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The biggest disappointment for me for this season is an easy one: Sacred Seven. For starters, consider that my two favourite Sunrise series of the past decade are Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto and Zone of the Enders. This series had the director of the former and the main writer of the latter. Together they could have made another epic science fiction series that could even have dwarfed Tiger & Bunny when done well. Instead, they come with a dull school mecha show.

And don’t get me wrong, school mecha series aren’t necessarily bad: Star Driver was excellent. But when you do one, make sure that it stands out. The creators of Sacred Seven had trouble with that.

The big problem with this show is that the plot it has come up with is completely boring, unimaginative and doesn’t know what it wants to be. It spends the majority of its time building upon two stories: Ruri(the token female)’s quest for revenge on her family and Knight and Faye,two random people with superpowers who are fleeing from bad guys. Both just fail to hit any high note whatsoever, made even worse through bland acting and long strings where nothing just happens.

What’s more is that the story seems just poorly managed. This show jumps the shark quite a few times throughout the series, like it wanted to do stuff but actually forgot about it and hastily tries to include it anyway. Halfway through the series an incredibly forced romance pops up, and the final two episodes throw away any suspense of disbelief and build-up and just go with an over the top cheese ball of an ending. Then there is also the bizarre case of the OP of this series. The OP actually was one of the best parts of this series: well animated, great choreography and a kickass soundtrack. And the halfway through the series the creators turn the OP into a dull ED with just random stills in front of it and switch over to a generic pop OP that just feels like all of the others.

What also doesn’t really help is the bland cast of characters. Out of everyone in this series, the only one who doesn’t feel bland is the main character, Arama. He’s this awkward tall guy who is nice to watch. The rest of the cast completely lacks imagination, is a cliche fest and just badly acted all together. Its villains aren’t exactly pathetic, but they’re just way too stereotypically evil.

And the worst part? The creators don’t even seem to realize most of these flaws for most of the series. For the first 10 episodes, they really try to play their series straight, instead of just making this a fun action series. The drama is completely unsubstantial, and yet it fills the majority of this series. Only in the final two episodes they decide to just screw it and head into the “so bad it’s good”-territory. This isn’t wasted potential. This is wasted talent.

Suggestions:
– Soukou no Strain
– Star Driver
– Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin

One of the things that I really learned after I started working full time, is how precious time can be. Because of this, I can understand what a daunting task it must be to check out Hajime no Ippo; the total franchise has a bit more than 100 episodes; that’s not something you just watch in a lazy afternoon. However, that’s the beauty of the second season, New Challenger: it’s a sequel, but perfectly allows newcomers to the franchise to pick it up, and it contains some of the most kickass fights imaginable. For those who do have the time and want the full experience, there is the first season.

The length of 76 episodes has both its advantages and disadvantages, but let me first rave about the technical part: Madhouse did the seemingly impossible by having consistently awesome animation during the entire run. The animation is often smooth, punches are animated with a huge weight behind them, a meticulous amount of research went into how boxers move, ranging from the simple jabs to the flash knock-out punches. Do not get mislead by the simple art style, because this allows the creators a great amount of freedom while animating.

Now, the New Challenger series didn’t really have a main character. The first season however does have a clear one: Ippo. The entire series shows about thirteen matches of his, and even the matches in which he doesn’t appear are either 1) cut short or 2) meant to show how awesome Ippo is. Because of this, this series is very, very shounen: wanting to become the best, lots and lots of training arcs and the underdog are very common themes that just keep returning in this series. However, the fact remains that this is no high school series: right from the start this is about professional boxing.

I don’t just say that because I personally tend to like sports series about professionals more than high school sports clubs (for me, this matters more than whether or not the characters are teenagers or adults), but because this also allows this series to really look into the other aspects of professional boxing other than training and fighting. There are some really good arcs throughout the series that look at the personal life and troubles, injuries, and how boxers sustain themselves to get enough money.

The huge benefit of the length is that this series has plenty of time to flesh everyone out, and it makes full use of it. Ippo perhaps isn’t the most interesting character, but this series just continues to develop and change him. Every single side character is given ample time to tell his story. Nearly every opponent that Ippo fights is given a good and non-cheesy backstory and characterization. The most amazing thing is… that there isn’t really a villain here. Al of the opponents that Ippo fights are just professional boxer themselves. At first sight there does seem to be a stereotypical rival, but even that guy steps out of this rival role as the show goes on.

As for the big downside of the length… well, this is a show with 76 episodes that consist out of nothing but boxing. In the end, I still have to say that Hajime no Ippo’s best matches are in the New Challenger series: that just had four fights, and it did everything it could to make those four stand alone and make them as epic as possible. With Hajime no Ippo, the fights fall into a formula. This series especially loves the pattern of pummeling someone to near-KO, only to have him make a miracle come-back, and it unfortunately pulls this twist a little too often, to the point where you can just predict when it’ll happen. The matches in this series are definitely exciting, but they miss the raw power that I experienced in the New Challenger series.

The new Challenger series was compact and perfect. The first season meanwhile was a lot harder to sit through because of its length and monotonous pacing, even though it never really drags on. If you’ve got the time though, by all means watch it, because it remains an incredibly solid sports series.

Suggestions:
– Hajime no Ippo – New Challenger
– Giant Killing
– Hikaru no Go

There was a time when Noitamina basically knew (and popularized) two genres: adult slice of life and experimental horror/adventure. Now, it did branch out to many other genres over the years, but it still retains true to the roots that originally made it big: slice of life series that don’t focus on the usual teenagers, but instead follow college students and adults in their daily lives. All these series have in common that their execution is ridiculously solid, and Usagi Drop is no exception to that rule.

This series chronicles the life of single parents, showing the challenges they face, but also the wonderful things they get back for it. The way this series has handled its themes are quite clever: at the center we have the main character Daikichi who ends up having to take care of his 9-year-old niece Rin. throughout the series, he runs into all kinds of people who are in similar situations, and because of that this series can show many different sides of the same coin.

Another major strength of this series is that it’s pretty much the most realistic series of the entire year so far. It doesn’t try unrealistically force its drama, and the things that Rin and Daikchi do throughout the series all feel wonderfully down to earth. Most of the show is really seeing the two of them live out their daily lives, and this is very well described and written.

The major flaw of this show probably is its lack of ambition. I know that this is a slice of life series and all, but even considering that this series does surprisingly little with the cards handed to it and the series feels incomplete. It introduces a romance, only to randomly abandon that later and also spends time on Rin’s mother without actually much interesting. It also only looks at children of nine years old; the older and younger ones get completely ignored. It would have been really nice to actually see this series evolve, but it chooses to just show one compact part of the lives of the main characters.
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And that, it does undeniably well. I personally like my slice of life series with a bit more spice, but its themes alone make it more than worth watching with excellent acting and characterization that’ll make the cast endearing from start to finish.

Suggestions:
– Hataraki Man
– Windy Tales
– Showa Monogatari

And here’s another widely anticipated movie: the first of the Mardock Scramble trilogy. Finally, Gohands could get in a project that actually showed off their talent, rather than making the umpth bad harem clone. The promo art for this series looked absolutely gorgeous, it had the writer of Fafner and Chevalier behind it. There was a ton of promise behind this. So, how did it go?

Well, that was screwed up. Mardock Scramble is science fiction. It’s based around all kinds of interesting ideas, some of which do not care how sick in the head they can get. There’s a ton of nudity as well, but despite all this it has an style that works really well. Its story is dark and well acted, it takes itself seriously and ends up as a great science fiction character study.

There are multiple characters, but within the first hour of this trilogy the focus went mostly to just two of them, and they got a good dose of airtime dedicated to their backgrounds. They’re both pretty interesting for a one-hour movie. Nothing stellar, but the bond that develops between them is quite engaging to watch.

Beyond that, this movie just oozes with style. The animation and art are both utterly gorgeous, especially the use of colours makes this a visual feast. The action is really well directed and amazing to watch as well, especially during the second half of the movie. It’s one of the strengths of the movie, but also one of its major weaknesses: it’s so busy with this style that at times it forces things along, just for the sake of this. This leads to sometimes rather jumpy editing and character development that may be a bit too sudden.

The meat of the story obviously isn’t in this first movie yet, and whether I’m gonna recommend it is going to depend entirely on the direction that the other two movies take it in. It’s very much a continuous story, so this movie doesn’t really just stand alone (especially when considering its cliff-hanger). It set up all of the building blocks. Now it’s up to the other two movies to use it.

Suggestions:
– Kara no Kyoukai- The Garden of Sinners – Overlooking View
– King of Thorn
– Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance

I’m a fan of the small and relatively unknown company APPP. Nowadays, they’re just busy doing (pretty excellent) inbetween animation for all sorts of series, but ten years ago they actually made their own array of series. Those series stood out because of their simple, yet very imaginative and original premises. Premises that include a runaway hospital bed, an angel and a devil caught in the same body, and yes. They were also the ones who went with the premise of a show focusing on a middle aged guy saving the universe with hard rock. They showed that you can create so many interesting stories without relay trying hard, if you’re just willing to just ignore conventions.

Kurogane Communication is the same: it’s premise is so deceptively simple: we have a girl who is the last living human on earth. There’s so much interesting stuff you can get out of that. The animation is simple, the budget is small, the story moves slowly and it doesn’t try to build up an overly complicated plot. We never really know exactly why humanity nearly died out beyond a few hints here and there. It’s really trying to be simple, yet engaging. And to me, it succeeded.

This series takes an in-depth look at loneliness. Haruka, the lead character, may live together with a bunch of robots, and while this is a series where robots can act just like humans, there still is something missing. The relationship she develops with them as she tries to live her daily life is the highlight of the series, especially with the robot who eventually takes up the position of a mother figure in her life. This show really takes a look at the nature of robots, even if they were to get enough artificial intelligence to become as smart as humans, and what it means to be alive. It’s definitely a unique little series (the episodes are also just 12 minutes long each).

Also helping are a top notch portrayal of the lead character, Haruka: she’s well acted and is a great lead character to follow. As for the rest of the cast, there is a bit of a catch here: they’re nearly all robots with various levels of artificial intelligence. The dumber ones can get on your nerves, but the creators did this intentionally, and over time their purpose in the series will become more than clear. The smart robots by the way are all great to follow.

It’s overall a heart-warming series that makes great use of its bleak themes. The storyline that pops up in the second half does come across as forced here and there, but it has good points that it wants to make, and it ends with a satisfying conclusion. The production values behind this one are low, so there are quite a number of distorted frames and the animation certainly does not look as good as APPP’s other series, but this is a series with its heart at the right place. If you want to watch a calming series that’s something different from usual, then this is an interesting recommendation.

Suggestions:
– Uninhabited Planet Survive
– Black Heaven
– Omoshi Magical Theatre Risky Safety

Aah, apologies for the delay, I’ve been really busy for the past weeks with all kinds of appointments. I finally got the chance to check out what pretty much is the single most anticipated movie of 2011: Madhouse worked for seven years on this thing. They put their top animators on the project (to the point where its production schedule even ruined that of Iron Man’s). So, did it live up to its hype?

Well, let’s get the following out of the way first: while it perhaps did not have the best animation I’ve ever seen, I will say that it’s without a doubt within the top 10 of best animated anime of all time. Possibly even the top 5. The thing with this movie isn’t just that it has unique designs: every single shot is imaginative, and the amount of shots with really fluent animation that has characters moving in all kinds of interesting ways is amazing. This could only have been done with a tremendous budget, and they make the eye candy within this movie virtually limitless. You have the over the top action scenes, but even the quiet scenes look absolutely gorgeous due to the amount of subtle movements that are in them. The best parts was the part by Shinya Ohira: they actually gave him full freedom in creating a truly gorgeous scene.

So, the visuals are absolutely amazing. But what about the rest of the movie? Well, the setting is really imaginative, plus the entire concept of basing your movie round a race also isn’t something we’ve seen in a long while. This movie found an interesting way to still have a ton of explosions and over the top action scenes, and the amount of ideas that has been put into this movie is very commendable.

The weakest part is probably the characterization: it just isn’t as good as most of the other top movies out there, and doesn’t really seem to focus on them anyway. The characters are all interesting and likable, the main characters have a neat and down to earth backstory, but beyond that there is little that sets them apart: the cast of this movie is just too large and there are too many side-characters who are just uninteresting and seriously were in need of more depth. This is the most noticeable with the bad guys: nearly all of them are just random one-sided goons.

The ending is indeed predictable, but I didn’t find that a major issue. The build-up of the climax of this movie was excellent, and I really liked the ending for how it stayed true to itself, and how it didn’t pretend to be anything more than what it was, while at the same time having a number of interesting stories behind it. It’s a well balanced movie that knows when to pack some action, and when to just be quiet and let itself build up.

When you go into this, don’t expect the best movie ever, because it isn’t. It remains a really good movie though, and if it’s a visual orgasm you want, you really can’t go wrong here.

Suggestions:
– Macross Frontier – Itsuwari no Utahime
– Trigun – Badlands Rumble
– Trava – Fist Planet