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Some autumn anime I’ve been following:

Sasameki Koto: I’m still following this story of romantic relationships among girls.  The self-absorbed Ushio still hasn’t realised how Sumika feels about her.

Nyan Koi: Amusing story about a boy, Junpei, who is cursed after damaging a roadside cat shrine, with the result that he can understand what cats say, and has to fulfill 100 cat wishes otherwise he’ll turn into one. At the start of the story he secretly is attracted to his pretty classmate Kaede. However as the series progresses one gets to feel that there is a harem thing going on, as while he may be cursed by the cats, he is also attracting a following of good-looking girls.

Kimi ni Todoke  (=Reaching You):  A charming story about the friendship between the shy and awkward Sawako and popular boy, Kazehaya. Sawako has difficulty in relating to other people, and at the start of the story has no friends.  Her classmates just think she’s weird, and  persistently mis-pronounce her name as “Sadako” (the name of a creepy character from the “Ring” horror movie). They spread rumours about her occult powers (she hasn’t any, of course.)  Kazehaya wants to date her, but Sawako is so lacking in self-esteem that she just doesn’t get it when he says he wants to see her over the summer. Gradually she opens out and makes friends with other girls while falling in love with Kazehaya.

Cross Game: Still watching this. A new character,  Akane, has appeared. Everyone thinks Akane looks startlingly like how Tsukishima Aoba’s dead sister would look now if she was still alive. 

Aoi Bungaku Series: adaptations of classic Japanese stories. Soseki Natsume’s “Kokoro”, Osamu Dazai’s “No longer Human” (Ningen Shikaku) and and “Run, Melos!” (Hashire Melos). RyÅ«nosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell screen”  (Jigoku hen), RyÅ«nosuke Akutagawa’s “The Spider’s Thread” (Kumo no Ito), Ango Sakaguchi’s “In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom” (Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita).

Running order:
4 episodes for ningen shikkaku/No Longer Human
2 for Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita/In the Forest, under cherries in full bloom
2 for Kokoro
2 for hashire melos/Run, Melos
1 for Kumo no Ito/The Spider’s Thread
and 1 for Jigoku hen/Hell Screen

Manga artists Takeshi Obata (Death Note), Takeshi Konomo (Prince of Tennis), and Tite Kubo (Bleach) will be involved in the animation’s designs. The first one, which was a grim adult tale set in  early 20th century Japan, seemed a bit long and depressing.  “In the Forest…” is totally different in style and content, and is superb. “Kokoro” is different again, and again superb. “Run, Melos” is excellent. It refers to an ancient Greek story about Melos. 

Dropped: To Aru Kagaku no Railgun: a story about some girl students at a college of magic in a magical alternate world. Well-realised and funny. I enjoyed it, but dropped it mainly because there wasn’t an interesting ongoing story.  If lesbo groping is your thing, you’ll find it here rather than in the  yuri animes reviewed on this page.

Those of you who like yuri anime may care to note that another one is appearing in the Autumn 2009 Japanese TV anime schedules -  an adaptation of the popular yuri  manga  “Sasameki Koto”.
At the beginning of October I downloaded a scanlated chapter of the manga to get some idea of what it (or the anime) might be like.  (There’s also a Wikipedia entry that explains plenty about it.). The anime started on 7 October 2009, and we are currently up to episode 7 or 8.
Briefly, 15-year old Sumika Murasame is academically gifted, good at sports, and skilled at karate, making her something of an alpha girl, and she is 175cm (5’9″) tall, which does nothing to diminish her reputation for being a bit scary, and she wears glasses.  Secretly, she is attracted to another girl,  her best friend, the pretty Ushio Kazama, who is also a lesbian.  However Ushio is only attracted to cute girlies, not strapping young Amazons like Sumika.
Sumika hopes she can find a way to declare her feelings, while Ushio repeatedly pre-empts this by constantly chasing other girls, and pointing out that Sumika isn’t her type. This is (so far) a story about unrequited lesbian love – those who hope to see the other sort should look elsewhere. 
Other characters include a cross-dressing boy who finds himself signed up as a (female) magazine model,   several other lesbians, and a yuri manga fan-girl. Inevitably, Ushio pursues the boy believing him to be a cute girl.
While this clearly isn’t another Aoi Hana, being more in the familiar territory of exaggerated romantic comedy, it does look like fun.  The first anime episode, a slow one, rather misfires, and looks fairly boring in contrast to the lively opening of the manga.  However it picks up from the second episode, and thereafter follows the style and storyline of the manga fairly closely.  

In the opening scenes of episode 7, the cross-dressing boy Akemiya is bring photographed by his pushy little sister, and this scene is so sexy that it’ s really quite disturbing. Sumika is pressurised into going on a date with  Akemiya, who turns up dressed as a girl. They have a snack in a cafe and then go clothes-shopping. It’s all a bit much for poor Sumika, who finds him/her so cute she practically has a nosebleed.  Crikey. Don’t watch this episode, guys, if you’re worried about being turned gay.

This series shows the potential of yuri romantic anime for comedy; however there’s as much drama as comedy. As a drama it has a problem in that the humour lies in Ushio never realising that Sumika fancies her, and so the same cycle of Sumika’a hope and disappointment is spun out indefinitely. If Ushio got the message, the story would either end or morph into something else.
By the way, one is aware that successive generations of Japanese are getting taller, apparently because of improved diet, so Sumika’s height may not that unusual. Still, at 5ft 9in she’d be a tall girl in any country!