Jewel Pet Kira Deco
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a mascot.
Jewel Pet always was this really annoying series with WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR, even for your average show for young girls. This time though, it seems like some crack slipped in with the sugar, because what the hell did I just watch? This episode got surreal at times, as some really bizarre ideas passed the screen. I am really not sure who found it a good idea to turn the moon into a television or a disco-ball, or why there is a sentient bus made completely out of jewels. Speaking of which: this show has a really, really unhealthy obsession with Jewels. I know it’s called Jewel Pet and that the first episodes of the previous seasons had a gair amount of them in it. But it’s just taken completely overboard. These guys stick jewels on almost everything. I’ll never be able to look at “bling bling” the same way… But granted, due to these surreal ideas, this was indeed the best first episode of Jewel Pet that I got to sample. Not that that standard is particularly high to beat though…
OP: Terrible song.
ED: The singer here can’t sing, but also doesn’t help that the song is again terrible..
Potential: 40%
Yurumates 3D
Short Synopsis: Our lead character moves to Tokyo.
Here is another one of these series with 5-minute episodes. And again it was pretty dull. It’s about this girl who moves into a new apartment and gets totally overwhelmed by her new roommates… and that’s it. This series did try to be funny using the usual tricks… only it wasn’t. I really don’t have much to say about this one: this is just a boring slice of life series, nothing more and nothing less. Oh, but the voice actress of the female lead is very annoying. Way too high-pitched.
OP: Bad J-pop and giant robots.
Potential: 0%
Sankarea
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to date the hottest girl in town.
Well, this was also pretty boring. Sankarea is like the show you sometimes see, that has a lot of moe, yet decent dialogue and good acting, yet still consists out of way too many cliches. This episode already established a pseudo-harem of three girls for him (no, I don’t care that two of those are his sister and cousin; that’s never stopped anime before anyway), there is the standard whining best friend, and the encounter between the main couple happens the same way as usual, with the male lead running into the main girl’s moment of weakness. Too much of this episode was “been there, done that” and there was little to make up for it. The only thing that caught my attention was the main characters’ feelings for his dead cat, of all things. But yeah, other than that this pretty much is Studio Deen’s second zombie show this season, only this time it’s the girl who gets to be one. At least the visuals looked pretty. I could recognize that the artists who worked on this episode also worked on Jigoku Shoujo.
OP: Creative use of visuals, at least.
ED: Actually good song.
Potential: 30%
Psgels, give this 3 episodes, it might change your mind, the manga is good.
Cousin? Yeah that’s something I can’t argue with. Sister? Either they changed it are you have seen too many bad harems. In the manga their was no romantic attraction or underling hints of any kind.
Also you can turn anything into a cliché if you simplify it down. Main character running into a girl in a moment of weakness. Yeah that’s somewhat common. Main character running into girl who was yelling about her fathers abusive and frankly disturbing attitude towards his daughter… that’s not quite as common.
Again psgel’s, do you have some sort of geared hatred towards some series. Cause this is the second time this season it felt you were trying your hardest to hate a show.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the manga, but did you stop reading it? Since something you said really contradicts with the manga.
No contradiction. Not unless you misread me and thought I was referring to the cousin. I was talking about his sister not having romantic thoughts of any kind for her brother. The cousin I said I can’t argue with. You have to be blind to not notice her love.
Stereotyping. He is subconsciously using his “mental shortcuts” to access the show. There are many cognitive biasses is his views. Anchoring heuristics, this is unavoidable since he anchored his thoughts in his preview post and assign numbers and grades before the anime actually aired. This will subconsciously affect his judgement when he is writing his first impression. Availability heuristics, this is obvious in this post. It is human’s tendency to make judgment about the frequency of an event base on how easy he/she recalls it. We are humans afterall. Biased judgement is perfectly normal and understandable. It would be a chore to sit through something that we do not like anyway.
*assess.
I’m indeed biased against generic premises like this, yeah. I’ve watched way too many of these kinds of series so the overused cliches really bother me when they get used over and over like this. But at the same time I do give all of them a chance to redeem themselves (there are enough cliched shows with a good execution), but this episode just did too little for that.
This is way more of a romantic comedy than a harem.I haven’t read any of volume 5 yet, but there has been no harem what so ever in the first 4 volumes.
It should be a series that i enjoy.The author of the source material doesn’t really follow the typical tropes of the genre he works in.Anyone who has read Inu Neko Jump! will know what i’m talking about.
well, there is more realistic feeling and conflict in its manga since there is no magic in that world unlike that 2nd season anime…if this anime will concentrate on that realistic part, it’s maybe became an interesting one and will not become a typical harem anime….
I could swear I was watching a Shaft show at the later part… all the usual random close ups and just the way it was “filmed”, so shafty
Mm…I like this opening episode a lot. It’s actually a pretty strong start for a romantic comedy. (It’s a romantic comedy…right?) Pretty darn unique setting if you ask me. I mean, take the girl out of the picture and Psgel’s tagline would be: Our lead character loves zombies and dabbles in necromancy. You gotta kinda wonder what would happen if it actually worked. >.>; I mean, this guy looks like he has cat ears.
And what Sanka shouted into the well that made the guy drop his bottle made me almost fall out of my chair. XD
There’s also something INCREDIBLY creepy about seeing this girl gently stroking the corpse of a dead cat. >.>;;; (with romantic music playing in the background too!) I get the situation. Really. It’s still kinda creepy. I mean, it’s not like the cat was hers.
Um…she doesn’t really turn into a zombie, does she?
Come to think of it, I seem to remember some famous japanese celebrity confessing that he has a zombie fetish. Hmm….
Holy %$#@! Maji de?!
omfg. OMFG.
The manga is a lot of fun but… I don’t think another few episodes will really change your mind on this one. Unlike Mirai Nikki, this one doesn’t have as many redeeming qualities, it’s just mindless fun. This mangaka isn’t really known for depth of story imho.
“only it wasn’t”
Except it was. To anyone who ever lived in university dorm. Constant hunger and shitkicking. Student life…
Well, sankarea’s plot creeps slowly in the manga and it goes really against the mainstream guy meets troubled cute chick tropes when things start to get a little darker (it’s always upbeat but it sure pulls some creepy stuff from time to time). I really dig the manga but I doubt Psgels would give it enough time to get to the good parts (that’s if they are animated -__-)
I still have to see the anime but from the manga, it’s something I’m looking for this season.
I really do not see how you would consider the sister to be a potential harem member, nearly yuri-goggle tier.
Not sure why you are hating on this show so much. This ep was way more original and refreshing than Ano Natsu ever was.
Granted, I thought the guy’s ear-like hair was weird, and wished he would comb it down. The only sibling-affection that was shown was the shoulder hug while mourning the cat, and that was in no way romantic..
I don’t think he hates it. I think he just doesn’t want to blog it. This is his personal blog and his views and biases prevail, as it should. I think it’s best if Psgels watches and writes what he finds himself passionate for, rather than forcing himself to write for an audience. It’s not like he’s getting paid for it. I sometimes wonder if he might be forcing himself to watch too much anime for the sake of this blog and it might be burning him out. He’s a working guy too. I think it’ll be sad if writing about anime turns into a hassle and he winds up hating anime in the end.
Of course, for now at least, we’re free to express any of our own opinions, for and against, too. XD Right, Psgels?
I think that’s what I like best about this blog.
Please note that “hating on” is tongue-in-cheek for discriminating against.
But yes.. I totally agree with your conclusion. Psgels shouldn’t blog stuff he doesn’t want to blog. Especially for cases like this one, it’s no fun for anybody.
Yurumates reviews a bit harsh, it was too short really to get much feel (5 minutes? was more like 2 minutes) but I thought it did have a little potential. Part of the problem was also it was too fast paced for its length, the jokes would have been funnier with better timing, for example she unwraps the gift her mother gave her for when she was in trouble and its a huge kitchen knife, scaring the other girl…. but only for a millisecond because it was onto the next joke of room mates appearing from every direction.
Kiradeco’s opening episode is not bad. But I can’t help thinking that Psgels gives it 40% potential just because MH’s staff is behind it. Unlike Sunshine, I don’t see much from this year’s setting other than a regular(maybe better) youjo series. But Sunshine really, is a parody anime (with anime-history-making ending). If Kiradeco goes youjo, I just have to use a totally different way to appreciate it.
“This episode got surreal at times, as some really bizarre ideas passed the screen. I am really not sure who found it a good idea to turn the moon into a television or a disco-ball, or why there is a sentient bus made completely out of jewels”
I’ve heard that this season of Jewelpet has Milky Holmes’ staff working on it…which fits strangely well since Milky Holmes initially sorta looked like it’d be right at home airing with Pretty Cure. I’m not sure if it’d be fair to expect this show to dive head first into beautiful insanity, but everyone including me expected MH to be bottom of the barrel garbage as well…