Some Quick First Impressions: Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-Bu, Fantasista Doll and Teekyuu Season 2

Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-Bu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins a club in high school.
So… remember the awesome promo-art that this series had? Yeah, they really don’t do anything with that in this episode. Having said that though, this episode did have heart. The set-up may be a bit generic, but you can see that the people from Gainax were inspired to work on this (in comparison, I got the total opposite impression from Medaka Box). Their previous works have shown more than enough times that these guys really like guns, and they wanted to do them justice here, and that passion was something that managed to win me over as well. As for the characters, they still need a bit of work, but they’re definitely not bad, actually. I actually empathized with the shy girl: some of her scenes were done quite nicely. Yeah, the series is obviously a sell-out (let’s have some cute girls with guns fight each other!), and my biggest worry here is keeping things interesting. Gainax ain’t going to have the budget of this episode for the rest of the series, and they’re also not going to suffice by just having a random battle every episode: that’s fun once, but not an entire season, so they really need to focus on that characterization.
OP: Generic opening bleh.
ED: What’s up with those random drawings? Really bad ED otherwise by the way.
Potential: 75%

Fantasista Doll

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets a bunch of dolls to fight for her.
Call me crazy, but I’m going to try and keep up with this series. This show is weird. With that, I don’t mean that strange stuff happens on it, but it’s more like there might be potential hidden behind this one. It’s flawed oh boy, it’s flawed, but not in the ways that I expected it to be. I mean the acting for one is really weird and the lead character behaves in a very strange way to stress, and yet: she isn’t a generic lead. She has a personality, and a backstory. She uses dolls to fight for her, but she also “softof” participates in the battles, albeit in a really stupid way. The dolls themselves as well: their acting is weird, but they don’t try to force their stereotypes down the viewers’ throats. Oh and the music is awesome. It’s this weird project that is in one way or the other supervised by Goro Taniguchi, who is actually really talented, but it’s directed by someone completely different. Something will happen here. The question is what, and whether it’ll be good.
OP: A great musician was at work here, unfortunately the same can’t be said for the vocalists and animators…
ED: Nice art
Potential: 70%

Teekyuu Season 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character plays tennis
I’ve said this many times before: Mappa get your stuff back together and make an actually serious series here instead of this stuff! I mean this made me laugh hysterically and question my sanity and all, but this is Mappa: they can animate series that most other studios can’t! Leave the Teekyuu stuff to the lesser studios! Anyway, Teekyu. It’s completely random and stupid, yet I laughed a lot yet again, and this one stood out as even one of the best of the series. The general trend of comedy sequels is to either repeat yourself, or take the material of the first season even more to the extreme. Teekyuu seems to have picked option number two, but with this type of series that thrives on complete random humour, adding a bit of insanity actually helped here. The characters branch out into a kindergarten that is lead by one of the most awesome principals. This will be good for my two minutes of insanity each week.
OP: This looks like it was made in an hour… I’m not sure whether it’s a compliment or not…
Potential: 70%