Hey look it’s chartfag’s poster for the 437th time!

As usual, every episodic blog­ger in the world already rushed out to take their stab at rat­ing each and every show. I’m not going to waste my time over that, but I do have some thoughts of my own on some of the series. My over­all thoughts on the sea­son are: looks awe­some, but in need of yuri (espe­cially since Rail­gun is fin­ish­ing). Also, there are sure a lot of excla­ma­tion marks.

Here’s the short ver­sion. Entries within each sub­cat­e­gory is ordered from most antic­i­pated to least. I think I have like… the strangest list.

Def­i­nites: Angel Beats!, Het­alia Axis Pow­ers, K-ON!, Da Capo Ext.
Prob­a­bles: Work­ing!, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama!, Senko no Night Raid
Tak­ing Peeks: Arakawa Under the Bridge, Ura­giri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru,  Haku­ouki, Mayoi Neko Over­run, B Gata H Kei
OVAs: Nodame Cantabile OAD, Gun­dam Uni­corn, Black Rock Shooter

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Def­i­nite Follows

Angel Beats! [Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Na-Ga (Key char-design) + Maeda Jun (Key sto­ry­board­ing) + P.A.Works (True Tears) + Ani­plex (Honey & Clover) = Awe­some
Syn­op­sis: In a world after death, angels fight for their fate and their future. Yuri, the leader of the Shinda Sekai Sensen, rebels against the god who des­tined her to have an unrea­son­able life. On the oth­er­hand, Ten­shi, the chair­per­son of the stu­dent coun­cil for the world after death, bat­tles against the SSS mem­bers. SSS mem­bers uti­lize armed weaponry to bat­tle it out against the angels har­ness­ing super­nat­ural pow­ers.
Thoughts: Com­bine KEY’s top-tier drama with the philo­soph­i­cal sur­re­al­ism of dis­cussing life after death, then add in some gang­wars action that’ll come out like some moei­fied ver­sion of Bac­cano!: this is def­i­nitely my most antic­i­pated show of the sea­son. Besides, since Kyoani won’t make my Lit­tle Busters! anime, this’ll be the next best thing, as both are KEY works with the same art style and many sim­i­lar con­cepts. Lastly, that trailer is godly, and I want the BGMs (which has the Shinji Orito/Maeda Jun team writ­ten all over it) already.

Het­alia Axis Pow­ers Third Sea­son
Pro­duc­tion: Stu­dio DEEN
Syn­op­sis: The con­tin­u­a­tion of the long-running series of shorts about world coun­tries as per­son­i­fied char­ac­ters, liv­ing through strange moments in world his­tory.
Thoughts: This par­ody of inter­na­tional cul­ture, pol­i­tics, and his­tory is absolutely golden com­edy. What sur­prises me even more is the fact that it man­aged to stay funny for so long, unlike so many other pure parody/comedy series we’ve even. I look for­ward to more of my favorite char­ac­ters: Belarus x Rus­sia, Eng­land, Ger­many, Switzer­land x Licht­en­stein, and hope­fully more Holy Roman Empire x Ita-chan.

K-ON! 2
Pro­duc­tion: Kyoto Ani­ma­tion speaks for itself.
Syn­op­sis: The con­tin­u­a­tion of the high school com­edy about four (five) girls who revive the school’s aban­doned light music club.
Thoughts: Not much to it — I enjoy another dosage of Fuwa Fuwa Time.

Da Capo Ext.
Pro­duc­tion: Feel, directed by Hideki Okamoto, same as the first two sea­sons.
Syn­op­sis: The con­tin­u­a­tion of the Da Capo series, as Yoshiyuki, the ‘grand­son’ of Sakura, is caught in the cen­ter of the changes brought to Hat­sune­jima island by the mag­i­cal sakura tree.
Thoughts: I watched all the DCs. DC2 first sea­son was dis­as­trous, but DC2SS had one of the best drama I’ve ever seen, with three cli­matic episodes back-to-back which com­pletely wrecked me. But DC2SS was mostly drama and not much romance, so I’m quite inter­ested in where this goes. Pick­ing up from DC2SS, I expect some res­o­lu­tion to the love tri­an­gle that formed between Yoshiyuki and the Asakura sisters.

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Prob­a­ble Keepers

Work­ing! [Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: A-1 Pic­tures, directed by Yoshi­masa Hiraike
Syn­op­sis: At a fam­ily restau­rant named “Wag­naria” in Hokkaido, Sota works part-time there among the restaurant’s high-spirited and strange staff.
Thoughts: It’s impos­si­ble to pre­dict how well a 4koma adap­ta­tion will go, espe­cially when the direc­tor has no expe­ri­ence in it. But appar­ently we have fam­ily restau­rant shenani­gans with a dys­func­tional staff, a strange set of house rules, and a wait­ress with a vio­lent case of Andropho­bia (fear of men)? I expect Kimi­nozo’s Ayu­mayu style lulz.

Kai­chou wa Maid-sama! [Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: J.C.Staff
Syn­op­sis: A roman­tic com­edy cen­tered on the stu­dent coun­cil head Mis­aki Ayuzawa, who despises the slovenly male dom­i­nated pop­u­la­tion of her pre­vi­ously all-boys school. How­ever, Misaki’s most hand­some school­mate dis­cov­ers her secret, that she works after school at a maid cafe.
Thoughts: I’ve already filed my com­plaint that Kai­chou is a case of ‘smut with­out the smut’ given how slow it approached char­ac­ter and rela­tion­ship devel­op­ment. Thus, this is prob­a­bly going to come out like Spe­cial A ver­sion 2, except Usui x Ayuzawa is so much cuter together. My biggest prob­lem with the anime right now is the choice of art style J.C. Staff picked. The manga uses intense but cool col­ors, with high sat­u­ra­tion but low light­ness to empha­size the color con­trast between its sharp lin­eart. The anime how­ever both rounded the lin­eart for more Moe appear­ance and switched to a much brighter color pal­lette, which gives it an almost gar­ish look.

Senko no Night Raid [Trailer]
Stu­dio: A-1 Pic­tures
Syn­op­sis: In 1931, the Impe­r­ial Japan­ese Army is dis­patched to main­land China, due to the recent Japan­ese wars. In shang­hai, a cos­mopoli­tan city of intrigue, there exists a spe­cial mil­i­tary spy orga­ni­za­tion, “Saku­rai Kikan”, that has been buried in his­tory.
Thoughts: The last show like this was Zipang, which did prop­erly reflect the Impe­ri­al­is­tic mis­takes Japan made dur­ing the war but greatly down­played the civil oppres­sion within occu­pied ter­ri­tory: very sym­bolic of how Japan admits their war of aggres­sion but dis­pute the war crimes car­ried out by their mil­i­tary. The nature of this show means it’s going to trig­ger some historical/political land­mines. I’m likely to rage at this show, but I have to watch it first before I rage, oth­er­wise I’d just be a hyp­ocrite. It’s sort of like a cul­tural research project: how does the Japan­ese soci­ety view WWII today?

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Check­ing Out

Arakawa under the Bridge
Pro­duc­tion: SHAFT
Syn­op­sis: Kou “Riku” Ichi­nomiya, a young upper-class man, meets a beau­ti­ful home­less girl named Nino on the banks of the Arakawa River, where many of Tokyo’s most unusual res­i­dents live, after she saves him from drown­ing. For sav­ing his life, Kou ful­fills Nino’s desire to have a boyfriend. Thus, Kou becomes her boyfriend, but has to live with her under the bridge…
Thoughts: That is one strange premise and has the poten­tial for both lulz and a Bakemonogatari-style pair­ing, but SHAFT’s pro­mo­tion pic­ture looks like they’re on shrooms again so I’m not certain.

Ura­giri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru
Pro­duc­tion: J.C.Staff, wait what they make series like this now?
Syn­op­sis: Saku­rai Yuki was found in the bushes as a baby and adopted by his cur­rent fam­ily. He strives for inde­pen­dence because of this, and the last thing he wants is to be a bur­den to any­body. Unable to con­trol his spe­cial abil­ity to feel the emo­tions of those he touches, he often made many mis­takes in the past. With death threats and his abil­i­ties grow­ing uncon­trol­lably, what will hap­pen when a man claim­ing to be his older brother appears?
Thoughts: For what­ever odd rea­son, this series give me X-TV-vibes, even if there isn’t any fight-for-the-world premise. I don’t know if I can like the BL here, but this def­i­nitely has the poten­tial for some great drama, so I’ll look into it.

Haku­ouki: Shin­sen­gumi Kitan [OP from the orig­i­nal Game]
Pro­duc­tion: Stu­dio DEEN
Syn­op­sis: Chizuru Yukimura is the daugh­ter of a Dutch-trained doc­ter who van­ished on a trip to Kyoto. Dur­ing her search for her father, she sees a Shin­sen­gumi mem­ber trans­form into an ogre. After it’s revealed that this change was caused by her father — she joins the Shin­sen­gumi in search of her father and the cure.
Thoughts: I can’t explain why I’m slightly intrigued by this, espe­cially since I hear it has a ‘so use­less I want to choke her to death’ heroine…

Mayoi Neko Over­run [Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: AIC
Syn­op­sis: Takumi Tsuzuki is a boy who lives with his older non-blood-related sis­ter Otome at a decrepit con­fec­tionary store called Stray Cats. One day, Otome picks up a mys­te­ri­ous beau­ti­ful girl off the streets.
Thoughts: I wasn’t inter­ested at all, then I saw the trailer and wowed at the art­work. Assum­ing they don’t meow as much as the trailer does, I might just end up enjoy­ing the show for its atmosphere.

B Gata H Kei
Pro­duc­tion: HAL Film Maker
Syn­op­sis: Yamada is a high school stu­dent and a vir­gin who aspires to have 100 casual sex part­ner. Despite this, she soon finds her­self tar­get­ing and pur­su­ing only one boy.
Thoughts: This sounds like another sea­son of To-Love-ru rub­bish and a fan­tasy for guys; I mean a girl who is very casual about sex and then fall in love with one gener­i­cal male romance-comedy lead? That being said, the premise is lol­wat ridicu­lous enough to grab my curios­ity for one episode, although I might regret it afterwards.

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OVAs

Nodame Cantabile OAD: I’m watch­ing every­thing from this.
Black Rock Shooter: Glo­ri­fied music video!

Gun­dam Uni­corn: It already aired and the next episode won’t come out until Autumn!!! That being said, this was mostly eye candy: great mechs and fight chore­og­ra­phy packed along­side almost every Sun­rise cliche imaginable.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Spring 2010 Quick Impres­sions and Sec­ond Episodes
• Mar­cana Tarot Project
• The Tsun­dere Is Not That Sim­ple: Behind The Prickly Persona

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