Some quick first impressions: Sumomomo Momomo, Asatte no Houkou and Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage

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.