I must say that the current Autumn-season has been a really good one so far. There are lots of promising and charming titles, with a wide variety of different styles.
#25 (32) – To Aru Majutsu no Index – (7,5/10) – I originally dropped this series, but after I found out that it was going to be 25 episodes, I figured that I may have quit it a bit too easily, so I gave it a second chance. Two episodes later and I dropped it again. This just isn’t a series for me, I just can’t get to like the fights. The animation is used in the wrong way: lots of flashy graphics, but when it comes to the people involved it’s very inaccurate (when a character receives a cut, he doesn’t even flinch), and characters blurt out their life stories at the slightest opportunity they get.
#24 (23) – Junjo Romantica – (7,5/10) – The story between Misaki and Usami is going really nowhere. What the heck is up with all these implausible love triangles? This should be a series about being in a relationship, not a male harem for Misaki. The other stories have been painfully absent so far, so I fear that the second season isn’t going to be as good as the first one.
#23 (24) – Kannagi – (7,75/10) – This series sometimes is brilliant, but at others it just drowns in its own fanbase. The series’ fandom is simply annoying (getting angry because a character may not be a virgin… these people need to go outside more often), and there’s just too much fanservice. I can understand how to a fan of the series, seeing Nagi into these poses is like ‘da bomb’, but I’m not a fan yet. I’m just trying to casually enjoy this series, and the creators sometimes make it rather hard for me to do that.
#22 (6) – Gintama – (7,75/10) – Lack of subs have left me in desp… wait, wrong show. In any case, it’s been so long since the last episode that I can’t really remember what it was about, hence the low score.
#21 (16) – Tytania – (8,25/10) – It’s nothing special yet, but still Tytania has been a solid series with some nice focus on politics.
#20 (12) – ef ~ a tale of melodies – (8,25/10) – I want to thank Coalguys for giving me another reason to avoid fansubs and go with raws instead. Anyway, it’s starting to look like melodies isn’t going to be as good as memories. Everything just feels too extreme, the subtlety is lost. Why didn’t anyone call the police in Yuuko’s story? Shaft seems to be trying too hard on this series, but it can still redeem itself in its final third.
#19 (17) – Telepathy Shoujo Ran – (8,25/10) – I don’t think that there are many series where the characters are actually developed during the filler-parts. In any case, in a way I’m glad that in this month, the creators seemed to have decided to forsake the original novels completely and just went with their own stories. The mystery-stories may be a bit less complex, but the banter is consistently hilarious.
#18 (20) – Ga-Rei Zero – (8,25/10) – Well, I can now understand why the creators decided to put the climax of this series in the first two episodes, because otherwise the start of this series would have been so dull so that nobody would have stuck with it. Right now, this series is shaping up a very solid storyline, so let’s hope that in its final third, it can make the promises that it’s made in these first two episodes true.
#17 (10) – Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – (8,25/10) – The only really annoying thing about this series is Saji. Apart from that, it’s building up pretty nicely with some nice action scenes. We’ll need to wait a bit longer to see whether it actually knows what it’s doing, but so far I remain positive.
#16 (9) – Nodame Cantabile – (8,5/10) – The second season is nice and all, but comparing it to its stellar predecessor is inevitable in this case. Right now, I feel that it’s missing the magic that made the first season so much fun to watch. It’s still an enjoyable series, but it doesn’t live up to the first 23 episodes.
#15 (2) – Jigoku Shoujo – (8,5/10) – Something tells me that the creators of this series are having loads of fun, trying to come up with all the different kinds of stories. The new series isn’t as varied as the older ones, but it’s a very entertaining and thought-provoking one nonetheless.
#14 (14) – Kurozuka – (8,5/10) – Kurozuka so far has been a very solid action series without any obvious flaws. So the story could have been a bit more complex, but the air of mystery and horror keeps the series going smoothly.
#13 (8) – One Outs – (8,5/10) – After Omo’s wise words I changed the way I looked at this series. One Outs is really perfect for baseball noobs, who don’t have the patience to sit through one entire game. The pacing is much faster than I expected. And to be honest, it’s not really the baseball that has sold me on this series. I’m happy enough to see Tokuchi pwn everyone in the entire series, regardless of the content.
#12 (5) – Blade of the Immortal – (8,5/10) – Not the best month for this series, but nevertheless the Makie-arc was a great one, and especially very nicely artistically directed.
#11 (21) – Clannad – (8,5/10) – I really hope Planetarian is going to be considerably different from Key’s other works (after all, with their lack of trying out new things, there is now way that Kyoani aren’t going to adopt it at some point), because my only criticism so far is that some of the stories here seem strangely familiar: sick girl, animal turned human, etc. Nevertheless the second season has been very well told and very enjoyable.
#10 (19) – Chaos;Head – (8,5/10)
My big fear of this series would be that the harem roots would take over too much. Well, as it turns out they did. Nevertheless I’m really enjoying this series and its paranoid aspects, and it’s good for those who are looking for some convolution in their anime.
#9 (13) – Hyakko – (8,5/10)
Call me a guy with a strange taste, but I’m really enjoying this series so far. Its sense of humour is hilarious, and at the same time the few serious moments haven’t felt dull so far. There are lots of characters in this series, and the creators made optimal use of this by really making an entire classroom come alive, rather than just a group of four or five friends.
#8 (22) – Tales of the Abyss – (8,5/10)
The storyline’s getting pretty interesting at this point, and I’m starting to see what people meant by Luke and his character-development. Let’s hope it can keep this up.
#7 (18) – Shikabane Hime – (8,75/10)
Shikabane Hime has been a really entertaining series so far, with lots of exciting fights and a male lead who somehow doesn’t suck. The series has a great sense of characterization and that makes it a very engaging anime.
#6 (3) – Skip Beat – (8,75/10)
The bitch-fights of the past few episodes were nothing short of awesome. The characters continue to develop, they’re deep and well defined. This could very well be the best shoujo series of the year.
#5 (7) – Porfy no Nagai Tabi – (9/10)
Okay, so I don’t think anyone could have predicted that huge twist in the plot and the focus of this series at the start of the finale. The realism’s gone now, but it’s promising to really take the best out of the characters so far. But the definite highlight of this month was obviously the awesome Alecia-episode.
#4 (1) – Mouryou no Hako – (9/10)
This series really took a unique turn in the past month, with two entire episodes dedicated to nothing but people sitting in one room and talking. Still, I like shows like this that decide to take a little risk like that, and the series still is really solid and very intriguing, and it’s remained one of my favourites of the Autumn Season.
#3 (11) – Bonen no Xamdou – (9/10)
The hiatus was most definitely annoying, but ever since this series returned, it’s been more solid than ever.
#2 (15) – Michiko e Hatchin – (9/10)
Ignoring the very strange broadcasting policy, this series is pure gold. Both Michiko and Hatchin are wonderful characters with their own past and problems, and the situations they end up in are nothing short of a delight to watch.
#1 (4) – Casshern Sins – (9,25/10)
Okay, so this isn’t a series for those who hate fillers with passion, but nevertheless it’s turned into one of my favourite series of the past series, simply due to the huge quality of the scriptwriters. They never waste a single second in an episode and the writing in every episode is simply amazing.
Nice to see your bitesize comments on this month’s array, it’s interesting.
And yeah, alot of those shows do deserve the praise they get! And of course, by the end of the next month it’s nearly onto the next season and a few of the Fall shows will be finishing up.
Speaking of Winter season, are you going to be making any sort of post on what you’re doing with that?
Hehe,I love Hyakko, too.
The humor and the characters makes this show fantastic.
Im looking forward for every new episode.
Ouch. I think your Kannagi-fan hate is a bit much. Maybe it’s because I simply do not listen to fan-talk surrounding it, go to too many forums about it, talk about it in 4chan (I’m banned forever in 4chan anyway). I do take it lightly and I think it’s best to keep it that way. Not the most original show, but I like it.
Michiko and Hatchin, I think the series looks really nice and is animated well and the writing can be tops, the story itself is one cliche after another. It’s good, but I’d hesitate to call it great, or even near the top crop of this season. Though I can see why some would do so.
And finally, I’m glad to see some people appreciate the weird humor in Hyakko. Though I don’t think Kyou no Go no Ni is so bad either, and yet people are bashing it for ‘not being as pretty as the OVA’.
I don’t think you should even give a score for Gintama since the subs are taking ages to come out (And doesn’t look like they’re coming any faster). As much as i like quality subs, I haven’t seen any progress in a week…
Uhm i don’t really thonk Casshern deserves #1, and, btw, it’s far mor haremish than Chaos;Head and lots of plot less
“getting angry because a character may not be a virgin… these people need to go outside more often”
I think you simply don’t grasp 4chan (or 2chan?) humour. You don’t have to and it’s a matter of taste anyway, or lack thereof perhaps.
I really don’t know if you could call episodes 7 and 8 fillers. They do help in developing the world and Casshern better D:. Then again I do have to question what one has to consider a filler for a series that does not faithfully adapt or follow a source, sure Casshern SINS is a revival of the original but it is not staying true to the original in the first place so its not as if we can say that the episodes made up would really be just there as “filler” until it gets back to source. Then again another show that questions the idea of filler for me would be Dennou Coil’s so called filler episodes, since they do contribute to understanding the concept of illegals further but more importantly are used as reference by future episodes. So I’m not entirely sure what one can call a “filler” for a show that builds itself up slowly. Sure the episodes may not be Casshern-centric but they are focused on ruining world, which I would say the show has been putting quite a bit of emphasis. So I’d like to ask can Casshern’s episodes really be considered “filler”?
Glad you’re enjoying Skip Beat. It does dive more into romance later on, but the awesome bitch-fights still stay. 😀
Denizen: well, I’m toying with the idea of writing a post about Konnichiwa Anne, but apart from that I’m not going to write much about the upcoming season.
Solaris: actually, I think that the amount of girls that Casshern ran into is about equal to that of the lead of Chaos;Head. And at least in both cases, the creators do try to make it plausible why these girls do the things they do.
Machi: that was indeed the point I tried to make. With series that consist nearly entirely of random stories, I believe that the term “filler” has rather lost its meaning. What I meant to say was that Casshern isn’t a series for those who like a continuous storyline.
There is a lot of similarities between the scriptwriting in Casshern and Kaiba, which would explain why you love that series so much.
Well I think if you consider both Casshern and Kaiba’s story I would say that all the episodes are part of the story arc. Except rather than simply focusing on relationship between characters or personal growth and developing them it seems the shows in a sense develop the character in relation to the world rather than others. Which I think sorta goes against the norms of most anime’s, I mean just look at all the romance ones its pretty plain its character to another character relation or in other common shows like shounen its character and well growth with self. But yeah I love Casshern a lot, I’m glad one series for fall is really shining out.