Nekomonogatari (Black)
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an ex-vampire in love.
Nekomonogatari. Just the first episode today. Here is the thing with me and this series: it’s improving. It really is. This episode still had the annoying pointless fanservice and the random focus on pointless things like ahoges (those plucks of hair on top of the head that a ton of different Shaft-characters have; this was a joke they milked out eight years ago with Pani Poni Dash by the way), the pacing here was a lot more bearable than with Nisemonogatari: stuff actually happened at a fair pace for once. Here is the thing though: I did not enjoy this episode. The problem with the Monogatari series is that thanks to Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari getting on my nerves so damn much, I’ve started to hate the characters. I did not warm up to them whatsoever and I do not enjoy watching them at all. My question now is: is it all worth it? Is the sometimes witty dialogue about love worth it? Is the really creative animation worth it? Do I want to keep watching this for TEN FREAKING SEASONS?
OP: Surprisingly normal for a Shaft Opening, but well animated.
Potential: 60%
Ai Mai Mi
Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are high school girls.
Enough with the three-minute moe shows already!! Jesus christ, this is a very annoying trend here. And you know what the bad thing is? None of them come even remotely close to being as fun and creative as Teekyu last season. It’s not like that’s a particularly high bar to pass, but at least that show was fun. I can’t say that about any of these shows whatsoever. Ai Mai Mi comes closest to Teekyu in the way that it also tries to have perverted jokes and randomness. The big difference is that the jokes are all terrible, and the pacing is a lot slower. To get a sense of the jokes in this episode: lots of sex jokes made by cute high school girls. If you’re into really bad sex jokes you might give this a chance, but even then the delivery remains poor, so be aware of that.
ED: Really cheap, but at least it’s creative. More that can be said of those other EDs so far…
Potential: 0%
Boku no Imouto wa Osaka Okan
Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister from Osaka.
Here is one series I missed, but really: don’t bother. If the title of the show didn’t already give you some suspicions: yes, this is a crappy flash animation; yes, this is about a brother and a sister, and yes, the sister has lived apart from the brother for nearly her entire life. Helloooo incest. Thankfully, the two characters don’t seem to be in love… but yeah the other signs are all there. Apart from that, the only point behind this series is to illustrate the difference between people living in Tokyo and Osaka. In the end this all boiled down to how they have silly names for things in Osaka. It’s not worth it at all to make an anime
ED: You couldn’t get this any more shameless, could you?
Potential: 0%
So far, it seems to me that this season is bad.
Wow, it seems that most shows will get a low score this season but look on the bright side, tomorrow there will be a new episode of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure which will probably be very awesome.
All these 3-minute shorts: the real cancer that is killing anime.
The fact that there could be sufficient audience to sustain productions like these that is more worrying 🙁
Not hard to have enough of an audience to support a barely animated 3-minute animation >_>
And so it begins.
The great shitstorm of our time.
MFW all of the quality was squeezed out in the last anime season.
FML now the lake is barren and dry.
Well, aside from the 3 minute shows even most of the long series don’t seem that promising.
overreacting
You have robotic Note, Shin Sekai Yori, Jojo, Magi and psycho pass continuing.
You have Maou Yuusha, Sasami and Chihayafuru 2 this season.
not to mention April titles are all epic
Oh. My. God. I’m just hoping for SHAFT to save everything now.
Haha, agree on that one. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see…
gawd. terrible start of the year. so far..
I prefer watching the five 3 minutes long series than a 20 minutes series about random girl of the week becoming emo or flashbacks about characters nobody gives a shit.
No need to make so much of a fuss, guys, most of the “real” shows haven’t aired yet, let’s wait for them until we conclude that this season is terribad, the end of times, or whatever you want to call it (usually, I find most of these predictions to be wrong anyway). About this trend of 3 minutes series… well, deal with it, they will continue to pop up in many seasons from now on. I like this format when it’s done well, but you just have to ignore it and move on if you hate it.
Saying Osaka has silly names is kind of like city folks making fun of country people. Not really nice to the people of Osaka for essentially having local quirks.
I think the monogatari series are heading into the wrong direction.
Psgels, if you didn’t like Bake or Nise, there’s little point in forcing yourself through Neko as well. It’s sort of a mix-up of the two, definitely not something totally new. Not everybody is going to enjoy a series like this, if it ain’t for you then watch what you actually enjoy.
I thought it was much better than bake and nise.
The plot moved forward at a very good pace and the characters seemed more interesting. It fixed the two problems I had with nise and bake for me.
I believe the timeline goes:
Kizu -> Neko -> Bake -> Nise
After watching it in full, I believe Neko does a good job at being a prequel. Delving into Hanakawa’s character and Araragi’s relationship with her, it made rethink some of her actions in future installments. To say the least, I don’t regret watching it.
Psgels really hates the -monogatari series huh? Well I guess its not for everyone. Personally I love the pointless conversations, anti-climatic endings, and stupid fanservice. I really doubt Nekomonogatari will deviate from the formula so I can’t say its a good idea for Psgels to watch the series
Personally I mostly have problems with the fanservice. Mostly because it got in the way of other things. I enjoyed everything else.
Nisemono is the best example of this. Every time I went “oh this is actually good!” the episode suddenly decided to spend the next 10 minutes on fanservice and nothing else.
Neko did it much better. There was fanservice, but while we were watching panty shots of Hanekawa the plot was actually going forward.
Psgels is tsundere for Nisioisin… just kidding, but seriously: It’s okay to drop Nekomongatari if you’re feeling so frustrated about it. After all it’s impossible to please everybody. In my case I love the introspective witty dialogues, the anti-climatic arc resolutions and even the bizarre fan-service; and in all these aspects I believe Nekomogatari Black is, so far, the best Monogatari installment.
While I haven’t read the novels, and Bakemonoagatari is a little fuzzy on my mind…
I think I’ll have to agree that Neko (Black) is the best…
So far anyway.
Doesn’t Neko(Black) come before Bakemonogatari chronologically? I don’t know if I can handle not having Senjougahara around for a season…
It’s just these four episodes, she appears again in Neko wwhite (Araragi is the one who will barely appear in that one) and from then on, all of the monogatari series are going to be in chronological order.
Nekomonogatari is just 1 hour 40 minutes long. The fan service mostly goes away after the first “episode”.
It took me a long time to like any part other than Senjougahara’s few episodes in Bakemonogatari. Like you, with each new installment by the writer I lose interest. At some point you just feel like he should have started a new series rather than expanding his harem, or giving insipid character development to existing characters out of a sense of obligation.
Senjougahara’s role as the romantic lead has burdened the author so badly that he constantly creates devices to get rid of her, or writes prequels so he can focus on the harem members most of us care less about….
On the second half, pretty sure that’s just speculation on your part. (;^_^)
Though, even if it’s true, it doesn’t take away on how great this entry is. Nekomonogatari is very solid. And I couldn’t help but like it after seeing it.
Couldn’t agree more. I liked Senjougahara the most out of all the girls in the series.
Despite not being a huge fan of the Whatevergatari franchise, I took a gamble and watched Neko. It’s the best of the bunch, imho, though that’s not exactly a huge compliment.
For starters, I liked that it concentrated on the characters I could actually bear watching; glasses-girl, little vamp, aloha-man, and the punching-bag protag. I still find the sisters annoying as f*ck, so that docked points, but at least that Senjowhatever chick and her pointless meandering didn’t show up.
Like all the other masturbatory offerings in the series, Neko is still trying too hard to be clever, but I guess the shortness saved it this time, and the presentation was decent enough. The first series (Bake, was it?) started out okay, but quickly deteriorated after the monkey-paw arch, and was a boring teen cheese-fest by the time it ended. The Nise season was pure crap, I gave up after 3 eps.
Not all people can get the Nisiosin type of writing.
Well people just have to deal with it.
I have watched episodes 1 and 2 of Neko…
Well, I loved the graphics, the fanservice was so artsy that it hardly qualifies as fanservice, and I don’t mind the long dialogs.
But… at the end I was sick and tired of the “Hanekawa” character. It’s not a character, she seemed to change personality and motivations with each dialog line, and the little that was actually shown was not very interesting.
Well I guess its not for everyone. Personally I love the pointless conversations, anti-climatic endings, and stupid fanservice.