As for the series I won’t be blogging this season:
– Kanokon: Obviously not. Please Xebec, I know that you’re good at adapting mangas and light-novels, you showed that with The Third, but stop picking out these crappy premises!
– I apparently like Blassreiter a lot more than others do. Really, what’s so wrong with it? The plot has potential, the characters may not be the best, but they’re not the worst anyway, and the CG is impressive to look at. Still, I do admit that it still has the potential to fall apart.
– Zettai Karen Children spends way too much attention on its most boring character: the red-haired girl, voiced by Hirano Aya.
– Wagaya no Oinarisama has terrific music, but I’m still not sure whether it knows what it wants to be: just random slice-of-life stories or something with an actual plot.
– The second episode of Nabari no Ou is just boring.
– The second episode of Kamen no Maid Guy is even worse.
– Special A has great main characters, but I’m not convinced about the side-characters yet.
For Soul Eater, after the first episode, I was really doubting whether or not to blog this series. On one hand, it’s a 51-episoded shounen-series, but on the other hand I heard a lot of good things about this series, like how the characters abandon the subplot of collecting these 100 souls to become a death scythe rather early on, and it seems that there are 11 volumes of the manga so far. Seeing as that within a year, it’s quite probable for a twelfth volume to come out, and that should be just enough to fill up 51 episodes.
Still, that does mean that there’ll be a chance for this series to have a disappointing ending. But on the other hand again, the fact remains that this series has a terrific sense of style, great characters and an actually good soundtrack (that’s one thing I really missed in the previous Autumn-season: there were hardly any series with a really good soundtrack, apart from Gunslinger Girl, perhaps). There’s also the fact that this has been the very first shounen-series that I considered to have any potential at all to beat the Law of Ueki as my favourite shounen-fighting series. Overall, these are enough reasons for me to blog it. And if it does delve into fillers, I can always drop it like I did with Shugo Chara. It’s also good to blog a series that does not air on tuesday or thursday.
This episode wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was still a great one. This one introduces the second couple of weapon “meister” and weapon. Their main weakness turns out to be that the male (who is the weapon meister this time) doesn’t know the meaning of “subtlety”. Whenever he tries to sneak up to someone, he makes no attempts whatsoever to hide his presence. Their strength is that the weapon likes to change into more than just a scythe, and she makes use of lots of different weapons, instead of how the guy in the previous episode liked to be a scythe for most of the time. The end of this episode also introduced the third couple that this series will be focusing on. In their case, it’s the weapon meister who’s the brilliant one (the son of Shinigami, if I understood correctly), but his weapons leave much to be desired.
Also, on a side-note: am I the only one who actually liked the voice-acting of the main couple in the first episode? Really, especially the girl had a refreshing voice that didn’t sound over-rehearsed. So what if she doesn’t sound like a j-pop idol? Its great to hear different voices for anime and not the same squeaky voice over and over again. That’s why I also like the deep voice of the male weapon.
It’s also good to see that the director has experience with series that span 52 episodes: he did direct Ashita no Nadja (note to self: continue that one. It’s good!), and judging on Wyrdwad’s comments on that series, it never lost any steam at all. It’s also good to see that he worked on mostly shoujo-series before, so the chance of this one heading towards bleach is also minimal. The only fear for this guy would be the insertion of pointless fillers and a crappy ending, like he did with Ouran High School Host Club, but at least Soul Eater has characters with enough potential, that don’t just rely on their quirks, and characters like Honey are missing.
The guy behind the series composition (Akatsuki Yamatoya, who also wrote the script for the first episode) also sounds very promising. He may have worked on a couple of crappy series like Blue Dragon, Busou Renkin and To Love-Ru, but this guy really gets on fire when he gets to work with a series with potential: he worked on the script of Gintama and wrote the script of episodes 10 and 12 (both hilarious). So for now, I’m confident, although I probably won’t feel like checking out the late-night airing of this series to find out the subtle changes that were made. I heard that the changes that were made weren’t impressive anyways.
I’m sad that the second episode of Nagari no OU was boring, the first episode convinced me to watch this anime and now, deception. =/
Wagaya and Blassreiter are others series that I see some potential but still, without a good plot, is hard to keep watching. And I hope Special A turn around and uses the side characters more or give them something to do.
And…Kamen no Maid Guy? lol. As a friend commented to me yesterday, the only interesting thing was the joke about the over detailed maid figure.
I disagree the second ep of Nabari no Ou was boring. It was necessary exposition after all.
I also disagree with Zettai Karen (they had to get past Kaoru if they’re going to go anywhere in that story) and you dropped Shugo Chara just because it had a few smattering of fillers? Whatever.
I actually am going to not drop a single fansubbed show that is released since I had enough fun with all of them. I do agree with one thing in that the side characters in Special A could be better.
And really… Ouran with a ‘crappy ending’? I don’t agree with that at all.
I can understand your reasons for Zettai Karen and Nabari no Ou. I just briefly stated why I don’t feel like blogging them.
But regarding Ouran: what made its ending so good? To me, it just felt like a forced plot-device to get some forced character-development out of the cast that came way too late in the series.
I liked the voice acting in Soul Eater ep 1. Seemed fine to me.
I must admit that Kanokon is something of a guilty pleasure for me. The second episode had me in stitches. Obviously there aren’t so much characters as sexual appetites with names and legs, and the plot is simply non-existant, but as a gag show it does fine.
Glad to hear that Soul Eater is shaping up nicely. I was rather expecting it to be your standard or garden variety shounen show with epic fight scenes.
Blassreiter has anti-Gonzo/anti-CG hate working against it. For that reason, I think it has been unfairly demonized, with many viewers harping on even the smallest flaws, such as an awkwardly written line or some missing frames of animation (and blowing them out of proportion as if they’re the worst things to hit anime).
Months before the show aired, posters at certain boards already picked Blassreiter as a pariah, so the hate is expected. Something about how Burst Angel (a CG-laden disappointment from Gonzo?) and Dragonaut turned out. To some degree, I think Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- suffered from similar issues since people loved to hate the show for its mediocre production values + setting authenticity.
Anyway, Blassreiter looks pretty fun so far (once you get past the silly-looking CG), although it’s impossible to say how the story might turn out. There’s an interesting premise and some nicely established characters, so lets hope the plot picks up sooner than later.
I agree with the fact that last season was lacking in soundtracks, but that one violin track in true tears was pretty good. Also, I do like the voice acting, the girl sounds diffrent, and in a good way.
I don’t know about Ouran. I do think it was rushed, but it wasn’t terrible IMO. Just a good bookend to it IMO. Not great, not terrible, but serviceable.
As for Blassreiter, I totally agree actually. It has a nice dark atmosphere and the CG work is actually pretty good in High Def. I think the Gonzo-hate is spreading to Tower of Druaga, though I think Druaga is pretty serviceable so far as well.
As for the OSTs, I’m not entirely in agreement because I thought there were plenty. Namely Kaiji (not everyone’s cup of tea I’d admit), Aria Origination (though lot of it was carry-over from The Natural). Though in a way, the last summer’s epic OSTs are just ridiculously hard to one-up anyway.
glad i am not really interested in any of those anime that u are not blogging,maybe i will watch some in the future but most of them are not what i want to watch right now
One of the biggest things that attracted me to Soul Eater was the background music in the trailer and so far the series has not disappointed in this department.
And, as Skua said, eventhough Blassreiter seems to be unfairly demonized due to the anti-gonzo and anti-cg bias, it does have a pretty interesting plot so far and seems to be much better than some other shows of this season.
I don’t want to bash Omigawa Chiaki so hard since I belive she has no exepreince of voice acting before, but honestly, apparently it’s really bad.
well, it’s simply disturbing and annoying. I almost came to think that “please change it to someone else in the next episode or later”
Man, she made Nasuka Kaori’s voice sound a lot better…who i hate so often
Well actually, not only is Death the Kid brilliant, his weapons are too. His weakness is a rather… hilarious and perculiar one. xD
Lika, wait till you see the third one of soul eater. He’s hilarious ^^
Impz (from THAT Animeblog) commenting on Star Crossed Blog? Lol, don’t get trapped people.
The first episode of Soul Eater was fantastic. The voice acting was cerntainly different, but refreshing. Although Maka’s voice bugged me at the beginning of the ep, I grew to love it by the end of the episode. It just suited her so well.
As for other shows…well, Kanokon might be my guitly pleasure show for the season, but I haven’t seen Ep 2 yet. And now that I’ve seen Ep 1 of Kyouran Nikki, I’d have to disagree with you. I actually think the male was a little boring, not the female. She was crazy, just like Excel.
I dropped Kamen no Maid Guy after 1 episode. Blassreiter and Druaga are ok; they have potential. And I still need to start Nabari, Special A and Kure-nai.
thank you for reviewing this series 🙂 I’ve read up to the most recent raw for this series and in both plot and visual style, soul eater is way ahead of a lot of more popular ‘mainstream’ anime series in my opinion. Looking forward to seeing it subbed 😀
^ If you think it’s way ahead of the plots from more popular mainstream titles already wait until the actual plot starts *teardrop*
This is the best episode I’ve seen this season till now (or at least the one that made me laugh more).
Nice Soul Eater blog post.
Just to clarify things though, I think the strength of the material comes more from the direction as opposed to the writing of Yamatoya (not to say that he didn’t organize the show effectively). Guys like him work on stuff that are adaptions, in fact all most all of his work is manga adaptions. So, unless the staff has licence (and talent) to do something radical and excitingly different, you’re basically at the mercy of the source material.
Back again, just watched the second episode.
Black Star…turned out completely different than I was expecting.
i also love the voices of the first couple. and I really felt surprised when the weapon talked fo the first time. i was expecting something more naruto style lol