LeMU.waterbottle

Spring!  New anime sea­son!  It’s unload­ing the old gear and pick­ing up the new ones for me… so nat­u­rally, a recap and pre­view needs to hap­pen.  Although I’m not reliv­ing the past when I was fol­low­ing 11 anime at the same time, this spring does offer quite a few new con­cepts while say­ing farewell (and some­thing less cour­te­ous) to the con­cluded ones.

Fin­ished

2011 winter’s anime are rather unremarkable–if not dis­ap­point­ing.  The few high pro­file titles turned out to be crappy, yet there are still some good ones that I enjoyed… and let’s start with those…

The Good

Daily Lives of High School Boys (男子高校生の日常)

Tsukkomi-based humor is not new, yet the manga’s bril­liant exe­cu­tion of it cracked me up numer­ous times.  I was happy to learn the anime adap­ta­tion became a real­ity but I kept my expec­ta­tion at a rea­son­able level.  Then it’s good to know that the anime turned out bet­ter than I had expected.  An impor­tant fac­tor for its suc­cess comes from its tal­ented voice actors, where the audio tran­scrip­tion of the char­ac­ters’ speech made eas­ier to under­stand some of the more obscure jokes.  A pack of famous voice actors always help the cause.

I real­ized that this anime is the mas­cu­line(?) ver­sion of Nichi­jou.  No won­der I like it so much.

Nise­mono­gatari (偽物語)

Same as its pre­quel Baka­mono­gatari, this anime is a show­case of what to expect from Direc­tor Shin­bou Akiyuki.  The fact that this anime requires pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of the series does not over­shadow it’s high qual­ity.  I sup­pose Shinbou’s style is “love it or hate it” kind of deal, and being a novel adap­ta­tion, the plot is guar­an­teed not to suck at very least.  Noth­ing more need to be said, other than if you are a fan of Shin­bou, or the orig­i­nal novel, Nise­mono­gatari will not dis­ap­point you.

The Bet­ter

Another

Another novel adap­tion that finally earned itself a place in TV anime.  The mys­tery genre is my cup of tea, so I picked this one up nat­u­rally.  My assump­tion of a good plot is proven to be cor­rect, where Direc­tor Mizushima and stu­dio P. A. Works excelled in mak­ing this dark-mood anime with the a clas­sic occult mys­tery approach.  Unlike some other mys­ter­ies I encoun­tered lately, this one fea­tures a very sat­is­fy­ing end­ing (which from what I hear, devi­ates from the orig­i­nal novel end­ing a bit).  For those who like mystery/horror kind of stuff, and those would smile at “art­ful” ways of killing off char­ac­ters, Another is a must-watch.

Inu x Boku SS (妖狐×僕SS)

At start I didn’t know what to expect.  Is this another moe­blob anime that worth none of my time, or did I knock on the wrong door that is intended for fan­girls audi­ence only?  The answer is no to both ques­tions.  Once into episode 2, Inu x Boku is no doubt a com­edy, with a tar­get audi­ence cov­er­ing both spec­tra of male vs female fanser­vices and nor­mal vs hen­tai needs.  It looks like the orig­i­nal manga is still ongo­ing, and the end­ing of anime is strongly hint­ing for a next season.

Let it come soon, please.

The Bad

Last Exile  –Ginyoku no Fam– (ラストエグザイル-銀翼のファム-)

Pre­emp­tive tl;dr: Fuck you, GONZO.  Fuck you for dis­card­ing every­thing good about series and filled it up with crappy nonsense.

Con­sid­er­ing Last Exile 1st sea­son is of one of my favorite anime, my expec­ta­tion is high for the sec­ond sea­son.  Yet all I have seen is pure fail.  The con­trast of qual­ity of the plot between the first and sec­ond sea­son is appalling: in sea­son 1, the plot pro­gressed as pro­tag­o­nists becomes mature when they are brought into larger con­flicts of the world, yet Ginyoku no Fam shows a twisted set­ting where as the young hero­ines step into a war, and then all the politi­cians and mil­i­tary lead­ers sud­denly rolled back their men­tal age to same level as the heroines.

I’ll learn my les­son here after what GONZO did to Last Exile and to a lesser extend, Tower of Dru­aga, where then only fucked up the 2nd season’s end­ing instead of the entire 2nd season.

Black Rock Shooter (TV) (ブラック★ロックシューター TV)

This is less of a fail than Ginyoku no Fam, but a fail nonethe­less.  Since I never watched the BRS’s OVA nor did I play the game, I don’t know how much I can relate this anime to its Vocaloid root.  The ani­ma­tion, spe­cial effects, voice act­ing, and many aspects of this anime are well above aver­age, yet for some rea­son, the plot is just messed up, lit­er­ally.  Yes, I know the meta-world (where girls’ inner per­sona are play­ing end­less fight­ing games) is sup­posed to be an abstrac­tion of their emo­tions… but is it really the only thing the anime is able to con­vey?  With the excep­tion of Mado the pro­tag­o­nist, most other char­ac­ters are men­tally unsta­ble ado­les­cents in need of insti­tu­tion­al­ized treatment.

So yeah, they had their “episodes”, and in the end Mado mag­i­cally solves all the prob­lems and (wtf) a happy end­ing ensues.  This anime is the rea­son I won’t look for­ward to anime that are spin­offs from songs.

On Air Now

This spring looks promis­ing to become my per­sonal “spring” as for my inter­est in anime.  Other than Fate/Zero’s April con­tin­u­a­tion, many new­com­ers are push­ing the bound­ary of “sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief” fur­ther into the realm of wack­i­ness.  After some sam­pling works,  this is my “cur­rently fol­low­ing” list.

Upotte!! (うぽって!!)

A clar­i­fi­ca­tion up front: this is no Gun­slinger Girls.  The girls in Upotte!! are, in fact, guns them­selves.  Don’t ask me how it works, just watch it.

Any­way, this anime is pretty much a moe’d up intro­duc­tory course on assault rifles (that use NATO ammo any­way for now)… A typ­i­cal case of 1+1>2, as nei­ther the fanservice-ladened moe nor the weaponry stuff is as inter­est­ing indi­vid­u­ally as they are com­bined.  A zany, light­hearted com­edy with­out much story can’t go too wrong, right?  Well, I sup­pose I shouldn’t say this to the male teacher who improp­erly gunhan­dled one of the girls and got hos­pi­tal­ized

It’s very replen­ish­ing to watch this anime after hours of Bat­tle­field 3.  And stu­dents be reminded, no live rounds in cam­pus hallway.

Nazo no Kanojo X (謎の彼女X）

Despite the some­what generic and unin­spir­ing title–“Mysterious Girlfriend”–this anime con­tains mate­ri­als that are any­thing but generic.  Though the art style feels incred­i­bly 15-years-ago, it is nonethe­less a heart­warm­ing devi­a­tion from the cur­rent norm.  How­ever, this anime is also a spit­ful: the cen­tral theme seem to revolve around the young couple’s daily exchange of… saliva.  The depic­tion of that is rather explicit and graphic–to the point that I have to look away, and laugh out loud.  Seriously.

True to the title, the rev­e­la­tion of the girlfriend’s “spe­cialty” (apart from secre­tion of addic­tive saliva), is a kind of a plot twist which I will not spoil.  Ver­dict: Nazo no Kanojo X is a refresh­ing, yet some­times dis­gust­ing crazi­ness that I just can’t stop myself from want­ing more of it.

Sankarea (さんかれあ)

Zom­bie sur­vival hor­rors is a suc­cess­ful genre across mul­ti­ple media, yet I can’t seem to find a real zom­bie anime that adheres to the for­mula.  I sup­pose it’s no secret for whom being the biggest offender.  Rest assured, Sankarea is still not a zom­bie sur­vival horror–or at least not yet from the first few episodes, and not likely to become one.  It is rather going to the sub­tle route where cer­tain peo­ple (and cat) die and reborn as zom­bies(?).  Since I have not touched on the orig­i­nal manga, I hon­estly can­not pre­dict how the story will progress, since it has some heav­ier top­ics, such as abu­sive parenting.

A prod­uct of Stu­dio DEEN, Sankarea’s ani­ma­tion qual­ity is good.  Hope­fully the plot goes not to the mun­dane but to some­thing subliming.

Polar Bear’s Cafe (しろくまカフェ)

I think it’s now safe to call this anime my favorite April new show (hence the top image).  It fea­tures anatom­i­cally real­is­tic ani­mals hang­ing out in a cafe in a humanly fash­ion.  If you are like me, who is tired of see­ing anime end­lessly pump­ing out humanoid char­ac­ters with only part of them are animal-inspired (namely ears and tails), Polar Bear’s Cafe is a true avant-garde, slice of (ani­mals mock­ing human) life anime that is worth watching.

And a lot of famous peo­ple in the voice actor list btw.

Hon­or­able Mentions

Fate/Zero   (cau­tion: loud flash splash animation)

Tech­ni­cally not a new anime, Fate/Zero is set to dom­i­nate as it makes a tri­umph return in this sea­son. Thanks to Uchi­boro, I finally made a first step into the uni­verse of Fate that this anime’s predecessor–Fate/Stay Night, failed to cap­ture my inter­est.  Every aspect of Fate/Zero, such as story, music, voice act­ing, and ani­ma­tion, is top notch; com­par­ing to ufotable’s Kara no Kyoukai, Fate/Zero’s qual­ity tran­scen­dent its TV anime nature and into the realm of movies and OVA.

What’s even more amaz­ing is that the anime is broad­casted world­wide on Nicon­ico Douga in 8 lan­guages, for free.  Although those sub­ti­tles are rather awk­ward and unre­fined com­par­ing to fan­subs, it’s still a gen­eros­ity from the pro­duc­ers which I am thank­ful of.  After all, the best anime of the sea­son is obvi­ously qual­i­fied to be aired world­wide.  Hope­fully this ges­ture will be backed up by the global BR/DVD sales so to encour­age more high pro­duc­tion value anime instead of com­mon cliched ones to be fur­ther pro­duced in Japan.

Queen’s Blade — Rebellion

I watched the pre­vi­ous two sea­sons of Queen’s Blade and was awed by how good the story is.  I thought Queen’s Blade was one of the plethora of H-anime com­ing from Japan that are less wor­thy of watch­ing… and I’m glad I was wrong.  The orig­i­nal anime went into depth with its plot, which is very rare given the large amount of  fanser­vices (that is it even rated M in Japan??).  Unfor­tu­nately, Rebel­lion has yet to show me the same qual­ity in its story in par with its pre­de­ces­sors, so I am unsure whether I’ll keep fol­low­ing it to the end.

Con­clu­sion

I don’t want to make a gen­eral state­ment say­ing that TV anime indus­try is revi­tal­iz­ing… Maybe it is, maybe it is not.  It is only an obser­va­tion: ani­ma­tors are mak­ing a step out the stale pond to test some new water.  Def­i­nitely encour­ag­ing, and we can only wait and see how it turns out.