August Summary

To be honest, I’m about to consider 2010 as the worst anime year since I started blogging. The summer season overall was held back by its quantity problem, which results in only a few series that I really consider memorable. Does that mean that I consider that anime is dying, though? Absolutely not. I’m very curious to see how it’s going to evolve in the future and in the upcoming years.

In this month, the surprises mostly came from the series that have been carried over from previous season, with a few notable exceptions. Overall it’s a better month than the previous one, and even the series that aren’t going to turn into anything memorable have their share of very enjoyable episodes.

#19 (20) – Amagami SS – (6,25/10) – I’m still watching this show, but it’s still just plain boring. The second arc was simply decent, it at least had some dynamic characters, but apart from that nothing stood out, and the conclusion yet again was too fast and rushed. The third arc however… by god. The portrayal of that shy girl was just abysmal.
#18 (19) – Asobi ni Iku Yo – (7,5/10) – Out of the huge onslaught of moe shows by AIC this season, this one turned out to be the best one. It’s self-conscious and knows that it’s just harmless fun, and the gunfights are enjoyable enough. The characters themselves are really cliched, but they could have been much more annoying. There’s good chemistry between them, which sortof makes up for the huge amount of flaws that this show has in its premise.
#17 (16) – Sekirei – (7,75/10) – The weak point of this series remains the scenes without drama: the voice actors just try too hard to sound cute, and those scenes are just annoying to watch. Still, the main story has been getting better now that the creators revealed the major background behind everything. The characters are definitely coming together now, despite the silly and fanservicey premise
#16 (18) – Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi – (7,75/10) – This one has gotten better. The animation still is consistently good, and it really has been thinking about arcs that give the main characters some depth, rather than the more silly adventures of the first few episodes. My problem with it still is the huge amount of references to otaku pop culture and overused anime cliches that just don’t interest me. Especially the boob jokes have to stop because this show has been overusing those beyond belief.
#15 (6) – Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – (7,75/10) – This month for me wasn’t as good as the previous one, but that mostly had to do with expectations. It’s mostly been a building-up moth for Denyuuden, and nothing really special happened here.
#14 (10) – High School of the Dead – (7,75/10) – What sets High School of the Dead apart from all other fanservice shows this season is its atmosphere, which is really genuinely good. The action itself is also very entertaining. Beyond that it’s just gore an fanservice, but I’m enjoying it so far.
#13 (12) – Katanagatari – (8/10) – This is a bit of a strange series, but even though its episodes are twice as long as usual, I just don’t have a lot to say about it. Nothing really stands out, good or bad. I hope that the final episodes indeed are going to get more interesting so that I’ll at least have something to say about it.
#12 (15) – Heroman – (8/10) – This show is weird. I thought it was predictable, but in this month it made a bunch of really strange choices. That island arc was a completely pointless filler. I have no idea what it did in this series, it had no relation to the plot whatsoever, and overall was boring to get through. On top of that, ONLY now, after more than twenty episodes, did it suddenly decide to reveal the most crucial background information. I mean, especially the explanation of Psy’s leg should have been given right at the beginning. But yeah: the upside of this is that the past few episodes have been really character-centric, and actually did a lot of good stuff with them.
#11 (14) – Mitsudomoe – (8/10) – You know? Of all the moe shows this season, I’m enjoying this one the most. Sure, it has its mind in way, way deep into the gutter, and most of the series consists just out of utterly wrong toilet jokes, but the delivery is top-notch and actually gets better as the series goes on. I don’t want to laugh, yet I can’t help it here.
#10 (11) – Anymaru Tantei Kiruminzoo – (8/10)

Now that the climax has started this show has definitely been delivering, and everything seems to be coming together now. I still believe that this could just as easily have been a 39 episoded series, but it’s been an entertaining month for Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo.

#9 (7) – Nurarihyon no Mago – (8/10)

Gyuki’s arc was quite good, even though it spent most of its time just building up for the rest of the series. Now that we finally got the introduction arcs done though, we should get to the interesting parts of the story, to which I’m looking forward to a lot. It’s perhaps not the most exciting series, but still a very solid one.

#8 (17) – Kuroshitsuji – (8,25/10)

Now that Alois is in the picture again this show has become a whole lot more interesting. His insanity is just so interesting to watch, and I love all of the interesting plot twists the creators try to put into this. However, it would suck if the sole purpose of this series was just going to be a plot device to get Ciel and Sebastian to happily coexist together.

#7 (8) – Sengoku Basara – (8,25/10)

Building up, building up, building up. Really, this month has been either building up to the finale (which had better be damn awesome with all this hyping) and one particularly crazy action episode that blew all my expectations. I expected this to be just one string of action-scenes, but instead this series went for just a couple of them, while trying to make THOSE as epic as possible. Well, I must say that so far they’re doing a good job because episode 18 (or 6) had without a doubt the best action I have seen this month, but this is all going to depend on these final episodes.

#6 (4) – Rainbow – (8,5/10)

This month we got various mini-arcs that were meant to develop and explore the characters as they move on with their lives, and I’m really liking this show more and more. Some characters can be a bi stereotypical at times(specially the thugs), but it’s still both fun and exciting.

#5 (2) – Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin – (8,5/10)

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin took on a completely different direction from expected this month, by taking on a much quieter and controlled pacing. I still consider it to be the series with the most solid execution of the Summer Season, though. The episodes ranged from really well executed (episode 06) to a bit disappointing (episode 08), but overall they were all focused on developing the lead character Maya. Whether it’s going to work depends on the final third of this series.

#4 (5) – Shiki – (8,75/10)

An excellent atmosphere that just continues to get better. This show is very good at building up, and that really starts to show at this point, not to mention that the soundtrack also just gets better with every episode.

#3 (9) – Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – (8,75/10)

I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere the creators suddenly decided to flick the awesome-switch here. This series improved beyond belief during the past month, with a number of awesome episodes in which all of the build-up of earlier on in the series is coming together. The music especially has exceeded all my expectations here.

#2 (2) – Heartcatch Precure – (8,75/10)

You can really see the show evolving now that Cure Sunshine has appeared, and it has possibly made this show even better. Some of the fights have become a bit beam-spamming, but the individual stories for each episode have been incredibly charming.

#1 (1) – Giant Killing – (9/10)

I love this show! Especially now near the end now that everything is coming together, the entire cast is just one chunk of personality. The opposing team is just awesome, not to mention the huge amounts of Dutch that the creators managed to insert. Every single character still stands apart as individual despite the huge cast, and not to mention how great the creators are with the build-up of the past arc.