I’m still decid­ing on my anime blog­ging style. Def­i­nitely not the episodic type, but I fig­ure I’ll try to get four in per sea­son: pre-season expec­ta­tions, ini­tial insights (1~2eps), mid-season impres­sions (6~8eps), and end­ing reviews.

Other than Rail­gun which I’ve already read, most of the 2009 fall anime sea­son has been Meh for me… or so I thought, until I caught up to the stun­ning first cli­max of Kimi ni Todoke, which is quickly becom­ing a mas­ter­piece in my book. I did end up drop­ping two series, but they were ones I never expected to watch in the first place.

Cur­rent Anime (listed in order of pref­er­ence):

Kimi ni Todoke

Episodes Watched: 6
Rat­ing: 8.3/10

With episode 6 mark­ing the first cli­max and the con­clu­sion to the first arc, Todoke is well on its way to becom­ing the one of the best anime this sea­son. Sure, the sto­ry­board for Todoke is noth­ing tremen­dous, and I saw the friends’ mak­ing up from a mile away. But it is the beau­ti­ful pre­sen­ta­tion of those crit­i­cal scenes that really mark this show as excep­tional. I was so touched when Sawako made her friend request to Yoshida and Yano that I almost shed tears. I’m really glad Sawako was able to become friends with such good peo­ple, as her angelic kind­ness really deserves some­thing spe­cial, plus her hard­work­ing atti­tude made me cheer for her the whole way.

Also, Shouta’s per­son­al­ity is pos­i­tively refresh­ing, and his shy­ness is rather cute too. This is cer­tainly one pair I’ll be root­ing for this sea­son.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

Episodes Watched: 7
Rat­ing: 8.2/10

On one hand, J.C.Staff is doing an admirable job of keep­ing this series matched with Rail­gun manga’s orig­i­nal con­tent, even if events aren’t in the same order. But on the other hand, the undi­luted con­cen­tra­tion of yuri in the first few episodes is start­ing to back­lash a bit, as the show is steadily pro­gress­ing towards its main plot­line while unrav­el­ing Mikoto’s true love — Touma. Yes, she’s straight, and this series is not all about Yuri. Sorry Kuroko, your face is hilar­i­ously funny to watch and Mikoto does love you, but only as a best friend. Index has made me adore the Mikoto x Touma pair­ing, spe­cially when I read about the fact Mikoto was the first to notice Touma’s miss­ing mem­o­ries. It takes a true soul­mate to do that, espe­cially given Touma’s bluff­ing and the fact Mikoto barely knew him before he lost his mem­o­ries.
Other than the dis­pro­por­tion­ate Yuri, I’d say this series does a good job of pac­ing between com­edy, action, and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. It may not seem like things have picked up yet, but it’s the fillers that unfold the plot in Rail­gun, and that’s one of the beau­ti­ful parts about the series.

Shaku­gan no Shana S

Episodes Watched: 1
Rat­ing: 8/10

First episode might be shenani­gans, but it was nev­er­the­less hilar­i­ous and cute at the same time. Watch­ing Yuji and Shana switch bod­ies was far more amus­ing than I ever imag­ined, espe­cially when Yuji did “Uru­sai! Uru­sai! Uru­sai!”. I’m impressed that the VAs man­aged to get into each oth­ers’ char­ac­ters so well. I guess Kugimiya Rie and Hino Satoshi have worked together on enough pair­ings to get mar­ried (now wouldn’t that be news!).

Yumeiro Pâtis­sière

Episodes Watched: 6
Rat­ing: 7.3/10

Watch­ing this has been all about enjoy­ing the fluffy and delight­ful char­ac­ters, not to men­tion the mouth­wa­ter­ing sweets they pro­duce. The sweets spir­its are par­tic­u­larly cute and ultra-huggable. But other than that I don’t feel like over-analyzing it, as then I might real­ize how flat the char­ac­ters really are. After all, it’s ultra-shoujo, and prob­a­bly designed to tar­get girls ten years younger than myself.
Honya and I also decided we need to gather desserts for wash­ing this show, rather than just sit there and drool at the screen.

Nogizaka Haruka no Him­itsu ~ Purezza

Episodes Watched: 3
Rat­ing: 7/10

It’s hard to betray my expec­ta­tions when I don’t have any. I watch this series purely because Haruka makes such a lov­able girl­friend. Although, as Yuuto under­goes but­ler train­ing (all right!), I real­ize once again why I root for both sides of this pair­ing — Yuuto is the same hard work­ing type as Urashima-Keitaro. So I find myself cheer­ing for him despite his mediocrity.

Seiken no Blacksmith

Episodes Watched: 7
Rat­ing: 6.7/10

Black­smith is rapidly slip­ping on my list. It’s still amus­ing to watch, but that’s mostly due to Cecily’s per­son­al­ity and the cute­blob pre­sen­ta­tion style. Sadly, Cecily is rapidly slip­ping away from my affin­ity with per­son­i­fi­ca­tion char­ac­ters, as the apples scene (ep7) shows that not only is she an idiot, she also has a vio­lent tsun­dere back­lash approach­ing that of Louise (Zero no Tsukaima). Thank­fully, her deter­mi­na­tion to pro­tect Aria and her com­pas­sion for Aria’s human side keeps me cheer­ing for her grad­ual progress. On that note, Cecily’s swords­man­ship is get­ting bet­ter, but it’s still extremely mediocre and heav­ily reliant on Aria’s power.
I’ll just list the cons:

• Loli princess Char­lotte is an annoy­ing spoiled-rotten ojou-sama brat, and her three min­ions make it worse. Episode 7 made them slight more tol­er­a­ble, but episode 6 almost made me drop the series.
• Hor­ri­ble tone pac­ing as the Black­smith flipflops between seri­ous actiony episodes that advances the story and slice-of-life filler episodes where noth­ing really happens.
• The art is start­ing to slip.

11eyes

Episodes Watched: 6
Rat­ing: 6.5/10

After six episodes, I still fail to see Japan’s hype towards this Visual Novel. Yes, Kakeru finally unleashes the Ulti­mate Eye we all expected and is doing some­thing rather than just mak­ing empty claims of pro­tect­ing Yuka. But the char­ac­ters still feel remark­ably flat and stereot­py­i­cal: Takahisa is all about strength, Yukiko is her dojikko opposed-personality berserker, Kukuri is so onee-chan, and poor Yuka is still a panty-shotting fanser­vice object. The only char­ac­ter who gained any real devel­op­ment is Mis­uzu and her back­story. On the other hand, the fight scenes are badly chore­o­graphed and the antag­o­nists are banal with overused evil-boss lines. Every­thing is so cliched that it feels like a game from the early 1990s. Maybe this is just another case of Japan hav­ing bad tastes.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Fall 2009 End­ing: A Sea­son of Many Disappointments
• Fall 2009 Anime Insights
• Mar­cana Tarot Project

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 22:31 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.