This sea­son is a bit of a slow start for me (again) since none of the series are quite blaz­ing at me in explod­ing neon signs, either that or because I still haven’t recov­ered from being utterly dis­ap­pointed in last two sea­sons, espe­cially by Valkyria Chron­i­cles and Asura Cryin’. But nev­er­the­less, prospects looks… ade­quate for a sea­son. At least if noth­ing else, Rail­gun already promises not to dis­ap­point. In a ways I guess that’s good, since it means I’ll have more time to catch up on every­thing still piled up from col­lege (I just blitzed most of Saki this Sat­ur­day — awe­some Mahjong yuri)

Kämpfer

Progress: 2/12
Pre­ferred Sub­ber: [gg]
Descrip­tion: Boy gains Ranma 1/2 (gen­der trans­for­ma­tion) pow­ers to take part in girls-on-girl com­bat tour­na­ment
Pros: Qual­ity pro­duc­tion, top tier cast
Cons: Stereo­typ­i­cal char­ac­ters, over­all ridicu­lous­ness
Sur­pris­ingly, Kampfer came first in my sea­son. I didn’t plan to watch this show, but my friends’ inter­est and its cast per­suaded me oth­er­wise. Kampfer’s seiyuu cast is sur­pris­ingly full of famous tal­ents, includ­ing Horie Yui, Tamura Yukari, Noto Mamiko, Mizuki Nana, and Inoue Marina — makes me won­der how the stu­dio man­ages to get all these top names together in such a ridicu­lous title. The pro­ducer also makes full use of this and pulls off one seiyuu joke after another. Although, it does feels painfully wrong when one hears Nanoha’s exact voice sug­gest­ing “Rip her skirt off… Wait, just strip her naked! Haha­haha!“































How­ever, aside from the top notch graph­ics and top tier voice act­ing, I can’t say much else for the show. It cer­tainly lacks the cute Kashimashi charm of the gender-bender genre. The char­ac­ters are as flat as their moti­va­tions, there doesn’t even appear to be a real plot, and the action is badly chore­o­graphed. It espe­cially puz­zled me when the pro­tag­o­nist team (gunner+caster) ran inside a build­ing from open space when fac­ing against a meleer — hor­ri­ble idea.
I’ll prob­a­bly keep this as long as my friends are inter­ested, but not any longer than that.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun

Progress: 2/13?
Pre­ferred Sub­ber: [Mazui]
Descrip­tion: <shock­ing> good­ness of hot yuri action with power lev­els enough to break scouters
Pros: Flaw­less graph­ics, steamy yuri, excel­lent com­bat setup
Cons: Pac­ing?

Com­ing from a reader of the manga, my sen­ti­ments are along the lines of awe­somely well done! Not quite enough plot hooks for my 10/10 tastes, but J.C.Staff is cer­tainly deliv­er­ing on my other expec­ta­tions. The first two episodes cap­i­tal­izes mostly on Kuroko’s relent­less devo­tion to rape love her dear onee-sama, while two scenes show­ing off their power lev­els promises fan­tas­tic bat­tles to come once the story is expanded upon.

On that note, I do worry about the pac­ing. The mango did a great job of bal­anc­ing back­ground scenes, yuri action, bat­tle, and plot devel­op­ment. It feels like J.C.Staff already squeezed out all the yuri from half the chap­ters and crammed them all in one place. I sure hope the anime doesn’t give the feel of sud­den genre change in the mid­dle of things.
Needs more electro-ahoge…

11eyes

Progress: 1/12
Pre­ferred Sub­ber: Tomodachi [TMD]
Descrip­tion: Undi­luted moe of stereo­typ­i­cal guy dat­ing the ideal (secret otaku) girl
Pros: Japan’s promises from a great Visual Novel? and the Hats
Cons: Flat char­ac­ter designs
At the point, my dri­ving incen­tive to watch 11eyes is still purely dri­ven by Japan’s Visual Novel fan­base whom promised great­ness from this title. The first episode really didn’t show much, although it did do a good job of pre­sent­ing seri­ous lev­els of creepi­ness from the oth­er­world.
Usu­ally, the pur­pose of a VN-to-anime first episode is to show off the char­ac­ters. I am cur­rently not impressed. We have a socially awk­ward main char­ac­ter, a child­ish osanana­jimi, the Haruhi-esque trans­fer stu­dent, the perverted-best-friend, a sup­port­ing girl to keep said perv in line, a jerk of a future male friend, and shots of sev­eral other unim­pres­sive char­ac­ter designs. Too generic I tell you.

The only thing I woot’d for was the hats. The uniform’s corset design puts the skirt too high in my opin­ion, so not impressed. How­ever, all female sei­fuku should include floppy beret hats with rib­bons!!! Just a per­sonal taste, ampli­fied by my love of Kud (Lit­tle Busters) and Kotori (Da Capo), but I’m sure many agrees with me.

Nogizaka Haruka no Him­itsu: Purezza

Progress: 1/12
Pre­ferred Sub­ber: [Mamiko]
Descrip­tion: Undi­luted moe of stereo­typ­i­cal guy dat­ing the ideal (secret otaku) girl
Pros: Shy tal­ented inno­cent blun­der­ing otaku bishoujo voiced by Noto Mamiko
Cons: Heavy fog, any­thing except moe
Fans of get­ting their weekly dose of undi­luted moe all know about Nogizaka Haruka by now, so not much else is needed other than that line in pros. My only dis­ap­point­ment is the weather — a thick strate­gi­cally placed fog is obscur­ing all the good views. I’m fine with reduced fanser­vice but… it’s start­ing to get in the way of sim­ply enjoy­ing the show normally.

On a dif­fer­ent note, I blitzed through most (18/25) of Saki this week­end. Loved it. It wasn’t just the yuri or Ueda Kana’s Kashimashi-Hazumu voice (new favorite VA) either. It was the adorable pair­ings, the unique abilities/styles of each of the play­ers and how they inter­act, as well as the well-balanced pac­ing of the Mahjong games — detailed, but cer­tainly not Yugioh. Also, GONZO shows they actu­ally have more tactics/strategy sense than Sun­rise, not to men­tion incor­po­ra­tion of an alice-soft art style. Can’t wait for an even­tual sec­ond sea­son.
<3<3<3 to Fukuji Mihoko x Takei Hisa (the Cap­tains pair), favorite pair of the series with per­fectly com­pli­men­tary per­son­al­i­ties.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Fall 2009 End­ing: A Sea­son of Many Disappointments
• Mid-Fall 2009 Anime Impres­sions: Rising
• A Cer­tain Rail­gun Ending

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 11:51 and is filed under Anime, Impressions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.