These range from incredibly good to incredibly bad. I had a good time watching the last two, but the first one is just horrible.
Joshikosei
When I first read the premisse, I hoped that this would become an awesome series. I was wrong. Totally wrong. This is just an excuse to display as many pantyshots as possible in as less time as possible. The comedy doesn’t work, and it isn’t so bad that it becomes funny either.
Simoun
The main characters here fly with some weird machines which somehow remind me of Noein’s minions. Apparently, only girls up to the age of 15 can fly them, a la Evangelion. The character designs somehow reminded me of Gundam Seed Destiny meets Utena with a little dose of Paradise Kiss. When I first saw a picture of the main character, I was somehow reminded of the main character of Fate/Stay Night. After watching her in the anime, I’d have to say that she bears some resemblances, but mostly her character design is different. Her personality, however, totally reminds me of the main character of Mai Otome. The storytelling itself somehow reminded me of the complex dialogue in Trinity Blood. So. These were all the shows I managed to recognize. It appears that Simoun takes a little something out of a couple of good shows, mixes these together and adds a couple original elements. Fifteen minutes in the microwave, and it’s done. The results is pretty good. The music is just awesome, you can barely follow what’s going on, which forces you to pay attention, and the characters look just awesome (not to mention their kissing scenes). Though there are a couple of bad points about this anime. First of all, it’s nowhere explained that the persons in this world are all born female, and then get to choose to their sex at their fifteenth. If I hadn’t read this beforehand, I really would have been confused. The grown-up males with female voices are also a nice idea, but they don’t really work. It’s also a bit strange to just pick up a fallen comerade, her them talk, and then just ‘ throw’ them away again. I also didn’t really feel for the characters who died this episode. I guess that’s the toll of having complex storytelling.
.Hack//Roots
The main character is shy! Holy god, I kept hoping for a main character to be different from all of those enthusiastic, talented and loudmouthed common main characters. I can´t believe it!! The creators just took a large amount of the awesome points of .Hack//Sign (one of the best anime ever, in my opinion) and turned that into their own storyline. The results so far are AWESOME!! I recognized the special and freaky voice acting whenever a character is in pain. The style of the character designs is as awesome as ever. The dialogues are deep. I so love the different characters The music is just totally awesome, and I could keep on rambling for a while. The major difference with .Hack//Sign is that .Hack//Roots seems to focus more on the MMORPG-element than .Hack//Sign does. I’ll definately be blogging this. This was by far the best one out of the first episodes of the spring season.
Alas, I didn’t find Roots that impressive. It was enjoyable, and nicely atomospheric, and Haseo’s newbie nature is nice, but apart from that I don’t think it scores in the animation or style in the same way that SIGN did, and not enough really happened here for me to make a judgement on it yet. I still prefer Utawaremono’s RPG-ish world to this new-fangled, rebooted world without the God of All Balmung.
Simoun I enjoyed, but I agree with you about the flimsy way it was set out, making it hard to understand. I’d rather not remember Joushikosei, worse show of the season.
I Dunno. At least Haseo doesn’t seem as stupid, self-centered, whiny and selfish as Tsukasa was, as a main character, so i suppose it’s an improvement ^_^