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The World God Only Knows was one of the shows I passed over during the Autumn 2010 Japanese anime season, in favour of more enticing works. During a mild bout of ‘flu recently I watched the whole show and found it quite a bit better than I had anticipated. A show about a self-styled “God of Gaming” who doesn’t interact with real girls, and a demonic girl, doesn’t sound like a must-watch.  In fact, there is a strong script, the characters are well rounded, and the girls are extremely cute (even cuter than the accompanying image suggests). There is no fan-service, which these days could be a plus point! The hero isn’t a hopeless loser – he just lacks social skills and loves gaming. When forced by the situation, Keima approaches real girls with determination, using the knowledge he has gained in gaming. The series pokes fun at the tropes of anime and games. For instance, when Keima comes home trailed by a little magical “half-sister” his mother welcomes Elsie – and promptly sues for a divorce.

There’s also an extended  and well-scripted story arc involving a shy girl and incidentally promoting the joys of libraries and printed books.  This is a hot topic in the UK at the moment, where for generations we have had public libraries which are free to all, but are now under threat. Local authorities, having spent too much money on prestige building projects, fancy salaries for executives, and so forth, are now faced with a recession and are looking for a soft target for spending cuts.

First a round-up of the Fall 2010 season:

Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru – best of the lot.  Even though the final episode wasn’t great.

Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii – Kirino learns to be a bit less obnoxious at the end, but an alternate ending may be presented in the DVD version! She still hasn’t been weaned away from her unacceptable hobby. Little that’s too embarrassing appears on screen in this series, mercifully.  There are several highlights, e.g. the sequence where a bratty child actress is pressurised into participating in a anime cosplay – and proceeds to totally ace it, and Kuroneko’s satiric and very funny manga featuring Kirino.

Yosuga no Sora – If you’re wondering what happens at the end, the answer is that it’s every bit as steamy as the rest of it. Now go take a cold shower.

Kuragehime – ends with all the situations suddenly resolved. A charming anime, except that the house-mates are just too weird. But they’re likewise too weird in the originating manga.

Otome Yokai Zakuro – continues to be charming, and we learn more about Zakuro’s background.

And now for the new season:

Starry Sky: Girl goes to previously all-male astronomy school. Awful, even if the don’t-care way they muddle astronomy and astrology doesn’t annoy you.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica (Magical Girl Madoka) : A typical magical-girl anime, but with some nice animation, especially in the CG magic bits.  The heroine is a pre-teen.  Promising.

IS: Infinite Stratos: romantic comedy adventure with mecha and some fanservice. Infinite Stratos (IS), is a weaponized exoskeleton system, almost exclusively piloted by females. Decently animated, but with some very familiar situations. Too early to tell if this will be silly but entertaining, or just silly.

Yumekui Merry (Dream Eater Merry) : When the real world and the world of dreams intersect, strange things happen. Could be worth following. There is contrasting animation for the real and dream worlds.

Onii-chan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!! (I’m not at all like that brother!) : A brother and sister fancy each other. Ecchi smut-fest comedy with few if any redeeming qualities.

Freezing: Aliens invading earth are countered by special force of female fighters.  Implausible but stylishly animated battle-anime with lots of fan-service.

Gothic (ゴシック): Set in an imaginary European country, in 1924. Token Japanese schoolboy meets a brilliant and bossy blonde girl who solves gothic mysteries. Quite funny, adequate animation. Promising.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka? (Is this a Zombie?) : Daft and hilarious comedy about a schoolboy who is already a zombie as the series starts. Add a magical girl whose clothes disappear whenever her magic falters, a gay crayfish monster, and some skilfully delivered visual gags, and we have a potential hit. ROFL.

Cardfight!! Vanguard: About teenagers playing a fantasy battle card-game. I’m not a gamer – I found it uninteresting.

Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son) : This was widely anticipated as the “quality” anime of the season – another adaptation of a Shimura Takako manga – the other being the delicate drama “Aoi Hana”.  The first episode is animated in attractive pastel colours, but crams in introductions to quite a lot of characters, as well as letting us see already its awkward subject matter – cross-dressing among junior high school students. This is a sensitively handled  character drama – not a sensational or comic anime.  My recommendation is to stick with this one, unless the subject creeps you out, or you don’t care for character-based drama. If you’re confused, take a look at the online manga scanlation, which also reveals that the animators have jumped in at around chapter 30 of a 90+ chapter manga.

Level E: Earth is infested with aliens, all here for their different reasons, and the humans are the only ones who don’t know. Our hero soon finds out as he finds a stranded alien in his room. Quite amusing, with a half-decent script. Could be worth checking another episode to see if it’s going anywhere.

Beelzebub: I imagine the creator had a bad experience with a baby! I’m unimpressed though.

Wolverine: Ultra-violent superhero stuff, with glossy animation. Uninvolving, though.

Kimi ni Todoke 2 (Reaching You 2) : Eagerly awaited by those who loved the first series of this shoujo romantic comedy. 2011 episode #0 was a recap. In ep #1, it’s chocolate-giving day, and Sawako can’t quite screw up courage to give lovingly-made chocolates to Kazehaya, who hangs about in increasing disappointment.  Give him the chocs already, girl! Worth a look.

Fractale: sci-fi anime, containing obvious homages to Miyazaki movies and Nadia Tv series. Much discussed, but sense of relief that it isn’t anything like Freezing or Onii-chan no Koto may cloud judgement.  Worth a look.

Haiyoru! Nyaruanai Remember My Love(craft-sensei) Ultra-short 4-minute per episode series, overlooked by some commentators. Supposedly about aliens and deities and an ordinary schoolboy. Ist ep. contains little besides smutty dialogue.
Several of the 2011 series are licensed on Crunchyroll, with trailers and opening episodes.

Confused by the availability of Fall season anime? So was I!
Here’s a run-down, omitting the less noteworthy titles:
Kuragehime – Funimation licence – streaming – not uk
Otome Yokai Zakuro – Crunchyroll licence
Samurai Girls – Anime Network licence – not UK
Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru – no licence
Squid Girl – Crunchyroll licence
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt – Crunchyroll licence – over 18’s
Hakuouki part 2 – no licence
Fortune Arterial – Crunchyroll licence
The World God only Knows – Crunchyroll licence
Arakawa under the Bridge x Bridge (sic) – no licence
Yosuga no Sora – no licence
Psychic Detective Yakumo – no licence
Yumeiro P̢tissi̬re Professional РCrunchyroll licence Рnot UK
Bakuman – no licence
Tegami Bachi Reverse (Letter Bee Reverse) – Crunchyroll licence.
MM! – No licence
Sora no Otoshimono Forte – Crunchyroll licence
Iron Man – G4TV licence – not UK
A Certain Magical Index II – no licence
Super Robot Wars OG – Crunchyroll licence
Ore no Imouto Konnani Kawaii wake ja nai (Oreimo) – ANN (Anime News Network) licence – not UK.
Those marked as licensed are more difficult to find as downloads.
Crunchyroll is a streaming site – see earlier post. The fact that any of these titles are streamed at all is evidence of the pressure exerted on the anime market by the downloading of bittorrent fansubs.

Bakuman: Third year middle school student Mashiro Moritaka is depressed when he thinks about the likely course of his life – the idea of being a high school student, then a college student, then a salaryman, just fills him with dread. He likes to draw, and has thought about becoming a mangaka, a manga author, but his uncle was a real mangaka and never met with any financial success, so Moritaka doesn’t think it’s worth trying.   Ace student and literary prizewinner Takagi Akito finds a math notebook in which Moritaka has sketched his secret crush, pretty student Azuki Miho.  To Moritaka’s surprise, Akito sets about persuading Moritaka to form a mangaka partnership with him, with Akito writing and Moritaka drawing.  Moritaka finds himself being bounced into agreeing, and also blurting out his feelings for Miho, who equally surprisingly dreams of becoming an anime voice actress. A promising opener with adequate animation and interesting characters and script.

Yosuga no Sora: A brother and sister move from the city to their grandparents’ house in a semi-rural area. Their parents have recently died in a car crash, and the grandparents don’t appear in the story so far.  Haruka is a good-looking boy and nearly all the maidens who encounter him promptly become lovesick.  Many of them seem to recognise him, which isn’t too surprising as he was apparently in the area four years previously.  His twin sister, Sora, is frail and has difficulty relating to others.  So far so good – we have some decent animation, an interesting script and characters, and a developing harem theme.  The sting in the tail comes in the last five minutes, when we learn that Sora’s lurid fantasies weren’t just for added colour, as she makes overt incestuous advances to her brother. Then we have a bare-boobs bath scene with another character, and a masturbation scene with a third. We knew this was adapted from a ero-game, but it doesn’t seem to have been toned down at all!  One awaits the following episodes with some trepidation, to discover if this series sensitively depicts Sora’s struggle to adapt to the world and her feelings for her brother, and her jealousy about the female attention coming his way, or if it’s just a load of erotica.

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt: With a title like that, absolutely no excuse for not knowing what to expect, particularly as the airing on Crunchyroll requires you to declare that you are over 18.  Not quite p..n but full of bad-taste adult humour.   “Panty” and “Stocking” are two fallen angels, directed by a priest-like character.  The character animation is in a curious non-realistic style, while the brief transformation sequence is in a quite different style

which one suspects will be a big hit with viewers.  In the battle sequences the angels remove their (ahem) lower garments and transform them into weapons…  Not my cup of tea but will probably be a huge hit as the creators have hit many fans’ tastes on a bullseye.  BTW be careful with the audio when viewing this if you don’t want parents/ neighbours/ partners to sus your dodgy viewing habits, as whereas Japanese soundtracks are almost always unintelligible to the non-fan, you can clearly hear “Panty” being repeated a lot in the opening credits of this one!

MM!: Boy tries to get help to cure his masochism. Encounters a sadistic girl and discovers that his best friend and confidant is a cross-dresser.  Shallow stuff.