Sakamichi no Apollon
Short Synopsis: Our lead character befriends a cute girl on his first day of school transfer.
Yes, this is clearly influenced by Madhouse. their subtle touch is all over this series, and combined that with Shinichiro Watanabe’s excellent sense of style and Yoko Kanno’s music, this was a wonderful watch. Out of all the series that aired this season, this series had the best acting: characters are portrayed wonderfully subtle, and this episode was really restrained. There was a ton of emotion in this episode, yet most of it was hidden between the lines. The point where this series really caught me however, was when one of the characters started to play the drums. That was a piece of incredible animation. Playing musical instruments in anime is something incredibly hard to do, but the creators here did it perfectly. The movements synchronize perfectly with the actual soundtrack, and something like that is incredibly rare in anime.
OP: This definitely is an OP from the guys from Mappa: the visuals really remind of OPs like Mouryou no Hako’s. Again restrained, but very well done.
ED: Simple yet effective.
Potential: 95%
Jormungand
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a giant sea serpent who surrounds the entire earth and… wait, wrong story.
So, this turned out to be quite a slick action-series with a heavy emphasis on gunplay. It’s got a neat soundtrack and the action scenes are well polished, with quirky humour on top of it. It had charismatic characters, especially the lead female, and quite a few characters were already likable in just this episode. I twas pretty much a textbook delivery. Now, textbooks are boring, so what does this show plan to add in order to really stand out? How do you plan to keep your 26 episodes interesting? Will your plot be varied or will most episodes be like this? Is 26 episodes the right amount for this series, or is the manga this is based on still on-going?
OP: Good visuals, but too much autotune on the vocals.
ED: Prertty picture… and that’s all this ED is.
Potential: 80%
Haiyore Nyaruko-san
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute girl.
Surprisingly, this didn’t turn out to be the worst of the season. The reason? This turned out to be a self-aware parody of the moe genre. It actually poked fun at the overused tropes you see in this genre, and Nyaruko’s energy was surprisingly addictive, rather than annoying. It’s strange to admit, but I actually laughed during some of the jokes it made. Unfortunately it also has the elements of a bad parody. You know, the shows that try to parody by just adhering to the tropes they’re making fun of while trying to look tongue-in-cheek. Another problem that this series has is that the moe genre is overcrowded: a lot of the jokes this series made were just copied from other bad shows, perhaps only done slightly better. If this series wants to be a good comedy, it really needs more material and it needs to keep the jokes coming. Since comedy is the only thing that this series has, it needs to be consistently funny, but for that, it still falls short: it had a few good jokes, but not enough of them to warrant 20 minutes.
OP: Terrible song.
ED: Parody 101: an ED is also a very good thing to make fun of. This instead was completely generic
Potential: 40%
If you are a fan of the Lovecraft mythos, this series is the ultimate in canon desecration (=
Sounds like a good thing to me. XD
Is it me, or does Nyaruko shout out the names of obscure enemy mecha from the Gundam universe every time she gets hit by Mahiro? ^^; I think I recognize the Gau and the Gaza-C.
Why do I know that?! XD
The manga for Jormungand is complete at 11 volumes and the plan for the anime is to adapt the whole thing. Looking forward to seeing how well they pull it off.
Please tell me the Jormungand anime adaptation is better than Zetman’s. I was greatly disappointed with Zetman. Hope it won’t be the same with Jormungand, since we rarely get seinen titles nowadays.
WOOOOORD, the Zetman adaption sucks and I’m not saying this because I’m a fanboy, I actually approved at episode 2-5 where the story was changed but at least they somehow saved it to smth decent…yeah and then episode 6 came…unwatchable
Either way the Jormungand adaption is very good IMO
Can you please tell me where you found Jormungand subbed? I looked all over, but I couldn’t find it.
He watched it raw, he usually watch his anime raw anyway.
gg fansubs is going to be subbing Jormungand apparently first ep is out for them on their website and nyaatorrents.
first episode is already out by 2 groups go watch
Jormungand seemed to aim at the same heights Black Lagoon achieved, but without the same charm. I know it’s only episode one, but the first episode should promise or hint at a rich future.
Where Lagoon seemed to evoke the glorious machismo of the 80s action flick, Jormungand has a different tone – a self-loathing of the genre, given that child soldier.
Jormungand is produced by the same production company as Steins;Gate (White Fox). I really do hope that the graphics are a step up since Steins;Gate sold like hotcakes in Japan. This should give the studio more money. 🙂
Same production company, yes, but entirely different staff.
Either my eyes have gone bad from too much screen-watching, or Jormungand really was in black and white T_T.
lol thought white hair person was a guy
Loved Jormungand, but the lesbian is kind of annoying, how she is so hung up about Koko and so cold to everyone else. Reminds me of the jealous girlfriend in shoujo mangas. =_= I hope her character improves.
Didn’t know Jormungand got animated yipee~!
Apollon was decent. OP and ED were not quite “Watanabe Level” but the the overall episode content was decent enough. I like the subtleties, like how Kauru took off his glasses when taking to class-rep girl in the hallway. He’s a bit delusional, though, and I hope these delusions of his don’t overpower the show (like it did for that annoying brat in the recent Onegai Sensei rehash, which was mediocre).
The lighting effects were pretty decent. Hope production doesn’t deteriorate too much in upcoming eps. Musical direction was pretty spot-on throughout the ep (props for The Jazz Massenger’s “Moaning”, they even gave it the original Blue Note cover art). Even the light classical piece Kauru played in the beginning was decent.
Not gonna rate this just yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to the next ep.
Can’t quite believe I’ve got 3 shows to look forward to now; Shiro-kuma Cafe, Mine Fujiko and Apollon. Might even become 4 if the other NoitaminA show, Tsuritama, impresses (I loved Trapeze). Definitely a big step-up from past seasons, so far at least.
how long will sakamichi be?
Yeah me too! When the guy started playing the drum, my eyes were wide open, the animation was way too awesome and it was very accurate! I was amazed by Nodame’s musical performances but it’s way a bit cheesy, but in Sakamichi it’s just perfect! I hope they will keep animate the performance like this in the following episodes too!
Oh wow, an ED song that is actually … musical? Apollon has ticked all the boxes for me and then some. I knew it’s going to be great, but not this good! The OP style reminds me immediately of the Blood+ OPs, which really suited the tone of the series. First episode in and I already want to buy the box set when it comes out lol
Apollon seems great! They have really payed attention to the animation. O_O Those drums. I’m really liking the characters too already! xD That drum guy just started to follow the piano guy (can’t remember their names yet) around because it seemed interesting… This is going to be so good. Happy to be watching this.
There’s a fascinating subtlety to the characters of Apollon. It’s very, very refreshing, and the characterization has this feel of polished competence to it.
As an instrumentalist, I’ve always gotten peeved when watching anime where the movements are completely off from the music. I loved watching Apollon though. That drum scene was fantastic. The rest of the art/animation is great too.
I actually really like the characters already. I can’t wait to see more.
first episode of Apollon does really had nice animation, hoping can do it in all it’s episode, not just the pilot episode ( for anime i think the first 4 episode is a pilot, maybe less ). unless they scatter the animation talent for the good part