much due to its low budget, but will gain a small following of supporters. A bit like Giant Killing from last spring. David Production are a pretty shitty studio, having only previously made Ristorante Paradiso and Book of Bantorra, and being propped up by Pierrot isn’t the most exciting of duos. The manga is from the same guy who wrote Hunter X Hunter (called Hiatus X Hiatus by its adoring fans) so there’s talent somewhere behind this show. Really though, my mild optimism is based more off the interesting synopsis than anything more concrete. But hey, that’s the great thing about these low budget anime. Nobody really cares if they drop off the face of the earth, and if they succeed then it’s always a nice extra to have each season.

Dragon Crisis

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This is apparently the anime to look out for if you’re a sakuga nerd (translation: animation nerd, because animation nerds are also massive weeaboos). Deen have decided to bring in some talenter animators for this. Otherwise, you’re staring at yet another Deen crapfest. You would think something with the word ‘Dragon’ in the name would be pretty awesome. Afraid not. Generic male lead finds magical girl who instantly likes him while bossy childhood friend gets jealous. Yeah, you all know the drill by now. Yawn next~

Infinite Stratos

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Generic male lead goes to school where he’s one of the only guys, although I’m sure they’ll be able to fit in the perverted best friend character somewhere. The catch is this school has girls using massive weaponry to fight off aliens or something along those lines. Basically, excuse to have lots of explosions and mecha musume action. It’s far from being the most inspiring of concepts. It does have one interesting point of note. The director of Infinite Stratos was also a director on Macross Frontier. Otherwise though, total newbie studio 8-bit making harem animu doesn’t fill me with excitement.

Is that a Zombie?

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lolDeen. This is basically Deen imposing on JC Staffs domain of ‘generic male lead getting picked up by flat chested high school girl with magical powers’. Which they can’t even do very well. I certainly would have more faith in Merry Dream Eater being watchable than this. lalala next

Nyarlko

In case you haven’t got the memo, Nyarlko is a moe-fied version of  Cthulhu; H.P. Lovecrafts demon monster thingy I dunno, I’m an uncultured plebian who has never read any Lovecraft. Basically a massive demon thing with tentacles and claws and all sorts of horrid things, turned into a flat chested, silver haired moe girl. Just let that sink in for a minute. The first episode is out already. It’s a directionless flash animation that barely qualifies as a legitimate anime.

Rio Rainbow Gate

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Rio is based off a pachinko game character, a gambling machine for single men who can’t get a job. This isn’t actually the first time an anime has been based off a pachinko game. There was Umi Monogatari a few seasons back. It wasn’t very good, but what it did show was that, given something so plotless as a gambling machine, the creator could come up with their own plot. So what did Xebec decide to do with this anime? Yeah, this was doomed from the moment the name Xebec came into the picture. For a quick idea of what to expect from Xebec, last season they made Yosuga no Sora. Booooooobs~

Houkago no Pleides

Houkago no Pleides is a project between the car manufacturer Subaru and the animation studio Gainax. I have a sneaking suspicion this is just a bloody advertisement. You’d think the producers would say that it wasn’t a TV show if it wasn’t, but I wouldn’t put it past Gainax to troll anime fans. That’s the thing about this project. Having the name ‘Gainax’ attached could mean bloody anything. The promo image is just a bunch of moe girls. It could be an advertisement. It could be some moecrap. It could even be a Redline-esque racing show. I really have no idea what to expect.

Mitsudomoe 2

The first season of Mitsudomoe was low-brow to the extreme, to the point that I stopped finding it funny and was mainly just grossed out by ‘urine samples being mistaken for eye drops’ type jokes. This season is only 8 episodes long btw, so not much for those handul of Mitsudomoe fans out there.

I don’t like you at all,

Big Brother

They’re not blood related. Just sayin’. In the world of incest anime, this is far more down the KissXSis route of straight up softcore porn than the fence-sitting nature of Ore no Imouto. If you like softcore anime porn, then you’ll love this! If you actually have taste, then you won’t. You’ll watch actual porn instead.

Freezing

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The website for the Freezing anime has a game. It’s one of the ball-and-paddle games where you knock out the blocks off the screen. In this case, the blocks are the clothes of the buxom females of the show, revealing their underwear-clad bodies beneath. It’s a rather fun way to pass the time actually. I cleared every single girl…umm, maybe I shouldn’t be admitting to that. Anyway, you should know what to expect from the game alone. This is one of those ‘girls fighting while their clothes disintergrate’ anime, which is a little bit depressing when you realise that’s now a fully fledged genre. Booooobs~

Starry Sky

If I’m going to heap scorn upon Freezing and I don’t like you at all, Big Brother, then it would be hypocritical of me to no heap just as much scorn upon Starry Sky. Generic female lead with no personality goes to school with heaps of beautiful boys with various famous voice actors (that you can listen soothe you to sleep in seperately sold drama CD’s) who all are instantly infacutuated with the female lead. This is the biggest pile of crap out of anything this season. Seriously girls, don’t watch this crap. If you do, I have as much respect for you as I do the people who watch Kiss X Sis. Well, maybe not. As far as I’m aware, straight up female oireantated anime porn doesn’t actually exist. The only one that actually shows anything explicit is Boku no Pico. You’re stuck with ero games, yaoi manga, static art or male aimed hentai. In fact, I’m pretty sure Boku no Pico was actually aimed at the shotacon male audience. So I guess if you’re really starved for some moving anime beautiful men whose only purpose is to sexually excite the viewer, then there’s really not much options. But for god sake, don’t pretend Starry Sky is anything but that.

Suite Precure

The endless Precure franchise. It has its fans, but my unnatural bias against magical girl anime has prevented me from ever watching this series. For those who do, I’m afraid I’m not sure if this is meant to be a sequel to Heartcatch or not. It’s all a bit confusing and I don’t really understand the continuity in the franchise, so go research that for yourself.

OVAs

Most of these are spin off or sequels to whatever. People tend to get unduly excited for OVAs when they’re just stupid extra episodes, which is annoying to see when there’s some genuinely interesting OVAs in there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Future Diary was just a 7-minute pilot. Yuri Seijin is a project by ufotable about a planet of lesbians. Dream C Club is based off those idol games, like Idolm@ster, for loser purity-obsessed otaku only. Haven’t a clue what Goulart Knight is supposed to be. There are still 3 interesting OVAs in here. Supernatural is the obvious one. It’s basically a fully fledged series, spanning 22 episodes in length. I’m unsure how the release format is going to run though. Madhouse is behind the project, although I’m wary after their miserable attempts at Ironman. I’ve never seen the original American TV series and all I know is that it has a massive fangirl following. It’s worth keeping an eye on anyway. The other two new project OVAs worth keeping an eye on are Tailenders and Koisento. Tailenders I was originally hyped for but, after watching Redline in the cinema, it now inspires considerably less excitement. It’s basically a much worse animated version of that. Still should be worth watching, but from a company called ‘Anime Innovation Tokyo’ is it too much to ask for a little bit of innovation? Koisento is interesting simply because I know next to nothing about it. Sunrise producing a 40 episode OVA? Sounds cool to me

Click here to view the embedded video.

Movies

Usual blah blah about movies not being seen by western anime fans until the DVD’s come out etc. My method is researching what anime movies are coming out is to type in names of anime movies that have been screened in Japan but I haven’t seen hit the fansub scene into amazon.jp to see if they have a release date announced. It’s not the msot accurate method, but it’s better than nothing.

Proffesor Layton and the Eternal Diva is apparently out already, although from what I’ve heard, you’re better off waiting for the English dub to hear Laytons hilarious gentlemenly english accent. King of Thorn is out 13/Dec, which looks mildly entertaining.  Trigun: Badlands Rumble is out 15/Dec. Again from reviews, it sounds like a nice nostalgia trip but nothing substantial. The Dissapearence of Haruhi Suzumiya is out 18/Dec, which has been hyped up to extrodinary levels by those who saw either the c

::Edit:: What the hell guys? Why did nobody tell me I was missing the last few paragraphs of this post? What the hell happened to them anyway?

Episode 151: Checkups Under the Bridge

Arakawa loves to play P-ko as the typical girl amongst the nutters under the bridge. She complains about how awful men are, organises slumber parties, obsesses over her weight when she quite clearly has nothing to worry about. Ah, the old weight issue and the size zero models. One thing I’ve noticed from this whole attempt to get women away from obsessing about their weight and stop bulimia and anorexia is telling people it’s all right to be fat. Like, there’s a movement to cheer for tubby women, the idea being that curves are better than stick thin figures. Which really isn’t helping the situation at all. Obesity is clearly a far bigger problem (hur hur) than anorexia and telling girls that it’s all right to be massive isn’t helping things. Size zero girls look weird, but tubby girls aren’t attractive either. It’s a dangerous area to get into though without some stuck up fat-ists getting offended so I’ll shut up now. I’m hardly the best person to talk about this, seeing as I’m one of those people born with a godlike metabolism.

For all those people who felt uncomfortable looking down at their belly after that last paragraph, here’s P-ko grinning to lighten things up. Now go out jogging or pick up a sport you lazy oafs.

Episode 152: Shimazaki’s Rampage

Here’s a question I don’t think I’ve ever asked in these posts: Who is the Mayor? Why does he wear this kappa costume? He clearly doesn’t actually think he’s a kappa. Who is he? Why does he have all this money, wandering around as a samurai and buying the land under the bridge right from under the nose of the Ichinomiya company. Why is he going to this level to protect Nino, and how does he get their tapes? He remains the one big mystery of the series. Think back to last season and one of the last episodes with the fire. By this stage, Recruit was starting to figure out what made everyone else under the bridge click, but for the life of him he couldn’t work out what made the Mayor click. And he doesn’t even know of the threatening samurai version of the Mayor. He’s a funny old character, and he’ll probably be the very last character the series would ever really cover, should Shaft actually continue the series right until the end. The manga is still ongoing, but Shaft seem more than happy to continue making this series and sequels in general. All things considered though, another Arakawa sequel isn’t that high on my list of series that needs sequels. What I’m currently craving is another Spice and Wolf.

Since we at The Cart Driver are dedicated to providing both sides to every argument (except shojo), here’s a constrasting opinion of the perceived coolness factor of Whitey. The first picture is Shimazaki’s opinion as show in this episode. The second picture is from the first season when Recruit discovers the single other leech under the bridge. Who’s side are you on?

Imagine if Shimazaki was the one to ‘cure’ Whitey of his affliction? Maybe she could take the approach of Billy by dressing herself up as a white bird. Hence the person Whitey has to marry will be her, the White Cornish. I bet that will happen actually. When you think about it, that’s exactly the sort of couple that would fit perfectly in the society under the bridge. A handsome business man married to a women dressed as a chicken but are both clearly in love with each other. Why is she dressed like a chicken? Because the husband stepped off the white line in one of the most romantic scenes of all time. I can see it all now!

Episode 153: Incurably Bold

OK I’ll stop now.

Episode 154: Astronaut Evaluation Under the Bridge

A week alone.

A group of girls.

Touching.

Each.

Other.

This post is going ever so steadily off the rails. Kinda like the people in the show itself.

Episode 155: Agony Endurance Contest

Yup. This post has gone right off the rails now. Ending it now before I go straight into gaga land.