Category: Some Quick First Impressions

Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to date the hottest girls in school.
Okay. Here is the thing with this series: its premise is crap. This episode did its best to hide this a bit by at least giving the main couple a bunch of similarities (they hate love) and building this up well, but I see no way whatsoever for this series to work. I can totally see where this is going: they both hate love and gradually across the series they fall in love. That alone should be fine, but then this series comes and stars three more girls, one of which was confirmed to be the dreaded childhood friend. How the hell are they going to contribute to this series beyond being a shallow harem? This is like this fancy-looking boat with a gigantic hole in it: waiting to sink any minute after it heads out. I mean, this is A-1: the production at least was not cheap and the acting was far from as bad as some of the other shows of its genre. It’s just… that terrible premise.
OP: FANSERVICE
Potential: 30%

Cuticle Detective Inaba

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a detective with special dog powers.
Oh my god. I originally was not interested in this show that much, but I did not expect it to be this bad. Here is the thing: the people who adapted this thing seemed to have put no thoughts whatsoever in figuring out how the jokes of the manga this is based on translate over to anime. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a bad delivery of what could have been some good jokes if the creators took their time to build them up. Right now, this episode just keeps pulling jokes out of its ass without any eye for continuity. This feels like it was written by a bunch of amateurs who don’t know the basics of comedy: they sortof have an idea of what it means to be funny, but have no clear grasp of the details. The result is an episode chockful of random anti-climaxes that feel just put in there for the sake of having tons of anti-climaxes. It tries so hard to put in as many jokes as possible, without making sure to make any of them count. I can tell that the manga that this is based on has a sense of humour: that made me laugh a few times. But holy crap, this is not being translated well here…
ED: Again: trying waaaay too hard.
Potential: 10%

Maoyuu Maou Yuusha

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to own a demon king with BOOBS.
Cynical synopsis aside: this was the first episode I liked this new season. And it comes from ARMS of all people. For the record: that studio is known for making absolutely horrible fanservice fighting shows over and over. This episode had politics, and very interesting ones at that! I like how this series emphasizes that the war between the humans and demons has become too necessary to make it stop, and it can actually get quite interesting for the main cast to try and solve that. Now if only the main cast was a bit more interesting. It’s basically this sexually frustrated demon queen who just glomps the first guy who she manages to run into, and this typical teenaged male lead hero with very little personality. The only thing that was interesting between them was their dialogue: that was well written. But their actual characters… nah. Their chemistry feels very clunky together. Also, boobs.
OP: Interesting vocalist, pretty good use of music.
ED: An actual good ED that is not about fanservice. Arms, you surprised me.
Potential: 75%

Nekomonogatari (Black)

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an ex-vampire in love.
Nekomonogatari. Just the first episode today. Here is the thing with me and this series: it’s improving. It really is. This episode still had the annoying pointless fanservice and the random focus on pointless things like ahoges (those plucks of hair on top of the head that a ton of different Shaft-characters have; this was a joke they milked out eight years ago with Pani Poni Dash by the way), the pacing here was a lot more bearable than with Nisemonogatari: stuff actually happened at a fair pace for once. Here is the thing though: I did not enjoy this episode. The problem with the Monogatari series is that thanks to Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari getting on my nerves so damn much, I’ve started to hate the characters. I did not warm up to them whatsoever and I do not enjoy watching them at all. My question now is: is it all worth it? Is the sometimes witty dialogue about love worth it? Is the really creative animation worth it? Do I want to keep watching this for TEN FREAKING SEASONS?
OP: Surprisingly normal for a Shaft Opening, but well animated.
Potential: 60%

Ai Mai Mi

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are high school girls.
Enough with the three-minute moe shows already!! Jesus christ, this is a very annoying trend here. And you know what the bad thing is? None of them come even remotely close to being as fun and creative as Teekyu last season. It’s not like that’s a particularly high bar to pass, but at least that show was fun. I can’t say that about any of these shows whatsoever. Ai Mai Mi comes closest to Teekyu in the way that it also tries to have perverted jokes and randomness. The big difference is that the jokes are all terrible, and the pacing is a lot slower. To get a sense of the jokes in this episode: lots of sex jokes made by cute high school girls. If you’re into really bad sex jokes you might give this a chance, but even then the delivery remains poor, so be aware of that.
ED: Really cheap, but at least it’s creative. More that can be said of those other EDs so far…
Potential: 0%

Boku no Imouto wa Osaka Okan

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister from Osaka.
Here is one series I missed, but really: don’t bother. If the title of the show didn’t already give you some suspicions: yes, this is a crappy flash animation; yes, this is about a brother and a sister, and yes, the sister has lived apart from the brother for nearly her entire life. Helloooo incest. Thankfully, the two characters don’t seem to be in love… but yeah the other signs are all there. Apart from that, the only point behind this series is to illustrate the difference between people living in Tokyo and Osaka. In the end this all boiled down to how they have silly names for things in Osaka. It’s not worth it at all to make an anime
ED: You couldn’t get this any more shameless, could you?
Potential: 0%

Yama no Susume

Short Synopsis: Our lead character climbs mountains and is afraid of heights.
Again, three minute episodes. If they were actually good, I wouldn’t mind, but this is yet again a moeblob series like the two before it. Although granted, of Puchimas and Mangirl, this one stands out the best: at the least it has things that resemble characters, rather than cardboard boxes. The two lead characters actually have a past together. A bland past, but a past. And bland is just about the right way to describe this episode. I guess that it’s nice to see a girl with a passion for climbing and all, and the focus on their past was something I did not expect in a 3-minute episode, but this episode just was boring. Way too much of the episode was dominated by cute girls trying to be cute, that we’ve already seen so many times before. If the creators want to make this work, they really need to avoid the focus on this, and instead focus on being heart-warming (I know from my holidays that the reward for mountain climbing is a set of breathtaking views).
ED: More bland j-pop…
Potential: 35%

Mangirl

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to start a manga magazine.
It’s no surprise that I consider this season to be awful. Here we come with the series that has one of the absolute worst puns for its title. This time it only has 3-minute episodes as it shows the characters try to compile a manga series despite being teenagers. I guess it had some nice trivia when it comes to actually producing this… but that was pretty much buried beneath the tons of obnoxious jokes and moe that filled this episode. Especially the jokes were bad, and the characters rely way too much on them. I don’t feel like watching bad jokes here over and over.
OP: Really bad j-pop
Potential: 10%

Puchimas! Petit Idolmaster

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has to take care of idol blobs.
Well, let’s get the worst out of the way first for the new season: a crappy chibi-spin-off for the Idolmaster franchise. The Idolm@ster was a show that I thought was… decent enough. This however is just there to be a cute as possible without anything else. In this episode (which didn’t even last three minutes, by the way) we just see them adapt a bunch of idol blobs and that’s it. It wasn’t funny, it was trying way too hard to be cute. Only go for this if you’re a really big fan of the Idolmaster franchise and want some random fanservice.
ED: Obnoxious j-pop that gets on my nerves with dull visuals.
Potential: 0%

Girls und Panzer

Short Synopsis: Our lead character rides a tank.
Girls und Panzer: why? Just why? Why did you make all these decisions for your direction? I mean, you’re a series about a bunch of girls that ride a tank. Shouldn’t it be obvious what to focus on? Your director is Tsutomu Mizushima, a guy who excels at being over the top. This could easily have been this really over the top series with a lot of brainless fun and action. So why on earth are you taking yourself seriously? No really, there was no comedic moment in this episode whatsoever. They rode tanks for like three minutes, after which they switched over to some school. Add a lot of different characters to that… and yeah. This is Strike Witches without the fanservice!
ED: Montage ED with boring song.
Potential: 20%

Teekyuu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character plays tennis.
What the HELL was that?! I mean, you know Studio Mappa, right? The studio that was just founded from former Madhouse employees and did Sakamichi no Apollon past spring. Well, their next act is a 2-minute series with a complete lack of any kind of inbetween animation about two girls playing tennis. I mean, this was just bizarre: the characters talked incredibly fast and hyperactively. The jokes were like a shotgun: some kindof worked, and some didn’t work at all. It’s very hit or miss. The animation was… interesting. The episode was full of different drawings thatlooked dynamic, but lacked movement. Yes, the effect is really weird with the incredibly hyperactive pacing of this show. I’m not really sure what Mappa was going for here..
OP: Super-deformed and crazy.
Potential: 30%

Ixion Saga

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets transported into a game.
You know, there is one thing that I did not know about Ixion Saga in advance: it’s a parody. I was fully expecting this to be this really cheesy fantasy show that should be passed up immediately, and this really looked to be the case at the start of this episode. And then… it just stopped taking itself seriously. Now, that alone is not immediately a good thing. Anime has so many terrible comedies out there, so this could have made this show even worse. But this brings me to the director, who previously worked on the first 100 episodes of Gintama. And yes, this was funny. This episode definitely had some parts that were bad, but for all of those moment it also had parts that were so bad that they turned good, and it had quite a few well delivered and actually hilarious jokes in its arsenal. The question now is to see whether or not they can keep this up. Shows like this generally can manage first opening episodes, but to keep up this quality for an entire series is quite difficult. Let me get beck on this one next week.
OP: DT! DT! DT! DT! DT! <- who the hell found that a good idea?
Potential: 75%

Sukitte Ii na Yo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character falls in love with a bishie.
This was really good! I mean really: this is a very good season for shoujo here. Perhaps Tonari no Kaibatsu-kun was a mysoginistic cliche-fest, but both Kamisama Hajimemashita and Sukitte Ii na Yo finally responded to some of the issues I have been having with the genre for years. This series finally has a main couple that is different. It takes its characters seriously, and the characters are not the same characters you see everywhere. The lead female here is socially awkward like Sunako, but the whole theme behind this is for once not purity. Instead, it’s distrust, and living in a state being constantly afraid of harassment. Heck, for once the creators actually found a use for the “annoying perverted best friend”-cliche. The lead female also dares to show some of her weak sides, rather than just being bland and not do anything. Sure, she gets protected in the end, but she reaches out for the guy out of her own accord, rather than being swept away by some random bad boy. That male lead also very clearly sets himself away from that: he neither falls in the cliches you see of bishies that the lead girl has to choose from. Instead he is this outgoing guy with a strange taste in girls.
ED: I dislike J-Rock. But for this ballad I make an exception due to the vocalist who is pretty good there. Although he clearly has trouble hitting the high notes.
Potential: 80%

Little Busters

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a high school boy.
Hmm, I’d say that in terms of Key opening episodes, this one ranks above Kanon and Clannad, and below Air and Angel Beats. I mean, all those shows had their problems (Air probably the least), but what impressed me about this episode was the characterization of the five lead characters: their chemistry was quite enjoyable to watch, making this my top pick this season for school-based series this season. Their chemistry was both fun and engaging: their characters worked quite well together. This episode did have its problems though. There were a couple of very badly portrayed females. That laughing girl for example is the carbon copy of a stereotype that I have never seen done right. At the end of the episode another girl also appeared who was trying way too hard to be naturally charming, and of course this show has school idols. This show needs to work a bit on making more believable characters, but that was a problem with Air, Kanon and Clannad as well: the females looked incredibly superficial at first sight, only with their development that came much later in the series did they stand out.
OP: Some very overused OP cliches saved by a good vocalist.
ED: Same good vocalist, but this song just doesn’t work with me.
Potential: 80%

Kintama

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has straight golden hair and is loved by everyone.
Something I did not expect happened here. I mean, my relationship with Gintama is a bit of a shaky one: I absolutely loved the first 100 episodes. After it changed director, it stopped being as funny to me, and I ended up dropping it because it was too long, and I’d rather remember the best parts than to keep going with it while comparing it to the first. The same happened with the second season: it had some nice episodes, but I just didn’t find it as funny anymore. I expected the same thing to happen here. Instead, this was my favorite episode since the change of directors. Tomokaze Sugita, the voice actor for Gintoki, really was on fire in this episode, and his rants throughout the episode really reminded me why I fell in love with this series. Not due to the excessive violance or toilet humour, but rather because of its incredible sense of dialogue. That returned here. I remember how early on in the first series, Gintoki noted that everyone should be glad that he wasn’t named Kintoki, because they wouldn’t be able to air the show like that. A lot of stuff changed in the meantime, up to the point where the creators pretty much managed to get away with naming their show Testicles. This really was hilarious.
OP: Very nice, one of the few OPs that are actually funny.
ED: Eccentric but interesting vocalist.
Potential: 80%

Hidamari Sketch Honeycomb

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an art student.
Well, the fourth time I check out Hidamari Sketch, and the fourth time in which I got no incentive to keep watching. This just is the type of slice of life series that just isn’t meant for me, and to be honest this was a bit of a chore to watch. This episode combined random slice of life scenes, with characters who were all really trying to be cute. It’s different from how Chuuninbyou did it, but the effect is similar, in which we pretty much get a cast that’s trying too hard. In a slice of life series like this in whih the cast is the single most important matter, it’s a bit of a problem to have none of the characters stand out. It’s all just so dull, hardly anything intersting happens. Beyond that: does this series really deserve so many sequels? Wouldn’t it just be better to make this a short but sweet series instead of dragging it on like this?
OP: Very obnoxious J-Pop, but at least the animation has some nice moments.
ED: It looks nice, but it’s also surprisingly plain and normal for a Shaft ED.
Potential: 20%

Onii-chan Dakedo Ai Sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has seduced his sister and the entire student council.
Urgh Japan… when will you ever quit making these utterly horrid incest series? This is the umpth one in the line and really: they still are terrible in every single way aside perhaps from the animation. This episode was nothing but the lead female hitting on her reluctant brother, and the worst thing is that this show frames this as if it’s the brother who is not normal. As the episode goes on it throws in three more girls who all have just one defining character trait that they keep flaunting all over the screen. I mean this was bad. By far the worst of the season and I am not going to waste any more time on this.
ED: Uninspired recap ED with a bad song
Potential: 0%

To Love-Ru Darkness

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the romantic of every girl in existence.
There’s one line from the main character at the beginning of this episode that I find to be… peculiar: “…to someone like me, who is not used to being with girls.” DUDE! It’s been more than forty bloody episodes. What the hell have you been doing in that time in which you succeeded to seduce every single girl who laid eyes on you?! Beyond that, what do you want me to say? It’s porn. This time they dropped all pretense and just changed the premise into trying to get the lead’s harem as big as possible. There was some drama, and I guess it’s an improvement over the stupidity that was in the first and second season, but it’s still horrible and annoying to watch. Every scene seems to look out for ways in which it can stuff the male lead’s face in some sort of panties, like he’s some sort of panty-magnet. Just turn this into a hentai and don’t make me watch this for god’s sake.
OP: Generic J-pop.
ED: FANSERVICE
Potential: 0%