As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Kill Me Baby just is too dull for a comedy.
– High School DxD is just another shallow fanservice fighting show.
– Symphogear’s second episode thankfully wasn’t as mind-numbingly stupid as the first episode, but it still forgets to build its characters, setting, and just about everything else and just degrades to boring exposition.
– I really bet that I wouldn’t mind Nisemonogatari nearly as much as I do now if the topics that the characters talked about were actually interesting. So why do these characters keep returning to talk about pointless fanservice?
– Amagami SS: hell no.
– The Knight in the Area just doesn’t live up to the standards of the sports series genre.
I’ve already pretty much figured out which series I want to blog this season. I only have one dilemma: I’ve got room for 7 new series this season. There are 7 shows that have so far aired that I want to blog. The problem is that Smile Precure and Black Rock Shooter haven’t aired yet. So if either of those turns out awesome, I may have to drop one of the other shos I’m blogging to make place for it. I doubt that it’ll be Mouretsu Pirates though, because it’s been quite a solid show so far.
I like that despite the silly looks, this show takes itself seriously. The characters here are well acted. They’re nothing amazing yet, but for a first episode they are solid and believable. From here on, the creators can start to play with them. This definitely is a series that keeps its trumps hidden for a while, because after two episodes the lead character hasn’t even decided yet whether or not she wants to be a pirate. This show has 26 episodes, so it can take its time for that.
This kind of pacing reminds me a lot of Tatsuo Sato, especially Stellvia of the Universe and Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars. In fact, this show feels like a bit of a combination between the two, as both placed a lot of emphasis on letting scenes play out between the different characters. I’m especially intrigued what will happen once the huge cast of this show turns up. Do I think that this show will become a classic, like what happened last season with Hourou Musuko, Madoka Magica and Levele E, though? That, however, I doubt.
This episode had some good stuff in it. While I’m not sure how a mere high school club got their holds on an actual space ship, the way it was operated had something whimsical to it compared to the usual older crews of these things, seeing as this is mostly done as a hobby. I also really like the relationship between the lead character and her mother, ad how the lead character is given ample time to make up her decision. The hacking… was done decently. At least they went further in detail than just “oh look! we’re being attacked! let’s try to type as fast as possible to make it go away somehow!”. The way that they explained how it exactly worked really helped here.
Right now I’m going to hijack this post a bit to compare my first impressions of the season to that of other Winter Seasons, because that’s the best way to show the strenghts and weaknesses of this season. I mean, last year, Winter was awesome in the way that it delivered three amazing series: the abovementioned Hourou Musuko, Madoka Magica and Level E. Winter 2010 had only one such series: Heartcatch Precure (let’s say now that for me to consider a series to be awesome, I’d rate it 85/100). Then look at 2009, which had a whopping seven of those series (Rideback, Erin, Birdy, Shikabane Hime, Genji Monogatari and Hajime no Ippo). 2008? Also seven (Gunslinger Girl, Hakaba Kitarou, Spice and Wolf, Porfy, Shigofumi, True Tears, Aria), 2007 had three again, but two of those were classics (Nodame Cantabile and Les Miserables), while 2006 had the awesome Ergo Proxy, Rescue Wings and Ayakashi.
Based on this, the minimum of awesome series for a winter season is around three series, ignoring 2010, which was by far the worst season I ever blogged. In fact, apart from that year every winter Season had me rank three series of 87,5/100 or above (which pretty much stands for exceptionally good to me). Do I believe that this season will do the same? Well, things can still grow of course, but at the moment I do not think that this season has the caliber for that. Only Natsume Yuujinchou seems to be heading into that direction, and that’s a sequel.
However, let’s then look at a tier below that. The kinds of series that may not be anything amazing, but still well executed, fun and interesting in their own ways. The tier that Mouretsu Pirates belongs to. Setting aside the best seasons for a minute (2008 and 2009, which really can’t be beaten), and look at 2011, 2007 and 2006: then they don’t really have much else to offer. 2011 had shows as Wolverine, Gosick and Yumekui Merry. Apart from that there was mostly bland stuff. 2007 had even less: apart from Msater of Epic, Nodame Cantabile and Les Miserables, ultimately only Rocket Girls and Deltora Quest were interesting, and even then only just. 2006? Um, Hantsuki and that animated musical Nerima Daikon Brothers.
That is the tier in which this season really delivers: we’ve got Rinne, Mouretsu Pirates, Aquarion, Milky Holmes, Another, Knight in the Area, Inu X Boku, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Dansei Nichijou and if you like Shaft there’s also Nisemonogatari. Not to mention the upcoming interesting arthouse project of Black Rock Shooter, which might very well also make this list. All of them are just a lot of fun to watch and interesting to keep up with, and that’s where the real strength of this season lies. And if I turn out to be wrong and one of those does end up awesome, then that only is a very pleasant surprise.
After all, if you look at the list of awesome shows I gave for each winter season: in more than 50% of the cases I did not realize that I would end up liking these series as much as I ended up doing. After only two episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Think you listed Erin twice for 2009 (unless there were two shows, I can only think of Kemono no Souja Erin right now). And I agree that while this show might not be part of that amazing category it is a very solidly fun title so far.
I don’t think that Suite Precure will be something amazing enough.
As of now it seems to return to “classical” path of those series with Suite – but it may not be a bad thing. After all it’s just kid show which is true to itself 🙂 so cheesy characters, non-scary bad guys and cute little faries is what appeals to it’s audience. And I’m totally fine with it – it’s fun.
and Pirates – oh it would be great if it would turn to something comparable to Stellvia, as that was something amazing. I find it somehow also similar to Ben-To… like this combination of serious parts with ones that are not so. But I like it.
i think if u keep watching area no kishi u will find it somewhat similar to cross game ( just a hint ;]) its not as good but believe me, their will be a BOOM moment coming in later episodes =D
I’ve just started watching Cross Game, and while what I’ve read of the Manga of ‘area no kishi’ is not too bad, it is definitely not as good as Cross Game.
This is pretty much exactly how I feel about the season. A lot of decent shows on equal grounds, no real stand-outs. I kind of preferred last year’s winter season, which had three stellar shows. It was easy to pick out which shows to watch. But I guess this season has something decent for everyone, provided these shows don’t start to suck.
Looking forward to seeing what you plan to blog! 🙂
Don’t you mean Smile Precure?
Yup, I do. *fixed*
Didn’t Durarara!! and Nodame Finale air in Winter 2010? Weren’t those shows awesome? Then again I only started reading your blog recently so I don’t know if you’ve watched/like them so… meh
I didn’t really consider both these series to be awesome. Durarara’s second half was just too weak for that, and I didn’t watch the Nodame Cantabile Finale because there was too little of a chance that it would be as stellar as the first season.
I just watched ‘Nodame Cantabile Finale’ recently and it was much better than season 2. They made much better use of the music. The pieces that Nodame is choosing to play show her emotional state really well. Chiaki was less of a dick as well although he really got my goat a few times. Nodame got him good though :)) Still probably wasn’t as good as season 1 although it looked better
Not much happened in this ep, did it? I guess I’ll have to scale back my expectations; for now they seem to be happy going for girl’s first spaceship ride instead of girl’s first space pirate adventure. I did like seeing some harder sci-fi, but I’m still hoping for more fun stuff.
I don’t know about Knight in the Area. It’s not nearly as bad as I expected, but I’m approaching it from a very “little kid” perspective. They execution hasn’t been bad, but I haven’t seen Cross Game yet so if goes downhill (as I suspect it might) then I’ll probably just watch CG instead.
Is Pirates actually 26 eps? ANN says there’s only 13 eps. I’d much prefer a 26 episode series by Sato in the vein of Stellvia and Nadesico, a couple of my personal favourites (as if you couldn’t already tell by my tag 🙂
ANN is very misleading and you shouldn’t trust it for accurate episode counts. According to moonphase, this show will run for two seasons.
That’s all I need to hear 🙂
Aww, you’re not going to blog Area no Kishi… ;_;
I really wanted to say that you should pick up Nisemonogatari again but i just watched episode 2 and i face palmed. I mean its such a good series except for huge amount of fanservice.
PROS
– OP and ED are great, there’s a new OP every episode episode 2 had an amazing OP btw.
– Sound is great
– Dialogue is witty and cleaver/ Arguing dialogue is great
– Visuals are original and stunning graphics
The only Cons are not much character development and that there is too much fanservice. And if they spent less time showing fanservice they could use that for character development. I will keep watching it but it pains me to see a show that has potential and wastes it with adding fanservice.
That is also why I never bothered to blog Bakemonogatari. It had a really interesting first epiosde, and then the second episode came… in which the first half of that episode was nothing but the lead female randomly in her underwear…
I kind of have faith in Nisio Isin though. It is bound to get interesting at some point.
Bakemonagatari’s story was pretty good at certain points. It was just the style was sort of getting in the way.
Nisemonogatari seems to work better though (or maybe I’ve gotten used to the style?), so once they get past the fanservice parts it should be good. (I hope).
Although I would have preferred they animated Kizumonogatari. Remember the awesome OP in the first ep of Bakemonagatari? It was sort of a recap of Kizumono…
I agree with you that once you get past the fanservice parts that the show is amazing. However the show is 75% Fanservice.
I don’t think fanservice marks the death of an anime, Neon Genesis is a great example of how fanservice can work. But when you have shows like High School DxD its overkill.
The unfortunate part about Bakemonogatari is that it had a lot of great elements for being an amazing show except it had too much fanservice, where as DxD is just a complete failure.
I wonder, if they keep adding Fanservice then it must be really popular in Japan.
You have to realize that fanservice is a VERY BIG selling point when it comes to making revenue for the company, which is what every company strives for… making money. That is one of the reasons why Infinite Stratos had such high sales.
Sex sells, and it’s also true with anime, though obviously not to that extent.
And I don’t see a problem with DxD. So far it’s the only blatant ecchi series in the Winter season, and I see no problem with it. A good season should have a varied genre of shows to cater to different audiences, and this is just filling up that gap.
Yeah Ecchi is’nt my thing i guess, to ecchi his own. : ) I really never saw Bakemonagatari as an Ecchi. It did have some panty shots here and there but it had great diologue. But Nisemonogatari is full blown Ecchi.
The thing that i hate is when an anime changes its genre to something that doesn’t appeal to me. Im sure you would hate it if DxD suddenly switched to long philosophical discussions like GITS and have everyone wear heavy clothing. You would say WTF?!? Why?
Another great example is Requiem for the Phantom. Hardcore assassin 13 episodes, drama filled 13 episode.
Wow, I’m genuinely impressed with the level of depth and insight put into the cross-seasonal analysis here. Definitely food for thought. These are some very interesting trends some anime enthusiasts have kind of “felt”, but I like how you put it to words.
I’m also going to have to check out Pirates. The name just turned me off, but to hear the show actually takes itself (even a little bit) seriously is definitely good news to me.
With Aquarion Evol, Moretsu Pirates, and Rinne no Lagrange all treading similar ground, it makes sense to drop one or two and focus on another. The only problem is, they’re all good, and I like all three. So I’m not going to choose, I’m watching them all.
However, with Black Rock on the horizon (and I don’t see how I won’t like it), my watchlist is far too long. So I think I’m also going to drop Kill Me Baby; I like its style, but as you say, it’s not exactly groundbreaking comedy.
As for Amagami SS, the fact the glutton girl’s arc is up next is the perfect opportunity for me to quit cold turkey. That eliminates an average comedy and a subpar romance and makes room for two sweet sci-fi series.
Aw, man. On top of your usual well-balanced and well-researched cross-season comparison, you actually thought Rescue Wings was awesome. I’m so happy that there are two of us –
Funny how each little blog has their own little sphere; whereas over here, we all dislike Bakemonogatari, at other blogs, all the commentors just fawn over it.
Regarding Mouretsu Pirates – I feel like this may become a Ben-To (Bentonmaru?)-esque show, a show that seems to take itself seriously, but is actually just covering up its ridiculous premise, which is actually just covering up actual political statements and philosophical food for thought.
Just in this episode, we face the growing problem of overspecialization – in the future, some parts of technology will become so specialized that you can only understand it if you spend your entire life working towards it. Yet, Marika somehow manages to defend against professional hackers by, uh, randomly typing on a keyboard.
It’s truly brilliant.