Category: Some Quick First Impressions

Charady no Joke na Mainichi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character tells jokes.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Um… yeah)
What is it with this season and series with five-minute episodes? This is the third one already, and to my surprise, all three of them have been strangely enjoyable so far. Charady no Joke na Mainichi looks very childish at first sight, with very bad animation, CG and characters, but then it really surprised me when it turned out to be surprisingly witty. The show’s only purpose is to tell jokes, and in that part it succeeded somehow.

Cookin’ Idol Ai! Mai! Main!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an incompetent idol.
Chance of me Blogging: -10% (No way)
Continuing the string of series with only five-minute episodes is a silly show about an idol who ends up presenting a cooking-show, but unfortunately unlike the others, this one is just baaad. And okay, I admit that I’m not exactly the target audience for his show, but that didn’t stop Chi, Marie and Charady from charming me. While I admit I liked the Cabbage-song, the acting here feels absolutely horrible, especially in the live-action bits are a pain to watch.

Mainichi Kaasan

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in her mid-life crisis.
Chance of me Blogging: -20% (Absolutely not)
Oh my god… I thought it’d never stop! Mainichi Kaasan basically tells the story of an overstressed mother of two children and her every day life, but it just goes on and on for too damn long. The season started off with so many surprisingly good series of only 5 minutes per episode, and this series would have been much better if they compacted everything in bite-size chunks of these five minutes. Right now, the show repeats itself way too often, jokes often don’t fall or are badly timed and it goes on way too long. Never have I been this glad for an episode to end because it’s such an incredible chore to get through it. That’s not what a slice of life is supposed to be!

La Corda d’Oro ~Secondo Passo~

Short Synopsis: Our lead character seems to have abandoned her magical violin.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (It just feels too much like an inferior shoujo Nodame Cantabile)
I remember how the first season was pretty much an insult to classical music, in which a ditz without any musical background acquires a magical violin and cheats herself into a competition among the top students of the school she’s in. Thankfully, the second season seems to have improved a lot on it, and the lead characters seems to have realized that it’s much more fun to be playing by herself. There’s quite a bit of potential in her growth. She now seems to be incredibly talented because she can play with lots of emotions in her violin, but I guess that that’s much better than the magical violin. I’m still not sold on the ridiculously looking bishies, though. Especially that blonde guy was horrible. He reminds me of Fuwa Shou from Skip Beat! In fact, I could swear that the two of them share the same voice actor, and I can’t believe that he’s being forced to play his character straight this time. Talk about overacting here…

Chi’s New Address

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to go outside.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (It’s a fun show and all, but I’d go crazy trying to blog it)
Awesome to see this series back. Chi is just as fun to watch as ever, and I’m surprised that the creators are actually continuing with the whole plotline of trying to find a new home for Chi. This is going to mean that dad, mom and Youhei are going to make way for a new family, and I wonder whether this new family has the charms of the original. Ah well, at least Chi will be the same. ^^;

Marie & Gali

Short Synopsis: Our lead character finds herself into some weird Italian-ish island.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Italy suddenly became a popular country to make fun of, hasn’t it?)
So… yeah. If you’re wondering what the “Gali”-part of the title means: it’s short for Galileo Galilei. What we have here is a bizarre fantasy setting in which a teenaged girl meets a very weird version of Galileo inside the tower of Pisa. I’m really not sure who thought of it, but for some reason it was kind of charming. It makes excellent use of its time of only 5 minutes to be either slapstick, make random historical references and be cute, and the combination works surprisingly well. It’s obviously never going to be amazing, but I have to admit that it was pretty amusing. Not to mention that Marie’s character-designs look very stylish.

Nyoron Churuya-san

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a silly spin-off of a character from a certain Kyoani show.
Chance of me Blogging: -20% (Uh… yeah)
I seriously don’t know what to write here. What was the point of this thing? Why was it made? I obviously didn’t get it because I’m not a fan of Haruhi, but do even its fans consider this something worthwhile? This whole episode was just a string of very, very, very dry jokes, that will probably work when you’re watching them with a bunch of very drunk friends (being drunk yourself helps too), but apart from that… yeah.

Suzumiya Haruhi-chan no Yuutsu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a silly spin-off of another character from a certain Kyoani show.
Chance of me Blogging: -40% (Uh… yeah)
Well, I’d like to thank this series from giving me a headache that’s probably going to last for a few more hours or so… At least Nyoro had some entertainment value because of the deadpan humour, but this thing was just terrible. The comedic timing was way off, the voice acting was terrible and the CG was horrible, aside from perhaps the giant electric monster. I can understand how you’d want to give a series a little extra, but DOESN’T THIS SERIES ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH OF THAT!?

Kodomo no Jikan Ni-Gakki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character continues to harass her teacher.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nice show, but no)
Okay, so the pointless fanservice is really getting more extreme now that this series has taken up the OVA format. While some of the fanservice was there to make a point, some other scenes were just… pointlessly disturbing to say the least. Still, I’m glad to see that this series hasn’t forgotten yet what made the first season enjoyable, and it continues with the Teacher vs. Student themes and does a pretty good job at it. Rin as the class president has potential, and some of the jokes worked pretty well. Especially that very strange ED was kindof interesting. 😛

Koukaku no Regios

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters a school in a world where people have strange powers.
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (Might be interesting)
You know, this may not be the best series, but this was exactly what I’ve been looking for this season: originality. Sure, this episode was full of clichés, but for every bad idea, the creators seem to have included a good idea, and I’m interested to see where the creators can take this. This episode took place on two different places: a desert city that’s attacked by a huge monster and a strange kind of high school, and I especially liked the former, and I wonder how it’s going to tie in with the high school setting. The high school itself had all the necessary archetypes present, but that female lead felt refreshing and much less one-sided than I suspected. It’s also a nice touch: if you live in a world where everyone has powers, then there are of course people going to abuse them, especially if they’re bratty high school kids, and you need a bit of extra effort to keep these guys in check. So overall, I like this: there are lots of different characters despite the clichés and a lot of potential. The soundtrack is pumping, though the OP is going to suck.

Slayers Evolution-R

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters meet a strange talking armour.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Not after that first season)
I really wasn’t looking forward to watching this series. I planned to just watch it and drop it to get it over with. And then this series came and delivered the best episode of the new Slayers so far. Okay, so that may not say much, but for once I wasn’t bored out of my skull, the talking armour was actually quite funny and I laughed more in this episode than during the entire first season. I really don’t want to go through the same pain as the first season, but if it’s true that all Slayers get better in their second halves, it might be interesting to stick with it.

Ride Back

Short Synopsis: Our lead character accidentally gets to try a motorbike-mecha-thingie.
Chance of me Blogging: 90% (Madhouse Rocks!)
Well, that’s Madhouse: here it comes and delivered the without a doubt best first episode of all the new shows this season. Sure, the lead character is yet another one of those teenagers who accidentally gets to possess a super-weapon, but apart from that everything about this episode was superbly done. The art looks excellent and yet down to earth, the soundtrack fits the series exactly and the series has a number of very likable lead characters. I was immediately a fan of the female lead character, but the rest of the support cast are also defined and varied. This is promising to be one of the highlights of the Winter-season if the creators can keep this up.

Abunai Sisters

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a couple of “sexy spies”.
Chance of me Blogging: -50% (…)
Here’s an interesting one: I’ve actually been contacted by the company that produced this series, asking for me to review the first episode of this 3-minute 10-episoded OVA, animated by Production IG. While I’m excited to actually have been contacted by professional companies like this, it doesn’t stop me from being perfectly honest with this series: Abunai Sisters is bad. In fact, it’s the worst series I’ve seen in years; even Musashi Gun Doh features better writing than this thing. These three minutes were full of the most obvious sex jokes you can imagine. It’s nothing more than a bunch of air-headed celebrities (the Kano Sisters, in this case) who want to insert themselves into an animated adventure. Still, at least it’s got a bit of entertainment value: it really is one of these series that’s so bad so that it becomes somewhat strangely enjoyable again. Something tells me that the writers also had no intention whatsoever to take this series seriously, and they did everything they could to make the Kano Sisters look as stupid as possible.

Druaga no Tou – The Sword of Uruk

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters has been angsting about the ending of the first season for… six months?!
Chance of me Blogging: 30% (I didn’t blog the first season, but who knows with such a lacklustre season so far?)
Aaand yet another sequel. It’s a good thing that most of these sequels are from good shows, but the lack of new series really bugs me. In any case, I was a bit surprised that Jill has been doing nothing but angsting for six months after what happened at the ending of the first season, but it’s a pretty nice twist to see him suddenly hooked up to Fatina, who went through pretty much the same as him. The series also hasn’t lost its sense of humour, so there is a lot of potential for this series to be just as good, if not better than the first season. I’m just worried about one thing: please let Jill and Fatina be a real couple, and don’t turn this series into a sort of indecisive harem once Kaaya gets back.

Asu no Yoichi!

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters gets to live in a house with cute girls.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No)
AIC sure is lazy this season: first they try to rip off Gonzo, and now they continue to rip off every harem imaginable. This really is the wrong season to look for originality. In any case, the only thing I can be positive about is this series is the characters: they were likable enough for me not to get bored, and I guess that the main character who has lived in a forest for his entire life, getting accustomed to the modern world had a number of amusing moments, but the rest of the series was either mediocre or simply bad. The character-designs are unimaginative, what kind of pickpocket flees away upstairs, characters are stereotypes, and it’s never afraid to use the biggest clichés in the book. Still, the fanservice jokes were so incredibly bad that they became strangely amusing again, so it’s not entirely a dull series.

Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is best friends with a flying potato with a train fetish…
Chance of me Blogging: 30% (Nice ideas, but…. what?!)
In my previous entry, I remember noting how this season lacked originality. I never thought that this series would listen to me, although it definitely has its own share of problems. Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo is weird. In fact, nothing of this series made any bloody sense whatsoever… the lead character moves from an innocent schoolgirl with an annoying sister to the henchmen of a weird mechanical space eye-ball… The character-designs are also way too moe. Still, I do have to appreciate the huge mount of ideas that was stuffed into this series, even though most of the times this is for the wrong reasons. This series is so incredibly stupid that it actually becomes enjoyable. The bad thing about this series is that it’s Sunrise again: the title is meant to cash in on Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo’s popularity, and the Lelouch-eyeball at the same time tries to squeeze more money out of the Code Geass-franchise.

Hajime no Ippo New Challenge

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a very good boxer.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Have yet to see the first season)
In this season, I’m looking for new and fresh content. I’m not sure where I got that idea, but this clearly was the worst possible season for it: yet another sequel! The only original and imaginative premises I’ve seen so far are from Akikan and Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo, which… definitely were in the complete opposite direction of what I was looking for… Nevertheless, laying this aside I pretty much liked this episode. The characters were immediately likable, even though I missed around seventy episodes of the first season. My biggest concern with this series is: what’s its point? The lead character has worked very hard through the first season to become world champion (or similar), so: what’s next? There are so many Madhouse series that are in dire need of a sequel, so why did they pick this one?

Viper’s Creed

Short Synopsis: Our lead character fights berserked robots on a motorbike.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (Only if the rest of the season is baaaaad)
Well, so it’s yet again a series that isn’t strong on the originality-department, but nevertheless it does have some good and exciting action-scenes. I didn’t notice anything familiar on the opening credits, but could this perhaps be the next Gonzo-series? It fits their style perfectly anyway: motorbikes, an all-female back-up team, lots of CG and camera-work, rock soundtrack. Still, this doesn’t look like Bad Gonzo; there was a delightful absence of stupidity that plagues these series oh so often. And this series has one big advantage: it doesn’t revolve around teenagers! The lead characters are trained professional adults who have been specifically prepared to fight crime. There were no angsty teenagers whatsoever. If only because of that, I’m going to keep watching this series. This is no Blassreiter, but still pretty entertaining.
Edit: ah, so it’s not Gonzo after all, but AIC Spirits that tries to look like Gonzo. Let’s see how long these guys can keep this series interesting (hint: plot!).