Star Crossed Anime

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.