The Knight in the Area
Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to play soccer.
This is a strange season. It’s not the best out there, and yet my standards of it are really high due to the best stuff airing right at the start (and don’t get me wrong: I’d love this statement to be wrong). The Knight in the Area finally came with a show that impressed me again, although it definitely isn’t perfect. Sports series are known for being really well executed, but this show doesn’t have that. What it especially lacks is subtlety: the foreshadowing is obvious as heck, it had some really overdone and annoying cliches like the hot transfer student childhood friend classroom introduction, and the acting overall lacks the refinement that you usually see in sports series. Nevertheless, this was an interesting episode that did a great job of fleshing out its lead character. We’re not looking at someone who wants to be the best, but just a guy who is passionate about the game, and this episode already looked at who he is, what drives him, what’s in his past. We really got to know him already, and that’s definitely a plus this early in the series. The soundtrack also is pretty well done, and the drama also works.
OP: Generic sports tune.
Potential: 75%
Zero no Tsukaima Final
Short Synopsis: Our lead character has ended up in a fantasy world.
With these first impressions, I also like to include episodes of series whose prequels I didn’t finish, for the small chance that I did miss something interesting. However, with this season’s trend to concentrate all of the bad shows together, I was really prepared to rant at how bad this franchise had turned out… but yet this episode was better than I imagined. Oh, it still has plenty of bad parts, like I have no idea how Saitou managed to make four girls fall in love with him, or how this episode immediately started with all kinds of boob jokes, but afterwards this series showed that it can actually… tell a story. I have to say, this episode did have some solid build-up and nicely balanced exposition with things that actually happened. What surprised me the most though, was that Saitou and Louise actually talked to each other to sort out their differences, rather just not saying anything to each other for the sake of drama. I like that. Whether I’m going to keep watching this time though… the harem elements really have to improve for that, because it’s still really annoying and I still fail to see the point in Saitou dating anyone but Louise. Also, THAT VOICE! MAKE IT STOP!
OP: Cheese.
Potential: 35%
Senki Zesshou Symphogear
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to be an idol who fights crime.
Good lord. Were they actually serious about airing this thing? You know, I criticized a lot of series this season for being too bland. The problems with this series are completely different, but it still has the worst and most uselessly pretentious plot of the entire season so far. To explain exactly how wrong this show is means to delve into spoilers, but here it is: finally we’ve got another animated musical. It’s about a bunch of idols who battle incredibly deadly alien monsters who only they can beat, apparently. So here is what they do at the beginning of this episode: they h old a concert, gathering ten thousands of people in one spot with really bad escape routes and no security whatsoever. And after that they get all surprised when the aliens indeed do attack and kill thousands of their fans. What the hell, people? Did nobody read the script and consider what an incredibly shameless premise this is? And the worst thing is, that that was just one of the plotholes and issues the plot has. Another plothole magnet in this episode was the female lead, a random girl. The main idols of this series watch thousands of people get slaughtered, but they don’t get sad at all. But when the main character gets shot in the chest, they suddenly break down in a huge slur of melodrama. Later when the main character is revived (yes), the same alien monsters who before slaughtered a ton of people… just stand a bit around her to give her the time of escape. I mean hell, I thought that High School DxD was the most shameless of the season here, but this just takes the entire cake. This is the problem with shows that are entirely meant to promote a bunch of idols; they do nothing but glorify them. Seriously, this is a really strong contender for worst first episode of 2012, because it’s been a long time since I watched a plot that was so offensively bad. And it’s a pity, becaus eyou can really see Satelight’s influences in the battle scenes: everything is grand, the transformation sequences are intense and imaginative. But when the script feels written in five minutes by a guy whose mind was on something completely different, it’s just completely wasted.
OP: Random J-Pop
ED: Random J-Pop
Potential: 0%
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a young genius pilot.
Well, first things first: it’s awesome to see Gonzo back. It’s not just the series they make. It’s because of their balls: they like to take risks like no other studio out there, and that’s why I became a fan of them, even though they did release their fair share of crap. Now, as for this series: it looks just gorgeous. The CG is still up to Gonzo’s high standards and the creators didn’t just copy designs from the first season, but came up with a whole new set of eye candy that certainly does not stand out as inferior to its predecessor. As for the story of this episode: it’s definitely more childish than the first season, and shows a bunch of teenagers being able to disrupt an entire fleet. The first season had this too, but was a lot more subtle about it, especially with the enemy fleet having very stuck-up commanders and deploying no vanships whatsoever to intercept the main cast. There’s also fanservice, though thankfully not as much as was feared. The acting is overall very good, though it does have a number of weak points. The direction is also quite solid, despite the lighter tone. This is a typical example of a first episode with a lot of potential to become amazing, but also with quite a number of things that can hold it back and didn’t work out as well as you’d hope. Yup, that’s Gonzo alright.
OP: The OP of the first season was much better.
ED: A familiar voice. The song is a bit redundant after hearing it in other EDs, but the picture slideshow looks nice.
Potential: 80%
Guilty Crown
Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a half-naked girl.
That was absolutely gorgeous. The first episode of Guilty crown is a visual feast, in the way that just about every frame is meticulously detailed and well drawn, in the way that only Production IG can do for a television series. If they keep this up, then this will very likely be the prettiest Noitamina series of the year. As for the rest of the episode though: there were a number of issues I had with it. The biggest is that outside of the visuals, I miss creativity: the scenario of this episode had a been there, done that”-feeling, and the main characters are a bunch of walking cliches. On one hand you have the really bland male main character, and on the other hand we have this female who has special powers, is his childhood friend, and gives the male lead a special weapon that he can use to kick ass. There have been way too many shows already with that premise, and the only thing that this show really added to that was its gorgeous visuals. This is a show that needs to grow significantly. But heck: at least the characters are far from as stupid or annoying as they were in Fractale.
OP: Good idea to combine it with the content of the episode.
ED: A bit of a dull ballad with nice art from the promo images.
Potential: 75%
Un-Go
Short Synopsis: Our lead character solves mysteries.
Here is a very interesting one, and I don’t mean that in the way you might expect. At first this episode started off like your average murder mystery series: the protagonists happened to be stuck in a room full of people where someone conveniently got murdered. It was well built up, but strangely mundane. Then however the second half came around and this episode just kept switching moods, themes and atmospheres. This series is attempting to breathe a new wind into the episodic murder mystery genre. This episode had science fiction, horror, and the post-apocalypse all stuffed together. This was the strange case of not the culprit getting some surprise added depth, but the setting itself became a lot more intriguing once this episode started putting the pieces of its puzzle together. On top of that, this episode was well produced and well directed with very natural camera work. The creators definitely took creative liberties on the original work it’s based on, and the episodic set-up really allows them to try a wide variety of different stuff. Oh, and as an added bonus this episode had the best use of music and sounds of the entire season so far. My only warning for when you plan to check it out: the characters. They are not on the list of priorities for this series.
OP: A bit of a dull song, but lots of neat eye candy.
ED: By far the best ED of the seasons. Heck, even the OPs get nowhere as close to the imaginative visuals and music that was displayed here.
Potential: 90%]]> 
Short Synopsis: Our lead character receives a baby from out of nowhere.
Just… what the hell was that supposed to be? This was… so bad that it became hilarious again. This episode was five minutes long, and it featured some of the worst animation and most wooden characterization of the entire season. The plot where a bullied girl takes care of a devil baby who is literally dropped into her bed (I really do mean literally: there are two hands visible who really drop that thing from out of this random hole in the air) is just ridiculously stupid and the acting may be so stiff and wooden that it becomes hilarious, it’s the kind of hilarious that’s probably going to be fun one episode. Of five minutes.
OP: Those vocals! Make them stop!
Potential: 0%
Mirai Nikki
Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a stalker.
Ooh, I like this one. This one turned out to be an excellent suspense series, with a very creative premise of using diaries that can predict the future. This episode was especially good at portraying the main character, and especially relating in how he slowly realized how badly he has been screwed over; his reactions were just priceless, and it gives this show a whiff of psychological horror that I can really appreciate. This episode was well animated, which is also a plus and for once an episode was fast-paced, without rushing though everything. There was one part where this episode fell down, though: the bad guy of this episode. He was just… there and we really don’t know anything about him. The creators had better try harder for the next characters to run into our main character, because this has potential to become a really fun series. Oh, and finally a series has the balls to have school that doesn’t feature school uniforms. That gives the character designers much more freedom, and it shows: this show really has this unique look without having a particularly different art style.
ED: Clever
Potential: 80%
Mobile Suit Gunam AGE
Short Synopsis: Our lead character pilots a giant robot.
Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. The big selling point of Gundam AGE was that it would show a completely different version of the regular Gundam series. In the end though, all that that amounted to was a new coat. It actually did nothing to remove the most obnoxious parts of the franchise. The male lead still is a teenager who for very convenient reasons ends up piloting a giant robot stronger than all others, he instantly knows how to pilot it, the female lead is completely useless, and there is a lot of angst about how bad war is. Sunrise, for the love of god try something new for a change. Probably the most insulting part is how pathetic the military is: even though they have never been attacked, they’ve only got one capable pilot. On top of that, they allow a twelve year old boy to design new mobile suits for God knows how much money. Really guys: designing and coordinating such a large-scale project isn’t so easy that you can just take off to school at the same time. Oh, and another cliche: everyone is an idiot in order to make the male lead look smart. Throughout the entire episode he is the only one who worries about the incoming invasion. Please Sunrise: you’re mecha series rocked because of how creative they were. This is not the way to do it.
OP: You can see that a lot of budget was put behind this, but it’s just too mainstream to really work. The flying scenes are good, though.
ED: This is pretty decent, though.
Potential: 30%]]> 
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is hungry.
So, it’s finally time for my most anticipated harem show of the season, and this definitely is a step above all of the others. There is first of all the premise of this series, but on top of that it also had by far the best direction of the bunch. This first episode was well told, had some great ideas into it, and especially the way in which the creators used amnesia in this episode in order to introduce everyone worked well, but also the use of camera angles was quite inspired. David Production also delivers in the animation: they really have the talent to breathe life into characters who seem very generic at first. Also, here is the thing about the next-best harem shows this season: Horizon and Majikoi may be enjoyable, they’re also badly acted. This episode of Ben-To wasn’t. The acting was actually quite good. The male lead is one of the first to actually do impressions (including a bizarre Norio Wakamoto impression), the females are based on stereotypes, but their behavior tries to move away from that. and attempts to give them a more colourful personality. Oh, and the use of music also was very good: it was well timed, the soundtrack is creative and it helps building up the tension.
OP: It has energy, but still a bit dull.
ED: Not a bunch of images, but actually relates to the series, though it does seem rather cheesy. The song still is badly sung.
Potential: 80%
Shakugan no Shana III
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is gone.
Okay, so apparently things actually happened in the second season. I gave up on that one after its second episode so I wouldn’t know exactly how it happened, but what this episode seemed to hint at rather scared me a bit. Of course, it’s good to see that at this point Shana has predictably changed from tsun to dere, so there’ll be no more “urusai urusai urusai”, and this episode was admittedly better than Hidan no Aria’s opening(not that that says much, though), but seriously. Are the creators really building up to a cheese ball finale where Shana is forced to have to fight Yuuji? Is that what these 80 episodes are building up to? Such a soap opera twist?! Please tell me that I’m wrong. I mean, pulling such a thing for a novelty is one thing. but to make it the main focus of 80 whopping episodes!?
OP: Not bad, but nothing special either.
ED: This is dull J-pop, though, where the limitations of the singer are really shown.
Potential: 35%
Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi 2
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is gay.
Here’s the thing with this series: cut it in half, remove the two non-main stories, and you’d have a very good story about a bunch of manga editors. The only reason why I dropped the original series is because it switched over to the second story, which put fanservice and blushing bishies before story and characters. This first episode of Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi’s first episode reminded me again of why I originally liked the series: it’s good slice of life, it portrays the stress of being a manga editor quite well and it’s quite funny. There is progress: instead of dealing with manga authors, the main character now has to deal with colleagues and printers, which take a completely different set of skills. In terms of the romance though… I didn’t feel like I missed much actually. Only this episode developed the relationship between the two male leads further and really, they’re pretty interesting characters. The biggest thing that this series needs to worry about now is to avoid Junjo Romantica 2’s big pitfall of not going anywhere.
OP: Try to do something different for a change.
ED: Dull J-rock
Potential: 70%]]> 
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a transfer student with special powers.
Seeing as how this was the most hyped up series of the new season… it felt oddly disappointing. I’m not referring to the characters, although that pee-moment certainly didn’t help, but what striked me the most is that the storytelling was completely off. In particular, this episode didn’t seem to care much about timing or build up. It didn’t seem to know how to create an atmosphere, it jumped around way too much instead of establishing things, and everything happened way too quickly . This episode had a very short attention span, which really hurt any attempts on drawing in the viewer: one moment the main character is in a shop, the next he dives in a tv. It just doesn’t flow well and there were a lot of anti-climaxes in this episode. Was the game really that long, forcing such a fast pacing? Oh, and this is just a small detail, but I consider it very important too: the show had what sounded like a great soundtrack, but it didn’t seem well used at all. There were lots of scenes with no background music at all, and it only started playing at the most predictable moments.
OP: Funky
ED: Again, funky. If only the rest of the soundtrack was like this.
Potential: 60%
Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is surrounded by cute girls.
For a while, this episode actually avoided the usual warning signs. When it was just the main male and female together, this show avoided fanservice, the female lead was eloquent, rather than stupid, and about the only big cliche was the deadpan snarker male lead. Then the second female lead arrived, the girls turned tsundere and they wasted no time in making boob jokes. This show… when I first read that it’d be about people who are bad at being friends, I thought that this would be a show about outcasts. Instead, the main cast consists out of two people with foreign looks, suffering from Japan’s xenophoby, and another character who refuses to talk to others because of… arrogance I guess. That was not what I expected. Strangely enough, these people didn’t seem to suffer from insecurities at all. Instead, the emotion that prevailed here was annoyance for not being able to make friends. It doesn’t have the biggest cliches: aside from the boob jokes this episode refrained from beating any dead horses, but it has relatively little that it can call its own. The xenophobia was probably this episode’s biggest asset, but that was handled very one-sidedly: everyone is afraid of the main characters, aside from the really good-looking girls (yay for subtlety!). This was neither the worst moe show of the season, but it also certainly wasn’t the best.
OP: FANSERVICE!
ED: Why the nuns?
Potential: 40%
Chihayafuru
Short Synopsis: Our lead character plays card games.
This had the best animation of the new season so far. Seriously, Madhouse made this series look absolutely gorgeous. The use of cg is excellent, while it completely lacks the acting problems of Madhouse’s usual series. The shots are all creative, the animation is smooth and life-like. It would be awesome if the creators could keep it up like that. The rest of the episode also was wonderful: instead of most series about games, the female lead Chihaya isn’t a complete rookie at the start: she has been playing the card games (and seriously, they’re not what you think: this is miles away from Yugioh) for a few years now. In fact, this series series shows how she got introduced to it when she was still a grade schooler. What especially caught me however was how well it used its animation to portray the game. The soundtrack is also exceptionally well used. This is one to keep an eye out for: rock-solid… though it’s a shame that it’s a manga adaptation. Of a manga that isn’t finished yet.
OP: A bit generic, but certainly not the worst of the season.
ED: Simple, but very pretty visuals, with a decent ballad.
Potential: 90%]]> 
Short Synopsis: Our lead character transfers to an all-girl high school. While being a male.
This show is what I’d call pretentious: it tries to be serious, but has actually no idea what it’s doing. Here is what I mean by that: this show is very schizophrenic. On one hand, it really seems to want to tell a good story. It’s Manglobe: the character designs may be abysmal, but the inbetween animation is quite solid. This episode started off with a very quiet act, in which the main character is simply trying to find his sister, who got lost. This was actually very effective in establishing their characters, and to introduce the main female (no panty-shots, accidental groping or violence!). The acting here was pretty good. And then this show continues to just nullify that by having the sister attempt to bathe with the male lead. Nearly exactly like how TWGOK did it. Things then get from bad to worse when it turns out that the first half was saving all of its cliches for the second half. The most pretentious part is the drama, though. This show is trying to be very serious with it, but what is it about? The colour of pure love, and that the main female lead very stubbornly refuses to open up her school for boys. It’s completely insubstantial, even though this show acts like it struck gold with it. Also, who the hell designed that abomination that is supposed to be a cat?
ED: Who the hell designed that abomination that is supposed to be a cat?
Potential: 30%
Maken-Ki
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a bunch of cute girls.
I really have a question to ask to the fans of harem series like Maken-Ki: what is their appeal? What is the appeal of seeing the same characters over and over again? What is the appeal of watching shows over and over where the main character is a loser, the main girl characters are idiots and stereotypes? What makes it worth watching when the characters are so damn unlikable as these people, and that over and over again (harem shows are often the most represented genre in any season)? Is it really just the boobs, or is my bias preventing me from noticing their merits? Why are there so many series entirely dedicated to fanservice, when there is plenty of porn around? In any case, my impression of this episode was as follows: it had the most unlikable male lead I’ve seen in any first episode this year. His acting was bad and his only defining traits are being wimpy and horny: during the entire episode he was either just standing there and mumbling, or getting horny from nearby females. The females meanwhile were the standard uninspired idiots and stereotypes that happened to have special powers. The fanservice also was pretty tasteless with the camera’s uncanny ability to always look for some angle to how a person’s ass.
ED: Is it really interesting watching a guy getting turned on?
Potential: 10%
Sengoku Paradise: Kiwami
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is another re-interpretation of the famous sengoku lords.
Sengoku Basara, what have you done? Ever since you aired there has been a sudden influx of series that try to cash in on the popularity of the Sengoku era. This ranges from very good and well constructed series (Hyouge Mono), to very silly and poorly written gag shows (Tono to Issho). I was ready to label Sengoku Paradise amongst the latter… however this first episode was actually funny. This is mostly due to a director who knows what a crappy premise he has to deal with, and just goes all out for the heck of it. The result is a camera guy who hyperactively jumps from one shot to the other and characters who have a lot of fun overacting the hell out of their characters. There are some good jokes in this episode. But to be honest, this doesn’t seem like a show with much staying powers, and this was likely the best episode of the series. The characters are bound to get dull after more than 3 minutes (yes, these episodes are only 3 minutes long), the jokes are of the type that get old when they’re already repeated once and I don’t think that the creators have enough ideas to keep this one fresh.
OP: Very badly sung, but that was definitely done on purpose.
Potential: 45%%]]>