Category: anime

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.

A posting on rec.arts.anime.misc led me to a couple of fascinating downloads:

This first one is OP/ED from 1966-67 (and includes the original Mach
Go Go Go (Speed Racer) and Jungle Taitei (Kimba) pieces:

http://www.nyaatorrents.org/?page=torrentinfo&tid=157654

And this second one has ones from between the years 1971-1977,
though it doesn’t have all the years, it still has a lot of
classic work (including the original Cutey Honey and Zambot 3):

http://www.nyaatorrents.org/?page=torrentinfo&tid=157657

They’re in FLV format, so they aren’t too big.  Amazing stuff. Despite the modest file sizes, there is a lot of material here. A lot of things I never saw anything of before. Must find out what the amazing WWII air battle show is. Also a few things I first encountered on foreign satellite TV, like the “Wandering Sun” from 1971, a story about a girl guitarist/singer.
I never heard of .flv format before, but my codecs had no problem playing it.
Old Anime

Well, I’m still following Kaichou wa Maid-sama! but am thinking that it’s rather lost its way and it could have been better as a 12-episode series.

Hakuoki Shinsengumi Kitan didn’t end at 12 episodes, it just stopped in mid-story and starts again with a second series sometime in the next few months.

Angel Beats! had a decent ending and is a series worth watching.

As for the summer season, I checked some reviews, and I’m only watching one new show, the excellent Occult Academy.  Funny, characters you can care about, an end-of-the world situation, and at least one really cute girl.

I also tried the well-reviewed High School of the Dead, but with its scenes of slaughter, and fan-service involving half-naked highschool girls being gnawed by zombies I found it a bit much for my tastes.

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:

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.

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.