RETS PARTY!!! [もちこ]

But with noth­ing from Kyoani, Sun­rise, Gainax, or SHAFT, it seems like the anime indus­try doesn’t have much faith in this sea­son either. I guess it’s expected from the sum­mer sea­son; another rea­son why it’s the per­fect time to catch up on the back­log. Nev­er­the­less, there are some shows with potential~

Here’s the short ver­sion (and the chart here). Entries within each sub­cat­e­gory is ordered from most antic­i­pated to least.

Def­i­nites: Sen­goku Basara 2
Prob­a­bles: Kuroshit­suji, Ookami-san to Shi­chinin no Naka­mat­achi
Check­ing Out: Mit­su­do­moe, Shuku­fuku no Cam­panella, Leg­end of the Leg­endary Heroes, Amagami SS

.

Def­i­nite Follows

Sen­goku Basara 2 [Site]
Pro­duc­tion: Pro­duc­tion IG
Syn­op­sis: Sequel to the first sea­son; with Oda Nobunaga defeated, Yukimura and Date will be fac­ing off against the sec­ond of the three uni­fiers: Totoy­omi Hideoyoshi.
Thoughts: Put your gunz on!
Really, I might not like shounen but this series is both awe­some and fun, not to men­tion extremely amus­ing for the his­tory fan to see how they chose to rep­re­sent the lit­tle tid­bits about each sen­goku war­lord, like Hideoyoshi the Kozaru (lit­tle mon­key).

.

Prob­a­ble Keepers

Kuroshit­suji 2 [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: A-1 Pic­tures
Syn­op­sis: Sequel to the first sea­son, this time intro­duc­ing but­ler Claude Faus­tus and mas­ter Alois Trancy as the main char­ac­ters.
Thoughts: Enjoyed the first, but as they’re replac­ing both the main char­ac­ters, this’ll be like a com­pletely dif­fer­ent series! While Claude is clearly a Sebas­t­ian clone except with­out the but­ler­iffic name, Alois’ meek demeanor doesn’t feel any­where near as inter­est­ing as Ciel’s res­olute per­son­al­ity. We’ll see~

Ookami-san to Shi­chinin no Naka­mat­achi [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: J.C Staff, directed by Iwasaki Yoshi­aki (Hay­ate no Gotoku!, Zero no Tsukaima)
Syn­op­sis: A love com­edy par­ody­ing fairy tales such as “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood,” “The Ant and the Grasshop­per,” etc. Ookami Ryoko (Ookami-san) is a spunky high school girl. She is a mem­ber of a “fixer” club so called Otogi High School Bank. She fixes the school’s prob­lems with her part­ner Akai Ringo (Akazukin-chan).
Thoughts: I really don’t care if this looks like Toradora!, because if it was any­where near as good then I’ll be a happy camper this sea­son. But unlike what some think, Ookami-san’s light novel is not writ­ten (or even illus­trated) by the same peo­ple; it’s also got a generic use­less lead in an anime full of girls, so I shouldn’t really expect any­thing too great. How­ever, it’s made by J.C. and Direc­tor Iwasaki, so I can at least expect some fun sim­i­lar to Hay­ate and Zero no Tsukaima

.

Check­ing Out

Mit­su­do­moe [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Bridge, directed by Masahiko Ohta (Minami-ke)
Syn­op­sis: Com­edy slice of life anime about 11 year old triplets Marui Mit­suba, Futaba and Hitoha.
Thoughts: With a sim­i­lar premise to the pop­u­lar com­edy Minami-ke and the same pro­duc­tion crew, this has a lot of poten­tial. I’m also a bit intrigued by how the triplets will bal­ance them­selves out to form Mit­su­do­moe, a tra­di­tional Shin­to­ism sym­bol of the three­fold divi­sion between Heaven, Sky, & Earth.

Shuku­fuku no Cam­panella [Site][Trailer]
Stu­dio: AIC, directed by Ushiro Shinji (Omamori Himari)
Syn­op­sis: In the trade city Ert’Aria, Leices­ter May­craft is an item engi­neer belong­ing to the adven­turer guild “Oasis”. One night, he is at a party with his friends to see a meteor stream from the rooftop of a chapel. One meteor grazes them and hits the steeple of the chapel. There he finds a secret room and a sleep­ing girl. The girl wakes up and says “You must be my father!”. The encounter with the mys­te­ri­ous girl brings an unex­pected adven­ture to Leices­ter.
Thoughts: Adapted from a visual novel made by Wind­mill (Hap­pi­ness!). Unfor­tu­nately, Hap­pi­ness! was thor­oughly bland in every way and Shinji’s Omamori Himari was also quite generic. So I can’t say I expect much of Cam­panella lest it gives us another leg­endary trap like Jun Watarase. Though, the ko~cha art style is quite enjoy­able and worth the watch by itself~

The Leg­end of the Leg­endary Heroes [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: ZEXCS, directed by Kawasaki Itsuro
Syn­op­sis: Raina Lute was a lazy stu­dent of Roland Empire Royal Magician’s school. He lost his class­mates in bat­tle when Roland Empire went to war against the neigh­bor­ing coun­try of Esta­boole. Now that the war is over, Lute sets out for a jour­ney to search the relics of a “Leg­endary Hero” at the com­mand of Emperor Zion Astar, and he finds out that a deadly curse is spread­ing across the con­ti­nent.
Thoughts: Fan­tasy adven­ture tale with a really awk­ward name. Sounds like generic fan­tasy, made by the stu­dio of generic/poor pro­duc­tions, and the title isn’t exactly sparkling of cre­ativ­ity either (even if it’s a joke). Beau­ti­ful graph­ics though~ will try out sim­ply cause I love fantasy.

Amagami SS [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: AIC, directed by Hiraike Yoshi­masa
Syn­op­sis: Due to past expe­ri­ence, a second-year high school boy finds him­self uneasy dur­ing Christ­mas; but the Christ­mas of this year is his last chance to ask out a grad­u­at­ing senior named Haruka Mor­ishima, or sev­eral other class­mates. The anime story will be done in omnibus for­mat, with each hero­ine get­ting their own ver­sion of the story and singing their own theme.
Thoughts: Based off a dating-sim, which by nature is incom­pa­ra­ble to the melo­drama of a Nakige visual novel, from a rather no-name com­pany too. I’ve heard good things about Amagami’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and that it’s sim­i­lar to Hat­sukoi Lim­ited, but I was hardily impressed by the other; decent romance maybe, but the drama is lack­ing. Also, Direc­tor Hiraike’s record does not impress.

.

OVAs and Movies

I’m still wait­ing for this glo­ri­fied music video from Black Rock Shooter. Much to look for­ward to in the movie Gin­maku Het­alia Axis Pow­ers: Paint It White [Trailer] but we’re not going to get that for at least half a year. Same with the shoujo manga to movie adap­ta­tion HiyoKoi, although I wish they ani­mated some­thing more inter­est­ing than a cute but generic series about yet another too-shy-shy-girl. There’s also the ONA for Sho-comi’s Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu: Sho-comi’s rep­u­ta­tion for smut not with­stand­ing, I wish they could have done some­thing by a bet­ter man­gaka like Ikeya­mada Go instead.

Bet­ter news yet is the fact that Unlim­ited Blade Works and Nanoha the 1st Movie should be com­ing out soon. The Nanoha movie will finally let me skip the slow-expositionary first sea­son of Nanoha when intro­duc­ing it to oth­ers, and while I still regret the lack of Heaven’s Feel, I’m cer­tainly not going to deny any Fate/stay night animation.

[も ちこ really is a Basara Chibi Specialist]

Every­thing Meh

.Hack//Link: Maybe back­logged for when I decide to watch the other .Hack//s.
Asobi no Ikuyo!: Fox-ears fanser­vice not inter­ested.
Digi­mon: Xros Wars: Other than for nos­ta­gia, I haven’t regained my digi­mon inter­est since mid­dle school.
High School of the Dead: Guns and boobs fanservice-fest not wanted either.
Nurar­i­hyon no Mago: Another shounen with katanas and demons? pass.
Seiki­matsu Occult Gakuin: Indi­vid­ual cases of horror/mystery isn’t really my thing lest they can wrap it together like Hig­urashi, and I’m already los­ing faith in Anime-Chikara.
Seitokai Yakuin­domo: Rid­ing on the seitokai-harem band­wagon are we?
Shiki: While I love Fuyumi Ono’s Twelve King­doms, I’m not exactly a fan of the supernatural/horror, and since her style includes an extremely slow expo­si­tion, it’s rather hard to enjoy her stuff unless you at least like the genre/setting.
Sekirei ~Pure Engage­ment~: More fanser­vice denied.
Strike Witches 2: The loli­cons’ war on pants con­tin­ues… *facepalm*
Tono to Issho: What is this I don’t even; doesn’t look like any­one else evens either.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Ookami-san Impres­sions and Char­ac­ter Folk­lore Origins
• 2011 Win­ter Anime Pre­view Thoughts
• The Tsun­dere Is Not That Sim­ple: Behind The Prickly Persona

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 20:19 and is filed under Anime. 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.