Spring anime 2013 (part 2)

*May include spoilers - if you don't ever watch the first episodes of these shows, then I'm not sure it can be spoiled though....
All media credits go to their owners.*

Okay! I don't have a lot of time today so I'm going to make this brief.
I watched Shingeki no Kyojin or Attack on Titan. And you'll probably hear every other anime fan yap on about it, because the beginning was rather memorable. And sad. As you might know, the Titans are back! And they are attacking the wall that people have surrounded themselves with to keep them bloodlusted creatures out. The main character Eren is an anxious boy who wants to go out of the wall and meet the titans out in their natural habitat - obviously when the action comes to him, he gets more than he bargained for. So yeah. Shit hits the fan.
This one will probably receive lots of high rates since it looks to be pretty well made. Did I like it though? I don't even know... I guess. Something about it bothered me, perhaps the overly psyched male lead. I'll definitely check out more before I make up my mind.

I also watched 2 episodes of Mushibugyou which is a pretty serious shounen. Giant bugs keep invading old time Tokyo and the son of a samurai travels there to join the Bug-Elimination-Office on his father's behalf. Yeah. That's about it. They battle bugs. Seems pretty good, not anything special though. The second episode was about one of the members - a female ninja who throws bombs. The third will be about another member - a criminal who looks like a mixture of Kenpachi and Zoro. If you like shounen, you will like this one, I'm sure.

Aha, then there was also the freak-show of the season. Aku no Hana or Flowers of Evil shows us painfully slowly the journey of a young man into "evil". Actually he just steals a pair of gym clothes from a girl in his class whom he has a crush on. Whereas in a romance-comedy anime this would turn out as the start of a beautiful relationship, here things go down a more realistic road and the situation gets really awkward. If you like a good mind fuck, you're in for a treat. A depressive treat, but nonetheless.
I don't. I'll admit that the execution very extraordinary but I just do not watch that type of shows. It's like the part of NGE where Shinji goes mental - just without the epic mechas and a futuristic world.

Just for fun and giggles I checked out Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko or Henneko for short. If you didn't catch that - it's The Pervert Prince and the Stony Cat (stony = never laughs). And. Well. It's a comedy-romance show with a personality swap. So basically if you're into that, go for it. The animation style is really childish and the characters seem like one tsundere after another, but I'm not saying it was bad. There were a few funny moments - if you like boys chasing girls with pornographic pillows attached to their backs. But in general: No. Just No.

The best out of them all was Hataraku Maou-sama or The Devil is a Part-Timer! Which is basically exactly what it says - there is an evil demon lord who is teleported to the real world with a general officer of his and transformed into a human. So, they have no choice but to suck it up and while the Devil Maou works for MgRonalds, his right hand man Alsiel researches a way to bring them back to the magical realm. Things only manage to settle down a little before the Hero Emilia, who followed the demon lord through the portal, discovers him working at the fast-food chain. But all that plot aside - this show is hilarious! At the very least, the first half of the first episode definitely is. Best humor this season, for sure! (I'm saying this without having seen all the new ones though...)
Although the Going-To-America topic may be a rather typical one,  I really thought this one was very well executed and what's most important - lots of fun! I took some pictures for you too.

Rawr mr Demon Lord.

Alsiel in his demon form

The Hero vs the Demon Lord!

A decisive attack!

...aaaand off to the real world we go. Sorry Alsiel, magic doesn't work here.

The resources have been cut down a bit. From a demon castle to one room only.

You cannot escape the hero!

Aaand here's just a treat from episode 3... uuuh!

Helllllo mr hot Demon Lord.

Okay well that's it for today since I have loads of college stuff to finish! But check out this Hataraku Maou-sama, cause it promises to be epic!

Spring anime 2013 (part 1)

*Probably doesn't include spoilers - if you care enough to watch the first episode. 
All media credits go to their owners. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.*

Aaaaaalrighty. Since nothing really seemed extra interesting this new season, I haven't been too eager with checking it out. But here's what I did see.
Date A Live. Yes, I started it. Yes, I watched the first 4 minutes. Yes, I closed the player as soon as there was a striped-panties shot of the main character's sister. Dude, no. Just no.
Then I watched the first episode of Karneval. I didn't actually expect much, but after watching it I thought it was pretty good. The action scenes were drawn pretty nicely and even though there was lots of jumping from one scene to another, it all came together half way through. I was thrilled to hear some of my favorite voices like Ono Daisuke (Sebastian Michaelis), Kamiya Hiroshi (Orihara Izaya), Suwabe Junichi (Grimmjow Jeagerjaques) and naturally Miyano Mamoru (Yagami Light - here he sounds more like Masaomi Kida), even though the last one only appeared for a few seconds in the end. The plot? Well... not entirely sure. There was a missing person, a white-haired chibi-chan, a huge secret defense organization and a LOADS of characters. I'm sure you'll catch on if you read a summary or watch the first episode yourself. Here's a few pics.

Here's the chibi-chan I was telling you about. They call him Nai.

Then some weird semi-sex scene... he pwns her though.

IIiiizzaaaayaaaaa.... just kiddin'. It's Gareki.

Don't you get the urge to sing "Tetsu to hagane ja magaru..."? Well, it's Tsukumo and Hirato, from Circus.

Hirato demonstrates his magic.

So anyway, the next thing I watched was Arata Kangatari or Arata: The Legend. It had a similar animation style to Karneval, but it seemed to be a bit more depressive. There was this boy, Arata, in modern day Japan, and another Arata in some fantasy land. And apparently the fantasy realm one had to pretend to be a girl in order to succeed a dying princess. However the princess was murdered by her bodyguards and Arata was framed, so he ran for his life and - camboom! The school boy Arata from Japan replaced him - due to some depressive reasons. That's how it gets going. I'd say Karneval was better, but this one doesn't seem too bad either - just way more cliche. I might keep an eye on it - but I sure hope it gets more cheerful. Here, I took a few pictures too.

The normal Arata.

The not-so-normal Arata...

The 60-year-old princess Arata is supposed to replace.

Shit hits the fan.

Now stuck with the loco people chasing you, huh Arata?

And naturally, stupid weak women get captured.

By the way, the abs I was so excited about, were Kannagi's, but turns out there's an even better sight. No idea who he is though.

Rawr!

Now after that one, I checked out Devil Survivor 2: The Animation. Well... it was a mixture of Death Note, Final Destination and Digimon Tamers. The topic was pretty intriguing and you already get a good glimpse of what's going to happen by the tenth minute or so. It had a pretty large scale, which is always a plus (at least for me) and seemed to be pretty well thought through. Is it really though - can't say yet. All I know is that the main character summons an epic kitty that looks like Xuen! I'm definitely going keep watching this one - out of the three it seems to be the most promising. Here's a sneak peek.

Daichi and Hibiki discussing future... before singing up to Dead Face.

Wanna see your friend dead...? Srsly, why would you want that?

Nitta's phone goes loco and starts summoning demons!

Lucky Hibiki got himself a tiger!~!!!

Hmmm, so in the end I took least pics of the one I liked most. Go figure.

My Teen Romantic Comedy is Wrong As I Expected was O-kay. Just okay. I guess there were some deep topics but since I'm not a depressive high schooler - at least not anymore - I really did not care about the topic of friendship/betrayal/keeping-disappointments-out-with-a-wall. There's a boy who has secluded himself, the most popular girl in the school and a cheerful girl who has a crush on the male lead. Not too hard to guess what's coming next, huh? I didn't even take pictures. CBA.

And then I watched all four of the released Red Data Girl episodes. There's a girl with weird powers and every time she touches cell phones or computers or some other electrical devices, they go out of order. She is matched up with a supposed guardian, a young handsome boy who is reluctant to change his current life style for her. So the female lead starts journey to change herself from the coward she is now. Sounds pretty cliché? I thought so too. But it turns out that it was executed rather differently. Just because she was timid, she wasn't entirely excluded from her school community. And she evolved even in the very first episode. Though I have to say that if I had only seen the first one, I probably wouldn't have wanted to watch it on a following week. I found that it gets better over the first few episodes.
I really want to stress that even though it's an anime, it feels way more realistic - the problems, the reactions. It does not feel like a typical anime at all, even though the subject itself doesn't exactly shine with originality. You'll just have to check it out yourself.
 
But yeah, those were the ones I did watch this week. I'll probably watch more further on, but can't be bothered to rush it just to gather them all in one post.

Spring season

*All media credits go to their owners.*

Well now. Today I just had a look at what seems to be interesting in the new season of Spring 2013. Here's a general overview, you can have a look at it yourself.

Well this Karneval is a maaaaaybe. I might have a look at it, but in general it looks a bit too flashy. Also the topic of 'secret organization that fights crime' sounds like something I've seen a hundred times. Well I'll have a look, anyway.
The next one that looks interesting from that list is Shingeki no Kyojin or Attack on Titan. Though I have to admit that the revenge topic doesn't sound like something extremely new either, this titans theme is pretty exciting. Like really, they seem to be huge on the picture. I'm intrigued! Gonna check that out!
Then Date A Live sounds like another random teenage romance anime, but since it has time-space-whatnot topic in there, I might actually have a look. Not expecting too much though.
Now Devil Survivor looks like something that might actually be good. If they pull it off of course. The topic of death and death gods and demons is always alluring and ever since Death Note, I'm pretty sure everyone is eager to see another epic mind-play. I will definitely keep my fingers crossed for this one. Since it's based on a game and I for one have never even heard about it, I won't get my hopes up too high. But the cast seems pretty decent - Suwabe Junichi (Grimmjow), Sakurai Takahiro (Kururugi Suzaku and Namikawa Daisuke (Gray (FT)) among others.
I'm also going to check out Red Data Girl. Not for any particular reason. Well, I like Fukuyama Jun (Lelouch). And I liked the picture on ANN.
Then Yahari, Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru or My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, As Expected looks like something I'll probably have a look at. Not that I'd be too into the very likely tsundere situation there, but hey - why not? I'm probably not too into all the space topics they are offering us this season, might as well try the romance ones.
That Mushibugyo sounds like some shounen - so I'm definitely going to have a look at that. Also, the blonde guy in the background of Arata Kangatari has sweet abs - totally going to check that out :D

And that's that. The rest of it looks either too cute or too sci-fi. How many potential animes did I get now? Okay, that's eight. Out of those I expect 3 to be worth anything. Lets hope I'm right.

Two major disappointments though. First, naturally, the cancelling of Fairy Tail. I still cannot believe it. I read on some forums that apparently it's due to several factors: continuously low ratings and sales (I'm guessing ever since that starry heavens arc? Cause that was god damn boring and the latest arc is the best there has been so far, so it wouldn't make sense for the last one to cause the drop, right?), Hirano Aya (Lucy) hating all otaku and wanting to quit her seiyuu career all in all, and to give the manga time to get a bit further ahead. Whether these assumptions are correct at all, I've got no clue. But regardless - this situations sucks! They're going to stop the anime in the middle of the best arc yet. Arghhh!!!
Another bummer was that the second season of Kuroko no Basuke or Kuroko's Basketball is not being released. Damn it! I was really looking forward to that. I just recently watched the OVA too and it was awesome, got me all pumped up. But no go :(

What are you looking forward to this Spring?

Chihayafuru 2

*Includes spoilers. Media credits go to their owners.*

Ahhhh, finally, Chihayafuru 2 is here! While it was already out last week, I didn't have the chance to relax and carefully enjoy the first episode soon enough. But now I have. And even though there will be another episode out by the time this bit of the blog will go live, I'll focus on the first episode here.

So whoever doesn't know it yet - Chihayafuru is an anime series about karuta. WTF is karuta? It's the name of the game, yo! Actually it's a game the Japanese nobles used to play and has a 100 cards in it with poems from the Hyakunin isshu - a great anthology of classical Japanese poetry. To set that aside, this anime is about smacking cards! You need to grab a card as soon as you hear the first syllable of any of those 100 poems. And that's what Chihaya (the pretty lady on the picture) and her friends do all series long. Sounds extremely dull?
It's not!
It has some pretty awesome sports tactics and abilities mixed into it, but it's also kind of elegant in the form of the poems and the readers (who read the poems to the competitors) and tradition. Even though competetive karuta has very little in common with the nobles of ancient times. Mostly everyone is sweaty and has to think a lot. Anyway, some pictures I captured from the first episode.

There's a new girl, who looks like a bitch and obviously likes Taichi. Not cool, missy. GTFO, he needs to be with Chihaya, kk?
Actually, I can't wait for today's episode, so I'm just going to leave this at that. Really want to see moooar!

Autumn 2012

*Includes spoilers. All media credits go to their owners.*

So most of the new shows have aired by now - some even have a second episode out - and like any self-proclaimed anime specialist, I too am now going to dive into the world of striking metaphors and clever wordsmithing!
Just kidding.
Let the expert opinions be given by obsessive fanatics. I'll do the good honest normal people version of what impressions the new shows left on me. 
I'll be using a primary version of something I like to call the HAI or Hopes-for-Anime Indicator and even though it sounds pseudo-fancy, it's just the weighted average of what I think works or doesn't work in the new anime. It spares me the trouble of having to address all the major aspects of a show in word, especially if I'm going to watch around 30 of them. I expect the method to be improved by the beginning of the Spring anime season 2013, but for now I'll stick to what I've come up with. I've focused on the ones I liked best, but it's possible to see the full list here.

Haru and Shizuku

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun  
8,7 (of 10)

...also known as My Little Monster, is exactly what it says it is - a show about a monster. Well, except his name is Haru and he is handsome, strong, surprisingly emotional ... and a genius. He's also wild, unstoppable and extremely impulsive, which puzzles the dryly rational heroine Shizuku to the core. As much as Shizuku may want to focus on her studies, she gets completely caught up in the little monster's pace after a teacher bribes her to take Haru some handouts and he decides they are friends. Because she brought him his homework. Duh. Obviously.

But things don't stop there as by the end of the first episode there have already been confessions of love, violence towards Shizuku's face, a change of heart and even a kiss. Watching one episode of this show feels like you've watched an entire season or at least a full length movie. But during the entire time it keeps you glued to the screen since the humor and absurdly comical situations pop out at any thinkable moment. 
Now I'm not your typical school romance fan - rather, I avoid these shows as much as possible. But this one starts off very strong, providing some captivating characters and a quickly evolving story which spices up the usual school and romance anime. Also, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun brings funny instead of awkward and embarrassing. What's there not to love!
Whereas the animation isn't anything special, it manages to keep up with the dynamic style of the rest of the show. All in all - lots and lots of potential, but whenever a show premiers this well, the question becomes: Will it be able to keep it up?

Btooom! 

Ryouta and Himiko

8,2 (of 10)

Everyone probably has that one friend who still lives at home with his mom, doesn't work or go to school and spends his days engulfed in video games. Well that's exactly where this anime starts off and with your typical gamer-gets-thrown-into-game setting, Ryouta, whose sole life has been pwning n00bs in the shooter game Btooom!, suddenly wakes up on an island equipped with a bomb pouch and no clue how he got there. 
Although it sounds like almost any other anime of the sort, from .//hack to the latest addition Sword Art Online, I found Btooom! pretty captivating. The majority of action in the first episode takes place in the main character's head - as there is no one else to talk to - and yet the authors manage to skillfully create a rich background and a spot on personality. For the first time, Ryouta is forced to think about what he is actually doing in the game he so loves and whether it's a healthy thing to be throwing bombs at people.

Somehow they've managed to display him as scared and confused as anyone would be when stranded on an island where other bloodthirsty 'players' are lurking, but he's not as a complete wuss. There is naturally the obligatory moral dilemma about killing people but luckily it doesn't drag on.
Visually it's nothing mind blastingly special, but the details and scenery are done rather well and all in all it rises well above average. Looking forward to the rest of the show and hoping it won't become a random action anime.

Shinsekai Yori
8,0 (of 10)

Shinsekai Yori

Shinsekai Yori, or From the New World as it is translated, appears to be the obligatory messed up sci-fi/mystery/post apocalyptic show of the season. Although it places somewhere below NGE on the level of crazy, the show brings together bits and pieces from a world that is strange and hard for us to understand. In the beginning we are shown a regular view of the modern world where suddenly people and things get torn apart. Then we teleport into the future where scenes of a Shintoistic/Buddhistic ritual take place - and at the same time we are shown a girl who 'has the Spirit of Adulthood come upon her'. That's when you know this one is mental enough to be the apple of the eye for all the critics.
As for the rest of us, the lack of structure might bring confusion and loss of interest instead of wrapping us into a mystical world of supernatural and horror. A good slowly unravelling structure is vital to a show with so many thorough aspects and unlike Steins;Gate, Mushi-shi and FMA: Brotherhood, this one seems to leap from one topic to the other, leaving many things laying around like horses you forgot to draw all the legs to as a child. So they're just spasming there on the ground. Horrible.
With that said, From the New World offers a great variety of topics along with the edge of spookiness, characteristic scenery and the hope of something great evolving from all the crazy. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the entire thing.

K
7,9 (of 10) 

Not entirely sure what the K stands for (okay? kool kids?), but the anime itself is packed with extraordinary visuals and lots of 'ubercool' characters. Actually, it gets rather ridiculous how many kakkoii guys they've managed to shove in there. And the visual side is clearly what the show is counting on, as the rest of the story just does not seem to evolve during the first episode. There are hints of a mildly interesting story - and there's magic, so it can't be all that bad. We are shown a gang of cool guys, whom you can see above, and a happy-go-lucky school kid, who might not belong to that school at all. For most of the show they are just shown to run their own errands and only in the last few minutes do these two stories clash. Oddly enough, those last few minutes make you want to know more and find out why the cool guys are after the school kid.
All in all, amazing visuals, not a lot of story, but somehow the potential makes up for it. Let's hope it actually does.
 
Wooser no Sono Higurashi

Wooser

7,8 (of 10)

He looks kind of cute but he's blunt and brutal and shameless - which also makes the short series extremely likable. Wooser, the yellow rabbit-like thingy to the right, ------------------>
is the main character of Wooser no Sono Higurashi or Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life. In a few minutes he displays some serious narcissism, his love for meat and, being surrounded by young girls, I'd say a fair amount of perversion. Still, Wooser is a funny little fellow and although there is no plot whatsoever and the entire thing is put together from random bits, it's plenty to give you a good laugh. Now add to that the magnificent voice of Mamoru Miyano in the style of Hououin Kyouma and it becomes just unstoppable! Well hopefully.
 
Zetsuen no Tempest
7,7 (of 10)

Zetsuen no Tempest

It's only once in a while that I hear anything as ridiculous as the phrase 'Civilization Blaster'. What the hell is that?? It sounds like the mixture of a nuclear bomb and a confetti gun. But that's exactly what Zetsuen no Tempest or Blast of Tempest has been given as the full title: The Civilization Blaster. Well, be that as it may, this show is bringing everything possible to a fantasy anime - magic, guns, love, murder, poetry, a mysterious disease, a strange cult - the full package. Actually, it goes to the extent where you start wondering if someone is maybe overdoing it. But strangely enough, Zetsuen no Tempest seems to have the potential to pull it off - everything is fused and blended pretty naturally, everything has a reason, a consequence and next to magic, it's still a world that we know. Will it be a Code-Geass-style win or a Guilty-Crown-style failed attempt?
By the way, the visual is pretty nice - including teleportation magic and the scenery. The addition of Shakespeare's poetry might have been pushing it though. Well, let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

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I have more grains to spill next Friday. In the meanwhile share your opinion - which of the new ones did you enjoy most?