Category: Seasonal Previews

Some trends for the upcoming summer season: the series aimed at girls seem to be getting big again after a long drought. The problem is that like the series aimed at boys, a lot of them are looking to be really bad. Beyond that, there are lots of series that have concepts that have been done to death by now. I’m nearly inclined to dub this season “The Summer of Dead Horses”.

On the good news though, there are quite a number of series that are looking to have some serious potential. And not in the way of the Autumn of 2013 in which everything seemed great, only to feature many, many disappointments, but actually in the way that there will be a lot worth watching here, series that take themselves seriously, or are trying out something different. Well, many. Many for the standards of the past few years.

As usual, lots of assumptions follow. I do not read manga so I have no idea about any original source material and stuff. My impressions are purely based on the stuff that I can say something about, like the staff, premise and promotional material. These ain’t full reviews, yo.

Series that I Don’t Look Forward To

Momo Kyun Sword

Why I don’t like it:`Yeah, this one is going to be terrible. It’s in the genre where cute girls with lots of boob fight with big powers, while at the same time raping the original story of Momotaro (the kid who was born from a peach). I mean, just look at the art here the creators weren’t trying to be subtle about the characters’ cleavage in any way were they?

Pripara

Why I don’t like it: It’s yet another one of those shows there to promote idols. Seriously, that too has turned into a complete dead horse. I wouldn’t mind so much if we just got one of these shows once in a while or something, like what it used to be in the past, but nowadays they’re everywhere! Idols are not so special that they deserve this many series people! The only saving grace here is that it’s from the director of Milky Holmes, but this isn’t a genre he can parody so well because it would make the idols look bad. Blegh.

Himegoto

Why I don’t like it: This is a stupid cross-dressing show with a ridiculous premise. The worst thing is that it’s the same bloody premise that every single bad cross-dressing series uses for its shenanigans: for some contrived reason a dude needs to enter a female only high school and therefore he needs to dress up like a girl. Blah boring! Skip this one!

Jinsei

Why I don’t like it: Well first of all it’s a light novel adaptation with an overly cute girl on the front page. That’s one of the clearest early signs that this will be bad. And yeah, it’s a dull school series. The premise however does hold a tiny shred of potential: it’s about the writer of a life advice column of the school newspaper that follows a few of the life advice requests he needs to write about. If they can deal with those requests intelligently, then this might make a chance. But then I direct your attention back to the covers of the light novels, which all feature overly cute girls in suggestive poses and yeah… this one’s gonna suck.

Survival Game Club

Why I don’t like it: Blah blah, another club full of girls at school that does something. Again something we’ve seen waaaay too many times by now. This time it’s about survival games, and is that me or does that really sound eerily similar to that Gainax show about the gun club that came out last Autumn?

Persona 4 The Golden

Why I don’t like it: Ooh, I still remember what a disaster the original Persona 4 anime was, and now they’re planning to make more! It was completely incomprehensible for people who didn’t play the game. It spent huge amounts of time on things that didn’t matter, and flew through the important bits. It was littered with bad humour. It was the first point at which I realized that Seiji Kishi had completely lost it with his new style, and he’s back. However he really turned into a Shinbo-wannabe right now by assuming the task of chief director while another director is the real one. And I know that having a chief director and a director is more common and all, but none are trying to rip off Shinbo as blatantly as he is. I have a pity with the fans of the Atlus that they keep getting stuck with this guy. I mean in the span of a couple of years he managed to turn me off completely to their games.

Nobunaga Concerto

Why I don’t like it: Normally I’m a bit more lenient on historical manga that look kindof serious. But for god’s sake come on! A high school boy who travels back in time and who must become Oda Nobunaga? Is that the best you can think of? Let’s try to rape his character even more by turning him into a high school boy for god’s sake. Japan has many more interesting time periods. You don’t have to stick with this guy. Here is the weird thing: when Sengoku Basara did it, the warring states era was hardly ever used as a setting. After that though, every single historical series suddenly was about that bloody period, to the point where there was hardly anything else. I mean come on Japan: move on!

Francesca

Why I don’t like it: You just know that this one will be bad: it’s basically one big advertisement for Hokkaido (like, the island), personified in a cute girl. As a zombie. Or at least, something that’s supposed to be a zombie. WHATEVER IS ON THAT PROMO IMAGE IS NOT A ZOMBIE.

Akame ga Kill

Why I don’t like it: This one doesn’t seem like anything special: it’s just another show in which a boy and a girl use magical powers to fight some evil empire. The weapons look stupid, the character designs bland. The sole salvation here is that there isn’t a school to be found, but that’s nowhere near enough to make up for the blandness of the rest.

Hanayamata

Why I don’t like it: Here’s a case of talented people being wasted on the wrong project. I mean, these people aren’t bad at all. They worked on some really good stuff: Madhouse, Reiko Yoshida and Atsuko Ishizuka (the latter in particular: she’s one of the few female directors who actually made it into the big leagues and consistently gets assigned to projects). However, what’s the show about? High School Girls dancing. Now Yosakoi is something that we haven’t seen before and all, but there is no hint whatsoever that there will be any depth here. Tip for future promo artists: don’t feature an all-cute girl cast on your image who look way too much like each other and nothing else. That’s just bland and boring!

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!

Why I don’t like it: For god’s sake stop milking out the Fate franchise! It’s done, it’s over! Enough already and think of something new here. this is just getting ridiculous!

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance

Why I don’t like it: Yeah, this one will be really bad, all of the warning signs are there. A promo full of only cute girls, they all use magic, they are all of nobility, and there is exactly one guy who gets to be special and ends up inbetween them for contrived reasons. Next!

Shounen Hollywood

Why I don’t like it: Aaagh! More idols! Such creativity! This one does come from the director of Sukitte Ii na Yo, however can we for god’s sake tone it down on the sheer number of these things?

Invaders of the Rokujyouma!?

Why I don’t like it: Yup, many warning signs that this is going to be terrible. All the male characters are absent from the main promo art on the website, character designs who all look the same aside from hair, eyes and boob sizes, a bland premise for a show. Not to mention Shin Oonuma and Silver Link being at it again. This is one to skip.

Argevollen

Why I don’t like it: Aaah yes, finally! Xebec is going back to making mecha series, the thing that they did that they were actually good at, until they radically shifted their focus towards producing crappy fanservice shows. Tatsuo Sato will write it, and this is a guy who also wrote Mouretsu Pirates, Basquash, Madesico, Shingu, and adapted Azumanga Daioh, and the director will be… what?! Atsushi Ootsuka? The director of To Love-Ru, Kanokon and Ladies Versus Butlers? Some of the worst shows Xebec has ever made!?! Seriously, you really couldn’t get anyone better? And yeah, the trailer confirmed that this is just going to be a dumb action series with a generic plot.

Magimoji Rurumo

Why I don’t like it: I do have to hand it to Rurumo: it’s got its own premise. It’s not completely original, but at the very least it has a premise that doesn’t attempt to rip off as many other generic series as possible. However, that does not mean that I look forward to a series with a tagline called “Pervert and Apprentice”. I find sex jokes bad really easily, so this show is going to have to try really really hard not to be annoying. So yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Love Stage

Why I don’t like it:Kenichi Kasai, the director who gave us the brilliant rendition that were the first season of Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover! After years of silence he’s finally back with another series: shounen ai! Fans of shounen ai: rejoice! Non-fans of shounen-ai: keep waiting. He may be brilliant, but he isn’t able to make people buy a genre they previously weren’t into.

Dramatical Murder

Why I don’t like it:Oh my god, BL with an actual plot! The problem with boys’ love series is that they’re just too often entirely dedicated to fanservice, to the point where the fanservice gets completely in the way of any potential that might have been there. Show me a great series that has a gay couple in it and I won’t complain at all. The reason I’m not looking forward to this is the one who’s going to adapt this: Machida Touko. Her adaptations comprise Amnesia, Allison to Lillia, Ookami Kakushi… basically lots of series that completely botched any potential that their original source material had.

Rail Wars

Why I don’t like it:Here’s an interesting one. The premise is creative, I like that, and I really want to like this series, but everything else is throwing up red flags: the guy who adapted Kanokon will adapt this, it’s based off of a bunch of light novels, the stereotypical character descriptions, and how the poses that the characters are all making are all trying a little too hard. Don’t get me wrong, these don’t immediately mean that we’re dealing with a bad series here. But there are an awful lot of hints that do point into that direction.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Why I don’t like it: I don’t really have anything to whine about here. It seems like a standard romance, just not a special one. It will work decently if the creators take care in developing all of the characters, they don’t make the romance too stupid or convoluted, the usual stuff. It won’t stand out in any way though, which is why I’m not looking forward to it.

Free – Eternal Summer

Why I don’t like it: Well, this obviously had it coming, the actually well produced slice of life series with lots of gay undertones. What sets Free apart from the shows like Utapri is that it actually bothers to put some effort into its characterizations, and making the characters come alive rather than portraying them as a bunch of cardboard boxes. They’re stil stereotypes, but hey at least it’s something: it’s progress. I’m obviously not going to watch it, but I do have a question to the fans of the series: does it really warrant a second season, or is this just milking it?

Ao Haru Ride

Why I don’t like it: Don’t get me wrong: Ao Haru Ride looks like a very solid romance. I can just say with certainty that the premise just isn’t interesting enough that I’m going to continue watching it. I mean, it’s got the director of Yahari blahblah, a solid scriptwriter, a premise that’s neither good nor bad or overused. It’s just another high school romance that doesn’t try to pretend it’s anything else. And I just don’t want to watch those shows any more.

Bakumatsu Rock

Why I don’t like it: Oooh, the cheese. Plus this show gets points for being historical and not featuring Oda Freaking Nobunaga. This sounds like a series that’s so bad that makes it worth watching at least an episode, featuring some bizarre love child between AKB0048 and Utapri. It will be glorious. Gloriously bad, but glorious. (For those uninitiated, this is a show about a bunch of bishies who try to save the Bakumatsu era with hard rock!)

Psycho Pass Recap

Why I don’t like it: This entry is just here to prevent confusion, which will very likely to be there considering how bad rumours can spread over the internet. Psycho Pass Season 2 will air for the upcoming fall season. I am psyched about that one. This summer season meanwhile will re-air the first season as an 11-episoded series with 50-minute episodes, and a few re-cuts here and there that probably will not amount to much. However, they’re really trying to make this one big, and they’re really profiling this series as targeted towards adults. This is good, Noitamina is slowly but steadily returning to what actually made it good. This is actually pretty important here, because this isn’t trivial. Out of all the possible series to focus on, the producers chose Psycho Pass. Not Guilty Crown, not Fractale. Psycho Pass. They really want to keep the original spirit of the timeslot going.

Series I Am Looking Forward To

Kuroshitsuji – Book of Circus

Impressions: OH GOD NO! The new season of Kuroshitsuji has a completely new staff behind it. Noriyuki Abe is actually a very skilled director: before directing Bleach he gave us Great Teacher Onizuka, and that was no fluke even with a very strong source material. Kuroshitsuji is exactly the kind of series that can get something great out of him again. The first two seasons were adapted by Mari Okada, and this actually fitted her very well as a series with the craziness that went on. For season three though… we have to deal with Uber-troll Hiroyuki Yoshino. If you don’t know him, be glad. This is the guy who wrote the original story for Seikon no Qwaser, Guilty Crown, Code Geass, Mai Otome. This guy writes grandiose stories which are often so grandiose and convoluted that they collapse in on themselves. His adaptations are hardly ever complete, even when well written. You’re almost guaranteed to get a completely botched up ending here, even though the endings are what I loved about the first two seasons of Kuroshitsuji. And to make things even worse, Ichiro Okouchi, the original creator of Code Geass and the writer of Valvrave is joining in for the scripts!

Tokyo ESP

Impressions: Because no staff has been announced whatsoever, I’m going to go and give this one the benefit of the doubt. Why? The bits of creativity in the premise and the promo artwork. Because of that it might have potential, but the whole premise is one that really can go both ways: from great to terrible. It needs to be more than “girls fight each other with supernatural powers”. We’ve seen that so many times before. Give us some depth here.

Sailor Moon Crystal

Impressions: First of all I should exclaim that I’m not a Sailor Moon fan. My relationship with it was a weird one, because it was one of the series that I watched on Dutch television before I actually discovered the internet. However, it had just the bad luck to air at a really inconvenient time in the morning, right before Card Captor Sakura. I LOVED Card Captor Sakura, and in comparison Sailor Moon seemed just a cheap knock-off (I only learned later that it in fact was quite a bit older) with some annoying characters and a romance purposefully dragged itself out for ages. Not to mention that the network ended up cancelling giving Card Captor Sakura an even more impossible timeslot in favour of Sailor Moon. So that’s not the reason I’m looking forward to this. The reason I’m looking forward to this is that it’s the first ambitious shoujo series we’ve had in many years now. We seriously needed something to revitalize the genre, and Toei really seems to have allocated a big budget to make it happen. For that, I want this series to succeed. Not for Sailor Moon, but for the shoujo genre as a whole. It used to be one of my favorite genres, but it got completely pushed aside by the shounen genres to the point that the only shoujo shows we nowadays get are school series.

ALDNOAH.ZERO

Impressions: Yup, we’ve got a solid one here. The winner of the most creative website, and overall it’s got a really solid casting behind it with an original story by Gen Urobuchi, directed by Ei Aoki who is very consistent as a director (you may remember him from one of the Kara no Kyoukai movies and Fate Zero), the music from the guy who wrote the score for Shingeki no Kyojin and Kill la Kill (and Kalafina for the opening yay!). Yes, this is ambitious. The key deciding factor for this one will be the series composition: Gen isn’t gonna write it this time, someone else is. So who will it be? Katsuhiko Takayama, the guy who in the past adapted ef, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, Ga-Rei Zero, Hantsuki, only to afterwards completely lose it with Boku no Pico, Asobi ni Iku Yo, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, Majikoi, Sasami@Ganbaranai and Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. So, the matter for this series will entirely depend on one thing: does this guy still have it? Can he still write serious stories, or has his mind been diluted too much by writing senseless crap? I mean, if that’s well, then the rest of the creators can make something out of it. He is the one who will make or break this show.

Glasslip

Impressions: There was a time at which I worshipped Junji Nishimura, the guy behind Simoun, one of my favourite series in like, ever. Then came Kyou Kara Maou… and Nurarihyon no Mago… and Dog Days… and I really started to doubt this guy… however this time, I’ll bite. This guy is brilliant at original stories, which is exactly what this series is: he’s both writing and directing it so he should have an amount of control that should allow his talents to surface again after so many years (dear god, I feel old now that I realize that True Tears was already six years ago!)

Barakamon

Impressions: After many years of absence, Kenji Kawai is doing the soundtrack for another series! Awesome! And it’s quite an interesting slice of life series which really seems to be aiming to bring something new to the table. We know that it’s in able hands, with the director of Tokyo Magnitude,

Tokyo Ghoul

Impressions: Now this is an example of how you grab my attention. Promo art that stands out and immediately tells you that something is going to happen here. The premise may not say much, but we know that we’ve got ourselves a horror story, plus it’s made by people who are outside of the conventional anime business. The Shuhei Morita directed Freedom, which was actually a pretty good science fiction series, and he has done many other short indie films, rather than big titles. They also got an actual playwright in in order to adapt this series, rather than picking from the usual scriptwriters, and I’m really curious what difference he can bring to the table.

Zankyou no Tokyo

Impressions: Now this series screams Noitamina, this series understood it. It’s not even that the characters are teenagers that can distract from that. Here we have a series with a skilled and famous director, lots of production behind it, looking ambitious from all sides and dealing with actual current issues that are grounded in the real world, rather than just the fantasy that most anime series are stuck at. The trailer looks and sounds excellent, and with Shinichiro Watanabe being really busy this season, this series is something to look out for!

Space Dandy 2

Impressions: Two Shinichiro Watanabe series in one season. Holy balls this is going to be awesome. And with Space Dandy, we already know what kind of a series it is: every single episode is different. Shinichiro Watanabe can handle two series at the time because of how much freedom he can give out with this series: every episode is basically in the hands of a group of talented people, and they’re instructed to be as creative as possible. The first season already showed that that was a great combination, as long as you don’t expect the next Cowboy Bebop. However, I do wonder what the creators have in store for closure. The second season needs that, something to really leave behind a fantastic taste.

So, I’m just going to continue to write articles whenever I have inspiration. One thing I always loved doing is compile these previews for the upcoming season, and that still hasn’t changed. There are a few changes now though, because I don’t feel like going into detail about all of the crappy shows that come out every single time, so my entries for them are very much simplified in order to save time. Also, my standards have become much harsher. Series that I was previously willing to give a chance right now are most likely shows that I’m not interested in anymore, due to a huge amount of red flags showing.

For example, in the past I probably would have praised this season for at the very least not containing anything that is absolutely utter crap, but the problem with that is that it glosses over the fact that there is so much mediocrity coming out. The only silver lining I can offer is this: there are hardly any pointless sequels. At the very least there are a lot of attempts at new series, and the sequels that are there, are there for a reason. And in the end, there are a few series with a very good pedigree that I’m looking forward to.

Series that I Don’t Look Forward To

Sengoku Musou

Why I don’t like it: Sengoku Musou is yet another piece set in the sengoku era, just like the countless other shows that preceded it. It really looks like a generic clone of the other series: everyone has weird outfits, the focus is on fighting. Nothing here looks like they put any effort in it.

Soul Eater Not

Why I don’t like it: I watched about half of Soul Eater. When I saw this promo material, I really had to do a double-take. I mean dear god, how much can you moefy something? The original soul eater had its own style, but this looks just like a generic cloned show about cute girls. The trailer’s even worse. Everything looks generic.

Baby Steps

Why I don’t like it: Boring show about this guy who has no skills and joins a tennis club. The same thing we’ve seen many times before, just with tennis. The only mitigating factor is that it’s got a really good direction for the action: Masahiko Murata, but he won’t be able to save this premise.

Haikyu!!

Why I don’t like it: Yet another high school sports series, this time with volleyball. And really, the premise looks to be incredibly generic again without much creativity. At this point a sports series really needs to come with something really impressive in order to be able to beat the standard that was set in the genre a few years ago. The director of Cuticle Detective Inaba is not one to do it.

Brynhildr in the Darkness

Why I don’t like it: Okay while it’s good that Arms is finally stepping away from doing these crappy fanservice shows, this one looks like a boring “boy meets supernatural girl with loads of mysteries”-story, without much more. The trailer has good music, but put the focus too much on bad action and a pointless swimsuit.

Mekaku City Actors

Why I don’t like it: Oh hey. Did you know that Shaft really likes NEET? Well, if you didn’t: here is another one! Obviously my Shaft-bias is working against this series, though granted it does look slightly better than their usual series. The show has promise if the right people were behind it, not Shaft.

La Corda D’Oro Blue Sky

Why I don’t like it: The first la Corda D’Oro was already incredibly contrived and so it really did not need a second season. For those who don’t know: it’s about this talentless girl who receives a magical violin that makes her able to play beautifully and make her compete with the top music students at her school. The same creators as the first season also seem to be behind this one.

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou

Why I don’t like it: Brains Base doing romance again, but it doesn’t really look promising in any way. A generic premise without much to say about the different characters other than that they look boring, Apparently it’s from the people who adapted Blood Lad, so if you liked that one you might give it a chance.

Futsuu no Joshikousei ga Locodol

Why I don’t like it: The director of KissXsis doing a 4koma adaptation about two idol high school girls. Do I need to say more? Moving on.

Blade & Soul

Why I don’t like it: Gonzo doing another MMORPG adaptation. You know, if this was the old Gonzo then I would have been slightly interested, but this? This looks like your generic battle anime with silly powers and no substance. However, what is the director of Steins;Gate doing there? Maybe this could- no, wait. The trailer contained some really bad action so never mind.

Inu Neko Hour

Why I don’t like it: All 47 Japanese prefecutres…. as dogs. Okay, I thought that this would be a random catgirl show when I first saw the title. At least it’s creative. It’s in no way going to be a good series, but at least it’s creative.

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei

Why I don’t like it: This series has this one line in its premise when I looked it up on ANN: “the young woman who feels far more for her brother than sibling love”. Yeah. It’s one of those shows. Beyond that, it’s a high school show about magic users, so yet again another really bland and boring premise.

Black Bullet

Why I don’t like it: Boring fighting show with a ridiculously complicated reasoning in order to try and explain why the fate of humanity rests on a bunch of teenagers. It fails. Great background art though.

Akuma no Riddle

Why I don’t like it: Another ridiculously stupid premise: there is a school, where one of the students is targetted by 12 assassins who all disguise themselves as random students. Lots of early warning signs, like loads of snarky characters and character-designs that look exactly the same aside from just some hair swapped around. Unfortunately it looks like just another battle show without much creativity.

Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii

Why I don’t like it: I think the best way to describe this one, is if you see it as the director of Fushigi Yuugi doing a similar series. The premise of a princess being sent off to a young king who somehow did a really good job at conquering at least has that same feeling. The premise does seem rather juvenile, though and I don’t have much hope for it.

Kanojo ga Flag o Oraretara

Why I don’t like it: The director of Space Brothers doing a crappy harem show. Well, so much for him then.

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky

Why I don’t like it: The one thing that this series has going for it is that the people adapting it have more than a decade of experience. An RPG adaptation isn’t necessarily bad, if enough things work well. However, the central focus of this series seems to be fighting with alchemy. Boring! Been there, done that!

Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?

Why I don’t like it: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu is working on this project, and he is a great writer who uses lots of emotion in his storytelling. If only the story he’s going to tell this time was a bit more than “a girl works at a cafe and cute girls drop by”. I mean have some variety at the very least: advertise with a diverse cast. Why does everyone have to be a cute girl on the promotional material? In this way everyone just looks like each other!

No Game, No Life

Why I don’t like it: OH MY GOD, THE EYE CANDY! Anyways, this one probably is the most interesting show in the list that I’m not interested in, it looks good, it’s got a very good director and adapter. I would have given it potential, if it wasn’t for a few red lights that I saw here. First of all, there’s the overabundance of cute girls. They try to hide it, but when you look at the trailer you see lots of shots just being cute girls demonstrating flashy powers. Been there, done that. The premise of this show is that all violence has been outlawed. That’s definitely not something that you can gather from the trailer. The whole premise of this show depends on the games that nations need to play in order to compete with each other. If you can make these games creative and inspired, then that would make a good series, but you don’t do that by focusing way too much on these flashy powers. That’s boring!

One Week Friends

Why I don’t like it: This show. It’s a cross between 50 First Dates and Kimi ni Todoke! It’s probably going to be the best school series on this list, but it lacks a bit of ambition if I have to be really honest here. You can make this work really well, but only if you really put in the effort, which I don’t think these creators will be able to.

Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to

Why I don’t like it: Yet another ridiculously complicated excuse to have two characters frisk up each other and just show some touching some boobs. I mean I’m not denying that some mangaka indeed draw inspiration from their girl/boyfriends for their sex scenes and all, but that doesn’t mean that you have to make an entire series about it. Here’s an idea: how about we make a series that’s about a guy and a girl, who are in a healthy relationship and are living together after about a year of dating? Outrageous right? You can show all the sex you want!

Kamigami no Asobi ~Ludere deorum~

Why I don’t like it: Ahem. Let me quote the premise for this series, because this is too priceless not to share: “Kusanagi Yui is ordered by Zeus, a god and the headmaster of a school he created, to teach the meaning of love to young and handsome gods. The reason he has for doing this is to cancel the negative effects of the weakening bond between the world of the divine and the world of the humans.” – This has got to be the most ridiculously far-fetched premise I have ever seen for a bishie series, and with stuff like Uta Prince already existing that has to say something!

Series I Am Looking Forward To

Fuun Ishin Dai Shogun

Impressions: This one looks like crap, and it probably will be. However I do want to put your attention to the two main people in charge, who are two of the biggest trolls walking around in the anime business. Takashi Watanabe, I know he is intelligent. Otherwise he could not have directed something as Boogiepop Phantom and Starship Operators. Most of the time though, he just acts like a complete idiot. Dai Sato goes the same: this guy is a really talented writer with a drive to create unique works of art, however has been known to sell out if he’s assigned on a project just to make money. It also doesn’t really help that the art for this one is horrible.

Hitsugi no Chaika

Impressions: Yes, there is hope! This series can be seen as the spiritual successor to Scrapped Princess: it’s based on a novel by Scrapped Princess’ author and the director is also going to return. Now while I wasn’t the biggest fan of Scrapped Princess, I did appreciate what it was trying to do. It just could have been done better, so here’s to a second chance. The premise of focusing on a war veteran after a war has ended? That’s actually pretty nice. Simple, but you can do stuff with that. I do have to put a question mark to the promo art though: that puts the emphasis on fighting with magical powers. Don’t do that! Focus on the psychological aspect!

Nanana’s Buried Treasure

Impressions: Well, it IS a Noitamina about teenagers, and granted this does look very sketchy, there are other parts of the story that seem like they have ambition in them. For that I’m interested. Kanta Kamei is a solid director after what he has shown with Silver Spoon and Bunny Drop, and my inner mystery-fan might find this one interesting.

Selector WIXOSS

Impressions: Mari Okada again, this time accompanied by the director of Steins;Gate and JC Staff. This can work. The trailer looks quite impressive: it knows its atmosphere, and this seems to become quite a psychological series that ties these six girls together. I see potential here to become a very interesting series, and Mari Okada can actually go all-out psycho here. Note: a good story takes balance: you can’t just go psycho all the time and think you can get away with it.

Knights of Sidonia

Impressions: Sadayuki Murai is one of the best people at adapting stories currently in the business. He brilliantly adapted Mouryou no Hako, the final two seasons of Natsume Yuujinchou and Boogiepop Phantom for their anime format. This time it’s a manga written by the creator of Blame, which seems to be quite a famous manga, although I’ve never read it. It’s in full CG so the faces look a bit awkward, but the trailer has me intrigued and it looks very good. Just one thing: please let that girl do more than just hold the main character’s hand and get dragged along. If you do that then I’ll drop this show really quickly.

Captain Earth

Impressions: Do you know what this is? This is the creators of Star Driver making another series! Basically, what this means is the following: this will be a mecha-series made by people who haven’t been into the genre, and therefore aren’t the most familiar with most of its conventions, as seen with the Galactic Pretty Boy. What has me most interested here is that there are some people involved who can deliver some really great series. Bones is very solid as an animation studio, Takuya Igarashi directed Ashita no Nadja, and Ouran High School Host Club (series that really stood out in their presentation), while Yoji Enokido wrote Revolutionary Girl Utena, Redline and parts of FLCL, and Rahxephon. Yes, there is talent here! One side-note though: the visuals are boring and standard. The robot and characters look generic.

Ping Pong

Impressions: I said before: at this point sports series have to bring something very impressive to the table. These are the people to do it. The guy who wrote Tekkon Kinkreet and Masaaki Yuasa. Two people who have an amazing eye of bringing people to life. That’s what a series like this needs. The premise is generic here, so they’re going to have to do something very special here to make it work. But if anyone can, they will. The trailer already showed signs of potential.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Impressions: I remember how incredibly fun the first season of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure was. And the great thing is that every arc is significantly different, with different characters to do things with. This is the series you need to be at if you want over the top action, because it will deliver, and much, much more. It’s one of those series in which both the source material rocked, and the animation really managed to bring the characters alive. This will be chockful of adrenaline!

Mushishi: Zoku-Shou

Impressions: Well, what can really be said here? One of the best anime ever made, getting a second season in order to animate the rest of the manga chapters that the first season never got to, all by the same creators and the same director. Hiroshi Nagahama is a brilliant director who screws every possible convention in order to get the best out of his work, no matter what. There of course is the danger of expecting too much, so I’m not going to expect this to blow my mind. And I’ll try to get to the 1-Hour special as soon as possible.

This season. It feels like a spring or autumn season is coming. Perhaps not a big one, but I’m surprised by the amount of solid titles that are coming out. There are quite a number of series I’m looking out for, plus also a few that already have the potential to become the best of the year unless the competition really ramps it up. We’re in for an interesting season, that’s the least. Unfortunately, there also are a lot of really bland series coming up. It’s a season of extremes.

Wake Up Girls

Impressions: Here is one to probably steer away from: Yutaka Yamamoto, a guy who basically is just one big troll, is going to direct a movie. It’s about seven high school girls. Who become idols in order to save a production company. Yes, he actually came up with this. It’s not an adaptation. Out of all the possible plots that he could have picked, he picked one of the most generic ones. Heck, with Fractale he actually tried to show that he had some ambition.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate

Impressions: This is going to be Gonzo’s new project, and it’s helmed by the director of Afro Samurai and the X-Men. What this basically means is that Bayonetta will be a movie about eye candy: throwing as much visual stuff at the screen and hope that the audience won’t be bored enough to realize that the storyline is pretty rubbish. It’s also got the screenplay from the guy who wrote the X-Men anime, which only reaffirms this.

Hunter X Hunter: Last Mission

Impressions: Here is the interesting thing about this movie: it’s going to be adapted by the guy who also adapted the 1999 version. Including the OVA, the part of the franchise that managed to receive the best and most heartful adaptation so far. That is very promising, because even though this guy isn’t perfect (he also was behind the much more lackluster Greed Island Arc that just felt lazily adapted), he knows how to do it, and how to bring the best out of the characters. Here’s to hoping that he can do it again. The director will be completely different though, so who knows where that’ll end up?

Amazing Twins

Impressions: Sato Junichi and Mari Okada. A combination between these two prolific creators was bound to happen someday, and it comes in the form of this quirky-looking OVA about some girls with superpowers. It looks out of the league for both of them, as this seems to be a pure action series, but that does provide opportunities. Both of them are ridiculously talented when they get something right, now the thing will be whether they can make this happen for this set of short OVAs as well.

Majocco Shimai no Yoyo to Nene

Impressions: Here is another one to look out for. Not just because of Ufo Table, but also because they put their best director on it: Takayuki Hirao. This guy screams alternative and he has guts to go where nobody else dares to go. He directed the fifth and best of the Kara no Kyoukai Movies, and was the only one who was deranged enough to try and animate a story by Junji Ito. His storytelling skills are sometimes a bit wonky and for that he will need good source material. But it looks like a nice and ambitious family movie.

Mouretsu Pirates

Impressions: Mouretsu Pirates was a bit of a weird series that got progressively better with every single arc thanks to some very good build-up. Tatsuo Sato is a great director and he will be both writing and directing this movie, which means that he has a lot of control about its content, and that’s very promising for a movie.

Buddha 2

Impressions: Buddha 1 was amazing. A brilliant adaptation of Osamu Tezuka‘s classic. So of course I’m looking forward to the continuation! The director is going to be different for this one, though: Toshiaki Komura, someone with less experience than the first one and who is mostly known for directing Precure series and awful fighting stuff like Kinnukuman and Ring ni Kakero. I hope that he has a good team to back him up, because a story like this deserves people who handle it with care.

Tiger & Bunny The Rising

Impressions: So yeah, a lot of people probably noticed that I’m not posting movie reviews anymore. I really want to pick up movies again, however I need to find a way to actually sit down and watch long stuff again. I’m currently battling my own laziness and concentration for it, because I still need to watch the first movie before checking this one out. And the second movie too has the brilliant director of Yoshitomo Yonetani behind it, who is a master of chaos.

Kaguya Hime Monogatari

Impressions: This is one of my top movies to watch out for this winter. It’s probably going to be Isao Takahata‘s last full movie ever. And for those who don’t know him: he’s the one who co-founded Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki. Out of all of the directors I have ever witnessed in anime, he is by far the most realistic one. Nobody has ever been able to top his feeling of characters since the late sixties when he got his first directing jobs. It causes his movies to be very slow, but I’d still like to see his talents one more time.

Mushishi

Impressions: Talk has been going on for quite a while now that there would be more Mushishi, and with this it has finally be announced: a one-hour special on January 4th. Reuniting all of the past staff that gave us one of the most memorable series out there. However, I am disappointed a bit: I had secretly hoped an entire new television series: there seems to be enough manga material left for that. However, I guess that you can’t have everything. A one-hour special is awesome enough.

Upcoming TV-Series:

Saikin, Imouto no Yousu ga Chotto Okaishiin Da Ga.

Impressions: This has to be one of the most ridiculously stupid, insulting and contrived premises to try and make incest acceptable.

Oneechan ga Kita

Impressions: This will have 3-minute episodes, and it seems strangely like older-sister incest. Next.

Maken-Ki Two

Impressions: Oh god, the director of Seikon no Qwaser and Xebec have found each other. Prepare for porn!

No-Rin

Impressions: Oh my god, Shin Oonuma is getting lazier and lazier. I mean, when you thought that he couldn’t go lower than with that Fate/Stay night ripoff, with this show they basically just putting up a sign saying “Otaku! Buy this!” I mean, can we please move away again from the idea that “big boobs” are a character trait?

Wake Up Girls

Impressions: I’ve talked about this one above: Yutaka Yamamoto could have picked any premise he would have liked (he has the ego to get away with things, we know that), and he goes for a generic idol series with seven cute girls. Yay for originality!

Nisekoi

Impressions: So many red flags going up here, it’s ridiculous. Right after finishing the Monogatari series Shinbo is immediately going to continue with another series. It’s a romance series, adapted from Shounen Jump, meaning that there is no way in hell that they’re going to be able to stuff the entire series into just 13 episodes, and it’ll probably drag out as hell due to the weekly format of that magazine. Also: “during their search they begin to dislike each other”… yeah right.

Robot Girls Z

Impressions: This one seems like Toei’s lesser department doing another series, because it completely lacks any sort of creativity whatsoever. It’s just another series that turns things into cute girls, only this time it’s classic robot series. This is not how you do a homage! This is just blatant ass-kissing. You’re putting these girls at places they totally don’t belong! The director and series composition are both really meh: both people who seem lazy and not really inspired to make something good out of this one.

Go! Go! 575

Impressions: I’m thinking: how on earth can they make this work? No staff has been announced yet, but even then: it’s two characters who read Haiku. Who on earth can make an enjoyable series that lasts an entire season out of that?

Chuuninbyou Demo Koi ga Shitai II

Impressions: I’ve ranted about Kyoto Animation before, but let me quickly explain why I dropped Chuuninbyou quite early: all of their characters look the same! They always keep relying on the same archetypes and gags over and over, and even when you think that they’re going to try something different, the first episode airs and they find some way to make their characters look way too much like their previous iterations. I’m of course not denying that things can get better later on, but the question is: do I want to pain myself sitting through the same characters over and over again? Right now my answer to that is no.

Magical Warfare

Impressions: Another boring premise with silly promo art that fails to stand out whatsoever. It’s a light novel adaptation, which raises even more red flags. The only bright point is that the staff behind this one is quite good: the director of Kaiji, Agaki and One Outs (but also Iron Man) and the series composition of Hajime no Ippo (but also Kampfer and Kamen no Maid Guy). And those negative examples are unfortunately what I’m fearing here: yes these guys have adapted some wonderful stuff. But they made that with great premises. Not bland and boring crap like this.

Super Sonico the Animation

Impressions: This one has me puzzled: so it’s a mascot of Nitro+, and it’s getting its own anime. If it’s going to be good, then it’s probably the first of its kind to actually deliver, because the potential for failure is incredibly high here. The problem is corporate: of course she’s a mascot so you can’t make her look bad or anything, she needs to be constantly appealing and you can’t do anything risky with her because it might lead to bad views about Nitro+. The creators behind it aren’t that bad or anything, but I really doubt that they can do anything with this.

Hamatora

Impressions: When the page loaded and I could only see a few vague hints, I could already tell immediately that this would be Seiji Kishi’s new series. It’s painfully obvious, and usually when you can recognize a director’s personal style, it’s good. With him though, I see him blatantly recycling some of the ideas he used in Daganronpa and Devil Survivor. I mean come on: over the past year he has done three series and one movie. This guy is overworked and needs to stop right now. The worst thing is that the premises of his series aren’t that bad. It’s just the execution that keeps on getting worse.

Neppu Kairiku Bushi Road

Impressions: It’s probably a coincidence, but I love how they decided to call the deadly menace that destroys humanity Shinbo (hey, it’s not my idea!) – But yeah, the plot here is pretty generic and pretty stupid (a princess of refugees seems very much like a silly attempt to make that character more special than what she actually is). The director of Needless and Maid Guy also makes me fear about whether this show will be more than cheap entertainment.

Mikakunin de Shinkoukei

Impressions: This one seems like the standard premise for a sitcom, and nothing more. So slice of life that depends on the antics of three characters, and possibly a lot of cuteness. I personally don’t think that it will work. Perhaps one episode will be nice, but it won’t have enough material for 13 episodes. Unless you like the 4-koma adaptation genre, I see this one as instantly forgettable.

Nobunagun

Impressions: When I first saw the promo material, my reaction was that it was a really artsy project that probably would rely a lot on being cool. Then I read the premise and this show lost all of the hope that I had for it. The plot of this show is one that I hope will die out very soon, because it really is a dead horse at this point. And as for the staff behind it… Nobuhiro Kondo previously directed Kekkou Kamen and Keroro Gunsou… two series that I haven’t seen before, but I doubt whether that kind of experience can really make something good out of this series. Hiroshi Yamaguchi though… this guy is a good writer when he wants to be. He really needs to try though, in order to make something workable out of a bad premise like this.

Sakura Trick

Impressions: Kenichi Ishikura is an episode director who previously worked at Shaft, and then went on to direct the umpth Da Capo series (which was really forgettable). But yeah, we have a lesbian romance series, which unfortunately still remains a series about a bunch of high school girls who all look the same, stuffed together. I like yuri, but I like it because of how good the stories of yuri-series on average tend to be. But I’m not sure whether just the addition of romance will be enough to lift this bland premise up from mediocrity.

Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha

Impressions: I’m on the fence about this one. The thing is that it’s a romance series that has the potential when done the right way. It also seems to want to take itself seriously. And it does have the director of Otona Joshi no Anime Time I. However it is a manga adaptation, and Machida Touko isn’t really good at adapting things. With that, I really fear that this will end up as a generic romance show that ends inconclusively and doesn’t go anywhere.

Wizard Barristers: Benmashi Cecil

Impressions: Okay, and the biggest WTF of the season in terms of staff is going to this series. Yasuomi Umetsu, the guy who is currently doing a pretty bad job with Galilei Donna, is going to follow it up IMMEDIATELY with a new series. Animated by Arms of all things, the single worst major production company out there. I… have no idea what he’s doing. He’s again going to write it from scratch and direct it at the same time. What puzzles me is how he got away with it, and why on earth he’s not doing a better job if he’s got so much ambition. I mean, this is not something you do normally in order to get a paycheck: he really needs to have wanted to do this in order to suddenly come out of nowhere with two completely original series. Why did Galilei Donna have such bad writing then? And if it’s apparently so easy to just get yourself an original series, why aren’t more people doing it?

Witch Craft Works

Impressions: Tsutomu Mizushima’s biggest problem is that he’s overworked: he doesn’t take his time for his series, despite being a really good director. Thankfully there has been some time since Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san, but I wonder whether it is enough. I mean, he needs to be really sharp again in order to make this premise consistently funny for an entire season, because it’s a school magic series. A very overcrowded genre, especially when it’s about this helpless male being escorted and protected by a cool and powerful female. What can they do to make this fresh? For one, the chemistry between the main couple NEEDS to be good. If it’s even remotely bland, then this show has no chance to remain interesting.

Sekai Seifuku ~ Bouryaku no Zvezda

Impressions: Tensai Okamura is coming with a new original series, combined with A-1. That sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, the thing with him is that he’s a hit or miss director, but when he hits, he really hits hard with stuff like Darker than Black and Stink Bomb, but he has also written series that… didn’t really go anywhere. I really want to like this one… but just look at the promo art. Obviously there is THAT outfit, but I have another issue with it: EVERYONE is trying to make some quirky facial expression. That to me, is a sign of trying too hard. Adding too much of one spice while not caring about the rest.

Noragami

Impressions: This one looks like it might actually be quite interesting to watch if it’s handled well. Of course, it is an adaptation, and to me this sounds like a story that will have a hard time fitting into its time-frame. Deko Akao is quite a flawed writer. However, the director seems to be a young talent who has been running around Bones, and with this he’s getting his first chance to direct a full series. The website for this really screams that budget has been put into it. So yeah Deko Akao, don’t be lazy this time: give this story the attention it deserves. Use your head and think.

Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta

Impressions: Remember Toaru Hikuushi e no Tsuioku about a fighter pilot who has to escort a princess? Well, the author wrote more novels, and this time we’re getting a TV-series about it. I’m fine with that: planes and fighter pilots are a pretty interesting topic to make a series about, and with this we have a bit more time to delve into the characters and the setting than just one movie. The director of Heroic Age and Rinne no Lagrange seems solid, as long as he won’t have to write his own story, but he knows his characterization at least. Shinichi Inotsune has adapted a variety of series, including good ones like Ristorante Paradiso. This has potential to work out.

Nobunaga the Fool

Impressions: Nobunaga… oh god not another one, please let this guy rest for onc.. HOLY CRAP THAT LOOKS AWESOME. I mean, this show. This is what he needed, because it dares to do something new with the guy. This is the kind of premise that is so ridiculously stupid that it might actually work, and Shoji Kawamori, who is strangely writing a series for once, rather than sitting at the position of chief director, is one of the people crazy enough to actually make it work. His ego will make sure that no idea is too crazy. And combined with that we have the director of Kiss Dum, which will make this an entire trainwreck. But it will be glorious!

Houzuki no Reitetsu

Impressions: Wit Studio seems to be split off from Production IG, and it looks like they took a lot of talent with them, and they actually came with quite an interesting premise to animate again, this time without Production IG at their side. It’s a premise that dares to be different. It’s an adaptation, but it’s the kind of adaptation that I can see would fit within an anime timeslot. It’s got a solid director who knows how to shoot stuff, and the writer wrote for a chunk of good series that Production IG did back in the days, so these people can pull it off. Now all that’s left is to hope that the manga this is based on is good.

Silver Spoon Second Season

Impressions: Noitamina next season will rock, with the second halves of both Samurai Flamenco and Silver Spoon. Silver Spoon is a series that takes a very honest, yet also silly and endearing, look at farming, and the first episode was very effective at that. Like full metal alchemist, everything was calculated and let’s hope that the second season will be as enjoyable.

Pupa

Impressions: Okay, so it got delayed one season. That still doesn’t change that I’m looking forward what is promising to be the first good show with incest in a long, long while. Tomomi Mochizuki is one of the best directors that Deen could have gotten, and it’s great to see him in the director’s chair again, and if that means a few delays in order to get things just right, then I’m willing to wait. I’m really looking forward to how disturbing they can make this one.

Space Dandy

Impressions: Space Dandy isn’t just awesome because it’s helmed by Shinichiro Watanabe. No, it also reunites parts of the Cowboy Bebop writing staff: Dai Sato and Keiko Nobumoto. The three brains behind one of the most solidly executed and celebrated anime ever are finally coming together again to make something new, and let’s see what 15 years of extra experience has brought to them. This will be their big chance to come with something big again. They’ve got 26 episodes, they’ve got the talents of the animators of Bones behind them. The character-designer behind Cowboy Bebop, and I can already see a ton of different musical artists who will be behind the soundtrack. This will be big.

My impression of the upcoming season? Holy crap! There are tons of different series to watch out for! Lots of big names will return, and we will get a ton of series with amazing animation. This could very easily become the best season of the year, especially in terms of TV-Series. To give an indication: there are a whopping seven series that I’m psyched for to come out. It’s rare for a season to get to that number the last couple of years.

Movies and OVAs to watch out for:
Here is a list of the upcoming OVAs and Movies that will be up for release that interest me. In this case though, I can just leave out the “OVAs”-part of this description and title, because there are none! Seriously, there is not a single interesting OVA on the schedule at this point. Only a bunch of random harem OVAs that are the umpth instalment of series that have been going on for ages.

Persona 3 The Movie #1: Spring of Birth

Impressions: AIC doing another Persona thingy, but thankfully Seiji Kishi is only the supervisor, and the director is someone else. However, the question remains whether this will be an as soulless adaptation as Persona 4. The problem I have is that the new director is the director of Bakuman, which for me also had huge pacing issues. Heck the creators know that they’re trying to push a huge game into a bunch of movies, right? They know that you need to take some creative liberties in order to make everything fit, right?

Ano hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.

Impressions: Okay, the big question: will the Anohana movie be a recap movie, or not? And that’s the tricky thing here: you can’t say for sure. It’s an alternative retelling, showing the story from the perspective of Menma, one of the major characters. You can take such a premise everywhere, because some of the series actually DID show things from her perspective. It all depends on how lazy you get, or how ambitious you get. This can become anything inbetween a recap and a new insight into a heart-wrenching albeit annoying character.

Captain Harlock

Impressions: Yes, there will be a new CG Harlock movie. The original Harlock was all about melancholy in space, and judging by the trailer, the creators seem to be going for the same effect, albeit a bit more action-packed (the original series had action, but the pacing was very slow). The graphics look very good, but the biggest challenge will be for this series to get the characters right. Can it evade the dreaded botox-faces that plague just about every3D movie? Can it actually balance out the characters who are constantly gloomy? The director will be the guy who directed Appleseed, and that was not his strongest forte!

Code Geass – Boukoku no Akito

Impressions: Hell yeah, finally the second instalment is up, with my favorite director behind the scenes in an original story where they apparently got a lot of freedom to do what they wanted. Now, Kazuki Akane usually really gets fired off when his stories enter their second halves, but until that we still get to see his impeccable sense of action.

Gekijou-ban Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Shinpen: Hangyaku no Monogatari

Impressions: So after two recap movies, the third and final Madoka Magica movie will have an original story. From the beginning I have said to not do this, because the story of Madoka Magica fits perfectly into just 12 episodes. It ha a very good ending that was very conclusive. But still, the creators and Urobuchi Gen in particular still can make something borderline classic out of it with the right mindset. One of the biggest issues will be that Gen’s ego needs to win from Shinbo’s.

Patema Inverted

Impressions: Aack! I still need to watch the prequel OVA that came out for this movie a few years ago. Anyway, this is the full instalment. And yes, it’s by the guy who made Time of Eve. This is a guy who likes to take full control of his series, and he does nearly everything: the direction, the script, he wrote the original story. One to watch out for.

Upcoming TV-Series:
Here is a list of all of the upcoming TV-series. Again, minus the kiddie series because I’ve gotten really tired of saying the same thing over and over again. Excluding those series there are about 37 series coming up in total. A very healthy number.

Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!

Impressions: Here we go with ARMS and their porn shows again. Moving on.
Trailer Impressions: Har har har, it’s funny because it looks and sounds like they’re having sex.

Diabolik Lovers

Impressions: … this is just Uta Prince but then with Vampires! Holy crap, Zexcs have fallen as well? Really, I don’t mind bishies and all, but would you at the very least try to look like you’re at least trying to do something new here. This show is just a carbon copy of shows that girls like, lumped together without any more thought put into it. Also, apparently this one will be directed by a character designer, so the goal really seems to be to make the bishies as pretty as possible, it seems.
Trailer Impressions: And yet, the bishies just look like every other cast of bishie out there. Also these vocalists can’t sing!

Infinite Stratos 2

Impressions: I remember what a giant troll the first season was. “Interesting science fiction premise? HA Screw that! Here are some harem hi-jinks!” – And yet, it sold. It sold ridiculously well, so here we have the inevitable second season. So yeah, don’t get fooled that it’s by the director of Macross Frontier or anything: this is a very blatant harem show with some mechas thrown in. It’s a shame, because Hikaru Nanase is one of my favorite soundtrack composers.

Tesagure! Bukatsu-mono

Impressions: Crappy flash show about a random high school club alert. Moving on!

Gundam Build Fighters

Impressions: I usually omit kiddie shows because I pretty much end up saying the same thing over and over about them and they are totally irrellevant unless you’re under the age of 14, but I do want to make an exception here, because it’s sad to see that Gundam has now devolved into one as well: a series that seems solely designed to sell toys, or Gundam model kits in this case. The problem is also that this being Gundam, Sunrise put some good people on it: Kenji Nagasaki directed No.6, which was well directed aside from its ending, and Yosuke Kuroda has penned many good original stories. I have seen this pattern way too much though: it’s a kiddie show and with that in mind not even the most talented people like Dai Sato can make something remotely interesting.
Trailer Impressions: Fancy transformation sequences! Buy our toys!

Freezing Vibration

Impressions: I watched the first episodes of the first freezing. It’s basically lots of gore and fanservice, plus a bunch of stupid characters. Girls pick fights for no reason, and it was really geared to go into the harem route. There really was nothing redeeming about it aside from some neat action here and there perhaps. Moving on.
Trailer Impressions: Okay, I have to grant it: the soundtrack was nice. But what were those famous artworks doing right in the middle of those girls fighting each other?

Unbreakable Machine Doll

Impressions: I hate how some series literally force the setting of a school onto their stories, even if this doesn’t make any sense. Why are students competing for a title named “Greatest Puppeteer”? What happened to the people who graduated that school then? Are they all dead? Beyond that, we have the director of Queen’s Blade and a bunch of hentai series, together with the one who adapted Persona 4. This one may look pretty, but that’s all there is to it, it seems.
Trailer Impressions: Okay, it’s very flashy at the very least, but beyond that…

Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru

Impressions: You know what the thing is? In the right hands this premise can become comedic gold. But no, a cute girl has to fall on his lap, yadda yadda, boobs. I mean, you just need to look at the promo art to know instantly where the mind of this series lies, and the director of Rosario to Vampire doesn’t make things better.
Trailer Impressions: Oh my god! Everything about this trailer is annoying!

Outbreak Company

Impressions: This is one of those stories that just seems to drown completely into its own meta. A cute idea that I fear is never really going to work because it tries to be way too tongue-in-cheek. There is giving a wink to your audience, and then there is just blatant ass-kissing. I also don’t expect much of the staff. They’re pretty standard, and Naruhisa Arakawa has a lot of experience… doing pretty mediocre adaptations.

Valvrave the Liberator 2

Impressions: Oh god, there is more. There is an entire season more of this. I’m not going to watch it. It started off entertaining enough, but as soon as it started taking itself seriously the fun quickly died, and then it only got worse. This is a series that aims to shock its audience, while not caring about anything such as a plot or anything.

Meganebu!

Impressions: They actually made a show about glasses. I mean, this is just bizarre. I only included one of the characters’ descriptions in the synopsis, but they are all equally cheesy. In fact, this was so cheesy that it became hilarious. Oh, this show will be bad, but at least it’s going to be bad in a way that we haven’t seen before.

Log Horizon

Impressions: I had to do a double-take when I read the premise. Why am I reading the premise of Sword Art Online here? It’s also originally written by Maoyuu’s original author. I didn’t like Maoyuu, but I’m not sure whether that was because of the story itself, or because of how it was just handled poorly. Anyway, Shinji Ishihara directed Fairy Tail and Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou, which mostly stand out with their action. Toshizo Nemoto also worked on Tokyo Majin Gakuen, although he also did Dog & Scissors and Inu X Boku. All adaptations that had their pacing issues. Thankfully Yasuharu Takanashi is an excellent composer. This seems to be an ambitious project for Satelight and they’re already set on 26 episodes, so this will probably a show with high production values, and a bad storyline. So yeah, pretty much Sword Art Online II.

Walkure Romanze

Impressions: It’s such a shame to see actually talented creators being assigned to… series like this. I mean you can’t get anything out of a premise like this unless you really try. The thing is though, that Kazuyuki Fudeyasu and Yusuke Yamamoto: they both actually managed to make very entertaining series about series with hopeless premises: Milky Holmes and B Gata H Kei respecively. With this series, they need that experience more than ever.
Trailer Impressions: Had some silly shots, but overall this seems still too dull.

Kuroko no Baske 2

Impressions: Kuroko’s basketball is a seires that I didn’t continue watching. Why? I guess it was because it’s a shounen jump adaptation: these things tend to go on for ages, and unless they’re really god right away I’m not really motivated to spend time on them. The first two episodes that I saw were okay, and had some nice basketball matches, but I saw little in terms of variety to keep up with it for longer. And yeah, with this it’ll probably have 52 episodes. That’s too much for me to give it a second chance.

Non Non Biyori

Impressions: Basically, life in the countryside as seen from a bunch of fifth-graders. It’s Silver Link, but it does have the director of Kokoro Connect (that guy from Bee-Train who moved over), so who knows? It’ll be charming, but will it be charming enough to be worth watching?
Trailer Impressions: At the very least this does not feel as obnoxious as Silver Link series usually do. Very mellow, but that’s fine. It’s not trying too hard to be funny like most other shows of this genre are.

Neppu Kairiku Bushi Road

Impressions: This is a weird one. It’s basically a commercial for a random company out there, in the same way that Infinite Stratos and Fantasista Doll were, however those two series looked like sell-outs. this one… it looks different. It’s this strange project that has been announced like ten years ago at this point, and only now got picked up again, which also intrigues me. But yeah, at the end of the day it does have the director of Needless and Kamen no Maid Guy. These are two series that weren’t necessarily sell-outs, but were full of dumb action and fanservice humour.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel

Impressions: It’s a bit of a shame that Seiji Kishi is doing this series, but at the very least this isn’t another game adaptation. The thing is that the characters here seem colourful, and fun, the science fiction story is clichéd, but it sounds like it has potential. I just don’t know whether I want to trust Seiji Kishi with this.. There are so many better directors.
Trailer Impressions: This contained quite a bit of animation, but ultimately all that it did was show a bunch of characters or things unleashing their flashy powers. that should not be the meat of the story!

Gingitsune

Impressions: What I miss here is ambition. Really, this show seems fine, but I detect very little reasons to keep watching it if all the lead girl is going to do is help a bunch of people. It’s going to need to be very genuine in order to set itself apart from the series that are already there as well. It does help that it has some good staff behind it though. Shin Misawa has like two decades of experience, and the same goes for Hiroshi Yamaguchi (although their series do range from good to bad across the entire spectrum). I can’t comment much on the original mangaka because she only seems to have done one thing before.

Phi Brain 3

Impressions: Here you have it. The series that I never thought would get a second season. Let alone a third! And technically, it doesn’t need one: all season all have a beginning and end. I’m still not sure who in their right mind green-lighted all of this, but the thing remains that it had some really good characters, even though it did waste A LOT of time through its airtime. I also really hope that Sato Junichi is going to return as the director again, which helped a lot with the first two seasons, but I can’t yet see his name among the staff. In any case though, the promo art is full of fabulous characters again, so let’s hope that this time things will get a bit more varied.

Tokyo Ravens

Impressions: The impression that I get from this series is that it seems decent, though juvenile. The whole premise is one that we’ve seen over and over again, the promo art is badly drawn, and don’t get me started about how this is a SCHOOL supernatural fantasy series. What also doesn’t get my hopes up is that the director of Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka is involved here, though granted that had its moments. It’s also going to depend on whether the original source material is good or not.
Trailer Impressions: Okay, this wasn’t actually half-bad. I like the music a lot, the direction works out quite well. It’s still very juvenile though. That will probably be a big problem.

Magi: The Kingdom of Magic

Impressions: Ah, the second season of Magi. It’s a show that I wanted to finish, but in the end couldn’t. Getting busier is one of the reasons, but it also just wasn’t interesting enough to warrant to continue. The characters were compelling, but it lacked genuine tension and at times it seemed to be trying too hard to be dark and edgy. So yeah, I’m not going to watch this one, but props to those who kept on with it.
Trailer Impressions: Nice eye-candy, as expected.

Ace of Diamond

Impressions: Here we have a series with… a unique staff listing. We have Madhouse and Production IG collaborating (when was the last time that that happened, aside from those movies that consist out of tiny different shorts), about a bunch of kids who play baseball and being directed by the director of Polar Bear Cafe. Well, if that one baseball episode of Polar Bear Cafe was an indication then at least the baseball scenes will get well animated, but it remains a weird match-up. My big worry is Takeshi Konuta, who previously adapted Library War, which really was not an example of how to do an adaptation right. Furthermore, baseball series have a really high standard, after Touch, Cross Game, One Outs and Ookiku Furikabutte. You can’t just make a baseball series about hard work and guts and hope that that’s all you need to do.

Strike the Blood

Impressions: Silver Link doesn’t exactly have the best track record with me, but who knows/ They did make Kokoro Connect. What strikes me most here is that it’s simple, and just focused on the interplay between the two main characters. They just have to get those two characters right and they’ll at least have an enjoyable series. Big problem here is Hiroyuki Yoshino who is trying to make a soap opera out of everything whenever he gets the chance, though luckily this is a light novel adaptation, rather than an original story. The guy who wrote them also wrote Asura Crying, which despite the bad direction did originally have some potential. Both directors have both done little in terms of directing an entire series, aside from two series that were doomed to fail, so let’s see if they’re a bit more motivated with a series with a bit more potential.

BlazBlue Alter Memory

Impressions: Well, finally a game adaptation in which Seiji Kishi isn’t involved. In fact, the assistant director will be Seiji Misuzhima, who directed the first Full Metal Alchemist, Un-Go, and Natsuiro Kiseki, among others. This show is going to need it, because Hiteki Tachibana is a TERRIBLE director. He completely butchered Dragon Crisis and Higurashi’s Kira OVA. His big problem is that his series focus on the complete wrong things. Deko Akao is decent at adapting, so here she too needs to do her best to make up for this guy.
Trailer Impressions: Eye candy, action-packed. Seems interesting enough.

White Album 2

Impressions: What made the first White Album so good? It’s because from out of nowhere, it took the concept of a harem and did something completely in its own style, disregarding any sort of conventions. It was annoying, but it was unique and in the end it really came together. The second White Album looks a lot more generic, but perhaps Satelight has a trick up their sleeve. Especially since they never do series like this. Fumiaki Maruto… this guy probably is someone who doesn’t write for anime who they managed to reel in with their connections, so that sounds promising. What’s really weird about this though? It’s the directional debut of Seiya Numata. That just makes no sense whatsoever. For those of you who don’t know him: he is one of the most awesome animators out there. His work is always completely crazy: full of energy, realistic movements, over the top motions. It’s crazy. For an example: he was the main animation director for Shion no Ou and the second season of Milky Holmes. I have no clue what he’s doing here on such a serious drama…
Trailer Impressions: And the thing is, the animation isn’t even that good…

Hajime no Ippo Rising

Impressions: Nothing has been revealed yet of who will adapt the third season, which does have me on a bit of an edge. This is because the first and second seasons were incredibly good adaptations. Everything went right there: the music, the animation, the pacing. It all just fit, and both in really different ways. The manga is good and all, but with these kinds of sport series you also really need the animation to bring everything alive. The promo art that has been released so far however, doesn’t look that way. The character-designs look mellow, and they lack the punch that the first seasons had. Especially this thing here. But yeah: if this does work, then we’re in for an incredibly intense and engaging series.

Little Busters – Refrain

Impressions: Well, Little Busters, go ahead. I managed to sit through the sometimes cringe-worthy first half. Go ahead and hit me with your best stuff. The refrain part that is supposed to be the amazing part of this story. The director and series composition have not changed, so you’ll have to do with them. Go ahead and just show me whether the plotholes, melodrama and bad voice acting were worth it!
Trailer Impressions: From this trailer I get the impression that the creators are really trying. This wasn’t such a thing that was hastily cobbled up. Some effort went into this. That’s the first good sign.

Yowamushi Pedal

Impressions: Ah, a manga adaptation about cycling. What makes this one special is that it’s by the director of Zetman, and the character designs (and therefore also probably the chief animation direction) will be done by the guy who directed the animation for Ookiku Furikabutte. I have no idea what that adds together, but I really want to see how the cycling scenes will end up looking now, because these people are in theory able to make stunning cycling sequences: Osamu Nabeshima’s energy on one hand and Takeshi Yoshida’s attention to detail and realism on the other hand.
Trailer Impressions: Not the best animation… but it looks fun.

Golden Time

Impressions: Finally! Chiaki Kon is doing something other than bishie-series. Really, as one of the most (if not THE most) prolific female directors, you shouldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over but instead set an example for all other aspiring female directors out there. And with this, she actually has a really good premise. When was the last time a story starts out when the main character already has a significant other? Oh, and this has the character designer of Revolutionary Girl Utena, which is also awesome. Really, this can become quite an interesting college series when done right.
Trailer Impressions: This was charming; I can see this work as a romantic comedy, but I’m not sure whether it’ll become something special.

Coppelion

Impressions: They have yet to announce anything about the staff behind this series, but holy crap does it look good! This one gets my award for the best promo art of the season. Just look at those details. There is also a lot that they can do with this premise if they go the right way. I’m excited for this one.
Trailer Impressions: Stunning scenery, but the animation also is just amazing here. Wait, this is obviously being produced by Gohands.

Nagi no Asukara

Impressions: Yuriko Ishii really didn’t seem to try hard on these character designs, because they really look like something generic, just with a lot of extra polish (literally: look at these characters shine!) She wasn’t this bad when she adapted the characters for Persona – Trinity Soul or even Another. But yeah, who cares? Mari Okada is back with a new series, and her stories at the very least are always interesting to watch. Also, she is assisted by the director of Bantorra. This will be their third series together, after Bantorra and Kuroshitsuji, so I really hope to be able to see the same energy and creativity in the storyline.
Trailer Impressions: Holy crap, the backgrounds look gorgeous! Such a shame of those character-designs. But this hints at quite an interesting character drama.

Kyoukai no Kanata

Impressions: Could it be? Is Kyoani trying something different, and it’s not just a fluke? Finally! Finally they do something different from a random high school slice of life series. It’s based on a light novel so they can’t do anything lazy with it, and Jukki Hanada is fairly skilled in adapting stuff. The director will be on his first full directing job, but he’s got enough experience working on other Kyoani projects, going back as far as Air and Munto. Also, Hikaru Nanase, one of my favorite composers, will do the soundtrack!
Trailer Impressions: HOLY CRAP THAT ANIMATION!

Yozakura Quartet ~Hana no Uta~

Impressions: Remember those awesomely animated Yozakura Quarted OVAs? Well, they’re going to make a series out of that. Still with the ridiculous talents of Ryo-timo, who also directed the animation for Birdy the Mighty Decode, and many other beautiful-looking episodes (think Noein, Bokura no, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt). This is the Yozakura Quarted what it should have been! (Yes, you don’t need to have watched the first series).
Trailer Impressions: This is mostly a recap of the OVA, but at the end there are some new scenes. You can see that the budget is a bit lower (obviously), but it’s still full of creativity and eye candy.

Kill La Kill

Impressions: The first TV-series produced by Studio Trigger, the studio that Hiroyuki Imaishi founded after leaving Gainax, and this time he’s reuined with Gurren Lagann and Ooedo Rocket writer Kazuki Nakashima. While I’m not the biggest fan of Gurren Lagann, there is no denying how much talent there was put into that show, and I love seeing what these guys can do now. Especially after Panty and Stocking, there can only be creativity here. Also, it will be 2 cours long. Now let’s also hope that the story is good.
Trailer Impressions: A few images, but they already look quite amazing.

Samurai Flamenco

Impressions: Could it be? Is Manglobe finally going to make good stuff again? Well, the indication is certainly there with a 2-cour Noitamina series helmed by Takehiro Omori, who is an incredibly solid and versatile director. And this time they seem to go for the nostalgia of old-school superheroes. The action director and designs are also done by the guy who did the animation direction on all four Natsume Yuujinchou series. So yeah, this is definitely one to watch out for. The only archilles heel here is Hideyuki Kurata. This guy is a really good writer: he wrote Read or Die, Now and Then, Here and There and Kamichu, but the past few years he really ended up cranking out some bad shows. But on the other hand, let’s see what he can do with a really good director again.
Trailer Impressions: Aah, classic retro cheese with a lot of detail and touches.

Galilei Donna – Storia di tre sorelle a caccia di un mistero

Impressions: Finally Noitamina is back in full force this season, with two original series. A-1’s contribution is a series that air for just one season, and it’s directed and written by a guy who is… interesting. He’s been in the business for a very long time, and yet his work ranges from really talented, to borderline porn. Yet he intrigues me, because he’s not among the crappy directors who just shove boobs everywhere: his serious work is actually really good. Just take a look at one of them. Or one of the more mellow examples. Note how good the animation is. You don’t just get that with a lot of budget, that really took talent. Oh, and he also directed one of the best and most unique shorts of Robot Carnival, so he definitely can do short stories incredibly well. But what about long series? His only other long work so far, Mezzo, didn’t really get the best reviews even though I never really watched anything of it.
Trailer Impressions: This consisted out of a bunch of stills, but really: the soundtrack that accompanied it was really, really good.

Kyousogiga

Impressions: Yes yes! I have been asking for this one for so long, and they actually made it! It’s only 10 episodes, but that’s perfect. Kyousogiga is poetry: it doesn’t need to last long. Just longer than… two OVAs. The OVAs were so charming, and really genuine while being full of some really creative animation techniques. It’s basically the show in which the talented Toei animators could try out new stuff and experiment. Rie Matsumoto really was a discovery: her directional style is incredibly warm and that is what made me originally a fan of Kyoutogiga.

Pupa

Impressions: This one looks amazing, but what’s more important: it’s going to be helmed by an amazing director: Tomomi Mochizuki. He’s currently already active as the one who adapts the current Rozen Maiden series, but he really shines as a director, with an impeccable visual style and an amazing feel for his characters. This will be by far be the darkest series that he’s ever done, but with Zettai Shounen and Sarai-ya Goyou he showed that he can make an incredible atmosphere.

Movies and OVAs to watch out for:
Here is an upcoming list of the movies and OVAs coming out that I deem noteworthy (I basically left out the kiddie movies, or the ones based on franchises that I don’t care about). And really: there are some big names coming up! Lots of great stuff is about to arrive here.

Ark IX

Impressions: This is a single OVA that will come out, as the promotional material of a new light novel series. It’s set in this post apocalyptic world, and the main character is a detective, so I’m smelling a good mystery series here. The problem is obviously that they’re never going to fit all that into just one episode, so let’s hope that this will just be a successful pilot.

Mirai Nikki Redial

Impressions: Mirai Nikki will be getting a new OVA. The interesting thing seems to be that it’s going to be completely anime original, penned by the manga artist. It’s meant to take place after the events of the series, and probably will be some sort of epilogue. But considering how the series ended, I see potential here.

Yozakura Quartet – Tsuki no Naku

Impressions: Hell yeah! Yozakura will not only be getting new OVAs, but sometime in the future there will also be a TV-series, with Ryo-Chimo behind the direction. Prepare for some awesome animation and fantastic direction, combined with lots of fun and interesting characters!

The Garden of Words

Impressions: The Garden of Words is Makoto Shinkai, and based on its trailer, it definitely oozes his style, while at the same time showing how he’s trying to branch out as a director. With Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo this was more towards Ghibli, but this one seems totally different. The one thing that caught my attention was that the acting was much stronger and less subtle than his early works. Let’s see what effect that has on his style.

Hal

Impressions: The premise for this movie sounds AWESOME: it’s a science fiction premise about a girl whose boyfriend dies. A robot named HAL then takes his place for her in order to ease her grief. It’s made by Wit Studio (the guys who are currently also doing Shingeki no Kyojin), and both the director and scriptwriter are rather new. However, remember that one episode of Fractale, that looked absolutely amazing and was nothing like the rest of that series? Yes, the guy behind that will direct this movie. He also worked on some stunning episodes of Kaiba and Yojou-han among others.

Ghost in the Shell Arise

Impressions: Ghost in the Shell Arise is the third installment of Ghost in the Shell with completely different staff members. And the creators are really going to have to fill some of the biggest shoes imaginable: those of Mamoru Oshii and Kenji Kamiyama, pretty much the best two directors walking around in Production IG. Tow Ubukata writing it will help a lot, because this guy has a very good sense of creativity when it comes to science fiction. The chief director is a character-designer, which will probably make for some really good visuals, and the director for the first OVA will be the director of Gilgamesh and Shikabane Hime, which means a really solid atmosphere. The ingredients are definitely there to make something awesome!

Kara no Kyoukai – Mirai Fukuin

Impressions: Since Kara no Kyoukai was such a big success, I’m not surprised that the creators are trying to animate more of it. Normally I would call this milking out a cow, but the previous OVA that was made completely sold me due to how daring it was. It did not try to copy the movies, but instead had its own direction, based on a concept that many thought would make an incredibly boring animation, and I hope that this new OVA will also again go into its own direction.

Kaze Tachinu

Impressions: Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film. Seriously, how old is this guy already? And he’s still making movies? I really admire his dedication, even though he’s not as fast as he used to be. Again, he does the direction here, the script, and it’s based on an original story written by himself. At this point, Hayao really can do anything he wants, really; he can even hire Hideaki Anno to voice the main character (yeah).

Short Peace

Impressions: I love these types of movies: the ones that consist out of multiple shorter films, all made by different creators with their own styles. Katsuhiro Otomo (yeah, the Akira guy) is overseeing everything, and this time the stories are based on some of his works, but he grabbed himself a wide variety of different talents with widely different styles.

TV-Series
Well, we’ve got ourselves a first: for the first time in more than a decade, the summer season is actually bigger in terms of quantity than its preluding spring season. I actually have more series to look forward to than what I did with the past spring season. The big downside to this season: too many sequels. Now, whether there are series that have the potential to top Aku no Hana and Shingeki no Kyojin… the potential is there, but to be honest I don’t see it as likely.

Brothers Conflict

Impressions: This is the male version of Sister Princess!

High School DXD

Impressions: Yeah, blahblah boobs, blahblah. The first season was already just about boobs and bad humour, I see no improvement whatsoever here.
Trailer Impressions: This trailer can be summarized as follows: “Boob boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs”. This show is about boobs, if I hadn’t made this clear yet.

Ro Kyu Bu SS

Impressions: I found Ro Kyu Bu to be really bad and misguided, therefore I’m not at all glad that it’s gotten a second season. I watched for long enough to see what point it tried to make: pushing little girls into this competitive game in order to keep their status quo, even though they just want to randomly goof off. The thing is, that it wasn’t handled well at all. Why did the elemantary schoolers have to dress up as maids. Why was there so much fanservice. And who was crazy enough to think of this set-up in the first place? This could have had potential, but the creators just turned it into otaku-bait, which makes it all the more weird because we’re talking about kids who are not even teenagers here.

Love Lab

Impressions: I really dislike how the premise introduces the characters in this series. It just labels them as stereotypes right from the start. It’s as if they’re not going to even bother with any kind of characterization or something. But then again, it’s a 4koma so I’m not sure how much we can expect from this. It does have the team of Mitsudomoe behind it, so let’s hope that they can add some humour to this. They have it, although Yuruyuri showed that they don’t always show this.
Trailer Impressions: Really, really generic.

Futari wa Milky Holmes

Impressions: No! No! No! No! Here is the thing with Milky Holmes: the first two seasons were awesome. Why? It was a parody. The creators realized what a hopeless premise they had and just tore it apart with a ton of random nonsense and craziness. It was glorious. However, afterwards, for some bizarre reason, the Alternative OVAs appeared, in which they actually played the concept straight. It was bad. Really bad. Very generic mahou shoujo fare. The first two series also completely removed the male main character, and these two ovas also showed why: this guy is completely generic and pointless! This is a classic example of a corporate milking taking over a good franchise.

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Ilya

Impressions: This really feels like a blatant cash-in on the Fate/Stay Night fandom.Just stuff the girls there into mahou shoujo outfits and you have a series. I really have no faith in the creators here, because it’s typical Silver Link with really bad humour, and many of their staple people involved.
Trailer Impressions: So yeah… they go to school… and I’m still not impressed.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear G

Impressions: How on earth did this thing get a second season? I have no clue what Satelight saw in the disaster that was the first Symphogear, but ah well. A big plus is that this series actually has a competent director. They switched in the director of Hataraki man and Yugioh 5D’s here. Let’s hope that it will be at least… bearable with this…
Trailer Impressions:

Monogatari Second Season

Impressions: The monogatari series has its moments. Unfortunately, I have gotten tired of it. I do not want to watch these moment if it means having to force myself sitting through hours of talking about nothing, or Shaft just repeating themselves yet again. Wake me up when they try to do something new again…
Trailer Impressions: The trailer is small and all, and there was no actual animation, but it did reinforce my opinion: with all the lines I could have sworn that I heard them before. This trailer said nothing about what would be new or different.

Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku

Impressions: Oh goodies, another series about a club of high schoolers doing nothing. I can see that they really flexed their creative muscles for this one. Go Zappa is a bad writer to start with, so it’s going to depend on Nomad and Hikaru Sato and the original source material to make up for that. I mean, it’s definitely possible and all. But by these guys?

The World God Only Knows: Goddesses Arc

Impressions: I was hoping that in the meantime, the staff has changed or something, in order to give people with a better sense of pacing a shot at this series, But unfortunately not. This series definitely holds potential, but these guys just managed to suck all energy from it. All sense of good characterization was just lost with shallow romance and some really annoying main characters, and I don’t think that that can be fixed, even if the story gets better.

Servant x Service

Impressions: The thing with this series is that from the outside, it looks very interesting. But that’s mostly due to Terumi Nishii, the character designer, being really good. The characters here look realistic and down to earth and overall very pleasant to watch (this is the guy who designed the characters for Penguin Drum, by the way). Because when I looked a bit closer, it looked like a series that totally was not my type: random jokes about people doing nothing. Both the director, original writer or series composition guy give me a lot of faith that this will be interesting to watch either, unfortunately.
Trailer Impressions: A bit of a taste of the humour that we’re going to get, and I found it to be so boring and dull!

Kin-Iro Mosaic

Impressions: These girls are fifteen! Holy crap! Seriously though, when was the last time I watched a 4Koma that I actually liked? This seems to go back to Geijutsuka Art Design Class or something. The creators can still make something out of it if they use the clash in cultures right though, so it’s not entirely hopeless here.
Trailer Impressions: Why does the English girl have to be blond?

Gen’ei o Kakeru Taiyou

Impressions: Michiko Itou and Keizou Kusakawa have done quite a few series, but the last time they did something together was with Ro Kyu Bu, a series about a bunch of girls in a basketball team with a lot of fanservice. Genei looks the same only with better production values and fairies. And I mean, I see potential behind this series if the “mysterious matters” that these girls solve are actually interesting. But I don’t think that these people can do that and will focus more on shallow stories with fanservice instead.
Trailer Impressions: Shallow, but at least it will look very pretty.

Kingdom 2

Impressions: I remember the first Kingdom. It had the potential as a good warfare series, but all I could see was the really bad animation and the incredible overacting. Together, this just did no look right and any good story would have been way too annoying to follow with that. I have heard that it got better as it went along though, and at least a staff change seems to indicate that the second season will only get better.
Trailer Impressions: No CG, which surprised me. I mean, the animation still looks really cheap, but it’s not as bad anymore.

Hyperdimension Neptunia

Impressions: As much of a fan I am of David Production, this definitely is the worst promotional art they’ve ever done. Having said that though… they’re really going to animate a series about the console wars? I have no idea what I’m supposed to imagine by that to be honest, especially with David Production. They also put on two rookies on the helm: both the director and the series composition guy have never done a full series before. This can really go anywhere.
Trailer Impressions: Aagh, that was really generic! Also hire someone who can actually sing!

Fantasista Doll

Impressions: I can only say “smörgåsbord” when I look at the different staff members here. We have the porn production company of Hoods, adapting a story from the director of Code Geass (and Planetes and Infinite Ryvius), with music from the composer of Heartcatch Precure, Jigoku Shoujo and Shiki, among many others, there is the director of Sora no Otoshimono and the character designer of Kobato and Needless. Usually I can say something about the direction of a series based on cast-members, but here this has me just baffled. The only thing I can say at this point is that the promo art looks really generic.
Trailer Impressions: Generic music and transformation sequences. The story had better be really good to make up for that…

Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaete mo Omaera ga Warui!

Impressions: Watashi blahblah (seriously, I’m not going to even try and remember how to spell these names unless they prove themselves) will be another one of those high school adaptations, but at this point we hardly know anything about it. Who will adapt it? Who will direct it? That still has to be announced. Does it hold potential? That entirely depends on whether its jokes will work or not. It won’t have anything else besides that.

Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist

Impressions: You know what the thing is about this series? It is probably going to be really good if the creators manage to avoid it boiling down to just shounen ai. Seriously, I like the creativity it has, it’s got the potential for lots of intrigue. But all I can see is a manga creator who also did the manga for Utaprince, Chiaki Kon who is still stuck in Junjo Romantica and Michiko Yokote who is doing way too many series this season. Prove me wrong here!

Kimi no Iru Machi

Impressions: I found the OVA for Kimi no Iru Machi to be terrible. It was a really generic romance with zero personality, so when I realized that there was a TV-series coming out for it, i really was not looking forward to it. Then I found out that it would be produced by Gonzo. Then I found out that it was going to be directed by Shigeyasu Yamauchi, and adapted by Reiko Yoshida. That duo has got a ton of experience, and they can actually really make a risk-taking studio like Gonzo shine again. The big question is whether they will also be able to do that with a source material that is as bad as Kimi no Iru Machi. I mean, of all the stories they could have picked. Why this one?!
Trailer Impressions: This does not look good…

Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East Second SEason

Impressions: If there is any series that I regret a bit in dropping the past year, it’s probably this one. I didn’t know that it would have a second season, and the only reason I dropped it was because I didn’t think it would get good enough after four episodes to further spend my time on. So yeah, it’s a series with a pretty good story and set of characters.

Genshinken Second Season

Impressions: The only thing I ever watched about Genshinken is the first half of its first episode (before starting this blog, actually, so that was loooong ago), but I did not like it. I didn’t really associate with the “otaku”-culture, and still don’t. But hey, it’s like eight years later, the staff has completely changed aside from Michiko Yokote and I like just about everyone involved in this production. So yeah, it’s definitely got potential.

Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3

Impressions: First of all, this show has awesome promo art. I like the use of colours and there definitely is emotion in it, as opposed to the really clean art you always see for these promotional images. The director is an entirely new guy, so let’s see what Gainax can do here to make up for Medaka Box which turned out to be rather generic. I mean, this has the potential to be really dull, but the way it’s presented hints at a very good chemistry between the characters.

Teekyu 2

Impressions: Mappa, as much as I like Teekyu’s randomness: your next serious project had better be something really awesome here.

Uchouten Kazoku

Impressions: Very nice promo material as well, and I’m looking forward to this comedy from PA Works, provided that they handled the comedy right. Shoutarou Suga and Masayuki Yoshihara perhaps aren’t the best for that, but I don’t know the source material for that to say for sure.
Trailer Impressions: This one said absolutely nothing.

Free!

Impressions: I love what a brilliant troll move this is. I have been begging Kyoani for doing something different beyond cute girls. So here Kyoani comes with a show about a bunch of guys who look like swtimming catalog models. Regardless of whether it will actually be fun, I approve of this move. The guy from Hataraku Maou-Sama is also doing the series composition here…
Trailer Impressions: What can I say really?

Blood Lad

Impressions: Hell yeah, another director of Aoi Bungaku is returning. It’s the guy who adapted Kokoro, and who later did half of Supernatural. This will be his next series, together with the guys at Brains Base. And he got himself quite an interesting premise. It’s the kind of premise that can be great with the right execution, and terrible with the wrong one. The big problem will be the series composition. This will probably be a long manga, and Takeshi Konuta has already screwed up once with that kind of problem with Library Wars.
Trailer Impressions: Sounds catchy, provided they don’t put the action above everything else.

Danganronpa The Animation

Impressions: I like the concept, I like the promo art. This feels like Btooom that requires more thought and careful planning. This is the kind of action series that I’m looking out for, that don’t just revolve arond random action. The only problem is that Seiji Kishi is a bit of a double-edged sword: as a director he can be really good or really bad, depending on his mood.
Trailer Impressions: Good music, stylish, strange character-designs. This can work out pretty well.

Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou

Impressions: Well, it’s taken a while, but for me, this is the first sign of Gonzo’s recovery ever since they went nearly bankrupt back in 2009 and got majorly reduced in size. With that, I mean that this is their first series since that point that doesn’t hope to cash in on previous successes (Last Exile), or just completely terrible (Leviathan). They are starting to train new directors to fill the old gap as well: this is Yukio Takahashi’s first full directing job, and this is a guy who has proven himself well as an episode director on series as Red Garden, Shangri-La and a unit director of Yukikaze and the second Macross Frontier Movie. Of course the humour can be completely terrible, but at least the premise here holds potential and it looks like they’re actually trying to be a bit creative again.
Trailer Impressions: Perhaps it has some acting issues, but it’s the only trailer this season that actually made me laugh. That’s a good sign.

Tamayura – More Aggressive

Impressions: Tamayura is a strong contender for the award for the strangest title of the season. I have seen the Tamayura OVA and Hitotose. What on earth do the creators mean by “more agressive”? This is a slice of life series, not an action title…. Either way though: it’s Sato Junichi, who is just terrific at creating slice of life. The characters area already really charming. Now it’s a matter of building further upon that like what he did with Aria.

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

Impressions: I LOVE the premise behind the world of this series. Talk about potential here. Tomoko Konparu as the main writer and adapter will definitely be able to bring justice to it, like what she did with Ashita no Nadja, Uta Koi, Les Miserables, Nodame Cantabile and Nana. Yuuji Kumazawa’s only directing job may have been Oda Nobuna no Yabou, but I give him the benefit of the doubt for now. It’s not like he could have made anything good with a premise like that anyway.
Trailer Impressions: Good music, it looks very nice. The backgrounds are also very creative.

Gatchaman Crowds

Impressions: Yes, Kenji Nakamura is back! The guy behind Mononoke, Ayakashi, Tsuritama and Kuchuu Buranko will next do a remake of a classic series. The fun thing about those kinds of series is that they always are really creative, and with Kenji Nakamura added to that, it’s bound to be lots of fun. Toshiya Ono who helped write Tsuratama will also be back.

Silver Spoon

Impressions: It’s finally time for Silver Spoon, the next series from Full Metal Alchemists’s Hiromu Arakawa. And it also couldn’t be any more different in subject matter. Adapting it is a very good team at A-1 Pictures helmed by Tomohiko Ito (the guy behind Occult Academy) and Taku Kishimoto, who previously adapted Usagi Drop. Tehse guys know how to deal with characterization. Yeah!
Trailer Impressions: Ska? Awesome!

Rozen Maiden New Series

Impressions: The reason why Rozen Maiden is the series I’m looking forward to the most isn’t simply because I’m a big Rozen Maiden fan, even though that really helps: the concept is awesome, and especially the first season was just perfect. In particular there went a lot of thought into the characters. But no. The reason why this stands above the others is due to Tomomi Mochizuki doing the series composition (along with the script and the sound direction (!)). As a writer to adapt your stories, this guy is pretty much the best guy you can get, bar none. He’s a king of realism, and his sense of characterization is fantastic. But it’s not just that: his adaptations are awesome. It’s not like he aims to be perfectly faithful, but rather he knows what works best for each story, and he takes risks. Oh dear god, he takes risks. Touka Gettan airing backwards? That’s his influence. The awesome conclusions for Kimagure Orange Road and Fancy Lala? He wrote and adapted that. Add that to the character-designer of Steins;Gate and the music from Utena and Asatte no Houkou. Yeah. I’m looking forward to this.
Trailer Impressions: Both new and old material together.

The upcoming season is relatively small: 27 series, 13 of which seem interesting. Production IG will be a powerhouse with many different series, and there will be a lot of mechas and bishies. There are a lot of sequels, and relatively little crap. Oh, and one of the reasons there are a bit fewer series is because I left out the kiddie shows this time. It just takes up too much of my time for some info that’s just completely useless.

Movies and OVAs to watch out for:
In the past I also did a separate post for the upcoming movies and OVAs for each season, but here is the thing: writing up these posts really takes up nearly an entire day. I can manage to do this once, but two days after each other… I don’t have the time for that anymore. Still, I do want to highlight the upcoming movies and OVAs, because there’s often a lot of good stuff amongst them. This is no complete list, just the ones that caught my attention:

Anime Mirai

Impressions: Anime Mirai, otherwise known as the Young Animator Training Project. For the third year in a row, four studios have received a budget and made a short story based on it. Madhouse, Studio Trigger, Zexcs and Gonzo each have their own entry and a lot of freedom, so now let’s see what they have come up with this year. I really like this initiative.

Hana-Saku Iroha – Home Sweet Home

Impressions: Aah, finally the Hana-Saku Iroha movie will air, written by Mari Okada her first movie) and directed by Masahiro Ando, so it’s pretty much the staff of the TV-series making a movie, and there is enough inspiration left. Looking forward to it.

Precure All Stars New Stage 2: Kokoro no Tomodachi

Impressions: I’m not going to watch this. I just to say: the counter is currently on 32 Precures. This is starting to turn into pokemon.

Aura: Maryuuinkouga Saigo no Tatakai

Impressions: You don’t often see this: a movie adapted from a light novel. Normally these things get TV-series. It’s from the same writer as Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, so it’s worth a look. The premise reminds me a bit of Chuuninbyou demo Koi ga Shitai: a girl arrives pretending to be from a different world, and the main character suffered from delusions like that in his past.

Steins;Gate Fuka Ryouiki no Déjà vu

Impressions: Steins;Gate will also have a movie, and just like Hana-Saku Iroha it will also be the staff of the anime to adapt it, meaning that we have a very solid team behind the movie. The question to ask is: the series ended very conclusively. What will the sequel be about?

Saint Young Men

Impressions: The movie that starts like a bad joke: Jesus and Buddha sharing an apartment. And they made an entire movie based on that. A-1 Pictures is behind it and the promo material does look gorgeous. A-1 Pictures will produce it and it will be directed by one of the staff members who worked on a lot of Kyoto Animation projects. There really are not many comedy movies, so I hope that this one will work.

Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai.

Impressions: Blagh! Incest! Still the worst premise of the season. Next.

Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Bride

Impressions: Well, here you have ARMS again with their boobs. They continue to churn out sequel after sequel, so it’s no wonder that Hyakka Ryouran would end up with one, and this one is even more shameless than before with a title like that… Just skip this one if it’s anything like the first series. Just a lot of bad boob jokes, fanservice and terrible voice acting…
Trailer Impressions: Yup, lots of fanservice, bad fight scenes… and maid outfits.

Pretty Rythm Rainbow Live

Impressions: Pretty Rythm’s previous seasons were just terrible. At least for the first episodes that I kept with, they were horrible cash-ins for the mahou shoujo idol genre with really annoying and paper-thin characters. The director for this season is completely the same as last time, so I really don’t expect anything from this series at this point.

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san W

Impressions: Why people just keep coming back to that godawful Haiyore concept is beyond me. We get it, she is the female personification of a monster from the Cthulu mythos. It’s good for a joke for one time. Not to drag this on for years now. The first series wasn’t even that good. It was just a string of bad moe jokes we’ve seen many times before. Why is there enough material for a second season for this?

Uta no Prince-sama – Maji Love 2000%

Impressions: So here it is, the inevitable second season of Uta Prince, which sold so incredibly well that it it mind-boggled me. I mean I could understand a good series with bishies selling well and all (like what happened with Hakuouki), but the first episode I watched of it was so ridiculously cheesy that I suspected it was some kind of practical joke or something.

Date A Live

Impressions: For this preview, Date A Live was the first series I looked at. And then you have a seires with such a ridiculously stupid premise… it did not give me the best first impressions for the rest of this season. Keitarou Motonaga has directed many different series, including a few good ones, but he only seems to try if he has an actually good premise, which is a very big problem here… Hideki Shirane’s works in the past years also don’t really seem that promising, with him having written Queen’s Blade Rebellion and Platonic Heart, both of which were horrible. And I also still haven’t forgiven him for what he did to Yumekui Merry’s second half… The nail in the coffin is that this is AIC, who haven’t exactly had the best track record with me.
Trailer Impressions: The soundtrack is pretty good for this series. The creators just have no idea how to use it. There are all these choirs, and the scenes include characters and mechas who try way too hard to look cool… and unnecessary panty-shots and harem hi-jinks…

Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru.

Impressions: … is this another Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai or something? At the very least, this series deserves no points whatsoever in the originality department. Thankfully the rest of the cast seems competent: Shoutarou Suga has written an awful lot of interesting series and episodes. But romantic comedies? Can he succeed to make this one not boring? Another interesting point is that this will be Ai Yoshimura’s first full series to direct. I’m always one to encourage fresh talents here, so good luck! Try to give this one some spark, how difficult it may seem.

The “Hentai” Prince and the Stony Cat.

Impressions: Another series with a pervert main character, but at the very least this premise does seem to hint at some good character chemistry with the main characters being polar opposites, rather than just being there for the fanservice. As for the people who are going to adapt this… I don’t trust Michiko Itou. Her track record with series as Twin Angel and Ro Kyu Bu, which were both mind-numbingly stupid, gives me enough reason to be wary of this. It is not really easy for me to like a romantic comedy and if I do watch one, I want one with substance.

Photo Kano

Impressions: My first impressions for this one? Bad. I mean, I get the idea of a guy with a photo camera. It can be a very nice hobby. But if you do make a show about it… at least try to be a bit subtle, okay? Don’t just stuff a girl in bloomer with a box of valentine chocolate on the front cover. It leaves hardly anything to the imagination. In any case though, the director has me intrigued, looking at his track record. He is someone who whenever he is involved with something, is involved as a lot of different functions. He’s also both writing and directing this. Someone who likes to be in control and has a lot of different skills, and some of the episodes he worked on really were amazing and really well done. I wonder if it was his idea to go with that promo art…
Trailer Impressions: I am not a photographer or anything, but is it normal that you first take a picture of a girl’s crotch before you focus on her full pose?

Yuyushiki

Impressions: This… just… what? So, we have a voice actress for hentai-series. She then starts to direct and animate for a few series, and suddenly she’s directing a new series. Just… what the heck happened here? Beyond that this seems like an average “random girls doing random things”-series, in other words a genre that hardly ever manages to catch my attention. It probably will be solid for its genre, but not good enough to catch my interest.
Trailer Impressions: It’s a trailer that does its utter best to not show you anything that’s going on. All we got was a bit of random movement and some dull background song.

Mushibugyou

Impressions: This is one of those series for which little is known yet, other than its original material and the fact that Production IG will be behind it. The premise also is a bit too vague to really say anything about it. It could become good with t the right people behind it, as a fun little action series. Even though the guy on the promotional material has drunk way too much coffee…
Trailer Impressions: Never mind what I said! When the very first scene is about a girl nearly getting violated by a giant spider… yeah. My only compliment is that the art style is surprisingly good, but when you’ve got your mind in the gutter like that it doesn’t really help your case….

Hataraku Maou-Sama

Impressions: The premise, in the right hands, can be comedic gold. But then it really as to be the right hands, otherwise it will end up horribly dull. So let’s take a look at the ones who are going to have to adapt this: Naoto Hosoda is the director of Mirai Nikki and the second season of Minami-Ke, which is regarded by many as the worst Minami-ke series… Masahiro Yokotani meanwhile wrote Busou Shinki. That does not bode well.
Trailer Impressions: Generic J-Pop, but misleadinglygood animation. No humour whatsoever…err…

Aiura

Impressions: Very little is known about this series and about who will adapt it, but this is a 4-Koma adaptation about three girls doing nothing. A genre that I’m not really fond of. If the characters change, or if there is more than just their daily lives. Otherwise I just get the feeling that I’m watching paint dry. Sorry!

Karneval

Impressions: Toshie Kawamura is something like Manglobe’s new in-house animation director and character-designer, because he is involved in a lot of their projects. It’s a shame that he is not very good though, although the promo art here does look like his best and most creative work. But we’re talking about Manglobe here: what happened to their ambition behind Ergo Proxy and Michiko e Hatchin? They used to recruit their staff all over the place, with all kinds of different backgrounds. Here, they just return to the director of Mashiro-Iro Symphony, which was an utterly crappy harem. The sole salvation here will be the original material, which granted does look promising with the right execution, but then we come to the one who will have to adapt this: Touko Machida is not good at that, and I really hope that she has learned ever since her adaptations of Okamikakushi and Allison to Lillia….
Trailer Impressions: The voice acting is really bad, but in terms of visuals it looks nice and colourful. At least the trailer shows a lot of movements and action.

Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince

Impressions: Both Keitaro Motonaga and Reiko Yoshida are doing other series this season. Okay. Still, collectively there is a lot of talent between the writing and directing staff, so this could actually become something. Dogakobo have shown that with Natsuyuki Rendezvous, they can do something actually good. The problem however is the premise. I mean, it tries to dance around the obvious, but we do have another high school mecha series here. What can they do to stand out?
Trailer Impressions: It’s a silent trailer so I can’t comment much on the music and voice acting, but what I’ve seen… good background art, overdone facial expressions, and unfortunately nothing that makes it stand out at first sight…

Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san

Impressions: That is the ugliest mermaid I have seen in a long, long while. It’s not really the hair… but those eyes…. they are kind of unnerving. Anyway, Kazuyuki Fudeyasu wrote Milky Holmes. He also adapted Ben-To. This guy has energy. And something tells me that he’s also going to put that energy in this series… I’m expecting something bizarre…

Danchi Tomoo

Impressions: Apparently the manga this was based on was nominated for a Tezuka Cultural Prize, back in 2007, alongside works as Hyouge Mono, Moyashimon and Death Note. My impressions seems that the manga manages to capture the life of being a kid. And seriously, only the director for this production is known, but he is a really good one: Ayumu Watanabe directed Nazo no Kanojo X and is still working on Space Brothers. He will be able to bring that out.
Trailer Impressions: Really bad animation with lots of CG. Unfortunately this seems to be a very cheap production, so the question remains whether it will be enough to show why the manga is so good.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

Impressions: 100 episodes of the To Aru franchise. Let that sink in for a while. I personally don’t think that it warrants so much. Collect the best parts in 26 episodes and you’d have one heck of a series, but this is just too long. In terms of the staff nothing much has changed though, and Tatsuyuki Nagai and Seishi Minakami? These guys are awesome! They worked on many awesome series including Anohana, Honey and Clover, Birdy the Mighty Decode, Shigurui and Asatte no Houkou.

Devil Survivor 2 The Animation

Impressions: Another series based on a series in the games of Shin Megami Tensei. And it’s by the director of Persona 4. Oh god, no. I still have not forgiven him for what he did there. Thankfully, the rest of the production looks a lot ore solid here. Bridge only did comedies so far, and this seems to be their first full series, and they are looking very ambitious. Makoto Uezu is someone who sometimes delivers really good, and sometimes really bad adaptations. And that’s the thing with this series: it’s got interesting source material, but it can both become great, or crash and burn horribly. And Mohiro Kitoh behind the mecha designs rocks.
Trailer Impressions: A solid trailer, it’s short but shows some nice animation, the soundtracks is good and it doesn’t loo overly lciched or silly. The problem will be the pacing again and whether that will be better this time…

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San

Impressions: Oh god, they actually made one: a sequel to Yondemasuyo Azazel-san. This is a comedy that is not for everyone, and I have seen very few other comedies in which the humour was as black there. There is so much bile in it, and yet it had me in stitches for many times. There is always the matter of this series losing inspiration, but with this premise there is plenty of material left that can be explored, especially if the episodes are only 10 minutes long again.

Valvrave the Liberator

Impressions: Holy crap, what a combination between staff members. The writer of Code Geass, together with Matsuo Kou of Red Garden, Kurenai and Natsuyuki Rendezvous fame. I mean seriously, this will be either the trainwreck of the season, or a really epic and creative series. It all depends on how much freedom the creators have. Matsuou Kou is at his best with the more freedom that he has, while Ichiro Okouchi works better when he has less freedom (just look at Berserk, and Overman King Gainer also was awesome because that had the famous Yoshiyuki Tomino all over it, for example). In any case this will become interesting to follow…
Trailer Impressions: Reaaaaaly vague. We just saw a bunch of mechas and characters, although I do like the choice of music. Apart from that, it didn’t really show off anything…

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet

Impressions: Here is a series that put some effort in its promotional material. Just take a look at the official site, there’s a lot of neat artwork there. On top of that, we have Urobuchi Gen doing another original script of his. At this point he is in a very good position, where he has a lot of freedom. I really hope that he makes more and more use of this, while continuing to get better at writing. Kazuya Murata has not directed in a really long while. In fact, he seems to be returning after many years of not working on anything. I wonder what this can add to this series, because it definitely looks interesting here.
Trailer Impressions: Here I noticed a problem that I’ve often seen with Urobuchi Gen’s works: his characters are rather dull. The trailer was fairly long so we could see quite a bit about them, but there is nothing that makes them stand out. They’re just bland in every way.

Arata Kangatari

Impressions: Yuu Watase is a big name in the shoujo genre: she was the one who wrote Fushigi Yuugi, which had a big influence. I watched the first episodes of it, and the one thing that struck me was how mind-numbingly stupid the female lead character was, to the point of making it really hard to watch. It definitely had potential though, and this premise again can lead to a great fantasy-epic that relates back to the current world. The director is a Satelight regular, being involved in many of their series (including NOEIN), and directing Croisée, while Mayori Sekijima is pretty experienced in adaptations to make it work if it has the potential. On top of that this seems to be a Korean co-production, showing yet again that the people at Satelight have a lot of international connections (first France, now Korea)

Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199

Impressions: Yes, I also had to do a bit of a double-take when I suddenly saw Hideaki Anno (you know, the guy behind Evangelion…)’s name between the credits. And that really shows in what way this series stands out: it’s a remake, but it’s a really well produced one. There are a lot of great names who are responsible for some of the episodes here, and you can really see that this is made by fans, who want to make the original Yamato (which is incredibly outdated at this point) accessible to modern audiences. I have seen three episodes so far and was planning to catch the rest as it comes out on television, but the creators really managed to tell the original story, while also adding a lot of new stuff and details.

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge

Impressions: Aaand the biggest wtf-premise award goes to: Crime Edge. I mean, cutting people’s hair is already strange, but this show seems to go out of its way to make its premise as strange as possible. And you know, I don’t think I mind that. Just go a little crazy, it’s much better than having a normal premise. The director has experience with weird shows like that: he previously di Touka Gettan and Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito. Tatsuhiko Urahata meanwhile has experience with everything. He is an awesome adapter, with his works ranging from Horizon to Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino and Hajime no Ippo and Master Keaton and Monster.
Trailer Impressions: This is how you do a trailer: really charming on one hand, and “wtf are those bloody scissors doing there?!” on the other.

RDG Red Data Girl

Impressions: I must say, I’m intrigued by the premise here. It sounds pretty solid and has a lot of potential to develop into something good. What makes this even better is that we’re talking about the director of the Book of Bantorra, which was a series that I absolutely loved (he also directed the first season of Kuroshitsuji). Michiko Yokote is a scriptwriter who I trust and she can really make the premise work. This is based on a story by the same author of Good Witch of the West, which I really liked. It’s great to see that this time, her story can be adapted by a bunch of people who know what they’re doing, instead of rushing through it.
Trailer Impressions: Very elegant, and it takes itself seriously. The backgrounds are really good, and the narration is good. The animation also looks very good, and the trailer really knows how to build its atmosphere. Good signs, good signs.

Aku no Hana

Impressions: Zexcs previously was a studio who made mostly unremarkable series, and sometimes got lucky and delivered a good one. They have been getting much better lately. And holy crap, the director of Mushishi is back! Finally, years after doing Detroit Metal City he’s ready for another one, and I must say: this sounds like an awesome drama. Finally there is a school drama that just immediately stands out from its peers with such a simple, yet deceptive premise.

Shingeki no Kyojin

Impressions: Back when I dabbled in manga (I really want to continue with that experiment… as soon as I have time again), one of the mangas that I checked out and really liked was Shingeki no Kyojin. Holy crap, that was intense, but it would also have been very difficult to animate properly. And here is the thing: if there is any director who can bring out the strength of the manga, it would be Tetsuro Araki, the director of Death Note and Kurozuka. He really can make this work! Yasuko Kobayashi also fits this show perfectly with his brilliant adaptations of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Add that to Production IG’s expertise, and yes. I am really looking forward to see this in animated form.
Trailer Impressions: Fucking epic.

I’ll be blunt: the upcoming winter season looks abysmal. I mean, I have seen bad seasons before, but this might go down as the worst season aside from Winter 2010. There are basically two series that I’m really looking forward to. And they are sequels. Beyond that… oh lord… there is a whole lot of mediocrity. It’s been a while since I raged so much at compiling a preview as today.

That alone doesn’t make this season so bad. There is a fair share of series coming out, so there might be surprises. No, what really gets to me is that this season seems specifically designed to piss me off. It may not have incest or Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it does have just about everything else that gets on my nerves. I think that seven or eight of people from my top 10 of staff members that get on my nerves the most is doing something this season, it’s unbelievable.

Seriously, it’s a good thing that the current season is so awesome, because this is just… ugh…

As always, I cannot comment much on the original source material because I’m not familiar to it.

Puchimas

The Positives: The most interesting part of this production seems to be that nearly every voice actress in this production will voice two or three characters. It might be fun to see them switch between their different ranges in one series.
The Negatives: Yes people. There you have it. More Idolm@ster, from the creators of 30-Sai no Hoken Taiku, otherwise known as that one show about the 30-year old virgin. The animation will be really bare-bones, and seeing as I have never even laughed at one single joke these creators made, this one seems destined for my drop-list.

D.C.III ~Da Capo III~

The Positives: I have nothing.
The Negatives: Good lord, even more Da Capo? There have been four TV-shows already, totaling 78 episodes already, and now they want to make more of this dating sim? Really? What’s so good about this one to warrant it so many adaptations? The creators also seem like nothing special: the writer seems decent, but nothing really special. Same for the director: they have nice experience, but nothing outstanding whatsoever.

Senran Kagura

The Positives: Takashi Watanabe. What happened that caused you to make Starship Operators and Boogiepop Phantom? They were so good, and so completely different from all other series you usually do…
The Negatives: Oh for Christ’s sake.

Maoyuu Maou Yuusha

The Positives: The soundtrack from the same guy who did Kobato? Fair enough, sounds promising.
The Negatives: Oh lord. Here is one match-up that I really fear: the creators of Dakara Boku wa H ga Dekinai, Aki Sora, Yosuga no Sora, Love Love? and other really bad fanservice shows (and Spice and Wolf; I still have no idea how that happened), together with Arms, the single worst animation company out there. Who the hell found that a good idea?

Ganbare! Lulu Lolo

The Positives: This is another one of the kiddie shows, apparently based on a best-selling children’s novel. Nothing is really known about who is going to make or produce it, but this seems nice enough for the smallest children.
The Negatives: It’s for really small kids, and there are no signs that it’ll be for anyone other than that.

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT

The Positives: The staff has changed. The writer of the original novels this is based on will join the anime staff, so this will be a pretty faithful production.
The Negatives: The director has also changed: the assistant director of the first season will take over, but unfortunately this was the director of Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, which was incredibly boring for the few episodes that I watched it. Added to that, that the first season also just could not catch my attention: none of the characters were interesting and I just did not get the chemistry between them at all. Not going to follow this one.

Youkai Watch

The Positives: It will be better than your average kiddie show.
The Negatives: I’m really getting pissed off by Level 5 right now. Setting their games aside, all of their anime basically all just look the same if you remove the topic that they’re about (football, mecha, youkai).

Vividred Operations

The Positives: Tensai Okamura… is this really where you want to be after Wolf’s Rain and Darker than Black?
The Negatives: Oh lord, this sounds bad. Really bad. Vividred seems to be an anime original series… from the director of Strike Witches. And yes, the girls are running around in underwear again. That alone already was pretty bad, but in combination with Hiroyuki Yoshino this is going to turn into a trainwreck of enormous proportions. In terms of adaptations this guy is fine, currently doing a very good job on Magi. But his original scripts, oh god, these have issues. Seikon no Qwaser, Mai Otome, Guilty Crown and Code Geass’s storylines all come from this guy. Granted, he also wrote Sora no Oto which seems to be much more in the direction of what Vividred will be, but even that show had some major pacing issues.

Love Live! School Idol Project

The Positives: Err… there have been plenty of good idol shows. Seriously, nothing is known about this yet so I can’t say much about the staff yet.
The Negatives: But for god’s sake people, haven’t you learned anything from AKB0048? You can have idol shows that are awesome, just put some imagination in your premises. Not have the umpth school show with idols in id. Agh!

Mondai-Ji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo?

The Positives: Uh, one of the directors has experience directing with Valkyria Chronicles, and Keizou Kusakawa directed a few good series (Nanoha A’s)… at least it’s something.
The Negatives: This again looks pretty bad. Most of the shows these guys worked on were downright mediocre, and on top of that they’ve got yet another badly sounding light novel with an impossibly long and quirky sounding title that was inspired by all those incest shows.

GJ-bu

The Positives: New blood: this will be the debut for the director on a full series. I wish him best of luck. A show about four high school girls is all about its chemistry, which you need to portray well otherwise my interest just gets lost completely.
The Negatives: So, chemistry. This is more than just adapting, it’s writing the characters in such a manner that they’re appealing and interesting to watch. So what kind of experience does Hideaki Koyasu have in this area? Akikan, Limeiro Senkitan, the Kurenai OVA, Yuruyuri… yeah. Don’t get me wrong: this guy is great when he has a crazy script to work with, but with four random high school girls this just doesn’t seem to be the case.

Mangirl!

The Positives: Aaaaaand the winner of the worst pun of the year is….. *drumroll*
The Negatives: The staff behind this series has not yet been announced yet beyond Dogakobo (who after Natsuyuki Rendezvous unfortunately seem quite content to go back to bad moe shows), but what can they ever hope to do with a premise as stupid as this? The only salvation I see for this show is if they take it over 9000, but can Dogakobo really do that?

Hakkenden: Touhou Hakken Ibun

The Positives: I still have no idea what made Toward the Terra so good, but I keep hoping. Osamu Yamasaki! Return to that brilliance! Mitsue Yamasaki is also quite good for the episode he’s worked on, and this will be his first work as an actual director for a whole series.
The Negatives: Agh, Studio Deen with its bishies again. No, not again! Miyuki Abe’s other works all seem to be generic yaoi and shounen ai. Try to do something different for a change!

Amnesia

The Positives: If this show has anything, it’s experience: Touko Machida has written a lot. Some of those things were actually good (GA, Muteki Kanbanmusume), and Yoshimitsu Ohashi has also directed a lot, some of which was very good (Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto, Witchblade, episodes of Michiko e Hatchin, Witch Hunter Robin).
The Negatives: They were behind a lot of bad stuff, though. However, this remains a otome game adaptation. I have never seen one that actually worked. Still, could this be the first to actually do something right? I sure hope so.

Ai Mai Mi

The Positives: Nothing is really known about this show aside from the premise and the incredibly quirky name of the original mangaka for this one. Ah well, if they make it quirky enough this might be worth watching.
The Negatives: I do however wonder where the mind of this series lies. Base on the promo art showing a girl holding a bag of tentacles, I suspect the gutter.

Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru

The Positives: A-1: Solid. Tatsuhiko Urahata: solid (we’re talking about a guy who adapted a ton of stuff already, including Hajime no Ippo, Gunslinger Girl, Master Keaton, Monster). Kanta Kamei, hell yeah solid (the director of Usagi Drop).
The Negatives: Which brings me to the actual premise: just simple romance with a childhood friend and a really long and quirky title. You really couldn’t try harder? The staff here isn’t so good that they can make boring premises like this worth watching, they’re more the types of creators who can really bring out the best of any source material.

Kotoura-San

The Positives: A supernatural 4-koma adaptation from the director and series composition guy of Minami-Ke and the first season of Minami-Ke and Yuruyuri. It depends on the source material of course, but they can make this work.
The Negatives: Of course, I also thought this about Yuruyuri, which turned out to be a string of bad lesbian jokes, so I’m still withholding my enthusiasm until I see what kind of material they have to work with. There is very little to be found about the author of this thing, so anything can happen here. Although it also doesn’t help that this is AIC again. I don’t have the most confidence in these guys and that’s an understatement.

Minami-Ke Tadaima

The Positives: More Minami-ke, slice of life about nothing that is actually quite enjoyable, albeit nothing special.
The Negatives: To be honest, this seems to be the weakest line-up so far to continue with this series. Feel is not the most solid studio out there, Keiichiro Kawaguchi can be solid when he wants to, but also has a habit of being really boring, and most of Takamitsu Kouno’s scripts and adaptations also aren’t much to write home about. I like how the producers continue to change creators to keep things fresh, but this might not have been the best choice.

Sasami-san@Ganbaranai

The Positives: Shinbo: when he’s good he’s really good. Katsuhiko Takayama: when he’s good he’s really good.
The Negatives: This… will get annoying. This premise sounds a bit like Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo, and with the right people working on it it can really become great. I just really fear Shaft’s long drawn-out discussions about nothing and fanservice here. Please: just do something about that horrible pacing of yours! I really want to like Shaft and all, but they annoy me way too much for that.

Cuticle Detective Inaba

The Positives: An exciting time for Susumu Mitsunaka: this will be his first full series to direct, so anything can happen. It’s a bit of a pity that he has such a silly premise to work with, but ah well. Makoto Nakamura is solid enough to back him up with the series composition. At least this doesn’t piss me off in any way, that’s also good in this season.
The Negatives: The thing with this show is that it has a really silly premise, yet it tries to look serious. Good perhaps for some deadpan humour or something, but will it actually work?

Senyuu

The Positives: Very solid staff members here: Daisuke Okumura has done the photography of many interesting-looking anime (Shikabane Hime, Gurren Lagann, Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna’s OP, Penguin Drum), Takanori Tanaka did some beatiful backgrounds (Dennou Coil, Ghost Hound, Seirei no Moribito), and Michiko Yokote has written and adapted many, many awesome series (Princess Tutu, Kobato, Strange Dawn, Bake Neko). The mangaka is a typical shounen mangaka, but he does seem to have his own unique style which actually seems retained in the promo art. I’d look forward to this, if it wasn’t for one thing…
The Negatives: Oh god, Yutaka Yamamoto. Not him. The problem with him is that he really wants to be there with the big guys, and he is ambitious, but he still needs to learn so much, and doesn’t seem to realize this. This lead to the disaster that was Fractale. And really: technically his series always look great and stuff, but they’re a mess when he starts to meddle with the story. This is an adaptation, but that still doesn’t convince me, considering how disappointingly out Kannagi (one of his other series) ended.

Yama no Susume

The Positives: The character designer of Black Rock Shooter? Could have been far worse. Also, the director of NHK ni Youkoso, Aquarion Evol (under Shoji Kawamori) and B Gata H Kei seems very promising here. Finally! Something new that is actually looking promising!
The Negatives: I have become very cynical while writing this season preview. It sounds promising, however the overabundance of moe on the promo art still has me worried. Have some variety dangit!

Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman

The Positives: I must say, I have no idea what happened to TMS Entertainment, but suddenly they have become much, much more ambitious and experimental than what they were before. Here they adapt another one of Monkey Punch’s works after Lupin, and again they plan to give it a different spin by adding a few centuries to the setting. That’s what I like: an adaptation that takes both the original source, and a bit of its own style and flavour. The director is quite versed with this, having previously done this with Kuroshitsuji’s second season, even though his work on the Knight in the Area was a bit mediocre. The soundtrack will also be awesome, if going by Hiroshi Takaki’s previous work on AKB0048 and Kyosogiga.
The Negatives: I am not confident whether Tatsuto Higuchi can write a good script for this. He’s not bad or anything, but he definitely lacks experience in this genre (he did storyboard a bunch of manga, which were about cute girls fighting in fanservice outfits…). I am confident that he’s able to write a fun script based on his experience, but I’m most worried about the overarching story. Yes, that’s very important for an episodic series.

AKB0048 Next Stage

The Positives: The official staff list has not been announced yet, but I think that we can be pretty sure that the main staff will be the same as for the first season. This means Hell yeah! Mari Okada and Shoji Kawamori once more together on one project. I remember how pleasantly surprised I was with the first season: it won me over, even though I hate the idol business, and it was exactly because of how it tried to bite the hand that fed it that made up for so much.This really was one series that needed a second season, and I’m really glad that it got one.
The Negatives: I really hope that this team will again get the freedom that they got in the first season. Considering the collective ego of both Mari Okada and Shoji Kawamori, this should probably be fine, but the chance still remains for this to turn into a sell-out.

Chihayafuru 2

The Positives: Squeeeeee! By far the biggest flaw of Chihayafuru’s first season was that it was too short: the ending was inconclusive. I sure as hell did not expect a continuation, due to the bad sales, but I am SO glad that it got one. The first season was just so beautifully made, and the chemistry between the characters was fantastic. It left on such a huge cliff-hanger that it will be instantly awesome again.
The Negatives: You need to have seen the first season in order to really enjoy this.

Oh my god. Remember how I said in the preview for the movies for the current Summer Season that it has the potential to become the best season for movies in a decade? Well, upcoming fall season actually is looking even better. I did not think it was possible, but seriously: there are so many awesome movies coming out, it’s just incredible.

So yeah, brace yourselves for the point at which all these movies will finally be able to arrive on DVD, because 2012 is going to be a fantastic year for movies.

Franchise OVAs

Comments: This is a list of all the ovas and dvd specials that are going to come out. A rundown: Otome wa Boku ni Koshiteru, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Minami-ke, Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai, High School DXD, Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka and Upotte. And to be honest, the only one I even remotely care about is Minami-Ke, but even that is a series that I can hardly remember when I watched its third season.

Ongoing OVA and Movie Series

Comments: These are continuing instalments of movies that are appearing, including the umpth Precure movie. And really: what’s not to love? Tales of Symphonia will conclude, Berserk will air its third instalment, concluding up to the point where the Television series left off (in other words, the BEST part), Mardock Scramble will conclude, and Evangelion is also back at a point at which it’s probably really going to take off, if the second movie was any indication. Interesting bit of trivia: for Evangelion they got their hands on a rather peculiar director to help along with the regular creators: Mahiro Maeda, the director of Gankutsuou. Yeah.

Katayoku no Khronos Gear

The Positives: The director originally came up with the concept for the Legend of Black Heaven and El Hazard, so he definitely has imagination.
The Negatives: You know, I find it very impressive that these guys managed to track down the descendants of Joan of Arc. Especially since she died as a virgin. I think this is one of those OVAs where you can pretty much get your impression from watching the trailer: it’s all really typical moe fantasy (with orgasmic power-up scenes included). Along with such a stupid premise, I’m not seeing much hope for this one.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Zenpen: Hajimari no Monogatari & Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Kouhen: Eien no Monogatari

The Positives: For those who haven’t watched Madoka Magica yet: this is for you. The chance to watch it on the silver screen.
The Negatives: You know, it really sounded great when three whole movies of Madoka Magica got announced, right? Well, two of those three are just recap movies: only the third will feature any new content, and really: that ending was very conclusive: how do they plan to add to that? In any case though, my real issue with these movies is that I cannot find an answer to the question of “What will these movies add to the Madoka Franchise?”

Kaiketsu Zorori Da-Da-Da-Daibouken!

The Positives: So, the producer of Legend of Legendary Heroes will direct the next movie for the Kaiketsu Zozori franchise, written by the director of Vandread, The Skull Man, Otaku no Video along with music composed by the same guy who also did the soundtrack for Hyouka, One Piece, Nurarihyon no Mago and A TON of other series. Kindof an impressive resume for a kids’ movie.
The Negatives: Kaiketsu Zozori is a bit of an overblown kids show that went on for way too long, can this movie really reel in new fans or is it just going to aim itself at kids?

Usogui

The Positives: This one screams pilot. It’s based on a shounen manga that is in no way going to fit inside an OVA, but this really looks like the producers are trying to see whether it works for animation, so we might as well see a proper Usogui series in about a year or something. And they got the character designer of Barefoot Gen to direct it… interesting.
The Negatives: So yeah, don’t expect anything from this OVA, it will only be an introduction, nothing more.

Macross FB7: Ginga Rukon Ore no Uta o Kike!

The Positives: So this is going to be a remake of the Macross 7 series, in which the characters of Macross Frontier are also going to make an appearance. Tetsurou Amino directed the original Macross 7 (which I didn’t see, by the way) and this guy really impressed me with his work on Shiki, so who knows? Satelight will also very likely brings its best animators to this project, so it’s definitely going to have a ton of eye candy again.
The Negatives: I hate to say it, but the Macross Franchise is really getting milked out right now. This is the third movie in what? three years? This one definitely sounds like it was thought up by producers with a lack of imagination.

Horimiya

The Positives: This story is definitely inspired by His and Her Circumstances, with the whole “pretending to be someone you’re not”-angle. The question will now be how well the creators make use of this shoujo story. And the guy to direct this and bring the characters to life is an interesting guy: this will be his first full series to direct, but before this he worked as the unit direction of the Full Metal Alchemist-movie, he directed episode 6 of the Tatami Galaxy and worked as an animator for anime as Welcome to the Space Show, Welcome to the NHK, Gurren Lagann, Read or Die and Panty and Stocking. He’s got an interesting resume for a starting director.
The Negatives: Yukino Ayana previously wrote the series composition for Denpa-Onna to Seishun Otoko, which didn’t know how to pace itself. But hey: this is a short OVA so the danger of it dragging on is much smaller.

Ippatsu Hicchuu!! Devander

The Positives: This is just one of those shows that made me do a double-take to check whether it was really true what I saw. I mean, we have this guy walking around on this robot horse who turns out to be named “Robony”. And to make matters even weirder, Robony was designed by who is probably THE classical mecha designer out there: he is the guy behind the designs of Gundam, Votoms, Reideen, and a ton of other classic mechas. Apparently this is to celebrate Tatsunoko Production’s 50th anniversary. The director is also a complete veteran: the director of Yatterman and all kinds of classic kids’ shows of 30 years ago (this guy was born in 1938!) The script also is written by a veteran, who has written and adapted a ton of series, ranging from Naruto to Yugioh and Yatterman. This definitely is an homage to Yatterman by the way.
The Negatives: The danger is aiming this too much at kids. This really should be something aimed at the older fans.

Kizumonogatari

The Positives: Do you remember that very misleading OP of Bakemonogatari? Now that was actually a teaser for the Kizumonogatari movie, the sequel to both Bakemonogatari and Kizumonogatari. The thing is that I read in an interview once that Nisioisin doesn’t like to repeat himself, which is something I really like, even though I’m definitely not a fan of his writing style that overemphasizes wordplay and takes ages to get anywhere. Still, this will very likely be full of really nice eye candy and animation, on top of that it seems much more action-packed than what Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari were.
The Negatives: That pacing still worries me though. Shaft does have an actual budget for this series now, and they’renot producing way too many series any more like when Bakemonogatari was aired, but I still need to run into a -monogatari adaptation that I really liked.

Arata Naru Sekai

The Positives: This is an ambitious project: it’s going to be both a manga, light novel and anime at the same time, penned by the guy who wrote the Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko novels, and I’m curious what his work is like without Shinbo dancing all over it. And really: this sounds very interesting with a story that deliberately spans different mediums. The director will also have his first full-on directing job, and he sounds like a solid Madhouse director here, having worked on an episode of Mouryou no Hako, Kurozuka and Steins;Gate in the past.
The Negatives: The problem is that I probably won’t be able to get 1/3 of the story, since I don’t read light novels.

Fuse Teppou Musume no Torimonochou

The Positives: Yes! The director of Xam’d is back with another work, this time an adaptation of the author of Gosick who based her story on the Hakkenden. Michiru Ooshima also is a really good choice for the soundtrack. This probably won’t be such an arthouse project as with the original Hakkenden OVA, but as a standalone story there is a ton of potential.
The Negatives: Ichirou Okuchi, the writer of Code Geass… yeah. Still, he did adapt the Berserk movies and Shigofumi, so he can definitely adapt something.

Sakasama no Patema

The Positives: So what was previously released were a bunch of preview OVAs. I didn’t watch them because I was just waiting for the full movie to arrive. In any case, Yasuhiro Yoshiura is the creators of Pale Cocoon, Eve no Jikan and Mizu no Kotoba. He definitely has a unique vision through his works, so this movie is definitely going to be interesting.
The Negatives: If I’d have to say one thing that he lacks, it’s making things come together. That also struck me with Eve no Jikan. Great individual stories, but it just seemed to miss something in the big picture, and I do hope that this gets fixed for this movie release because it definitely seems interesting.

Hana-Saku Iroha: Home Sweet Home

The Positives: Sweet, they stuck with the main staff members of the TV-Series, and on top of that this will probably be Mari Okada’s first written movie screenplay. There is enough inspiration left to fill a movie here, especially since we already know the characters and therefore don’t need the lengthy introduction arc that bogged the TV-series down a bit around its beginning.
The Negatives: So yeah, unfortunately this will likely be a movie for the fans, and not new audiences.

Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled From Paradise

The Positives: Awesome: a new completely original movie, animated by Toei, directed by Seiji Mizushima (the director of Natsuiro Kiseki, Full Metal Alchemist, Un-Go) and written by Gen Urobuchi (Madoka Magica, Phantom, Fate Zero). It’s going to be a science fiction project, but apart from that nothing is known yet what it’ll be about. It’s also got a really cryptic official website that makes Psycho Pass look like the bible in comparison.
The Negatives: I can’t say anything negative yet. The people involve here are awesome, and Toei’s movies always have this charm to them when they’re done by the experimental part of Toei, of which this definitely belongs to.

Tiger and Bunny – The Beginning

The Positives: The Tiger & Bunny movies just got even better once I found out who the director is going to be: Yoshitomo Yonetani’s name is synonymous to crack: he was behind Dororon – Enma-kun, Hoshi no Umi no Amuri and Brigaddon. He has this unique style and is always really fun to watch, and his crazy touch is definitely going to be interesting and unconventional for Tiger & Bunny here, aided by the series’ original scriptwriter.
The Negatives: Now, the series did end pretty conclusive. I’m not going to spoil this here, but the creators are going to have to be very careful to avoid some deus ex machina in order to actually get a story here.

Asura

The Positives: Holy crap! Toei actually made a movie out of this!? Oh my god, this manga was actually labelled like an anti-Miyazaki story, and this seems unrelentingly dark here. On top of that, the director of Karas and Tiger and Bunny will direct this. The scriptwriter of some of Mononoke’s stories and Ojiisan no Lamp will adapt the story and the ever-lovely Yoshihiro Ike will delier the soundtrack If they can manage to make this work this will definitely be an incredible movie.
The Negatives: The big danger for this one is making it devolve into something that is shocking for the sake of shocking. Make it count and actually flesh these characters out.

009-Re:Cyborg

The Positives: Kenji Kamiyama is back! And how, with this remake of one of the classics in anime (it was written in 1964 and formed the prototype for all power rangers and super sentai series to follow). On top of that, the always awesome Kenji Kaway will do the soundtrack, and one of the people behind the storyboard is one of the main episode directors of Mahou Shoujotai. Remakes are usually awesome, but to have such a rock-solid staff behind one this time makes me even more excited than usual for one.
The Negatives: Like with all remakes, this will have to balance between the original vision of Cyborg, and the vision of the creators themselves. The key here is freedom while doing justice to the source material. That’s always a bit difficult.

Gothicmade

The Positives: Now this is it: a completely unique movie. It was already announced seven or eight years ago, and with this, it’s finally done. This is Mamoru Nagano’s magnum opus. He was involved everywhere. In fact, the reason for why this movie took so long to make was because he took up so much of this movie’s production to himself, from the key animation to the storyboards: everything needed to be done perfectly. After such a long wait and build-up, I just have to see what it eventually turned into because really: we’re likely never again going to see another movie like this.
The Negatives: But yeah, that’s also the danger of such a project: it will either be an amazing and really personal experience… or a complete train-wreck because Mamoru Nagano took way too much into his own hands. But even then though, it will most likely be something special.

Nerawareta Gakuen

The Positives: Holy crap, Ryousuke Nakamura is back! This guy really is my favourite director who started his career during the past ten years, and just about everything he touches becomes brilliant. I mean, just look at the trailer on the official website. It looks so completely gorgeous and expressive. On top of that, I cannot confirm this and I’ve only read this somewhere, but there are rumours that Tetsurou Araki (the director of Death Note and Kurozuka) also helped to work on this movie after his work on Guilty Crown was finished.
The Negatives: There is the premise, which at first sight doesn’t seem like much. Yet, the author did write the Order to Stop Construction, which was delightfully witty. It probably won’t be something as unique as Mouryou no Hako and Hashire Melos though.

The next season: 36 new series, and that’s probably not even the total amount, since I’m quite early with my preview this time. There will probably be a few more announcements next week for the latecomers. What sets this season apart is how relatively little bad series there are. I mean, there are a number of kids series and bad fanservice shows and all, but much fewer than usual for an Autumn season. Plus, for some strange reason the kids’ shows nearly all have really good people working on them, do not ask me why. That’s another theme of this season by the way: really talented people working on relatively dull or just outright questionable premises.

With most of these previews, I usually have a clear one that sticks out. This time though, I don’t. I’ve got about 7 shows that all intrigue me equally, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg here. Seriously, this season is definitely going for the quantity, because there were a lot of shows that piqued my interest. On the other side of the coin though, it does have one major weakness: everything looks the same! There are a lot of very similar premises out there and series with the exact same genre. On top of that, just about every show deals with teenagers again. We definitely don’t have the sheer amount of imaginative premises that we’ve gotten used to from the past half year here, unfortunately.

Also, do note that I’ve decided not to include Kyousogiga for now. We just don’t know yet whether it’ll be an OVA or TV-series. However, I do want to note that if it does turn out to be a full fledged TV-series, helmed by the same director, then it will immediately rise to the top of the list of shows I’m looking forward to.

Onii-chan Dakedo Ai Sae Areba Kankei Nai yo ne—

The Positives: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu… in theory could make this into something enjoyable, after what he did to Milky Holmes.
The Negatives: If you don’t understand what the title means: BE GLAD!!!

To Love Ru Darkness

The Positives: I see no positives about this one whatsoever.
The Negatives: Good lord, they’re still going with this show? This makes 52 episodes of mind-numbing fanservice. Or am I really missing something beyond the boobs that makes this worth watching?

Hiiro no Kakera 2

The Positives: It has bishies.
The Negatives: Studio Deen, for god’s sake stop making these crappy bishie series and get back to actually doing justice to the shoujo genre.

Monsuno

The Positives: An American-Japanese co-production…
The Negatives: … about spinning tops that summon monsters. Yup, it’s another kiddie show. The director also isn’t looking good, being the director of Element Hunters and all. Moving on…

Seitokai no Ichizon – Hekiyoh Gakuen Seitokai Gijiroku

The Positives: Staff change! This season is handled by AIC, adapted by Reiko Yoshida (a very experienced writer) and directed by the director of Kateikyo Hitman Reborn.
The Negatives: I did not like Seitokai no Ichizon. It was like, funny for one episode and then it lost all of its charm. Most of the jokes were bad moe jokes anyway. Do I think that this will change with the new people working on it? Not really, bad moe jokes is everything that this show is. The creators are going to have to try really hard to make this consistently hilarious, and I don’t see that happen.

Battle Spirits: Sword Eyes

The Positives: The thing with the Battle Spirits franchise is that Sunrise keeps enlisting actually competent writers and directors to its installments (heck, Dai Sato worked on one of them). This time they got the director of Bartender. I am not kidding with that. Atsuhiro Tomioka, many of you may know him better as as the guy who adapted Zetman. The potential is definitely there.
The Negatives: The thing however with this franchise is that even though it isn’t among the worst of the kiddie series, it’s clear that the creators are forced to dumb themselves down a lot. From the few episodes that I did watch, they were trying way too hard to conform to the standards of kiddie series that really limits creativity, for the sake of selling toys through a business model that has proved to be lucrative. But then again, I only watched the first episodes of these series, so perhaps they got better later. With so many episodes however (all previous four seasons had 50 episodes, this one will likely have that as well), this franchise is just way too long for me to actually give it a chance.

Bakuman 3

The Positives: For those of you with enough time and patience this will be a treat.
The Negatives: Sorry Bakuman, you could have been a nice series for me. But there is no way I’m going to watch 75 episodes of you dragging on. You’re just not worth it, especially after you pulled a bunch of soap operas in the second season. This might be bearable for a series with a regular length, but not one that is as long as this one. Zero potential, because I already know that I’m not going to continue watching it.

Haitai Nanafa

The Positives: Passione is relatively new, and this will be their first full series to produce. Nice.
The Negatives: The thing is, that this is like Recorder and Randsell: it’s got five minute episodes and even the same director, so I really fear that it will be as dull and under-produced as that series.

Hayate the Combat Butler: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You

The Positives: Manglobe is… well, I guess I can’t use that argument anymore, can I? Anyway, the character-designs at least look better now, although I’ve heard that they really don’t work in animation-form.
The Negatives: Hayate the Combat Butler has been recommended to me quite a few times now, but really: with this instalment it will probably have 100 episodes. Is such a huge amount really worth it? Does it really stay hilarious enough for its entire run? Is it really fun enough to make up for Rie Kugimiya in yet another of her tsundere roles? On top of that, this season will be directed by the director of the ultimately very dull Asobi ni Iku Yo.

Aoi Sekai no Chūshin de

The Positives: Perhaps this has potential for a few classic game jokes or something?
The Negatives: It’s very hard to find something about this series, but basically we have an adaptation of a parody manga with a lot of fanservice, adapted by the guy behind Kannadzuki no Miko and High School DXD. I’m not expecting much from this one.

Teekyuu

The Positives: This is a case of awesome people working on… what!? I mean really: Mappa, the people who broke off from Madhouse studio that did Sakamichi no Apollon is now going to work on somehting that sounds like K-On with tennis. It’s also directed by Shin Itagaki, who is someone who really knows how to make exciting action scenes, as shown by Ben-To and Basquash.
The Negatives: What really worries me is the original source material here. Looking at some of the other works of Tsugeo Terada, there is a lot of hentai doujin among them. This is not looking good and I predict a lot of bad fanservice.

Hidamari Sketch × Honeycomb

The Positives: Hidamari Sketch is not one of my series. I tried watching it, but after around four episodes, I came to the conclusion that just too little happened. It was just too slow and boring to hold my attention. I can understand the appeal though.
The Negatives: However, there is one thing that I’m wondering about: how can series like this last for four entire seasons? Is there really enough material to warrant 50 episodes, or are the creators just repeating themselves over and over? I mean, me and Shaft sequels have a very bad relationship, so I’m very sceptical about this one.

Aikatsu

The Positives: Oh great, another show based on a card game. Prepare yourselves, because this season really has a ton of them and… Seiji Mizushima?! The Director of Un-Go, Natsuiro Kiseki, Hanamaru Youchien, Full Metal Alchemist, Gundam 00… what’s he doing here with the supervision? And you know about the director? He was the assistant director for Natsuiro Kiseki and Hanamaru Youchien.
The Negatives: And on the other side of the coin we have the guy who wrote the utterly terrible Miracle train. This season is bizarre in these choices, really.

Busou Shinki

The Positives: To think that they actually made a full fledged anime about this. And take a look at the character-designer, Takahiro Kishida: he also designed the characters for Baccano, Durarara, Noein and Madoka Magica, so the producers are definitely gambling on this as an advertisements for their action figures (because yes, that’s what this series is).
The Negatives: So yeah, this basically requires an original storyline to be written for these figures. So who do the producers get? The director of Infinite Stratos. Sure, he also directed Macross Frontier, but that was under Shoji Kawamori. But I guess that he’s not all bad, with that series and Kurogane Communication under his helm. My real worry here lies with the guy who is going to have to write everything: This is the guy adapted World Destruction, Beelzebub, and Maria Holic. His one original story is from Reideen, which was more wasted potential than anything and saved by good directing. Add that to the story of the OVA which just involved a boy finding one of these girls, even though it did have really good staff behind it, and it seems that on top of that these guys will probably be facing a lot of restrictions in this adaptations from above. To be honest this isn’t sounding too good.

Chou Soku Henkei Gyrozetter

The Positives: My very first impression when I saw this was: great, not another kiddie show to promote toys. And then I found out who were involved: the director of Daily Lives of High School Boys and the first 100 episodes of Gintama will direct, and Dai Sato will be writing it. On top of that it also turned into a show to promote various cars, the soundtrack is composed by the same person who composed the awesome soundtracks of X and Blood-C and they got a lot of different designers together for the various mecha designs. And on top of that A-1 Pictures will animate it. That’s a lot of ambition for a kids’ series, don’t you think?
The Negatives: As much as I’d love to see more Dai Sato (this is the guy who wrote Eureka Seven, Ergo Proxy and various episodes of Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell, and he’s characterized by his very intelligent dialogue), I want to see him do an actual non-kiddie show again: one that can take itself seriously. Because he already did this before with Battle Spirits and also with the Tekken movie. After he went off and created his own writing studio, he unfortunately had to take a lot of jobs for the heck of it in order to make some money, it appears. It’s a bloody shame, because a writer like him really needs to get his chances.

Girls und Panzer

The Positives: From the creators of Squid Girl: a series with a bunch of girls and a tank. Okay, fair enough. These people know what good comedy is, and this time they’re dealing with an original story so they can go all out. Just don’t let this get a sequel.
The Negatives: Reiko Yoshida is busy this season: three series at the same time. Also, it’s a bunch of girls with a tank! I can just imagine the creators coming up with this “Quick! We need another premise! What do people like besides girls?” “Uh, tanks?” “Good enough! Let’s go!”

Suki-tte Ii na yo

The Positives: This most definitely looks unlike anything Zexcs have ever done before. I think we can blame Yoshiko Okuda for that, who has an interesting track record as an animator so far with experience on episodes of Casshern Sins and Shigurui. Yuuji Nomi also did the soundtrack of Bokura no and Hi no Tori, so that also sounds very promising. On top of that, this will both be directed and adopted by one of the two directors of Steins;Gate. The series director meanwhile is completely new. He worked as an animator for a few years, after which he moved on to a few series for episode direction (Ao no Exorcist, Inu Boku, Working and Kimi ni Todoke) and this will be his first chance to direct an actual series. Interesting.
The Negatives: For the negatives, I unfortunately have to turn to the original source material. Looking at the author’s other works, she seems very fond of smutty shoujo romances, and to be honest, that’s exactly what this series sounds like. It’s so entirely typical, so the execution really is going to have be good here to prevent us from watching yet another couple of paper bags in a “will they won’t they” relationship.

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

The Positives: It’s a bit difficult to explain what a director of photography does, but he basically is in charge of the camera work, and making everything look good. Now, the guy who does this for Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun also did this for the various seasons of Natsume Yuujin-chou, Durarara and Kuragehime. Add that to the director of Kimi ni Todoke and we’ll probably have a very pretty looking series here. Noboru Takagi is also a very good writer, having adapted Baccano, Durarara, Koi Kaze and Sankarea in the past.
The Negatives: Now the question is: can they make this story work? I’m glad to see more shoujo romance, but if it’s just going to be like “will they won’t they” like with Kimi ni Todoke, then I’m not feeling like sitting through that again. The set-up is really clichéd for a shoujo series: especially dating a bad boy has been done to death, so something definitely needs to set this one apart in its progression or execution. I’ve taken a look at some of the other stories that Robico, the writer of the manga this is based on, has written and they’re typical romances, although all of them aren’t as plain as what Kimi ni Todoke was: from what I could gather she always tries to at least give a side or story to her character. She also seems to like to use irony in some of her short stories, so let’s see whether her longer ones can also make use of this.

IXION SAGA DT

The Positives: So here is the thing: Ixion Saga is based on an MMORPG. Since these games are known for their plots, the main creators will need to put a lot of new and original stuff to make it work. And wouldn’t you know, they happen to be the people behind the Gintama anime: its series composition guy and the director of my personal favorite first 100 episodes, so be exact. That series had some really good fillers, so they have shown that they’re able to create original content. Atsuki Yamatoya also worked on the series construction of Simoun, which I found to be utterly brilliant.
The Negatives: The downside is that these two don’t always try to deliver good stories. Akatsuki Yamatoya is just as well fine with doing stuff like To Love Ru and Blue Dragon. Also, how on earth did they succeed in making this show this ugly? Shinji Takeuchi is the character designer of Gintama, so he should know how to correctly portray colourful characters.

Medaka Box 2

The Positives: Well, even though this involves Gainax’s worst director and Nisioisin, I enjoyed the first season. It was nothing special, but the craziness it evolved into… I could appreciate that, and the second season is promising more of that, if you liked that, then you’ll probably like this sequel as well.
The Negatives: It remains a shounen jump adaptation that needs to squeeze in 52 chapters in one year. That rather scares me, because that gives this series the danger of dragging on horribly, like so many other of its predecessors have done as well. When I see the first signs of this happening, I’m bailing out.

Chuu-2 Byou Demo Koi ga Shitai!

The Positives: Trying to find information about light novels is really hard on the internet. I’m surprised nobody has yet set up some kind of AniDB for light novels yet. Because of that, I also have no idea what the source material is going to be like. It does sound interesting if it goes in-depth to what that “Chuu-2 Byou” actually does to teenagers, despite the really bad title. Jukki Hanada is a good choice to adapt this material, and on top of that Kyoani put its best director on the job: Tatsuya Ishihara was behind Air and Clannad, whose adaptations I really loved.
The Negatives: But it can just as easily turn into yet another show in which cute girls fight and a male lead is in the middle of them. There are too many of those, so this show will have to set itself apart, and not just with Kyoani’s trademark really good animation. Is this the right type of material to make Kyoani shine, or have they just gotten more generic?

Magi

The Positives: Oh god, this will definitely be the eye candy series of the season. A-1 have really managed to improve themselves even more, and with this they also brought in Takashi Hashimoto in for the special effects. The list of series this guy has worked on is HUGE, and includes things as direction the animation of Mononoke and Bake Neko, including their conceptual designs and the Special Skills director of Karas. And then there is the director: the guy who directed the really imaginative Read or Die, Risky Safety, and Kamichu. Whole premise is loosely based on the Arabian Nights. Interesting!
The Negatives: Oh god no! Not Hiroyuki Yoshino! The guy behind the script of Guilty Crown, Macross Frontier, Mai Otome, Seikon no Qwaser and Code Geass. This guy’s name is nearly synonymous with train-wreck. Thankfully he is adapting a story this time, but when I look at who wrote it, I’m not really positive either: he’s the guy who wrote Sumomomo Momomo before this, a series whose only redeeming quality was its catchy name (Plums and peaches too!), otherwise it was just a run off the mill romantic fighting school comedy. Magi thankfully sounds much more creative, but can he really do justice with a story based on the Arabian nights? I mean, such a setting sounds really promising, but not when it’s chock-full of shounen cliches. Especially not with Hiroyuki Yoshino having to adapt it.

Jormungand 2

The Positives: Well, those who watched this series know what to look forward to: snarky military action with a lot of intrigue.
The Negatives: The first season for me missed something. The characterization was just one-sided, especially on the villains’ side. That’s something that this sequel is definitely going to have to fix.

Initial D New Season

The Positives: I’ve actually never watched anything of Initial D, but who knows? A hot blooded racing anime has potential, especially now that the creators are giving it a modern touch. This series will air twice every month, so it’ll follow the same formula as Wangan Midnight, allowing the creators to just take their time. Nice choice.
The Negatives: I’ve heard that Initial D was not the best looking series (to the point where the car CG stood out way too much, and one particular character resembling a potato more than a human being), so I wonder if this new series will have the same problems or not.

K

The Positives: This is an original project by Gohands, and the only thing we know so far is a bunch of voice actors, a bunch of promos and that it’s got a producer who worked on most notably Fafner, Stellvia and Heroic Age. Based on the promo images, this seems like an action series with good animation and a lot of different characters walking around. The trick will now be to give them all character and make them all interesting, so I hope they went with the right people behind this.
The Negatives: One warning sign though was that everyone looked around the same age. If you want to have a diverse cast, then go for it. Switch up the ages as well. Also, make sure not to go overboard on the CG, Gohands.

Code:Breaker

The Positives: Kinema Citrus, with the director of Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood and Kurau Phantom Memory. Hell yeah! This guy knows how to portray action scenes and how to do characterization properly, and he’s doing both the direction and series composition.
The Negatives: This does seem like the least interesting story he’s worked on so far, though. The original mangaka seems to have written Samurai Deeper Kyo before this. The premise for Code Breaker just seems… plain in comparison to what Yasuhiro Irie and Kinema Citrus did before this, so let’s hope that it at least has some good character development.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

The Positives: Finally a show that doesn’t look like the others! I tend to love remakes of classic series, so I’m very interested what the creators can do with this, and the character designs at least look very artistic. We still have no bloody clue who will end up doing this, but they definitely plan to make it interesting to look at.
The Negatives: However, try to look at that trailer on the official website and you get treated to some very jumpy and awkward animation, showing that character designs like this are hard to move around.

Btooom!

The Positives: Yosuke Kuroda as the scriptwriter is a really solid choice. This guy is really experienced. The director is also very interesting: he hasn’t done much, but the episodes that he did work on were really, really good: A Spider’s Thread of Aoi Bungaku, plus a few episodes of Madoka Magica, Chihayafuru and Supernatural. I wonder what he can do with the actual series here.
The Negatives: So… basically we have Sword Art Online again here, only this time with a survival theme and instead of an MMORPG the focus is on an action game. Okay, sounds promising. The mangaka of Btooom seems to like a lot of horror as well and his stories definitely have potential. There is that fact that the manga isn’t finished yet though…

Robotics;Notes

The Positives: Well, so after Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate there is Robotics;Notes. The whole futuristic approach really reminds of Eden of the East. And yes, for those wondering: Naotaka Hayashi is a member of 5pb, the company who published the game that this is based on. He’ll be able to keep Jukki Hanada in check, who sometimes manages to lose himself in his own scripts. Beyond that Jukki Hanada managed to turn into a very solid writer who manages to deliver when he needs to in his adaptations recently, as shown by Level E and Steins;Gate. This is also necessary for Kazuya Nomura, the director of Sengoku Basara 2 and its subsequent movie.
The Negatives: So yeah, the big challenge will be to stuff everything into just Noitamina’s 11 episodes. This is pretty much tackled by people with pacing problems. Sengoku Barara’s second season for example had its awesome moments, but near the end you could see that Kazuya Nomura was unable to make everything come together due to his excessive focus on build-up. Also, Noitamina is for adults, put them in there for god’s sake!

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

The Positives: Mari Okada! That definitely gives it a plus, because even though she writes really good original script, she is also brilliant at adapting other works, as shown by Hourou Musuko, Gosick and the Armed Librarians. What’s also good is that there is character-development in the premise of this series. And to make things even better: they got the director of the final two stories of Aoi Bungaku, and half of Supernatural, both which were really artistic and well directed. And on top of that she worked on a ton of awesome episodes of series like Mouryou no Hako, Monster, Nana, Chihayafuru, and Himitsu. My favorite female director out there is Sayo Yamamoto, but damn: she comes close.
The Negatives: So of course the next move for these two would be a seinen romance. A bit strange when you consider that they’re both women, and from the outside this does look like wish fulfillment for the common fetish of helpless girl (pretty much like Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko). On top of that, JC Staff is a lot more conservative than the companies that they usually work with. The thing with both of them is that they need freedom. But something tells me that Mari Okada is going to grab that anyway. Also, I don’t really like the character-designer: she was the one behind the IMO ugly designs of Zero no Tsukaima and Hayate the Combat Butler.

Zetsuen no Tempest: The Civilization Blaster

The Positives: From the original author of Spiral, very interesting. This guy knows how to write mind games really well. But what about the rest? Well, the plot for this story definitely sounds much more interesting than that of Spiral. Add that to that it’s going to be adapted by Mari Okada, who is excellent at adapting stories, along with a chief animation director who previously designed the characters for Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood and Rahxephon, along with none other than Masahiro Ando, the director of Sword of the Stranger, Hana-Saku Iroha and Canaan, and you might just have something that can surpass Spiral very easily.
The Negatives: Unfinished manga alert! Abort! Abort! With Spiral this ended in a disaster where this caused the series to be unable to answer just about every single damn question that it asked.

From the New World

The Positives: A-1 Pictures adapting the work from an award-winning novelist about a dystopian science fiction mystery story. Count me in! The director is a very interesting guy. He doesn’t direct often, but he did the really stylish OP for Senkou no Night Raid, he did half of Speed Grapher (which I unfortunately didn’t watch), he was the chief animation director of Read or Die and directed the animation for Welcome to the Space Show. This guy needs some freedom (he also designed the characters for Eiken of all things), but he can really make this work. Masashi Sogo meanwhile is a decent scriptwriter for this. He worked both on good and lesser series, but he can really make this work I feel. I especially enjoyed his work for Yukikaze.
The Negatives: The big potential pitfall: the 5 children. The promotional material already made it clear that they’re just a small part of this world, but make sure that they can play out their role, instead of forcing them in the midst of struggles they don’t belong, having to pull deus ex machina to get them out again.

Little Busters

The Positives: After Air, Kanon, Clannad and Angel Beats, this will be the next Key work. This one’s another adaptation, and this time it’s JC Staff’s turn to have a go at it. I’ve heard from various sources that the original story is even better than Clannad, so I’m definitely interested here. Michiru Shimada can make it work. On one hand she did a very botched adaptation of Before Green Gables, but her adaptation of Kaze no Shoujo Emily was amazing and very well thought out.
The Negatives: I haven’t seen Hatsukoi Limited enough, but I do wonder: is the director of that one good enough to make this work as a tear-jerker? Beyond that he also directed Kill Me Baby, but such a gag manga isn’t really comparable to something by Key. And here is the thing: what made Air and Clannad stand out (both with the movies and the TV-series) was that there were some amazing people working on it. Can these people live up to that in their own way?

Psycho Pass

The Positives: The creators are being really mysterious with this one. And it’s really working as well. This will definitely be some sort of police series, an interesting new direction for Noitamina, and the way in which it does this will probably involve some sort of science fiction. But the exact how and what are still completely unknown. This is unique for a Noitamina-series, but goddamit whoever the people behind this are: they definitely wet my appetite.
The Negatives: The only promotional material was of a gun that looked very CG-ish. Be sure to use your CG well, Psycho Pass!

Litchi DE Hikari Club

The Positives: And the winner of the most creative premise of the season: Lichee Light Club. I mean, this just looks bizarre from start to finish, and with such ideas behind it it’s bound to have a few laughs. A horror comedy isn’t done often, so this definitely has potential, and it also definitely stands out from the rest. Good job.
The Negatives: We still don’t know who will adapt this, nor if it’s actually going to be able to make it on October, since there is no official art yet on the website to be found. The above image was either that, or some strange live action picture.

Kamisama Hajimemashita

The Positives: YES! YES! For more than three years I have been waiting for Akitaro Daichi to actually direct a proper series again. I mean, he’s doing a wonderful job with Poyopoyo right now, and his adaptation of Gag Manga Biyori also was hilarious, but remain just random gag series. For those who are unfamiliar with him: I consider him to be the single most consistent comedy director out there, who at the same time gets even better when he has something serious in his hands (he was the guy who directed Now and Then, Here and There for example). On top of that, the premise here sounds like we’ll finally get another good shoujo series again, and Julietta Suzuki has potential as a writer: her short stories won a few awards and her stories overall seem much more imaginative than what I’ve been used to from most shoujo-series of the past years. TMS Entertainment, I really like the complete change in direction you took this year.
The Negatives: My one worry is TMS Entertainment, in the way that they’re obviously taking a huge risk this year. Now don’t get me wrong: I really like that, but I fear that like with Zetman, they won’t have enough support to fully animate it. Especially considering how the manga has 13 volumes currently published… and is still ongoing.

I’ll be honest here: in terms of OVAs the upcoming season will suck. The continuation of the Tales of Symphonia anime is the only thing noteworthy coming out. On top of that there will also be very little original content: nearly everything is based off on some franchise or the other. I am not sure what it is, but producers seem to get more and more scared to put out movies and OVAs with an original premise.

However, and I don’t say this often: in terms of movies the upcoming season has the potential to become one of the best of the past decade. This season has four movies coming out that have the potential to be incredible due to the staff involved in all of them. Of course things still need to air and all, but really: it has been a long while since there were so many of these movies at the same time coming out.

Franchise Movies and OVAs

Comments: These are the OVAs and Movies that either just keep coming out, or that are a small release. Squid Girl and Rinne no Lagrange for example are getting OVAs that probably won’t be more than just random side-stories. The key here will be whether or not they’re fun to watch, it’s that simple. There is also an OVA of that Esthetica series by Arms coming out, which I don’t care about in the slightest. And bizarrely enough there will also be a Code Geass OVA. In which they’ll do exactly the same as what Kuroshitsuji did a few years ago in having everyone play cameos in Alice and Wonderland. That Kuroshitsuji OVA really was not good. Did the producers really look at that and said: “yeah, we can do that too”? As for the movies, Naruto is getting a new one, and it looks really dull and generic again. At least with Blood Prison I could imagine what it’d be about.

Ongoing OVA and Movie Series

Comments: There are lots of on-going OVA and Movie series coming out this season. To start with the OVAs: The Tales of Symphonia episode is especially looking interesting and more Azazel is always nice. Beyond that though, To Love Ru, Hakuouki, To Heart and Seitokai Yakuindomo all get more OVAs which I don’t care about, and let’s net get started on KissXSis. Kimi no Iru Machi and Holy Knight also both get continuations, but the first episodes of both these OVAs were really bad and cheesy romance, and not really worth it to continue. Also hell yeah! Berserk’s second installment. From what I heard of first impressions, it’s supposed to be amazing, but filled with ugly CG. Well, let’s see if the second movie will be able to improve on that, but regardless I am really looking forward to it. Yamato’s second movie will also arrive, and based on the first episode that was pre-screeened a few weeks ago we’re in for a very solid science fiction show with a lot of nostalgia value. Nanoha’s second movie though.. I am not looking forward to that one. Unlike the two above, those movies are just simple recaps with very little value on thir own. The only point about the first movie was that now Nanoha’s story could be viewed in movie format. There is no way in which that’s going to work for Nanoha A’s. The story is just to big for that.

Asa Made Jugyou Chu!

The Positives: Yeah…
The Negatives: It’s pretty much porn from Gohands again, this time with the director of Princess Lover.

Tight Rope

The Positives: You could probably guess by the picture, but this will be a shounen ai OVA. Nothing is known about this yet and who will end up handling it.
The Negatives: That’s a very emo sounding premise you’ve got there, guys… Granted, it is a kind of premise that could work well when in the right hands. But I really doubt that these hands are right. Especially with a two episode OVA like this.

Eiga Jewelpet Sweets Dance Princess

The Positives: Studio Comet. Are you serious with the staff you gathered for this movie? The director of Kodocha, Les Miserables and and Geijutsuka Art Design Class, together with the writer of Ojamajo Doremi, Heartcatch Precure, Marie&Gali, Shion no Ou and Yumeiro Patissiere? The people who can totally make this premise work if they try?
The Negatives: And here is the ting with these two: if they try they can deliver some very charming and incredible series. If they don’t then the result is random fluff without much value. I have no idea what’s going to happen when both of them come together, though…

Fairy Tail Houou no Miko

The Positives: Fairy Tail fans, be delighted because this movie has a really good director assigned to it: Masaya Fujimori directed You Are Delicious a movie which was good on so many levels. The story is original so I think even I am going to take a peek at what he did here.
The Negatives: The scriptwriter is the same as for the TV-series, which I hope will work out because the annoyance of the characters lead me to quickly drop the show.

Toshokan Sensou: Kakumei no Tsubasa

The Positives: The director and screenplay writer are the same as for the Toshokan Sensou TV-series, so if they did have some sort of vision that was cut off at the really incomplete ending of the TV-series, then this is the place to show it. Toshokan Sensou does have potential. The TV-series did not find it, but it also did not cut it off. The director in particular is very volatile: he made some awesome stuff and some dull stuff, often in the very same franchise. Anything could happen at this point.
The Negatives: Still, before the advent of Guilty Crown, Library Wars was my least favorite installment of Noitamina, especially after the Armed Librarians came, and did everything that it should have been. If I had to give the movie one advice: pick one plot, and develop it. The TV-series was all over the place and therefore didn’t really do anything quite well. Keep your focus here.

Ookami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki

The Positives: Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo)’s next movie looks really interesting. It’s closer to Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo again, and looks to be a very personal story, about a grown woman and a mother, of all things. That really isn’t something you see everyday, and with these writers on board it’s bound to become really interesting
The Negatives: Hmm, my only concern would be that the focus would lie too much on the children, and there are enough movies about kids already. But heck, with these creators they’ll end up balancing things really well.

Blood-C – The Last Dark

The Positives: If you want to know why I’m looking forward even more to this than compared to the TV-series, just watch this video. That is the third opening for the Blood+ TV-series, and the guy who directed it will direct the new Blood-C movie. It is a gorgeous and very artistic opening, and if you look at some of the other episodes he’s worked on, like Sengoku Basara’s second episode, or Chevalier’s eighteenth episode, the amount of passion he puts in his direction and visuals is just completely stunning. He already showed that he is a very clever director with the cute romance OVA Tokyo Marble Chocolate, but here he gets to direct a full fledged action movie. Written by Clamp who have shown that they had huge guts with their complete re-imagination of the Blood franchise. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to this one.
The Negatives: Overall the direction of Production IG has taken after Blood-C has worried me. I really hope that this wasn’t caused by Blood-C’s backlash, but ever since they have been so incredibly safe. First Guilty Crown and the Prince of Tennis, now Shining Hearts and Kuroko no Basuke. And it’s such a pity, because these guys need to go back to their days in which they took huge risks and delivered on some of the most imaginative and bold series out there. I really hope that this movie won’t be the last of that side of theirs that we get to see. Have some balls, IG!

Code Geass – Bokuko no Akito

The Positives: I have been looking forward to this for so long. For those new to this blog: Kazuki Akane is like, my favorite director ever. He directed three of my most favorite anime ever (Noein, Escaflowne and Birdy the Mighty Decode). I don’t care whether he’s doing the Code Geass sequel next, it’s an original story in any case so this can be taken anywhere he wants. He has been working on this for years now, and I’m really psyched what he is able to do with this franchise. The staff isn’t a dream team, but together they can do some really interesting stuff.
The Negatives: Miya Asakawa did write the Mars Daybreak, a show with some very flimsy plot twists, so she does need guidance because her scripts on Noein, Birdy the Mighty Decode and Overman King Gainer were amazing.