Category: Some Quick First Impressions

Noragami

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a god.
Okay, so I mistakenly got the director of this series wrong. Apologies, my bad. Still, this episode had its problems: it looked stylish, but ultimately it just got a bit too generic. Characters had basically two modes and nothing more: snarky and serious, and that got old a bit too quicky. The monster design is quite nice, but this series isn’t really impressing anyone in that department after Space Dandy. From this first episode it rather looked like a standard shounen supernatural series to me, with perhaps better animation than usual.
OP: Nod bad. The style works here.
ED: I’m not a fan of this song, it’s very generic.
Potential: 40%

Tonari no Seki-kun

Short Synopsis: Our lead character sits right next to someone with an overactive imagination.
Tonari no Seki-kun is a weird series. It’s only 5 minutes per episode, and it’s based on just one and only one gimmick: during class, the titular Seki-kun does the weirdest things as a means to alleviate his boredom and the teacher doesn’t notice a thing of it. Remember doodling like crazy during classes? This series takes that to an art-form. Here is the thing though: if it’s just got one gimmick, then why would I want to watch more than one episode? The next episodes are just going to be exactly the same, only with other hobbies that the main character ends up doing on his desk. The female lead also is a very stiffly acted for a straight man. That also breaks the flow of each episode a bit.
OP: Yay for spoiling what the future episodes will be about…
ED: Again, there’s no nead to make even more clear what the gimmick of this show is going to be.
Potential: 40%

Space Dandy

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is dandy and in space.
This was an incredibly silly episode. It didn’t take itself seriously at all. But oh my god, the creativity! At heart this is an adventure series in which we follow the characters to all sorts of fantastical worlds with all kinds of weird and crazy creatures. It makes no sense whatsoever in the process, and the obsession with boobs probably wasn’t the best way to start with, but this episode was a lot of fun to watch. The animation in the second half in particular deserves to be watched. Bones really put their top people on that sequences; the movements were amazing! I do have some complaints though: some jokes were really corny (and I mean 1980s corny), plus the animation is quite inconsistent: the animation in the first half of the episode strangely cut all sorts of corners. Given that usually, series splurge the most of their budget in the first episode, Bones does need to have the resources to make this consistently good.
OP: Dandy.
ED: A great ED. It flows really well from the ending of the episode rather than starting abruptly.
Potential: 85%

Saikin Imouto Blahblahblah

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to have is own little sister.
Japan…. whyyyyy? Why do you keep making these utterly horrid imouto-series? What is people’s fascination with having their own little sister that they can have sex with, which is something that they always end up implying? This one is especially bad, by the way. Where it’s normally just the sister who for some inexplicable reason fancies her brother, this time it’s going to be worse: the sister is actively forced, against her will, in order to have sex with her brother due to some incredibly stupid chastity belt. It’s the single worst premise for an sister-series that I’ve ever seen! And I guess that this episode did tell a bit about the etymology beind the word “sister”, and why it’s so ingraved in Japanese culture, but that still doesn’t really justify the incredible slew of these series that go to so many lengths for some hot brother-on-sister action. Oh yeah, they’re not REALLY siblings: we all know what’s being implied here. There is also no single excuse to why I had to watch this sister go to the toilet for SIX. FLIPPIN’ MINUTES!
OP: Lazy. Badly sung,
ED: Again really bad J-Pop, plus the chibi character is just not funny.
Potential: 0%

Buddy Complex

Short Synopsis: Our lead character’s future self sends a cute girl to him to date and fight robots and stuff.
Here’s a surprise. Buddy Complex looks like this incredibly cheesy robot-series, and I already started to cringe when the creators somehow managed to wedge a school in there. However, as the episode went on, I noticed that on quite a few occasions the creators were actually using logic in order to advance their plots. You want to escape from this giant robot that’s attacking you? Just grab a bicycle and hide in narrow streets: that makes sense if you’re just a normal high school boy who can’t do anything else. Now, don’t get me wrong, the series remains really cheesy and it’s got no excuse of putting teenagers in the middle of armed conflict as the pilots of robots, however it is refreshing to see that it takes itself completely seriously: it’s got a story that it wants to tell. The cheese will be its biggest potential pitfall, because most of the characters are really hamming it up here.
OP: Very, very cheesy again. I know that a basketball has to do with the story, but you should not look at it like that.
ED: A decent song for once. Nothing special though. Again cheesy.
Potential: 70%

Witch Craft Works

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is protected by a hot girl.
Well, so the first new series of the year… is completely vapid, shallow and boring. Everything about this episode was just taken from the hundreds of other school magic series that exist with nothing new whatsoever, and everything about this show just screamed that the creators were just bored when they made it. It’s another one of those fantasy series in which the completely useless male lead gets protected by the single most popular girl in school, who this time has her own fanclub of crazily obsessed people who use weird catchphrases. It’s another glaring example of how badly a big part of the anime industry is stuck in its own rut by completely retreading the same thing over and over and over again.
OP: Even the vocalist sounds completely bored!
ED: Trying way too hard to be cute.
Potential: 0%

Pokemon XY

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to catch them all. Still.
Okay, so the ingredients for the new pokemon series: an inventor kid, a young girl who barely looks even eight, lots of cute new pokemon and big mega evolutions, and a brainwashing Team Rocket. Unfortunately I have to say that the originality is lacking here, but it’s Pokemon so I guess it can’t be helped. There are only two parts that are really bad: that one kid’s backpack, which is pretty much set up to be a plot device that can become anything the creators want whenever they write themselves into a corner, and the fact that Team Rocket brainwashes now, and it’s the cheap kind of brainwashing. This is something that personally annoys me, because brainwashing overwrites any kind of development a character may have by just blaming it on the brainwashing. Beyond that, Ash still is annoying, Team Rocket still is obnoxious, but the huge variety of pokemon is what sets this show apart. That alone gives this show a variety that all other kids’ shows lack. The animation was also pretty good for this series’ standards (the character designs look much better than with Black/White). Also this is the first time I noticed this, but the music here was pretty good.
OP: Really not bad for a this series.
ED: Oh god this is awesome
Potential: 40%

Galilei Donna

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are the descendants of Galileo Galilei.
Aah, this will be one of those series: the type of anime with lots of ambition, with a very short airing length and a very inconsistent execution. Lots of stuff is added, some which works really well and others which are… questionable. Sometimes they work out quite well, like with Gatchaman Crowds, at others they bomb horribly, like what happened with Fractale. Galilei Donna has tons of ideas. I like how it tries to have a diverse cast: the main characters are a middle schooler, a high schooler and a college student, and it managed to really show how all of them are in different stages of their lives. On top of that their parents also play a really big role in this show and they too are unique. The action is the same: at its worst it’s badly animated CG fluff. At its best it’s a really engaging thriller with intense animation. The characters? At their best they really are likeable and engaging. At their worst we have a middle schooler piloting all sorts of crazy mecha. The plot of this episode was the same. But here is the thing: I’d much rather have this, than a show that doesn’t have any ambition at all. In the past I have shown a ton of support for these kinds of series and I will continue to do that, because experiments like these are just so interesting to watch. After all, the more ambitious you are, the more things that can go wrong. Screw playing safe! Let’s go crazy!
OP: This would have been the best OP of the season if it just ran for half a minute longer. Now the song just ends in the middle of the best part.
ED: A pretty standard ED.
Potential: 80%

Samurai Flamenco

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets this weirdo who wants to be a superhero.
This series has the potential to become something really special. It’s an original story, probably 22 episodes long. To me, this series stands at the top of the season, along with Kyousogiga and Yozakura Quartet, though unlike those two it’s much more grounded into reality. The thing that’s immediately noticeable here is how good the two main characters are: both adults with jobs and lives and histories. And the chemistry between them is just hilarious: the two of them fit together really well. But here’s what really sold me on this series: the way it deconstructs the superhero genre. Forget those fancy promo images that this series advertised itself with. That’s just a show within a show. This series is about a cop, and a wannabe superhero, and this episode really proceeded to drive home that you should leave heroism to the people who actually know their stuff. Within one episode it already managed to drive hom a great theme and message. Let alone what it can do with 22.
OP: The best OP song of the season I guess. Not like the competition was particularly great though…
ED: Generic poppy ED with the girls of the show who didn’t even make an appearance yet.
Potential: 90%

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

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets hit by a girl falling from the sky.
Well. This series was one of the biggest surprises I have had in years while doing these first impressions. And I’m not kidding. The premise of this series is a horrible excuse to make a cute girl fall from the sky and do the bidding of the main character. It looks and sounds exactly like your umpth obnoxious harem show. Every single character is your obnoxious harem cliché that has been done to death, and all of the female characters have these annoying squeaky voices. This should have been utterly horrible. This should have been a contender with Yuusha Blahblah and Walkure Romanze for the worst show of the season. And yet the creators gave it the best rendition that it possibly could have had with these horrible ingredients. This episode had me in stitches. I laughed so hard at times. I’m not going to spoil why. I just applaud this show for doing what I thought was impossible.
OP: FANSERVICE
ED: Live action used well? In a series like this?
Potential: 80%

Blazblue – Alter Memory

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a powerful right hand of doom.
This season sure likes its “really sad flashbacks in the middle of fire”-cliches. This was like, the fourth show that had one? – Anyway, silly trends aside: I’m blank on this one. This show has some action scenes (which weren’t bad by the way), but it’s supposed to be a game adaptation. This did not feel like a game. It also didn’t really feel like the creators were stuffing way too much or too little in the first episode: it’s a perfectly fine episode to start off with with a lot of hints for the future of the plot and the set-up for the characters and the setting (which have a few neat ideas in them by the way). It jumped from scene to scene, but in actually a comprehensible way, rather than making it seem like the story was flying through everything. The characters also have slightly more charm than what I expected from a game adaptation as well. It at times made no sense, but that too wasn’t in a bad way: this episode raised a lot of questions that all look like they can be answered as the show goes along. It’s also good to have a main character as an adult (please tell me that this guy is at least older than 18…). The thing here is that most of this episode was bland, but I saw small hints of interesting stuff like mentioned above. And then there was that preview for the next episode that I happened to watch. A hint, or just a cry of despair?
OP: Quite a standard OP song.
ED: Nice art, bland song.
Potential: 75%

Tokyo Ravens

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can be an Omnyouji.
This one turned out a bit different from what I expected. I thought that this would be another one of those immature shows about a bunch of kids fighting with onmyouji powers. And while this series is indeed a show that features a bunch of teenagers fighting with omnyouji powers, there was a surprising amount of time dedicated to drama, and pretty decent drama at that. You know that with all the fanservice shows, this has been the first one to feature an actual kiss? And there isn’t even much other fanservice in this episode, with most of it being at least a bit more subtle than a horny horse with a craving for skirts. The strange thing with this series is that it knows that it has cliches, but it dances around them, instead of addresing them directly. Well, this episode did at least. I’m not sure whether the creators intend to do that for the entire series.
OP: Not bad, but still not the great ED I’ve been waiting for.
ED: Nice artistic direction there.
Potential: 75%

Yowamushi Pedal

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes anime.
Why does anime have this fixation with idiots? I mean, isn’t it much more fun to watch actually smart people do stuff? What makes things even worse is that most idiots in anime are also mind-numbingly stupid. Yowamushi Pedal: I found the experienced bikers much more interesting to watch: someone who has been training for years, with a love and passion for the sport, held back by his own pride and having this really good rival as a roadblock. But no, the main character is this kid who lives entirely in his own world, refuses to think straight and who just happens to be really good at cycling. This really is the prime example of a series with the “bad main character”-syndrome, because the rest of the cast: I don’t mind them, and they seem interesting from what we’ve seen of them. Even the female lead, even though she’s held back a lot by her cliche of being the token female in a sports series who can’t compete and therefore just ends up being a manager. Is it that weird to have both a male and a female team? Despite these criticism though, I do have one positive thing to say about this series: I would not be surprised if this was inspired by Kuroko no Basuke, but where Kuroko did not motivate me to keep watching, this episode of Yowamushi Pedal did. Damn you cliff-hanger!
OP: Generic shounen opening with lots of modern speedlines that don’t fit their context.
ED: Generic ending. Come on. Please. Give me at least one great opening or ending this season. Just one that dares to be different and unique.
Potential: 70%

Unbreakable Machine Doll

Short Synopsis: Our lead character’s girlfriend is a magic fighting doll.
Wel… it’s not the worst thing of this season. Its plot at the very least is guided by “some” logic. Not much, but I’ve seen worse! I still see no hope in this one though, for the usual reasons: bland cast, bland premise, no hints whatsoever that it can get some good things out of its characters nor plot, and the action itself also has nothing to write home about. Beyond that, the characters remain really stereotypical without much soul, and all of the action scenes make no sense whatsoever. I know this series uses magic and all, but even then there are some thing sthat you just need to hide better. To me this feels like the creators were just animating it for the heck of it without really spending time on thinking how to make it work or how to polish it. Moving on.
ED: Bad song, bland animation.
Potential: 0%

Non Non Biyori

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters live in the country.
Quite unexpectedly, Non Non Biyori was a huge nostalgic trip to my childhood for me. At times it lost itself a bit in its comedy, or attempt to be heart-warming, but at its best points, this episode just forcefully dived into my head when I was a child. I personally grew up in the countryside, so I can really relate to some of the things they talked about, like not locking your doors, having small schools, or how if you drive 50 km per hour, you will reach 50 kilometers after an hour (shut up, I was young!). My point is: this show captures being a kid more than any other series of the recent years about just a bunch of kids growing up and nothing more. It doesn’t aim at the complete picture, but it doesn’t lay things too thick or too thin. It doesn’t focus on the darker parts of being a kid, just the random ones and with that it doesn’t lay things on too thick, which is a problem that most other series of its caliber have; even Tamayura wasn’t really realistic due to how forced its drama was at times. And yet despite that, I had trouble to not fall asleep.
OP: Not bad. I like the singer of this, but I forgot her name.
ED: Oh boy. Next time try to leave the singing to people who can actually do it…
Potential: 75%

Arpeggio of Blue Steel – Ars Nova

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to command a cute girl. And a submarine.
Arpeggio is cell shaded 3D CG. Okay, I did not expect that. The creators did well in their attempts to hide this… but it still stands out and the animation is in this uncanny valley in which the characters all have these creepy stares. Now, if the rest of the series was good, then this could be perfectly excused… but I’ve got a big “meh” impression from all of it. Yeah, the action is decent, but nothing special. The characters are virtually nonexistent aside from the lead couple, and they… just interact with each other. Nothing more nothing less. The story is the standard Yamato-inspired series: humanity is screwed until a single traitor from the bad guys joins the good guys giving them superior technology that kicks ass. There’s nothing that really stands out in any way here. If you want a good series about submarines: watch either Blue Submarine No6 or Fushigi no Umi no Nadia. This one… this episode was bland and I saw no hints about it not being bland in the future.
ED: I assume that this will be the OP for this series, and it’s just copied and pasted from other OPs. Seriously, what the hell happened to the awesome OPs here? Even the best OPs this season just stood out due to animation. Gone are the openings based on great ideas or with a strong artistic vision behind them. What gives?
Potential: 50%

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is human.
Yozakura Quartet, congratulations. You have beaten the entire Autumn Season so far. No other series came close to the creativity you showed in this episode. The characters were incredibly likable, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the animation. Oh god the animation! There are plenty well animated series this season, but this show really takes this one step beyond. This episode featured a festival for example. Take a look at all of the characters in the background: the creators made sure to give all of them a unique look, and they tried to animate all of them as much as possible. Kill La Kill stood out, but it did so in just one way and one style. Kyoukai no Kanata just had a ton of inbetween frames that brought its characters to life. This series however really puts thought into its animation: it toys around with camera angles, it actually moves its camera dynamically, characters physically interact with each other and their environment beyond just swinging swords, punching or firing beams, and it’s all incredibly diverse: the animators experiment with a ton of different stuff here. Especially the second half of this episode was chock full of neat ideas, experiments and really creative movements. There perhaps isn’t as much animation as with the OVAs, but that was to be expected, and there is still plenty to like. This really is a series that excels at showing what’s going on. The only other series that can even get close to it will probably be Kyousogiga.
OP: Oh, the animation. The awesome animation!
Potential: 100%

Gingitsune

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can talk to a fox spirit.
Too… many… great series… this season! I was hoping that Gingitsune would just be one of those forgettable youkai series without much ambition, but no. They just had to make this one incredibly charming series. It’s still a really simple show: a girl suddenly lives with her father at a shrine and suddenly she sees a fox spirit who can talk with a god. She’s the only one who can, and so she becomes its spokesperson. That’s all, nothing special, and similar things have been done many times before. But that fox. I LOVE that fox. He’s all sorts of adorable. He’s this big cuddly teddybear who is this old fart and suddenly realizes he has to be commanded around by this bratty teenager. He’s just wonderful to watch and he synergizes with all characters he’s able to interact with. The female lead, she’s not bad either. She’s bratty, but she too is developed and she learns of her mistakes. She’s engaging enough as a female lead and as the spokesperson of that awesome fox. I know my taste is weird!
OP: Strange animation choices, but I see here enough hints to know that this show will have enough material for 13 episodes.
ED: Awww.
Potential: 85%

Walkure Romanze

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes horses.
I… just…. what did I just watch? Sigh, dear Walkure Romanze: if you want to have fanservice, fine. Find some way to add it naturally or something. Do not throw in a horse that has a craving for young girl’s skirts. I’d really wish that I didn’t have to tell you this, but unfortunately these series still exist. This entire episode felt like a slap to the face to be honest. The entire setting doesn’t make any sense, as it seems entirely devoted to jousting, and nothing else, and it throws in this inconsequential romance subplot featuring an entire cast of characters with the IQs that many horses can beat easily. The horse was the most bizarre part, due to how well it was drawn at times. Heck, the creators even emoted this animal, with the result that it looked even more rapey than it already was. This really is one to pass up here…
OP: Bland in every way.
ED: Yeah yeah, just give any more obvious hints that this is going to be a harem by putting the entire female cast in wedding dresses…
Potential: 0%

Little Busters Refrain

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a high schooler.
Yes! Yes! Now this is much more like it! This is what I’ve been waiting for. You know, for as bad as Little Busters was at times, there was one thing that it always did really well: friendship. It sounds cheesy, but it managed to create this tight group of friends who spend their high school days together and have a really tight emotional bond with each other, and this time it’s a reasonably sized one, rather than the usual four or five that you see everywhere. That point was used really well in this first episode of Refrain, as it had a bit of silliness and drama that played off it surprisingly well. There are bad characters. Good lord, there are bad characters. But thankfully we’re all done with their arcs now and we can start to focus on the good ones now.
OP: Lots and lots of hints that things are gonna end bad.
ED: The entire episode was chock full of hints that things were going downhill. So why such a cheerful ED here? It’s not even a good song.
Potential: 80%

Phi Brain Season 3

Short Synopsis: Our lead character solves puzzles.
I’m not going to deny: I thought this episode was awesome. It’s finally done something that it should have done long ago in its second season, but never got around to: focus on Jin, Kaitou’s mentor, who was one of the most interesting characters of the first season. Finally they’re taking his development further, and it seems like he will be a central character in this third season, as opposed to being completely nonexistent in the second. Like the second season, this start again was quite strong with great character-designs and atmosphere, plus the characters work together really well again. HOWEVER, I KNOW THIS SERIES. Please, Phi Brain: make good use of your time for once. The first season was excused to experiment a bit, but not anymore. Actually spend your time well developing your characters, and make the conflict worthwile. Don’t use such a stupid motivation in which characters just can’t think straight. It’s very unusual for a show of your caliber to get so many episodes. Now actually use them!
OP: Very polished. Perhaps not as good as the first OP, but still works quite well.
ED: The song is a bit too bright and cheerful here…
Potential: 75%

Meganebu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wears glasses.
“Well, there are a ton of different series coming out today, so let me just quickly watch this random bishie show and get things over with so that I can focus on other stuff… holy crap what the hell am I watching?!” – Seriously, just the title “Meganebu”, or glasses club, is not enough to prepare you for what this series is. This isn’t just a series about a bunch of guys who started a club about glasses. This is about a bunch of morons whose entire universe revolves around the damn things. It’s incredibly camp and ridiculously cheesy, not to mention completely pointless. This show is bonkers, of the kind of “so bad it’s good”. Also for some reason it has very creative camera angles.
ED: Lots of cheese and bright colours.
Potential: 20%

Hajime no Ippo – Third Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character boxes.
For this new season I did wonder: what can the creators still add, after nearly 100 episodes. Then this episode started off with a story about Ippo’s past and nearly made me cry. Hajime no Ippo at this time is a project that has been going on for nearly ten years now, and it’s interesting to see how it evolved over time. This third series is a little less pimped up than the second season (less shiny, and the soundtrack is not as over the top), but the boxing matches still are really well done and full of adrenaline. The strength of this show lies in its side characters, of which there was very little in this episode, but there were plenty of hints for things to come. One thing that did strike me here is how fast the pacing was: the episode went from backstory, to a new challenger to already fighting this challenger, without much of the preparation work that we’ve usually seen from this series: the challenger got like, three lines of introduction before he started fighting. Let’s see whether this is a trend for the new season, or something purposefully needed for this fight.
OP: This actually looks gorgeous!
ED: One of the few ‘running’-EDs that actually work.
Potential: 90%

White Album 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character dates an idol.
Before I start talking about the actual episode, I want to talk about this series’ pedigree. The first two seasons of White Album (or the adaptation of the first game, explaining why this series is called White Album 2, even though it’s the third season) were made by completely different people: a crew from Seven Arcs brought it to life, and for that they decided to go into a completely unique direction that challenged the way we look at harem and idol series. It was incredibly annoying, yet so satisfying in the end. If you’re a fan of that style: forget about it for White Album 2. Now, the director: Seiya Numata. I really am a big fan of his, as an animator. He has this kind of energy that you hardly find with any other animator out there, not to mention that he is completely crazy. His series and episodes are always incredibly fun to watch. Now, if you are also a fan of him: forget about it for White Album 2. It’s not crazy in any single way, and neither is the animation very impressive. Satelite in general seems to be a Studio where the general rule is that the more money they throw at it, the better it looks, without much focus on the talents of individual animators. Having said that though, this series does set itself apart from most other high school romances, in the way that it has an actually sensible and intelligent male lead. And with that I don’t mean the snarky kind who sprouts quirky one-liners that come out of a novel, but it’s someone who uses his head, he’s great at organizing, and connecting people. The female lead also sounds like she didn’t have her head lobotomized, which is always good. It’s not perfect though, because especially the minor cast still consists out of one-dimensional idiots, but it’s something. This is a series that takes itself entirely serious, with no comedy whatsoever, however you can see Satelight’s love for music in this return quite obviously, and that too works quite well.
Potential: 80%

Teekyu, Season 3

Short Synopsis: Our lead character are supposed to play tennis.
Ooh, Teekyu. You still don’t make an ounce of sense, and I love you for it. At the point of season 3 you still don’t show any signs of slowing down, andthis episode brought us all sorts of randomness from ski lift to chihuahuas. This series still consists out of a bunch of talented animats just having random fun and playing around, and it also helps that the jokes in this series that DO make sense are actually quite good. I’m not that bitter that this was extended to a third season.
OP: What the hell man?
Potential: 75%

Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character “wrestles” in public.
What can I say? This show is just outright porn. Karuta gets Chihayafuru, Go gets Hikaru no Go, Football gets Giant Killing, Shougi gets Shion no OU. And then wresling gets to do with this vapid excuse of a show. Har har, it’s funny because it looks like they’re having sex! I mean, what’s there to say about it? I could spare some words about the whole set-up perhaps, because that also is just an incredible sellout. With the premise of this series being hot girls having sex with each other under the pretense of wrestling, the creators had to find some excuse to get enough of them in there. Their solution? Idols, making this even more of an insult to the sport. The female lead is basically incredibly stupid and ignorant which leads her to just have a match with a professional wrestler without knowing anything at all about the sport, in the middle of a huge audience. In a way this is a good symbol at how the idol business has spiralled out of control at this point, and how idols have forced their way into places that they totally don’t belong with their cameos, just because they’re famous and that their loyal fanbase will basically just support them no matter what, to the dismay of people who don’t have anything to do with them. But you know the thing with parodies, right, Sekai? It’s not a parody if you’re just adhering to the things you’re supposed to make fun of.
OP: Bland song, bland visuals that just show a bunch of bad wrestling scenes.
ED: Just reverting back to the idol part isn’t going to save you here, guys.
Potential: 0%

Ace of Diamond

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a pitcher.
So, did this series live up to the incredibly high standards that the baseball genre has set in the past? Nah, it’s just a Major-clone, and not really a good one at that. The creators here need to lookup the meaning of “laying it on too thick”, because that was exactly what they were doing in this episode. There is a ton of overacting, but the biggest problem is that it’s got a Marty Stu as a main character, as much as this show tries to hide it. He may make mistakes, but this series always points at him as being right, despite being a brat and making a ton of mistakes, and you also have the strange paradox in which the guy really values teamwork above anything, yet stands at the center of everything. It’s like “teamwork is awesome! As long as I’m the center”. The only redeeming factor here is how this series showed the difference between small baseball teams and the top tier of teams and it at least slightly tried to stay away from the “underdogs good established players bad” cliche. It nearly failed at even that though, but thankfully that catcher and manager ended up saving it.
OP: Generic cheesy opener
ED: The song is generic, but at least the art style is interesting
Potential: 30%

Strike the Blood

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a vampire who threatens to nknowingly destroy the world.
This turned out to be another one of the bad series this season, unfortunately. At first it looked like it might have potential, but there is one thing that really holds it back: its chronic lack of creativity whatsoever. This entire episode was cobbled up with cliches from other stories without any attempt to turn them into something new. Everything here was done before thousands of times, which made for a really, really boring first episode. And they’re not even the good cliches, but the lazy cliches, varying from the riduclously complicated universe rules in order to give the main character special powers while at the same time making him just a normal guy, the way that a panty shot is the biggest source for interaction between the lead male and female, how an international police organization tasked with saving the earth sends a teenaged girl to do this mission, not to mention the amnesia, the generic setting that throws all sorts of monsters just together without any sort of cohesion, the “not any person could block my uber-attack”-cliche, the “I am so stupid that I have no idea that I suck at tracking people”-cliche, the “random assholes who assault a girl”-cliche, and of course the “really sad flashback in the middle of a fire”-cliche (Miss Monochrome did that too, you know). Add that all together and you have a really boring show.
ED: Generic fight scenes and music that was just copied and pasted.
Potential: 0%