Some quick first impressions: Moetan, Zero no Tsukaima Second Season and Mononoke

Moetan It took a bit of time to get used to the fact that the main character had the same voice as Akazukin from Otogi Juusi Akazukin. However, while Akazukin was awesomeness, Moetan remains an utter failure. I was hoping for it to be at least a good comedy, but nearly all of the jokes are blatant and unfunny fanservice ones. The “story” revolves around a highly skilled magician, who flees his world, turns into a duck, and forces our female main character to become a mahou shoujo, without any particular reason. The duck also turned into an annoying pervert, the transformation-sequence is blatantly obvious and the additional romance where a ten-year old girl has fallen in love with a fourteen year-old boy tell me that this is just otaku-bait. Even the very few engrish-jokes don’t work. Zero no Tsukaima Second Season Sometimes, I give second seasons of series that I originally dismissed a second chance, just in case I misjudged them. I discovered Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club this way, so why not? And I do admit it’s not as bad as I remember it, there were a few cute moments here and there. It seems that the characters definitely made more progress than Shakugan no Shana in its entire series. Still, I’m not going to continue watching this series, simply because the main character remains an idiot. After watching this episode, I admit that this series could have been good, if it didn’t throw us a fanservice-joke whenever it had the chance. Seriously, about half of the episode is spent on this main character, drooling over the bosoms of the different female characters. I also wonder why the queen of a country would come to him, simply because Louise’s powers are useful for the war. Can’t she just leave that to one of her military officers? Mononoke Excuse me while I fanboy for a moment, but THAT WAS AWESOME!!!! It’s exactly what I hoped it to be, even though this was just an introducing episode. It takes its time to introduce the case and the demon that has to be slain, but it already provided lots of good scares. The summer-season is proving to be an excellent season for the horror-fans, when it comes with two excellent horror-shows. Shigurui will be focusing at gore, while Mononoke’s scares are all psychological (do not miss seeing the guy get killed, that most probably was one of the most intense moments I’ve seen in quite a while). I am currently SO excited about this anime, and it had delivered without question the best first episode out of the entire summer-season. In fact, it’s got the best first episode of the entire 2007! If the same level of Bake Neko will be achieved in the future episodes, we’ll be looking at one of the definite highlights of the year! Oh, and don’t worry about not having seen Ayakashi ~Japanese Horror, there is enough background given to just watch it without having any background knowledge. I can’t wait for the second episode!!!!]]>