Category: Some Quick First Impressions

Time for supernatural “action” anime. Right now, I’m eagerly awaiting the subs for Red Garden and Jigoku Shoujo. I hope they’ll arrive soon. ^^

Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto

A samurai anime featuring supernatural monsters. I’m not sure whether this is going to be a success or not, but there’s one thing I am sure of: the music is awesome. If only because of that, I’m going to continue watching this show. I’m a bit worried about the main character, though. As things stand now, he doesn’t really have a clear, thought-out reason to be fighting monsters and saving children. I hope that this comes in the next episodes. The side-characters sound interesting, though. My level of Japanese couldn’t understand their exact role, but from what I understood, they’re a bunch of theatre-people who involve themselves with catching dangerous criminals.

Death Note

I’ve found most of the hyped shows to be rather disappointing (see Fate/Stay Night, Tsuyokiss, Kanon, Yoake Mae, etc). Death Note, however, deserves every single hype it’s got! Really, this show is awesome, and I’ve just seen one episode of this. The main character is so incredibly interesting, the soundtrack kicks ass and the theme of this anime has potential for so many interesting events. Seriously, if this quality stays, Death Note will turn out to be awesome.

Shounen Onmyouji

I’ve been looking forward to this anime. Too bad it turned out to be disappointing. It’s another one of those 13-year-old-going-to-be-the-best-things. Lots of flashy graphics, lots of action scenes, little substance. It’s a pity, as the character designs for the side-characters look appealing. The next episode doesn’t seem to be much better, as our main character’s love interest will be introduced. Oh, have I already mentioned the cute pet who keeps following him?

I’m trying to become a bit more objective with the quick first impressions. Doesn’t really work so far. ^^;

Gift: Eternal Rainbow

During the first couple of minutes of this episode, I began to fear. Childhood friend who left and is coming back. Wake-up call by cute girl who makes your breakfast for no apparent reason. Ctrl+c-ctrl+v male main character. Silent samurai girl. Clumsy mahou shoujo. Lots of pantyshots. Thic couldn’t be other than a disaster. Still, then it seemed that actual cases regarding other characters were introduced. That actually made up for quite a lot, as this means that this anime will be more than just a male and his day-to-day life with a bunch of bishoujo.

009-1

Ah, an anime about spies. Lots of information, planning and stealth. Or in this case, action, stealth and fanservice. This really isn’t the most realistic way to portray the world of spies. It’s more like a James Bond gone female. Lots of strange gadgets are used in order to win, including three cyborgs. One can change her face, one has a leg which can shoot all kinds of missiles and one is a walking mainframe. As this anime focuses mostly on action, there also isn’t a lot of planning involved. Things just involve infiltrating some base, getting shot at and our main character taking out two dozen trained guards like it’s nothing. Sure. Oh, have I already mentioned the huge fanservice?

Kujibiki Unbalance

An anime about a school council, if I understand things correctly. For some reason, there’s been a lottery to determine some of its new members, and our main characters get to be the lucky ones. Apart from that, we’ve got our crazy scientist and her crazy assistant, a girl who works at a ramen-bar and the other members of the tudent council. As all student councils in these kinds of anime, they look quite evil, though there seems to be more than just that. I have to say that the quirky characters were really worth the watch. I especially loved the scientist and her assistant. The only bad part about this anime is the two main characters. I don’t know why, but they seem kindof bland when you compare them to the others.

Ah, these are some of the ones I’ve been waiting for. It’s great to see the good parts of this season, among all of the other rubbish. Sumomomo might have been somewhat disappointing, but the latter two promise to be awesome.

Sumomomo Momomo

Another harem. At least, I think it is. The other girls should arrive in the next episodes. Anyway, this one has the standard girl-loves-boy-for-no-apparent-reason, but with a twist: it’s a comedy. At least, it tries to be. It has funny moments, but at times, I feel like it’s trying a bit too hard. The jokes could have been presented in a much better way. Not to mention the fact that our main female character’s character design kindof failed. The promo-art looked very good, but the creators of the anime somehow found it a good idea to give her ridiculously large eyes. These don’t fit at all. The huge amounts of fanservice also could have been toned down a bit. Still, the thing I liked was the main character. His reaction to all of the things happening to him was the funniest part of this episode.

Asatte no Houkou

I can’t believe how well this turned out! I knew that the concept was something to be looking out for, but I never could have imagined how extremely likable each of the characters are. After seeing this episode, I think that so far, Asatte no Houkou has delivered the best first episode of all the fall-season shows so far. The story’s like this: we have a young girl, who lives together with her older brother. Their parents died, and the girl hates to be a burden on her brother, so she hopes to grow up fast. On the other side, we have a woman, who longs to be young again. Guess what? The girl grows old and the woman grows young, with the help of a strange stone. The character designs actually show that you can create beautiful characters with a small budget, the music fits perfectly, and this has been extremely well written. I’m not sure whether I’m going to continue this series raw or not. Depends on how fast the subs are coming out…

Black Lagoon, The Second Barrage

Finally, Black Lagoon returns with its second season. The first episode was mostly meant for introducing the bad guys of the following arc. This time, we’ve got two homicidal siblings. They’re just small children, but they’re already a bunch of incestuous killing machines. So far, so good. The creators really made them look extremely evil. But will they be as awesome as Roberta? That depends on the next episodes. I’m also wondering how Rock and the others will get involved in this matter, as it’s mostly an issue for Balalaika and the other maffia-boses.

Another batch. More harems. Woo. Exiting. I think I’ve done most of the harems so far. I´m eagerly awaiting the subs for the good shows now. But then again, the harems may be almost over, there´s still a bunch of shounen-action series…

Happiness!

Okay, I admit. This one isn’t as bad as the other horrible shows we’ve seen so far. It’s got cute character designs for once. The graphics also are pretty and in good quality. It’s also a mahou shoujo, always nice. The characters actually have a history, and secrets. The main male character also seems to have a reason for refusing to be healed by magic. Good, good. I also liked his cross-dressing friend. If I understood things correctly, this friend likes to act and dress up as a girl. Nice touch. However. This doesn’t mean that it escaped the oh so horrid clichés of the bishoujo harems. For starters, our main female character is in love with our main male character, simply because he did something nice to her when they were children. It’s like the creators saw the beginning of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and saw a good excuse, without even bothering to check the ending. This anime is also rather ruined by the useless fanservice, our main character has the usual horny classmate with which he’s friends with, apart from that, he’s surrounded by girls, girls and only girls (yes, even the cross-dresser acted too much like a girl. There was almost no way to recognize that he actually wasn’t a girl). Oh, and did I already mention the amount of valentine chocolate he received?

Kanon

This harem isn’t that bad either. It cleverly stays away from some of the clichés which often plague similar harems. The characters are a bit more than just stereotypes, there isn’t much focus on fanservice and our main character isn’t surrounded by girls who love him. It feels a bit more natural now. Also the graphics are pretty. It seems that people were willing to spend a big budget for this. Still, that doesn’t mean that this anime doesn’t have any flaws. Where it does things good at some points, it messes up at other points. While the graphics may look good, the character designs are ugly. All females have incredibly emphasized eyes. It’s supposed to look cute, but it turned out fake. Our main male character also is another one of those ctrl+c-ctr+v characters. Okay, girls don’t love him for an unknown reason, but because of that, he turned into a huge player. That’s also not the best type of character you can think off. (Also, aren’t the girls bothered by the cold, while walking in the snow without any pants?)

Mamoru-kun ni Megami no Shukufuku wo!

Both Happiness and Kanon showed that you can have harem-series with a few good qualities. Because of them, I actually began to think that some harem series might not be that bad. Unfortunately, after having seen this horrible piece of garbage, I totally take back what I said. Seriously, watching this anime made me almost lose faith in humanity. Even for a harem-show, this series is pain. Do not go near it! *twitch*

Woo! An actually good batch. While Ginga Tesudo Monogatari might’ve turned out mediocre, Marginal Prince and Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club actually turned out to be a big surprise. These anime really show that this series can contain something other than garbage. And yes. I have a strange taste, and I’m proud of it. ^^

Ginga Tesudo Monogatari ~Eien he no Bunkiten~

Interesting concept. Instead of space-ships, this anime has trains which travel through space, with earth as the main base. This seems to be the continuation of a previous season (I didn’t get the chance to see it, by the way). It seems that at the end of that season, the main character lost his father and decided to live with his mother again. This episode, he realizes that he is needed after all when he’s the only one who can do something about a high-speed train which went out of control, is heading towards earth, and plans to crash there, along with its passengers. For some reason, the main character manages to hijack a small train and reaches the berserked train with just the right timing. Strangely enough, he was the only one who got this idea. He then detaches the engine from the rest of the train, so the passengers are saved. But for some reason, he’s stupid enough to remain on the engine-part, instead of just letting it crash on earth. I’m also feeling that this show loses itself too often in useless techno-babble. Most science-fiction shows like these seem to be troubled by it. I think this is just extra material for fans of the original series. I wouldn’t recommend it to people who haven’t seen it.

Marginal Prince

First of all, before I start, I have to remind you that this is a bishounen-series, done by Gonzo, of all possible studios. Finally, they managed to make an anime without any big-breasted fanservice-indusing female characters. They finally begin to learn. Anyway, about the anime. I quite liked all of the cheesy scenes which flowed across the screen. Things also turned quite serious at the end of the episode, and quite enjoyable as well. Okay, the anime doesn’t make any sense at all, but a boy who gets admitted to a super-rich school with only six people in it sounds so much better than a boy who gets surrounded by a bunch of beautiful girls. I’ll keep watching this. I might even blog it if the second episode turns out to be good.

Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club Season 2

Seriously, why hasn’t this series gotten subbed yet? As far as I know, it’s the ONLY spring series which didn’t come without even one sub, and that’s such a darn shame. It may be my love for mahou shoujo-series, but I actually really enjoyed this first episode of the second season. If things continue to be just as good, I’m probably going to end up blogging this show. The show is about a school for mahou shoujo (finally the girls actually get to study, instead of getting instant-superpowers. I like that), and follows five girls, along with one of their teachers. It’s a shoujo-series, and things are mostly light-hearted. But the events are just presented in such an adorable way. It can be funny was well. I especially loved the lesbian-kissing-scene at the end. ^_^ Someone, sub this. Seriously.

The second batch for the spring season, and the first subs have already appeared. Luckily, the overal quality is better than the previous batch, but still, the huge load of garbage remained. Thank goodness Pumpkin Scissors proved to be good.

D.Gray-Man

So, this is the first of the bunch of shounen-series, and it isn’t very surprising that this one also doesn’t promise much good. We’ve got a 14-year old boy, who somehow is a master in exorcism. He’s gotten huge power for no reason, and he’s probably the only one who can kill the killing machines called the Akuma. There have been some attempts at comedy, but these failed. The battles also are nothing special. An Akuma appears, kills a bunch of people, our main character does nothing and waits till the tension is the biggest, does his thing and the Akuma is history. The story used in this episode also was incredibly basic and even then it had some flaws. Why didn’t anyone bother to mention the fact that the female heroine lived right next to the church in which the Akuma killed its victims? And yeah. The fact that the main heroine is going to team up with the main hero is so cleverly thought of.

Pumpkin Scissors

I’m glad to say that we’ve got our first good show from the fall season. Okay, it could have been better, but I really like the quirky characters which go along with this show. It’s rather refreshing to see an anime about the aftermaths of a war, involving good realism, strategic battles, and yet tries not to take itself too seriously. The result works rather well. This has to be the anime with the most realistic (and because of that hilarious) tank-movement. I especially liked the two main characters. I mean, they’re a rather enthusiastic lieutenant and a gorilla-like war-veteran. Nice combination, no? ^^;

Yoake Mae Yori Ruri-iro na ~Crescent Love~

Oh, the pain. The horrible pain. When you thought Tokimeki Memorial couldn’t get any worse, this piece of garbage comes in and changes your mind. I seriously hope that with this, we’ve passed the worst part of the season. We’ve got another pubescent male who’s just been copied and pasted from any other random harem, he has a little sister, a big sister, and somehow he’s made friends with only girls. Things only get better when a moon princess, along with her own personal maid (guess what?) comes to live with him. The characters are all bland and overused. Not to mention the fact that the following episodes will probably cause every single girl in the show to fall in love with our overcharming main character. Seriously, the person who wrote this stuff needs to get some kind of blow with a hammer.

Yeah, I’m planning to through the garbage of the season first by watching the raws. It’s not like shows of this nature were known for their incredibly difficult language anyway.

Galaxy Ange-lune

This is another one of those failed attempts at comedy. We’ve got a cast of stereotypes, who try to be as random as possible, but aren’t really funny. It’s basically an excuse to give some cute girls a chance to drive space-ships, without any explanation for their huge skills. Thrown in a couple of fanservice-references, the standard cute pet (who seems to have the same voice actor as Randagio) who gets abused for the most standard reasons ever and the only guy in the show who moans when he speaks and you have a recipe for failure. The only moderately funny part was the red-haired girl, sleeping through the explosion.

Tokimeki Memorial

This anime takes place in a high school. Guess who our main character is? Yup, a transfer student. How original. In any case, the school president has come up with a “clever” idea for the school event. Coincidentally, it took place right on the day our main character joined the school. Because of that, our main character gets labelled with a pair of nekomimi-ears, and the one who catches him will get a date with the most popular girl in school. And yes, believe it or not, but our main character manages to outrun the ENTIRE male population of this school. In the meantime, he helps another cute girl in the library, reaching a book on the top shelf (seriously, couldn’t she have grabbed a chair or something?). I guess she’s in love with him now. The next episode will probably feature our main character, flirting with the top female athlete of the school. Seriously, this anime is another piece of garbage. The only good points came from the range of weird teachers this school inhibits. They were actually quite hilarious.

Love Dol: Lovely Idol

Surprisingly good, if you compare it to the two above. Still, that doesn’t really say anything. This show is mostly bad, though it does have its potentially promising moments, unlike the two mentioned above. First of all, it’s got a huge cast: 18 idols, one manager and one boss. Especially the four main characters actually try to move away from the stereotypes. If these are used well, things can become very interesting, though I’m not expecting that to happen. At this point, the show mostly looks like it intends to focus on cute girls and your occasional moment of fanservice. Still, the fact that the debut-concert was cancelled does show that things don’t always go as planned in this anime. That might be a good point. Still, my verdict is that this anime will lose itself in its huge amount of cute girls, directed to fanservice. And am I the only one disturbed by the fact that they were performing in front of a herd of wild otaku? Aren’t these idol-things mostly meant for young children and pubescent girls?

And the fall season has started. So far, it’s promising to be a load of garbage with a few good shows. I SO hope that the coming month will prove me wrong, though the current batch hasn’t really managed to change my opinion.

Black Blood Brothers

It’s got hate, it’s got angst, it’s got despair, but it’s also got a main character with absolutely no sense of fashion and an annoying little brat who is annoying for the sake of being annoying. The anime also plays in a world in which hundreds of bullets can be stopped by a single swing of a sword. Not really that realistic. Even though the angst was nice to see, I decided to drop this show. The decisive reason for this happened at the end of the first episode. We first see our main character on a ship, moving things (including the annoying brat) with just the power of his mind. Then, the brat falls into the water, and suddenly his power stopped working, and he actually jumped after him, sustaining significant damage as the water seems to dissolve him. Why couldn’t he just zap the brat back to the ship?

Sci-Fi Harry

Yeah, I know. This series aired in 2000. But as this section is called “some quick first impressions”, and not “newly aired anime”, I might slip in an old one once in a while. And this one was just a tad too good to ignore. The anime plays around Harry. He’s been alienated from society, and he’s an extremely shy boy. Then, it seems that he’s a psychic who can’t fully control his powers. People are now obviously after his powers, and the few people who did spend time with him then will probably get entangled in this. The series immediately starts out very intense. And by the third episode Harry already killed about fifty people at once. Overall, it’s a very good, but the series does have its own annoying moments. The main female character’s feelings towards Harry are nothing short of obnoxious, and a lot of scenes show some facial expressions which just don’t work. It does give something unique to this anime, though the fact that looking at these characters’ faces is annoying.

_Summer

Okay, things can’t be good when this anime immediately starts with a perverted onsen-peeking-scene. And indeed. This anime has one of the most WORST. SETTINGS. EVER. A male who’s been copied and pasted right from any other random harem is surrounded by a huge load of “beautiful” girls. Of course, each of these girls absolutely loves our main character and they all perfectly fit the stereotypes. The anime is about a very difficult choice: which girl does the main character want to spend the rest of his life with. Seriously, I hope that this isn’t some kind of sign, regarding the overall quality of the rest of the season. Anyway, thankfully some small details prevented this anime from becoming a total disaster. There were some funny moments (the teacher and the evil girl were rather funny) and also, at times whenever we see characters talk, you can see rather random things go on in the background. I do admit that it was a nice touch. Still, I’m not really recommending this to anyone. (Oh yes, and in case you were wondering, I watched this one raw. You need to wait a bit before the subs appear, but you’re better off forgetting about this series)

A strange patch we have this time. All of these shows were especially made for the fans of one certain niche. These shows are mostly for the yaoi-fans, lolicons and people who like to gouche their eyes out with a spoon.

Angel’s Feather

This is an ova, set at an all-boys high school. It remains shounen-ai, but it’s one of the first of its kind which managed to have caught my interesting. For an OVA, the creators have thrown in a fairly large amount of characters, and all of these characters interacting with each other does provide interesting scenes. Especially if they’re filled with doubt, betrayal, angst and love. Still, the plot isn’t flawless. Only descendants of kings are said to have wings, but right now, it seems that every single character has them. The reason why wings give you superpowers also is oblivious.

Sky Girls

This series is like, 35% action, 60% fanservice and 5% plot. Or in other words, garbage. It’s basically an excuse to please all the lolicon fanboys out there. The plot makes no sense at all and remains uninspired. The graphics are nice, but not something to make you jump up from your chair. The characters also don’t seem to have any personality. About the only good thing was the time pressure given from the government officials.

Naikaku Kenryoku Hanzai Kyousei Torishimarikan Zaizen Jotaro

Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was to go down as the worst anime of the century. We´ve got a secret agent who’s probably the richest, bravest and coolest person in the world who fights against corrupt government official. A decent premisse, but it has been executed in a horrible way. For example, our hero gets introduced while flying in a jet fighter. He then uses the ejection seat and lands on the ground with a parachute. What happened to the fighter, we never know. The rest of the episode featured even more of these strange events which don´t make any sense at all. The art isn´t much better. Everything looks incredibly low budget. Seriously, though. Stay away from this one.

Aah, finally we get another good batch. It’s good to see that this season does actually have some good series. All of these anime feature something different from normal anime. One is co-produced with Koreans, another is entirely made with flash, while yet another has a very messy art style.

Kemono no Zume

Ah, this is what I’ve been waiting for. A monster hunter falls in love with a monster and vice versa. Quite an interesting premise, and I’m happy to say that the first episode left me with a good feeling. Our main character isn’t invincible after all, as he seems to have an indigestion problem when facing monsters, and our female protagonist/antagonist was actually introduced in quite a funny way. In fact, this anime succesfully managed to produce some very funny moments, while the serious moments were kept sortof light, though full of content. The art style is indeed something which immediately catches the eye. It’s incredibly messy, especially the animation. Still, in the end, it works. It really contributes to the overall style of the anime.

Hanoka

This anime is completely created in flash. While others may find it ugly, I kindof appreciate the fact that people are experimenting with different art styles. And indeed, this anime looks quite unique. With also five minutes per episode, in which 90 seconds of this are occupied by the OP, leaving only 3,5 minutes left, you also can’t say that this anime bores you. But that doesn’t nessecarily mean that it’s good. In this case, however, it does have potential. It’s an anime about a war, which is being fought. Our main characters has special powers, though she’s held captive, only to serve in the war. She was quite sad, and these emotions did surprisingly well. I have no idea what the rest of this anime will be about, though. It can go anywhere, from incredibly bad to incredibly good.

Shoujo Yang Geum no Yume

Okay, why did this show take so ridiculously long to get subbed? It’s quite good. In case you’ve never heard about this series, it aired during the spring season. Now, a massive five months later, it has its first episode subbed. It’s about a very energetic girl, who loves cooking. Her late mother inspired her for this, before she died. She used to say that seeing Yang Geum (our main character) eat her dinner would make her really happy. Yang Geum is now aiming for about the same thing. Meanwhile, a lot of interesting things are going on in the background. It seems that the prince of the country is rather inexperienced, and goes hunting with only one guard. Assasins take advantage of this and actually attack, while Yang Geum and her cousin happen to be near. They actually manage to scare away these assasins in a very creative way, and they also manage to see their faces, which immediately gives this story a good start. Our main characters also are very likable. They’ve got interesting personalities. Another interesting point is that this is one of the first, if not first Japanese-Korean co-productions, hence the Korean names. Overall, if there ever was an unpopular show which deserves way more attention, it’s this one.