Here is a list with the shows that are scheduled to air. (At least, that’s what I assume. Notify me if it isn’t complete).
– No direct sequels; that’s just boring and predictable.
– Apart from that, I accept any series with an airdate between September 20th and November 11th.
– Please refrain from spoiling synopsises or staff lists. I’m still trying to enter the Autumn Season with as little information as possible about the upcoming shows, and I’d like to keep it that way.
– The poll will end at September 30, 23:59 GMT. All votes that arrive after that will be ignored.
Here are the current scores:
Kimi ni Todoke – 44
Romance of the Three Kingdoms – 36
Kobato – 34
Kuuchuu Buranko – 31
Winter Sonata – 25
Letter Bee – 23
Armed Librarians: Book of Bantora – 18
A Certain Scientific Railgun – 14
Seiken no Blacksmith – 11
Fairy Tail – 11
Jungle Emperor Leo – 8
Darker than Black – 8
Sasameki Koto – 7
Blue Literature – 7
Nyankoi – 6
Kampfer – 3
Seitokai no Ichizon – 2
Ai no Kusabi – 2
Yumeiro Patissiere – 1
Sora no Otoshimono – 1
Note that with comments that selected three series, I just picked the first two. The people who voted for Darker than Black II and ignored the “No Sequels”-rule can of course always change their votes.
A Second Note: it just turns out that Jungle Emperor Leo isn’t going to be a TV-series at all, but instead just a TV-Special. Those who voted for it can of course change their votes.]]> #30 (29) – Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei – (6/10) – Okay, so this series has hit new frontiers of boredom for me. After one episode, this got so bad that I suddenly became fascinated by the pattern on my chair. In addition to this series getting less funny with every episode, the non-funny parts are also getting harder and harder to sit through, with especially the incredibly stereotypical characters growing more and more on my nerves.
#29 (20) – Saki – (7,25/10) – The battle between Saki and Koromo unfortunately was a step down for this series. At this point, Koromo was so unbelievably god-moded that the creators had to god-mode Saki as well to give her a chance against her. So in the end this just became a contest of who could pull off the biggest and cheesiest Deus ex Machina. Afterwards, this series never really managed to recover for me. It’s been one cheesy and predictable scene to the other, with hardly any of the character-depth that made the middle episodes so enjoyable.
#28 (25) – Chi’s New Address – (7,25/10) – Okay, so I got impatient with the slow subs and tracked down the raws for this series. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like this series is getting any better. There is just an entire lack of direction, and the show just hangs on a string of random episodes that all fail to live up to the first season. There are too many episodes in which Chi randomly causes trouble and breaks stuff, and I think that this series has hit past its expiration date at this point. Such a shame.
#27 (26) – 07-Ghost – (7,5/10) – I hope that for this series, the creators are going to go with an anime original ending. Don’t get me wrong, but this just isn’t a series that’s going to work with a second season, and with an ending that actually wraps up the story there is at least going to be some sort of closure. This show lately has been getting less bearable, with as the depth the really lame Bishop Exam.
#26 (28) – Needless – (7,5/10) – This show really is one of the most vulgar shows I’ve ever seen. The jokes are amongst the dumbest I have ever seen, same with the fanservice. Still, it does what it intended to do: entertain. In terms of mindless entertainment, it really does the job well and doesn’t try to pretend it’s anything more than what it is. At least I can appreciate that.
#25 (23) – Hetalia Axis Powers – (7,75/10) – This month, Hetalia has been adequate. There were no particularly bad episodes, but there weren’t any that stood out either. It’s nothing particularly boring, but I do hope that this show can pick itself up again after this.
#24 (30) – Bakemonogatari – (7,5/10) – I can see that the dialogue for this series is good, but at the same time I have a lot of trouble connecting to the characters because Shinbo took his style way too far. The screen is way too full with pointless visuals, walls of text that appear at the wrong moments, take way too long, and take the focus away from what’s really important: the characters. Seriously, the lead character in particular hardly gets any close-ups when he talks. The camera is always focusing at either his eye, his ahoge, or something completely different. It’s probably because of this that I found the ending of the third arc to be convenient and cheesy.
#23 (17) – Gintama – (7,75/10) – The thing that the new director is going to have to work at is his climaxes. The past oldies arc was pretty good, but the climax just ended up a bit cheesy and was filled with Deus ex Machina.
#22 (16) – Basquash! – (7,5/10) – Basquash was mostly building up this month. It’s going to need it, because I’ve pretty much lost my faith in this series, and only an entertaining ending can save it for me. My biggest issue with this series is that it doesn’t seem to really know what it wants. If it’s supposed to be a fun and entertaining show, then why does it go on and on in pointless drama? If it’s supposed to be a deep and thoughtful show, then why are the characters so unbelievably stupid at times?
#21 (22) – The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – (7,5/10) – Now that the Endless Eight has finally ended, I’ve gotten bugged with another of this series’ problems: Haruhi is annoying. Seriously though, the past three episodes of her Sigh have been surprisingly boring and uninteresting. The characters have been acting way too much according to their stereotypes, rather than as actual characters, and the dialogue also suffered a lot. In fact, the dialogue of the entire second season has been far from as detailed as it was in the first season.
#20 (24) – Kuruneko – (8/10) – This series is surprisingly fun, especially now that Chi’s Sweet Home has stopped being funny, there’s enough cats to laugh about here. But I especially like the old lady who keeps the different cats. She has wit, and I love how she always tries to voice everything over.
#19 (13) – Canaan – (8/10) – So in this month, Canaan showed its true colours. Deranged, over the top and very far-fetched colours. While I admit that I would have preferred a bit more subtlety in the storytelling, it still is a pretty nice action series. Just don’t try to go in it expecting any sort of realism…
#18 (18) – Taishou Yakyuu Musume – (8/10) – I’m starting to wonder whether twelve episodes are enough for this series. There’s still so much left to do, and yet we’ve already passed two thirds of the series. Sure, things have been pretty enjoyable slice of life, the characters are quite charming, but are the creators really all right with only four episodes left?
#17 (21) – Konnichiwa Anne – (8/10) – I still hate Henderson, but granted, she was much more annoying in the previous month. Thankfully Konnichiwa Anne has gotten better right now, with the focus nicely balanced between Anne and the side-characters.
#16 (11) – Umi Monogatari – (8/10) – This has been a peculiar little series. It’s strength is that it’s incredibly dramatic, and yet it never delves into melodrama or something that’s so overacted that you can’t take it seriously. It’s a great example of an emotional series: one that’s meant to bring out emotions. At this, it actually fares off pretty well, but this is a Sato Junichi series we’re talking about. He has done so much better in the past, that this series just pales when you compare it to some of its other works. If you don’t though, then it’s pretty nice.
#15 (27) – Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou – (8/10) – This is yet another one of those series that isn’t supposed to be good… and yet it is. Seriously, it has all the elements of yet another dull moe show: overly cute character-designs with weird hair-colours? Check. Stupid fanservice? Check. Overly cute voice actresses? Check. And yet, this series has something that a lot of moe shows nowadays lack. The characters, especially the main character, are all surprisingly genuine; the way they act, the way they interact with each other. It feels like they’re really behaving like themselves, rather than trying to go for forced stereotypes.
#14 (15) – Umineko no Naku Koro ni – (8,25/10) – I think that the biggest difference between Higurashi and Umineko, at this stage in the series, is that Higurashi was much more of a horror series: it used its storytelling and mystery to create a very tense plot. Umineko instead chooses for censored gore and a lot of talking, which neither come really close to horror. Because of this, I like the first nine episodes of Higurashi better than Umineko. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that the mystery in Umineko doesn’t rock. This yet again is a great series to try and formulate theories of what the heck is going on, only to have them proved wrong by this series.
#13 (10) – Marie & Gali – (8,5/10) – It’s a shame that this show went into multiple hiatuses during this month, because I really can’t get enough of the craziness in this series. What’s also very peculiar for a comedy is that it’s just consistently awesome: there’s hardly any bad episode, and every episode has something creative that puts a smile on your face. Sure, the episodes are only five minutes long, but still.
#12 (14) – Shin Mazinger Shougeki Z-Hen – (8,75/10) – This show really has become epic in the past month. I must say that it’s really managed to create an awesome story, based on the premise of a few key characters and a powerful giant robot. The twists and turns have only added to the awesomeness, and this series is only getting better and better. In the coming month, it’s finally time for this series to close off with an epic finale, and something tells me that the creators aren’t going to settle with a straightforward ending. There are so many different villains at this point that it’s promising to be a true clash of the titans.
#11 (8) – Pandora Hearts – (8,75/10) – Every time I think that this series couldn’t possibly pull any more plot twists, it does, and with every plot twist the series only gets more intriguing than it already was. Sometimes the creators keep hanging a bit too long around Oz’s development, but overall this still is an excellent series. Now where is that second season?!
#10 (7) – Guin Saga – (8,5/10)
After watching the new Mazinger, and realizing how well it was written I started to wonder whether the director,
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The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Second Season Review – 77,5/100
Well, so that’s it for this season. Anime News Network reports that the second airing of Haruhi is only going to take up 28 episodes. Since there now have been fourteen episodes of the second season aired, a quick bit of math shows that the final episodes are going to be the ones that were left over from the first season.
Anyway, the “Second Season” of Haruhi is a bit of a misleading title. It’s not really a sequel, but rather a collection of episodes that fit in between the episodes of the first season, with the purpose to flesh out the cast a bit more. It consists out of three arcs: the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight and the Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya.
The Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody is pretty nice. It’s a bit of backstory for the lead character Haruhi, which is of course always welcome. It just takes up one episode, and is pretty enjoyable. Endless Eight on the contrary takes up a whopping eight episodes, and basically consist out of the same episode repeated again and again and again, just with the animation and voice-work redone. However, these episodes can be easily skipped: only the first and the last matter, while the middle ones are still a nice enough slice of life to watch in those cases when you’re really, really bored.
My main problem with this series came at the start of the Sigh of Haruhi, though. One of my main complaints with the first season already was that Haruhi was incredibly annoying, and she really proves that again in this arc. The arc is also way too long, so her ramblings just go on and on and on. The rest of the cast could have made up for it, but during this arc they acted way too much like the stereotypes they avoided so well throughout the first season: Kyon becomes continuously horny for Mikuru, Mikuru continuously becomes a crybaby, Tsuruya is hyperactive and weird 100% of the time. I mean come on, give us some subtlety here!
Thankfully, the arc closes off with the best two episodes of the second season. The semi-final episode made a very good point, and the final episode finally shows that the scriptwriters put in some effort again, returning the series back to its former subtlety.
Overall though, the first season simply is better than the second. Not only did the second merely function to flesh out the characters, but you can also see that less effort was put into it. A lot of the episodes lack the detailed dialogue of the first season, and the animation, while still rich and detailed, suddenly started looking way too much like K-On and Kyoani’s other moe shows during the climaxes. Seriously, the characters for this series were already moe enough; you really don’t have to add even more to it…
The first season, while it also definitely had its annoying parts in the episodic fillers, did have its excellent first arc. but the second season has a lot less episodes that really deliver. Nevertheless, I really doubt that this is going to be the last of this series, and the second season nevertheless was a pretty decent slice of life series. I still like that Kyoani, during this time of an economic crisis, still is willing to try out daring concepts. At least, in some of their shows… Yes Munto, I’m looking at you.
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Storytelling:
8/10
Characters:
7/10
Production-Values:
8/10
Setting:
8/10
Slight Delay in Posts
Gintama Episodes 1-100 Review – 90/100
Well, I’ve made up my mind. I just finished episode 150 of Gintama, and it was indeed awesome. The perfect way to close off the series, no matter where you are in the series. Still, with this I’m going to drop this series. It’s the same with Ranma 1/2: I’d rather remember the classic first part, rather than stick with it for a few good episodes in a sea of mediocrity, especially since the good episodes don’t even come close to the standards that the series set in the past. But this review isn’t about the three digit episodes of Gintama, you can read about those here. This post instead is a review of the first 100 episodes, and a series that stands among the Law of Ueki and the Excel Saga as my absolute favourite comedies in anime.
Gintama is about a group of people who are willing to take any job for money, in a setting in which the earth has been taken over by evil aliens who settled in to live there after their victory, while the humans still live around as if it were feudal Japan. It’s structure is mostly episodic: most of the episodes are standalone stories in which the lead characters meet someone, or have some objective to overcome. While this formula can get incredibly boring in the wrong hands, the creators of Gintama turned it into gold.
Thanks to an amazingly witty sense of humour and a nearly limitless amount of creativity, the creators really manage to make the best out of this series’ format. In its jokes, it takes absolutely nothing for granted, and there are a number of absolute classic episodes that just deliver one brilliant joke after the other. The humour varies from parodies to character-based to downright random, all with their own highlights.
But what really sets Gintama apart from nearly all other comedies is its attempts to be serious. Usually, comedies fall apart horribly when they try their hands at some serious drama, which most often fall apart in horribly dull and cheesy messes. Gintama however only turns better when it gets serious. It knows exactly how to build up its stories, make them relevant and develop its characters. Its sense of dialogue in particular really is amazing: deep, meaningful, inspired and very detailed. Gintama was a series that could make me weep manly tears again and again.
Granted though, this series’ brilliance doesn’t last 24/7. Gintama does have a fair share of lesser episodes that, while nice to watch, border on the cliché, milk their jokes a bit too far or just fail in what they set out to do. Especially the first episode was one of the worst things that the creators could have picked to start off the series, because it ranks among the weakest of the series, but overall the entire first part of the series is hard to get into.
But when it does, the good parts really get better and better, and this trend continues for 100 episodes. I really recommend this series for anyone looking for a good laugh, because this series is just about everything comedies should be outside of compactness. The episodes after 100 are a lot less impressive, though. While they still have a good episode here and there, they just lack the creativity that made the first 100 episodes so awesome.
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Storytelling:
10/10
Characters:
9/10
Production-Values:
8/10
Setting:
9/10
Aoi Hana Review – 87,5/100
At the start of this year I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of romance, but damn. 2009 has surely proved to be an excellent year for this genre. The year already started out with gems as Clannad’s After Story and Genji Monogatari, then it continued with the truly excellent Ristorante Paradiso and Cross Game, and if that wasn’t enough the Summer season only continued this trend of awesomeness with Spice and Wolf II and, of course, Aoi Hana.
At first sight, Aoi Hana may seem like your average lesbian series with lots of girls who cheesily fall in love with each other, but this series quickly proves those suspicions wrong when it subverts just about every cliché in the romance genre imaginable. FOR ONCE, romantic relationships are portrayed realistically, rather than those overly romanticized relationship you see in most average romances. For once, you see childhood friends who really behave like childhood friends, rather than the creators using the childhood friendship as a cheap plot device to get the lead couple in love with each other. For once, the two lead characters don’t end up falling in love with each other, and instead the main romance plays out between one of the lead character, and a side-character. And really: for once in a gay show we see actual straight romances. In fact, there’s only one lesbian in the entire series (Fumi, one of the lead characters). The rest is either straight or bi.
On top of that, this series is incredibly well told. there’s a huge amount of subtlety within the relationship of the most important characters in this series: the way they behave, feel and interact with each other is really done with a superb attention to detail. The series is only eleven episodes long, and yet the personality of each character can’t just be explained in one sentence. There’s absolutely nothing that’s shallow in this series.
The animation for this series also really stands out among the best in the romance genre. It’s very subtle, and portrays very accurately how all of the different characters move. But it’s especially the scenes in which people are touching each other, whether holding hands or messing with each other’s hair, in which the animation really makes those movements feel so incredibly real.
I feel hard-pressed to pick up any flaws for this series. Obviously, you don’t want to watch this series if you dislike a slow-paced series, but it really is a must-watch for any fan of the shoujo-ai genre in the way that it so realistically portrays lesbian relationships. There are a few scenes here and there that could have used a bit more build-up (like Kyouko’s fiancee, or the ending), but those moments are few and far in between. Aoi Hana really is one of my top picks of the past Summer Season.
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Storytelling:
9/10
Characters:
9/10
Production-Values:
9/10
Setting:
8/10
Jungle Emperor Leo Review – 77,5/100
For those who were confused: the Jungle Emperor Leo remake is not a full fledged TV-series of 80 episodes. It’s a TV-special celebrating the 80th birthday of Osamu Tezuka. It’s about one hour and 45 minutes long, and directed by the director of Code Geass of all people. Still, while this show has its flaws it still serves as a very nice family movie that perfectly captures the childish side of Osamu Tezuka, and yet isn’t afraid to become dark and serious.
Jungle Emperor Leo is an environmentalist anime, and with these kinds of stories there always are plenty of obvious pitfalls. A lot of environmentalist stories lack any sort of subtlety, and often contain entire monologues on the creators’ morals. Yes, we get that the earth is in danger. We get that man is evil. Now stop shoving it down our throats!
Typical of Osamu Tezuka, the basic premise of this special is overly idealistic: humans are evil and make animals suffer. However, it brings a lot of twists to the table, and I mean a lot. This isn’t just a matter in which some character you thought to be evil turn out to be good and vice versa, but there’s a very imaginative back-story behind everything that really makes you think about where humanity is going with the pollution of the earth. It criticizes modern technology, but at the same time it also pays homage to it. The main villain, while he’s obviously got a very sick and twisted mind, isn’t pure evil either: if it wasn’t for his actions, the animals would have been even worse off, and his feelings for his son give a surprising human touch to him.
In the lead are two young children: a young lion and a young boy. These two form the back-bone of this special, and while they’re not the most interesting characters, they do their job of keeping the series going without getting boring because the creators put a lot of time in fleshing the two of them out. They’re both charming, yet flawed characters that are nice to watch if you can accept the fact that they’re a couple of little kids and that the boy can talk to animals for no apparent reason. The majority of the rest of the cast also has well backed-up reasons for their actions, which is always a nice thing.
Unfortunately though, the ending is pretty cheesy, and nullifies a lot of development that went into the setting. It’s too idealistic and solves things way too easily. Plus, it’s got this thing in which small animals are able to win fights with fully grown animals… which is pretty lame no matter how you look at it. This special really tries, but in the end it can’t fully shake its stereotypical nature.
This anime reminds me a lot of Miyori no Mori: both involve kids who somehow can talk to beings they’re not supposed to see, and protect them from evil humans. In the end, I like Miyori no Mori better because even though it too was idealistic, it feels more complete and heart-warming, plus it showed a more realistic portrayal of its lead character. Nevertheless, Jungle Emperor Leo really served its job as a homage to Osamu Tezuka, and the creators stuffed a lot of nice elements in it.
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Storytelling:
7/10
Characters:
8/10
Production-Values:
8/10
Setting:
8/10
My Dilemma with Gintama
I have a question for the people who have been keeping up with the latest episodes of Gintama. As some of you may know, I’ve been keeping up with Rumbel’s subs for the series. Now that Horriblesubs have released the final missing episodes between Rumbel’s and the start of Crunchyroll’s, I decided to slowly marathon up to the latest episodes. Right now, I have just finished episode 124 and am seriously considering to drop the series altogether.
My question to you is: is Gintama really going to improve?
Because seriously, my patience at this point has entirely run out. I have heard that around episode 140, this series gets serious again with a bunch of good episodes around Kagura’s past, but is that really going to be worth it if the creators are going to delve into boring fillers again? Is it really going to be worth it, watching a dozen episodes, just to get to one good one?
Ever since the new director took over at episode 101 for me, this series has lost all of its charms, but I had faith in the series, hoping that it might pick itself back up. However, then I reached episode 120, which was the funniest episode ever since this guy took over. So what was the best joke in that episode? A rip-off of one of the best jokes of the first director. It was at this point that I realized that it was getting pointless to watch this series.
I truly rate the first 100 episodes among the top comedies I have ever seen. Sure, it also did have its share of weak episodes, but those were vastly outnumbered by the number of awesome and really well written episodes. The new director however just failed to live up to it in every single way. The penis jokes for example have become way too obvious, and that’s just the tip of the ice-berg.
Another pet peeves of the new director is that he tries to stuff in as much references to other shounen series as possible. I’m always in for a good parody, but that’s the problem: instead of parodying, the new director is simply listing a bunch of references without making fun of them. After a while this becomes really, really boring.
Then there’s also the matter of the increase of lengthy arcs. In the first 100 episodes, the only arcs that took up more than 2 episodes were the ones that mattered: the ones that developed the characters and made optimal use of their length. Right now the long arcs are just dragging on beyond belief, often wasting entire episodes with things that can be solved within only 10 minutes. The biggest example of this are episodes 121, 122 and 123: what the heck was the point in dragging this on for three episodes? The entire story would have fit into just a half of an episode, and instead it became an utterly predictable bore-fest that just would not end.
A more fundamental problem however is that the quality of the script-writing has gone down a lot. The first 100 episodes were really good at tugging at my heart-strings, not through its characters, but because of its subtle writing that knew exactly what to say. Especially the long monologues of the characters were deep, meaningful and really got the best out of the characters in the serious moments. That’s completely gone now as well. The dialogue has become uninspired, cheap, and way too much focused on over the top violence in an attempt to make up.
I’m really beginning to feel that I’m just watching the show for the heck of it, which is a shame because there are many better shows at the moment that I’d rather spend my attention at. In the end, there really seems to be a curse on shounen series that go beyond the 100 episode mark: Dragonball Z would have been fine if it just ended after 26 episodes; it would have been a nice action series that way. Naruto was pretty much a good series until the start of the final Chuunin Examinations, after which it dragged its story on and on beyond belief. Bleach was also a very entertaining shounen series for its first 30 episodes… until it descended into a bunch of boring and predictable fights around the Ichigo the Marty Stu. Gintama lasted longer than the others, but in the end, my enthusiasm for the first 100 episodes is just completely gone at this point.
So yeah, if I do end up dropping it (which is pretty likely at this point), what do you want me to do? Write a review about just the first 100 episodes, or is that review not really necessary?]]> Urban Legend Story Hikiko Review – 65/100
Okay, so apparently Urban Legend Story Hikiko was an OVA, released about a year ago. It’s a fully CG-Rendered movie done by some guy who also seems to have worked on Catblue Dynamite. Since I’m always in for a bit of good horror, especially since the past spring and summer season didn’t have any of it, I decided to give it a shot. So, did this movie do its job and give me a good scare?
Well, it did give me a good laugh…
This OVA is THE example of why 3D-rendered movies have a looong way to go at this point. While in theory, it seems like a logical thing to do: you can get smoother animation, there is more detail, you can get a more dynamic background and a more realistic set of character-designs than the drawings of traditional anime. It sounds all nice in theory… but this movie just looked so incredibly fake.
It’s a shame, though: this OVA does have a very neat story: there’s plenty of build-up, a deep main character, a nice set of plot twists. In traditional 2D animation, it would have been a pretty good horror OVA. The big problem however is that the characters’ expressions and motions look incredibly unrealistic. So unrealistic that they’re nearly impossible to take seriously. This may be because I’ve been too much used to anime, but even though there’s plenty of animation in this, but all the animation feels jerky, and especially the facial expressions of the characters look nowhere near accurate and more like a bunch of puppets.
There’s a saying in art that goes as follows: “if you can’t make it, fake it”, and 2D anime has become very good at this. It knows that its artwork is very detailed for animation standards, and that there’s no way to continuously animate everything in drawings, and so over the years they’ve perfected the art in simulating movement even though there isn’t any. As long as it doesn’t stand out as “fake” or “too much” in any way, these cinematic effects really work.
3D animation has yet to discover these techniques, and instead just try to… animate. The thing is, that unless you’ve got the budget of a small country or the imagination of Hayao Miyazaki, there is no way to perfectly emulate every subtle nuance in human movement, and this movie especially fails at it. The few attempts it makes to make up for the lack of movement are some of the most pathetic cinematic techniques all around, like a couple of cheap but loud sound effects during the intense part, and lots of shaking the camera around while looking at the characters with extremely scared faces.
The thing that 3D animation is going to have to learn is the art of cutting corners. American 2D-animation does this by extremely simplified drawings, Japanese animation does this by trying to limit the number of frames that need to be animated. At this moment, there’s nothing wrong with the artwork: show any still frame in this movie, and it looks gorgeous. Combine them… and they don’t.
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Storytelling:
9/10
Characters:
8/10
Production-Values:
2/10
Setting:
7/10
Which Autumn Series do you want me to blog?
August Summary
Lots of politics this month for Guin Saga, and I must say that I like it a lot. The cast of characters is really growing beyond belief, but the creators still managed to give most of them their own identity. The lead characters meanwhile also make sure that this remains an epic series.
#9 (5) – Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood – (8,75/10)
It seems that the manga readers aren’t all happy with this adaptation, because of all the things it cut out. Having not read the manga, however, I don’t care. I personally don’t notice anything of the cuts that were made, and especially episode 19 was really good and well animated.
#8 (12) – GA:Geijutsuka Art Design Class – (8,75/10)
This show rocks! Sure, it’s probably a bit boring if you don’t have any interest in art, but this series really is one of the few anime this year that actually taught me something. Aside from that, the creators have managed to keep a perfect balance between fun interactions, slice of life and the educational parts. Not one episode feels like a copy of the others, and every episode it comes with new material, rather than ripping or milking off previous episodes due to a lack of inspiration. This definitely turned into one of the best (if not THE best, along with Cross Game) slice of life comedies I’ve seen this year.
#7 (9) – Cross Game – (8,75/10)
The thing that makes Cross Game so good is that every single episode, no matter how seemingly insignificant, contributes to and develops the characters, if ever so slightly. The pacing is slow, but for this series, it’s just enough to see the characters slowly get more and more complex and likable. That really is the strength of a series by Adachi: sure, he can only write shows of one type, but he’s really, really good at it and hardly ever repeats himself.
#6 (2) – Shangri-La – (8,75/10)
It’s not the best month for Shangri-La, but nevertheless it’s gotten surprisingly solid now that it’s building up to its finale, and it might actually be able to pull off a very enjoyable one at this pace. At this point, the story has gotten epic without sacrificing what made the rest of the series so enjoyable. All it now needs to do is have something awesome happen at the finale.
#5 (6) – Spice and Wolf – (8,75/10)
The biggest difference with the first season is the relationship between Lawrence and Horo: the two of them have become much closer with this season, and yet the creators manage to keep the romance mature and prevent it from being forced. The talk about trading has been as intelligent as ever, which always is a good sign.
#4 (4) – Aoi Hana – (8,75/10)
This series has really been consistently excellent, like I’ve probably said many times before. The romantic relationships are very down-to-earth and realistic and the creators are really good at very subtly fleshing out the characters.
#3 (1) – Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 – (9/10)
At first, when I finished episode 8, I thought that this series was going to finish with a rather uneventful finale that didn’t really live up to the amazing first five episodes. But then when I realized that SPOILER, it suddenly put the entire series in an entirely different light. That’s got to be the SPOILEREST SPOILER I have ever seen, and I really applaud the creators for SPOILER. This has the potential of being a classic if they manage to end this series well. Apologies for the rather cryptic description, but the ones who saw episode 8 will probably get what I mean.
#2 (18) – Kemono no Souja Erin – (9/10)
Yeah, yeah. So I gave in to everyone who praised this series and marathoned it up to episode 33. And oh my God, people surely weren’t kidding when they said that this was one of the best shows of the year! Because of its long length, it really was able to get the best out of the character. Especially Erin, who has now grown up to be eighteen years old, has become one of the best developed characters of this year for me. This series has become so good at portraying the pain-staking work it takes to tame and take care of a wild beast, but also the newly introduced villain is already an awesome one who is going to pose a serious threat to Erin. The back-story for this series has also turned out to be surprisingly solid, and for those who were wondering whether this series would have gotten a bit too childish with the farting bee-keeper: don’t worry. It’s just a small gimmick that returns occasionally.
#1 (3) – Phantom – (9,25/10)
Now that it’s entered its final arc, this series has become utterly amazing, and without a doubt my top pick for the past spring season. Especially Cal’s character-development has been awesome, but Reiji and Helen have also become a joy to watch with all of the development that this series has put in them.]]>
