Chihayafuru #2: The second episode is entirely a flashback to elementary school, where Taichi and Aruta have a karuta battle. Maintains the high standard of episode #1.
Tamayura – Hitotose: #2: The second episode was pleasant, but doesn’t greatly change my opinion about this show.
Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle: #2: The second episode introduces an annoying character, and the second puzzle, with car-shunting, was rather silly. Goes down in my estimation.
C3 #2: There is more action in episode 2, when a powerful and malign character appears, but I didn’t feel involved and it felt formulaic. Will probably drop this.
Kimi to Boku (You and Me) #2: One of the boys tries to help a fierce little girl who resents his efforts. A bit blander to watch than it reads.
Maken-Ki #2: More of the same lingerie catalogue. See comments on episode #1.
Mashiro-Iro Symphony #2: The boys try to ingratiate themselves, with mixed results. There was little to tempt me to watch any more.
Last Exile – Ginkyo no Fam – Preview: It looks like the flying mecha will be great, but with mention of pirates and princesses, I don’t have much confidence about the plot. The show has been heavily promoted at overseas anime conventions, and is licensed to Funimation already.
Ben-Tou #1: The hero lives in a dorm, and so has to provide his own lunch and dinner. The half-price bento in the supermarket look tempting, but whenever he tries to buy any he is knocked unconscious and trampled underfoot by hungry and violent students. A friendly girl accosts him, but he can’t remember who she is. The most violent of the bento-buying girls offers to let him join her club. It’s quite amusing so far.
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE #1: It’s another Gundam series, and so far quite similar to the earliest series. The young hero, Flit, is handed a memory chip by his mother, who is dying in a collapsed and burning building. It contains plans for a giant robot suit. Years later, Flit, now a teenager, is helping develop that mobile suit, now called the Gundam. He has a cute girlfriend, and a bouncing ball robot pet. Unknown raiders, called the UE for short, attack the space colony in a graphically animated attack, causing considerable destruction, and Flit starts up the untested Gundam and defeats one of the UE machines. Flit looks about ten years old, and one has the impression that this series is aimed at a young age-group. BTW, when I was a boy, “Flit” was a popular brand of insecticide, but that’s not the only reason I am unable to take this show very seriously.
Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) #1:
In the opening scenes, we see the hero wandering around school, obsessively texting a diary of trivia into his mobile phone, and evading the attention of bullies who dislike him partly because he doesn’t mix with his classmates. He has a rich fantasy life in which he talks to an all-powerful God in his bedroom. Unfortunately, a serial killer starts knifing people near the school, and then the God turns out to be real, and hands our hero a smartphone that predicts the future.
I agree that the hero clearly needs psychiatric help, but one can empathise with his fear of the bullies. The bully mentality (needing somebody they can feel superior to, and getting annoyed when the victim doesn’t follow the script) is depicted quite accurately here. This develops into one of the most riveting anime episodes I’ve seen for ages. For this guy, having that girl take an interest in him would be enough to scare him witless, but she keeps appearing in front of him as he tries to run away. What does she want? Is she connected to the serial killer? He dosn’t want to die horribly just yet. We suspect that in fact she just wants to talk to him, but it’s still thrilling. Actually she has a future diary too, and she wants to save him. It turns out that the future diaries predict deaths, and in the God’s deadly game, the last player to foil the predictions and survive, will gain supreme power.
Sure, it’s about as plausible as a political party manifesto, and seems set to cross off one killer every week, but it looks like an exciting entertainment.
Un-Go #1: This is a detective comedy thriller, set in a near-future Japan which has passed through some sort of crisis. A politician about to be arrested on corruption charges holds a party. Unfortunately he is murdered during the party. There are two rival teams of detectives, reclusive Kaishou with his computers and cameras and his daughter Rie, and the “Defeated Detective” and his odd assistant Inga. Rie attends the party, but her team is out-thought by the “Defeated Detective” and the unlikely killer unmasked. That’s a lot to fit into 25 mins without rushing, and this show could have used more time to set out its stall. However it’s a stylish-looking show and has promise.
Guilty Crown #1: In a near-future Japan which has had a plague crisis and is now occupied by a foreign force, the GHQ, Shu Ouma, a nerdy boy, explores a deserted site and comes across a wounded girl. She has a secret something which she insists he delivers for her. He recognises her as a well-known idol singer, and she urges him to take a cat’s cradle from her. He hesitates, mesmerised by her partial state of undress. GHQ thugs arrive and drag the girl away, while Shu cowers on a platform above. He does, however, deliver the object, and a band of insurgents led by a long-haired bishie collect it. Minutes later, the GHQ launch a general attack, ostensibly to cleanse the area of infection. While citizens are shot down in the streets and the insurgents counter-attack with a kind of mini tank, Shu somehow finds the escaping girl and tries to get her to safety. At this point it all goes a bit supernatural, with him taking the girl’s essence and going off to smite the GHQ mecha with a long swordlike thing. Phew. It’s all vividly animated and the action hardly ever stops. Wish-fulfilment rules OK. It looks good, which may be enough to persuade one to overlook a certain lack of plausibility. And did I mention before how the Fall anime come in pairs?