Nearly 3 months since I started watching the Spring season.  I’ve continued to watch Kaichou wa Maid-sama! which continues to please,  also Hakuoki Shinsengumi Kitan,  Angel Beats!, which develops in a rather surprising way, and (courtesy of Crunchyroll) Ichiban Ushiro no Daimayou and Durarara.

Admittedly I followed “Ichiban Ushiro no Daimayou partly” because it was on Crunchyroll so I didn’t have to download it, but some of the episodes were good, and there is an acceptable amount of fan-service. The ending is just irritating and I struggled to remember who some of the female characters were; there were so many of them…  The fiery Junko however is rather likeable.

Durarara continues to be the best of the bunch, even though it has shifted its focus from Celty, now rather a wasted character, to the three teenagers Mikado, Anri, and Masaomi.

Working! About part-timers at a restaurant.  So irritating that I only watched half of the first episode.

Heartcatch Precure Another series in the “Futari wa Pretty Cure” universe. For addicts only, I think.

K-On! Series 2 The same five girls as in series 1 re-appear.  In this episode they mess around and fail to recruit any new members.  Seems a bit lacking – so far I see no reason to watch this rather than re-running the earlier series.

Mayoi Neko Overrun! Bizarre school comedy involving cats and cosplay. Even after watching it I don’t know what it’s about and I’m not sure I care.

Giant Killing A brilliant Japanese soccer player returns to Japan to revive the fortunes of a failing Japanese soccer team.  Might be good – check it out if you are a soccer fan.

B Gata H Kei This was trailed as a sex comedy about a 15 year old virgin girl who intends to have 100 sex partners.  I hadn’t memorised the Japanese title so when I downloaded and viewed yet another 1st Ep, the stunningly crude dialogue and the clumsy sexually-charged situations took me completely by surprise.  Partway through the episode I’d had enough of this dodgy tripe, and switched off.  Now removed from my computer. Apparently this is broadcast at 1am in Japan, so heck knows who it’s for – certainly not well-behaved Japanese school students who would be in bed asleep at this hour.  If  you live in the UK you might be wise to give this one a miss, and  check out the vaguely-drafted legislation made active earlier this week:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/06/cartoon_law_live/

If you come to the attention of the plods as a weirdo who watches stuff like this or the equally toxic “Kiss x Sis“, they just might make an example of you.

Another mixed bag but there may be some worth following:

Mizuki

Kaichou wa Maid-sama! Ayuzawa Mizuki is the school student president, and because of family circumstances (her father deserted the family), she works part-time at a “maid cafe” in another district.  The school enrolment is 80% boys, and Mizuki enforces the rules with a firm hand, which doesn’t make her any more popular with the boys, whom she seems to dislike anyway. One day she is discovered at work by the school’s most eligible boy, Takumi Usui, much to her dismay.  However, instead of exposing or blackmailing her, he just hangs around, staring at her, and even helps her out with a couple of problems.  Looks like this will be a pleasing shoujo romantic comedy. Despite the maid thing, there’s no overt fan-service.

Chizuru

Hakuoki Shinsengumi Kitan In Meiji-era Japan, while disguised as a boy, Yukimura Chizuru goes to look for her father, who has gone to work on Kyoto and then stopped writing to her. She is chased by some toughs, and then witnesses a fight between them and some supernatural monsters.  She finds that she has been captured by the Shinsengumi. (At this point non-Japanese viewers, or readers,  should do some Googling to get themselves up to speed with who the Shinsengumi were.  While their portrayal in this anime is liable not to be accurate, they were a real Japanese sword-wielding militia formed in the turmoil of the Meiji restoration forced by the arrival of powerful foreign forces.  They were involved in some factional fighting.) Some of the Shinsemgumi seem slow to catch on to Chizuru being a girl, despite her overtly feminine face and mannerisms, for the subtitles in the  Aoi-Anime sub refer to her indiscriminately as “he” , “boy” or “she”.  It turns out that the Shinsengimi are also interested in her father’s mysterious disappearance, and instead of rubbing her out as an inconvenient witness, they decide to keep her as a permanent guest, still dressed as a boy.

So far, this anime has a strong and consistent period feel, and some nice character designs.  I found the first episode rather confusing – to untutored Western eyes, Chizuru at first glance is obviously a girl. (Non-Japanese viewers may be slow to realise that what Chizuru is wearing is supposed to be typical boy’s clothing of the period).  I’m still not sure who the supernatural fanged guys were or who was fighting who, except that the ones chasing Chizuru apparently died.

Angel Beats! The lead character Otonashi is dumped (like the viewer) straight into a world where a girl, Yuri, wielding a large gun, exhorts him to pick a weapon and attack an silver-haired girl below. Otonashi refuses, and approaches the girl “Angel”, but it seems he says the wrong thing, for she sprouts a blade and fatally stabs him. After at least one painful re-incarnation, Otonashi learns that the girl/warrior  “Angel”   is controlling a world consisting essentially of one school, and passing on those in it to be re-incarnated – not necessarily as people. Allegedly.  Otonashi is persuaded to join Yuri’s armed group, which is resisting being re-incarnated.  In a bizarre second half of ep#1,  an all-girl band plays in the school hall while Yuri’s gang hold off  Angel with machine-gun fire, and the dinner tickets they staged this battle to capture swirl through the air like autumn leaves.

Arakawa Under the Bridge The protagonist Ichinomiya Kou is the heir to a vast and powerful corporation.  A real high-achiever, Kou lives his life by the philosophy of never owing anything to anyone.  Unfortunately while crossing a bridge one day he is hassled by punks, and ends up falling into the river and being rescued by a mysterious girl, Arakawa, who claims to be an alien. It’s not hard to guess what happens next. She refuses Kou’s extravagant offers and in return for saving his life merely asks that he stay around and love her.  Which puts her in control of his life.  While living like a down-and-out under the bridge, Kou is introduced to another wierdo, who is wearing a kappa suit.  While this might have potential as an oddball comedy, after 22 minutes it’s already becoming irritating.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimayou The hero, Akuto Sai, happily arrives as magical academy where his ultimate ambition is to be a high priest.  Unfortunately, at the medical screening, a cigar-smoking talking bird divines that his future career will be… Demon Lord.  A hundred years previously, a Demon Lord raised an army and messed everything up, so this news rapidly gets around the school. Everything Akuto says or does thereafter is mis-interpreted by the students as evidence of demon lord-ship. There are some good touches in this episode: the gag about the health check being performed by a chain-smoking bird, the very prickly relationship between Akuto and Hattori, a sword-wielding girl in a very short skirt, the trains on magical tracks, and Hattori’s friendship ceremony using her sheathed sword. There is also a fair amount of crud, like the fanservice, the fact that everyone in the series is an idiot, and the arrival of a clutch of a whole bunch of violent magical girls in the closing minutes, and the suspicion that this will become another tiresome harem comedy.  So which way will it go?

A quick run-down of some of the new season: it’s said than no Japanese animation is entirely without interest, but with several of this season’s offerings that observation is put to the test!

Katanagatari – (trailer). Samurai swordsman fantasy stuff – didn’t pique my interest.

Dance in the Vampire Bund – Irritating TV show in opening episode, but in the last scene we meet some sexy-looking, under-dressed and violent female vampires, so could be worth following if this is what you like.

Ookami Kakushi – transfer student arrives in town full of mystery, and immediately  finds a cute girl hurling herself at him, and other students seem to like him too. However the opening credits are full of supernatural violence.  Do we want to explore the mystery, or are we just too irritated to care?

Chu-Bra – about a schoolgirl who is fascinated by adult underwear.  If you are a teenage girl, it could be quite educational; if not, best just leave quietly…

Sora no Woto – about a girl who joins the army and gets herself posted to a troop of female soldiers, with the idea of learning the trumpet. Setting is a cod-European pastiche. The lead character, Kanata, is utterly and irresistibly cute – but hold on a moment – this is from the same pen as “K-on!” and the character designs are rather similar, so maybe just digging out “K-on!” and re-running it might be a better idea.

Baka to Test to Shokanju - set in a school where the thickest students get the worst facilities, but can challenge the elite classes to a contest to swap rooms.  Contains many of the usual school comedy elements but very funny, could be worth following.

Cobra the Animation – Old fashioned all-action sci-fi adventure.  Note that the under-dressed female eye-candy are scrumptious and definitely Women, not schoolgirls, so no need for embarrassment about your viewing tastes if you’re over a certain age.

Durarara!! – at last something decent this season. A well-paced opening episode that delivers a lot of exposition and introduction of characters without getting bogged down.  The background is the streets of Tokyo by night, there’s some violent action from a masked black motorcyclist, and an on-screen blog that comments on the events. Plenty of reasons to look forward to episode 2.

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). Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell screen”  (Jigoku hen), Ryūnosuke 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!

Now that just about all of the 11 or 12-episode summer TV anime series have ended, it’s time to look back and draw some conclusions about what was worth watching.

Fumi (Aoi Hana)

Aoi Hana didn’t stand out at first, but as I continued to follow it, I grew to like it more and more. The subject, girl-girl love among schoolgirls, is one that some will find intriguing…  The characters all seemed as if drawn from life, and  were never made to act out of character, as the story unfolded in a natural unforced way. In contrast to many other romance anime, there was no attempt to exaggerate or to contrive humorous situations.   While the lead character wasn’t particularly good-looking, many viewers found her – or her facial expressions – very cute.  I found that her habit, when alone in her room, of  throwing herself down to lie contemplating the day’s events, was rather charming. Partway through the series Fumi drops one relationship and continues with another.  In the anime, the viewer has to infer how far these relationships went, or might go, but if you read the original manga far enough, it does eventually spell it out more explicitly.  The anime artwork is done in a beautiful pastel style, that suits the story well.

Tokyo Magnitude 8 does not disappoint, unless you wanted 11 episodes of structural catastrophe! In fact, this is a disaster as experienced by a young girl, Mirai, and her younger brother Yuuki.  There’s less emphasis on large-scale destruction after the first episode, and more on the experiences of the characters as they trek for kilometers through the wrecked city to reach  homes and families that may no longer exist. Towards the end, there’s a wrenching shift of perspective, that will probably send you back to re-watch several episodes.

Spice and Wolf II ended being a disappointment, as it started off promisingly, but never attained the excitement and magic of the first series, instead losing itself in drawn-out business schemes, and tiresome and none too convincing squabbling between Lawrence and Horo.  Too often, Lawrence behaves like a schoolboy rather than an experienced traveller and trader. It has an open-ended last episode, so we may get further series until everybody agrees they can’t bear it any longer.

Bakemonogatari is fantastic, with magical curses, gorgeous sexy girls, wicked humour, and an art style that some will love and some  may find annoyingly arty.  I’ll definitely buy this if it is issued as a reasonably priced subtitled box-set.

Cross Game (51 eps) is still running, and continues to charm as our two main characters continue to practice their baseball skills and still refuse to accept that by the end of the series they have to stop detesting each other and be a couple.  Superb scripting, good characterisations, and manages to make baseball seem interesting even if one has never played. A casually dressed  Aoba looks cute in the end credits too.

Fumi

I’m following several of the new Summer season anime.

Aoi Hana (Sweet Blue Flowers) is a rather sweet tale of girl-girl romance among high-school girls.  Fumi moves to a new district and a new school. She discovers that an old schoolfriend, A-chan, attends another school nearby. Fumi is miserable because her cousin recently got married. However she soon meets a tall and charming sempai at her new school.  Fumi, a tall, shy girl who cries rather easily, is very cute.

Tokyo Magnitude 8 is a bit different. It’s about a future earthquake of magnitude 8 and claims to be carefully researched.  It’s worth getting the 1st episode just to watch the pre-quake sequence – a beautifully scripted Day in the Life of a disgruntled schoolgirl who wishes everything would just self- destruct. Subsequent episodes mix dramatic collapses and tremors with the sort of situations survivors might find themselves in: queuing for toilets or tramping towards ferry terminals.

Spice & Wolf II is up to the standard of the previous series.

Bakemonogatari is about a schoolboy who discovers that a girl in his class is not quite normal. She falls in anime-style slow motion, he catches her and discovers that she doesn’t have any weight. Not one for the faint-hearted – in the opening sequence the wind blows up a girl’s skirt showing her underwear,  and when the ‘weightless’ girl suspects that the youth has been talking about her to someone else, she does something beastly to him with a trimming knife and a stapler. The animation is VERY arty.  The dialog is very good, and whle the wierdness is quite slow-paced it’s certainly interesting.

Also checked:

Taishou Yakyuu Musume is set in 1925, and is about some schoolgirls (some still wearing kimonos to school) who want to play baseball like the boys.  So-so.

Umi Monogatari is about two young sisters who live under the sea (!) and venture on land to return a beautiful ring which somebody has thrown into the sea. They innocently blunder about till they find the owner, and also trigger, or at least get involved in, some dark supernatural doings. Has some nice bright colours; might appeal to younger viewers.

Sora no Manimani is about a school astronomy club. An amusing comedy.

Kanamemo is about a 13-year old schoolgirl, Kana, an orphan who lives with her grandmother, until the old lady dies suddenly and creditors invade the house to reposess anything of value. Kana flees into the streets, and is taken in by an all-women newspaper collective. Three of them are lesbians, and while two are interested in each other …  This is a light comedy, but I should warn the unwary that while this might have played alright in Japan, some Western viewers, especially parents, may find themselves unamused.

Yokawaraku Gendaimahou: Magical drama. In the first episode, the young heroine, a rather irritating girl with a high opinion of herself, inherits a magical book and staff. Initially without any magical powers, she is chased by dangerous characters who want the staff. She also appears bare-assed in one scene for no valid reason. Avoid.

Just finished watching Tekkonkinkreet. Another neglected masterpiece! Unusually, it is directed by an American, Michael Arias, who was also involved with “Animatrix” etc.  Less unusually, it has a sound-track by two British musicians.  Having seen it, I have to say that perhaps Western direction is what anime needs to drag it out of the mediocricy into which it seems to be sinking.
Tekkonkinkreet (the original title of the manga better known here as “Black and White”) is a Japanese pun on the Japanese word for reinforced concrete.  Not that the story has anything much to do with concrete, but if you watch the whole thing you may agree that it kind of makes sense. While the manga was in, er, black and white, the movie explodes into glorious colour.  Two street brats clash with gangsters who are taking over their city.  The two brats, both of them rather crazy, are portrayed with remarkable depth and sympathy, and White in particular has some great lines.The characters are depicted with a sophistication that is far removed from typical anime, and succeeds notably in making the yakuza characters seem human as well as menacing and nasty. The art uses both painted backgrounds and computer graphics to allow the viewpoint to swerve up and down garish oriental buildings and along twisting township streets, in a way that older animation methods can’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekkon_Kinkreet
It cost me £5 at HMV.

I pulled this off the shelf at random to watch again. It’s a 12-episode TV series from 2003,  later made available in the US by Geneon, and there is also a related movie (or OVA) series “Kara no Kyoukai” from 2007.

While some old series turn out not to have stood the test of time, this series seems even better on second viewing than I remembered. The orphaned Shiki returns to live with what remains of his family, but finds that unpleasant and frightening events are happening around him.    Shiki is not quite what he seems, or even who we thought he was, and the same applies to several other characters, that is, they’re not quite human.

In particular Shiki becomes involved with the white vampire Arcued, who insists that Shiki killed her and chopped her into 17 pieces. Indeed Shiki has a strange ability to see “lines” and when he cuts along these lines with his knife, things fall apart.

Shiki is put under severe stress. His schoolmates note a change in him, but obviously he can’t tell them the truth. He is terrified by the situations Arcueid leads him into, and in his new home he has to resort to sneaking out at night to meet Arcueid and evade the watchful eyes of his beautiful but severe sister, Akiha. The growing relationship between Arcueid and Shiki is well-handled, and the dialog, delivered by some fine voice-actors , makes this unlikely relationship the more believable.  For once, it’s played as a straight drama, with little or no attempt to over-egg it  or inject humour.

The least succesful characters are the ordinary school students, who appear sketchily defined and irritating.

keep looking »

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