It’s the first sea­son after my post-graduation life setup. With­out an engi­neer­ing ‘double’-major I find a lot of time at my hands and tries to allo­cate a good chunk of it towards anime. Well that was a poor choice, as Japan sees fit to send me the most dis­ap­point­ing anime sea­son of my life.

Onee-sama is not amused

Well, let me try going through a list of all the things I watched wasted time on… I’ll save Rail­gun and Todoke for last as they’re the only two that really man­aged to save me from bang­ing my head against the wall repeatedly.

[ Maybe I should have watched Seitokai no Ichizon, but after both Lucky Star and Hay­ate no Gotoku I thought the anime par­o­dies were get­ting a lit­tle excessive ]

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The Bad Horrible

First, a moment of rage. Shin Koi­hime Musou is denied the title of anime. I checked out 1 episode since I’m an obses­sive Romance of the Three King­doms fan. Look­ing back, I want to gouge my eyes out. Not only did this title tar­nish the ROTK name, its char­ac­ters are out­right retarded. May Zhuge Liang for­give my sins from his grave. The fact there’s an OVA com­ing out makes me won­der how retarded this fran­chise can get…

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I swear to god if I hear that line one more time…

11eyes: I picked this up because a friend of mine is a huge fan of the Visual Novel. The char­ac­ter designs were way too stereo­typ­i­cal from the start but it pro­jected the appro­pri­ately creepy atmos­phere so I gave it a chance. Now, I’m won­der­ing if this is just the worst Visual Novel adap­ta­tion ever. The set­ting (Red Night real­ity mar­ble) and antag­o­nists (Black Knights) feel like they climbed out of a stereo­typ­i­cal shounen manga, with your point­less vil­lain­ous taunt­ing and laugh­ing to boot which exceeded the time they spent actu­ally fight­ing. The plot is hor­ri­bly paced as you spend half the series being tossed into fights with­out pur­pose, and about 30% of the best Visual Novel con­tent packed into the last episode.

Of the cast, your have a bland main char­ac­ter who can do noth­ing except shout “I’ll pro­tect Yuka”; a use­less osanana­jimi who begins as a patsu-shotting fanser­vice object and turns into a mind­less yan­dere; a swordswoman who offers up her body with­out inhi­bi­tion like she’s a pros­ti­tute; an annoy­ing dojikko dual-personality berserker whose back­story took about all of five min­utes; an irri­ta­ble per­vert side­kick; and an anti­so­cial and strength-obsessed pyro­ma­niac who’s just as unpleas­ant, etc.

The art­work degrades hor­ri­bly down the series, just in time for the cast to show the power of love & friend­ship, elim­i­nate the boss, pull a Mai-HiME revival, and return to talk about how nice the weather is, the end. I see where the poten­tial for the Vis­nov rep­u­ta­tion lies, but with this anime I’m going to walk away with the OP and pre­tend the rest never happened…

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Loli harem with your girlfriend’s lit­tle sis­ter and her friends *facepalm*

Nogizaka Haruka no Him­itsu ~ Purezza: What I expected is a show about your generic anime male lead spend some qual­ity time with his cute, lov­ing, and admirably per­fect girl­friend. What I got is a show about said male lead build­ing up his harem and then lose his spine as his girl­friend gets conned into an idol con­test while he’s too stu­pid to say any­thing. Heck, there are a few episodes where Nogizaka Haruka her­self only shows up for a few frames. It’s a show about a lovey dovey pair where said pair­ing van­ishes for entire episodes at a time!!!

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This is nei­ther joke nor troll: she said it

Seiken no Black­smith: I thought I would enjoy this because I like fan­tasy series even if they’re a lit­tle generic. Well Black­smith broke all my expec­ta­tions of just how ridicu­lously generic a show can get. The char­ac­ters are either annoy­ing or fit their arch-typical shells so well its shock­ing, be it your ide­al­is­tic justice-loving hero­ine or past-regretting “I couldn’t save her” hero. They intro­duced two fan­tasy ele­ments and left it at that. The first: instant katana smithing, was used about three times the entire series and looks the same each time. The sec­ond, arti­fact demon swords (which may turn into girls), was lim­ited to sin­gle element/tricks and fought it out like poke­mon (wind vs fire, wind vs earth, wind vs elec­tric­ity, yeah).

The com­bat scenes were enter­tain­ing when they lasted, but less than 15% of the show involved fight­ing. Cecily’s tsun­dere moments were amus­ing, but there were few good ones. My only gains from the show are two pic­tures: the one above and a katana slic­ing through a greatsword like but­ter. Even Tears to Tiara at least had an inter­est­ing set­ting back­story and Roman Con­sul Impe­r­ial Gen­eral Gaius.

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Wat?

Kämpfer: I didn’t expect any­thing good. I had a few laughs from the seiyuu jokes. Then I dropped it because since it was about Ranma 1/2 style shenani­gans with the com­edy spread too far apart. The char­ac­ters feel flat and/or stu­pid, their designs seem all shine and no con­tent, and they choose to fight because they have no clue what they’re fight­ing for. I’m done.

I swear, I’m never pick­ing up this much again… fil­ter­ing sys­tems will be put in place.

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The Enjoy­able But Meh

Don’t get me wrong, I liked these shows, but no one is miss­ing any­thing if they skipped it. I came up with this con­clu­sion when try­ing to rec­om­mend some­thing from the sea­son to a friend.

This is the best phi­los­o­phy ever!

Sasameki Koto: It’s enjoy­able. It’s fun. It’s touch­ing in a ways. It fea­tures a large cast of girls who love each other too much and forms a love tri­an­gle steplad­der rela­tion­ship chart (reminds me of Straw­berry Panic again). Bet­ter yet, it takes place in a coed­u­ca­tional high school where the nature of same-sex rela­tion­ships are actu­ally looked upon. But at the same time, Sasameki Koto is also yuri designed for guys and doesn’t try to step out­side the genre expec­ta­tions in any fash­ion. It’s a good series if one needs their yuri fix, but oth­er­wise it’s pass­able and for­get­table. Although I do love that line…

I want Girl Friends animated…

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Bishies + Faeries + Food

Yumeiro Pâtis­sière: Cheer­ful and opti­mistic 14-year old girl try­ing her hard­est, check; cute adorable assis­tants, check; a diverse group of tal­ented male suit­ors who winds up along­side her for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son, check; other girls express­ing jeal­ousy over their Princes, check. This show is Ultra-Shoujo and I can’t put it any other way. It’s cuter and fluffier than ever, with the added points of deli­cious mouth­wa­ter­ing deserts, but any more expec­ta­tions would be badly mis­placed, espe­cially as the ani­ma­tion took a nose­dive dip in the lat­est episodes.

Although, the cook­ing lessons are nice, as I’ve learned more about mak­ing choco­lates than ever.

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The Good Few

Kimi ni Todoke: At first glance, Todoke seems to be another series with a clas­sic Shoujo setup (in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way from Patis­sere, of course). We have a benelovent, hard-working, but socially awk­ward hero­ine, who meets a kind and super-popular guy, gains con­fi­dence, makes friends, and then attracts the evil schemes of envi­ous women — I can think of quite a few manga series like that.

How­ever, Todoke proves yet again that one can take some­thing ordi­nary and make it excep­tional through superb sto­ry­telling. As Sawako turns a new leaf from her old ‘creepy’ and anti-social self, Todoke takes us along to fully expe­ri­ence the jour­ney of her love and friend­ships from the very begin­ning. Ths show’s finest lay in its pre­sen­ta­tion: its abil­ity to project the emo­tions of its char­ac­ters to the audi­ence. We felt the dis­ap­point­ment and sor­row when Yoshida and Yano mis­un­der­stood Sawako’s words, just as the heart­warm­ing con­fes­sion and makeup scene in the bath­room brought tears to the eyes. We felt the joy as the two main char­ac­ter became friends, just as shock (and anger) courses through us now with Kurumi’s lat­est attempt at back­stab­bing. All of these con­cepts are over­done and one can pre­dict the next plot­line point from a mile away, but few series have made the audi­ence as attached and sym­pa­thetic to the char­ac­ters as Pro­duc­tion I.G. man­ages in Todoke. Just know­ing what hap­pens to the char­ac­ters isn’t good enough any­more, we have to see it hap­pen­ing.

Although, I must say that as much as I love Sawako’s inno­cent and altru­is­tic per­son­al­ity, her saintly com­pas­sion is push­ing the lim­its of per­fec­tion. Not only is this get­ting in the way of the real­is­tic atmos­phere con­structed by the series, but it also gets irri­tat­ing at times. I mean, how can any girl not real­ize what Kurumi is up to after that line!?!

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To Aru Kagaku no Rail­gun: Thus far, Biribiri has my favorite of the sea­son. We have a kind and capa­ble hero­ine who might just give Taiga a run for being the most well-rounded Tsun­dere around, a Kuroko (she’s weird enough to be her own type) who is both hilar­i­ous and awe­some, and some other intrigu­ing sup­port char­ac­ters includ­ing a plant and a skirt-flipping addict. Com­bine that with some slice-of-life com­edy, well chore­o­graphed com­bat sequences, yuri rape enter­tain­ment, cre­ative use of super­nat­ural pow­ers, all of which evolv­ing into a well-paced con­spir­acy sto­ry­line with a touch­ing Rai­son d’être. Well, we’ve got a win­ner. There’s been more than enough said on this topic so I’ll leave it at that.

As a reader of the manga, Rail­gun did not dis­ap­point me one bit. In fact I think J.C.Staff’s pro­duc­tion exceeded the manga, and I look for­ward to the series’ sec­ond half.

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I do expect great things from Nodame Cantabile Finale and Angel Beats! come win­ter and spring.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Mid-Fall 2009 Anime Impres­sions: Rising
• Fall 2009 Anime Insights
• A Cer­tain Rail­gun Ending

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