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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.