Wayyyy too many series to watch >.< [mosu]

Fall anime is usu­ally the best dur­ing the year, and fall 2010 is just spetac­u­lar; def­i­nitely the best since the leg­endary fall 2008 sea­son. In prepa­ra­tion for the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia anime club pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion, we (Aorii [Major Arcana] and Honya [Lyri­cal Spark]) have decided to join up for a pre­view post~ (if you have an anime club you should totally do this). Charts here and here.

Def­i­nite Follows

Ore no Imouto ga Kon­nani Kawaii Wake ga Nai (My Lit­tle Sis­ter Can’t Be This Cute!) [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: AIC, Ani­plex
Syn­op­sis: Kyosuke Kosaka, an ordi­nary high school boy, has a younger sis­ter who is not only a fash­ion model but also a secret otaku of adult games, which he ran­domly stum­bles across and winds up being the con­fi­dante to her life issues.
Aorii: The adap­ta­tion of a light novel I’ve been fol­low­ing closely. The title is a bit mis­lead­ing, as three-quarters way through the first novel this has been lit­tle focus on the moe (no sis­con at all, yet) and mostly about otaku life issues — from the deal­ing with the social stigma to get­ting along with the fandom’s cliques. Kirino try­ing to find her own place in soci­ety gives many anime fans a lot of sym­pa­thize with, one could say.
Honya: Agreed; I was like Kirino dur­ing mid­dle school and high school so I’m sure I’ll be able to relate. Any­way this has been on my radar ever since the light nov­els started pub­lish­ing so I’m really look­ing for­ward to this.

Baku­man [Site]
Pro­duc­tion: J.C. Staff, based on a manga from the cre­ators of Death Note and directed by Kasai Kenichi (Honey & Clover, Nodame Cantabile)
Syn­op­sis: Tal­ented artist Mori­taka Mashiro and aspir­ing writer Akito Tak­agi, 9th grade stu­dents who com­bine their skills to reach their dream — become suc­cess­ful manga artists and get an anime adap­ta­tion. Mashiro also hopes to marry Azuki Miho, the girl he loves and aspir­ing voice actress, when their dreams come true.
Aorii: An anime adap­ta­tion about try­ing to get an anime adap­ta­tion for a manga about draw­ing manga; awe­some meta ~ must see this now xD. Also, the Director’s spe­cialty in romance com­edy is squash any shounen wor­ries I have (plus awe­some ship­ping!)~
Honya: As an artist I’m most excited about see­ing the behind-the-scenes life of manga-ka. From what I have heard the manga gets detailed about the ins and outs of the indus­try so as long as the anime fol­lows suit I’ll be happy.

Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai (The World God Only Knows) [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Man­globe (Ergo Proxy, Samu­rai Cham­ploo), directed by Takayanagi Shige­hito
Syn­op­sis: Known as the ‘Cap­tur­ing God’, Kat­suragi Keima is a prodigy in play­ing dat­ing sims but despises real girls. One day he is approached by a devil who asks help in catch­ing run­away spir­its who have hid­den in the hearts of women, and can only be removed by mak­ing the host fall in love.
Aorii: Mix visual novel humor, some otaku 3Disms, and lots of fab­u­lous ‘just as planned’ — should make an amus­ing enough show at least. Although, hav­ing a direc­tor with near zero expe­ri­ence is a bit wor­ri­some…
Honya: Even so, he has some great source mate­r­ial to work with. This feels like a must watch for any­one deep into otaku culture.

Shiryaku! Ika Musume (Inva­sion! Squid Girl) [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Diomedea (sola, Boku­rano, Nogizaka Haruka), directed by Mizushima Tsu­tomu (xxxHolic, Gen­shiken OVA, Kobato [script])
Syn­op­sis: A com­edy about Ika Musume (squid girl) who vows to invade the entirety of mankind for pol­lut­ing the seas with trash. But with no knowl­edge of life above the sur­face, her inva­sion was thwarted when she ends up slav­ing away at a nearby beach-house in pay­ment for dam­ag­ing its wall.
Aorii: Laid back slice-of-life com­edy of the sea­son, except this time with an orig­i­nal premise instead of just another four girls ;D Given the director’s his­tory with Dokoro-chan and xxxHolic, bet this series’ humor will be extremely ran­dom as well.
Honya: I remem­ber hear­ing about the orig­i­nal manga and the comedic antics of a squid girl. As such it falls into my “so weird I have to watch” cat­e­gory of shows.

To Aru Majutsu no Index 2nd Sea­son (A Cer­tain Mag­i­cal Index 2) [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: J.C. Staff
Syn­op­sis: A spin­off of Rail­gun… I mean, con­tin­u­a­tion of the first sea­son about Touma, a stu­dent of Acad­emy City which trains abil­ity users (espers) and Index, a liv­ing mag­i­cal library, as they get caught up in var­i­ous inci­dents revolv­ing around divine, super­nat­ural, and the occult.
Aorii: Boss rush, sea­son 2. But I loved Index 1 and Rail­gun, no to men­tion being a Touma x Mikoto ship­per and a fan of the whole esper x magic world, so can’t wait for this ;D
Honya: I’m in the same boat. I just hope the story expands upon the appar­ent con­flict between espers and magi­cians. Of course It’ll be nice to see cameos of my favorite char­ac­ters again.

Yumeiro Patissiere Pro­fes­sional [Site]
Pro­duc­tion: Stu­dio Pier­rot
Syn­op­sis: Con­tin­u­a­tion of the first sea­son about Amano Ichigo as she enrolled in St. Mary acad­emy, a culi­nary school for sweets, as she strives towards her dream of becom­ing a patissiere (dessert chef). The sec­ond sea­son skips for­ward by sev­eral years when Ichigo and her friends are start­ing to become real patissieres
Aorii: Sur­pris­ingly enough, this super-shoujo series had become extremely enjoy­able. The over the top pre­sen­ta­tion has kept it hilar­i­ous and deli­cious at the same time, not men­tion­ing non­stop inspi­ra­tions that con­tribute both to cake-baking and friend­ship. Plus, it’s going to be real inter­est­ing to see how they take a young-target-audience shoujo series and skip to an adult gen­er­a­tion cast; hope Ichigo isn’t still stuck with a 4rd grader men­tal­ity lol.
Honya: This show makes me won­der why we never have any cake around when we watch it. But seri­ously the Iron Chef­ness is quite amus­ing. I won­der though how the style of the story will shift now that the cast will be aged to adults? Men­tors for a new gen­er­a­tion of patissieres perhaps?

Yosuga no Sora [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: feel., direct by Taka­hashi Takeo (Spice & Wolf)
Syn­op­sis: After los­ing their par­ents, the twins Haruka and Sora Kazugano moves in with their grand­fa­ther in the remote vil­lage of Okukozome-cho, where they used to spend their sum­mer vaca­tions. Reunion with old friends and meet­ing new ones may feel like life as usual, but beneath the sur­face is a promise they made long ago, the loca­tion of an impor­tant lost item, and the real rea­son they chose to return.
Aorii: The premise is extremely generic for a visual novel, except for one thing: our main pair­ing are twins. I usu­ally pre­fer for­bid­den sib­ling love kept non-blood-related but, if there’s true love and good melo­drama, which the vis­nov is appar­ently famous for, then I’ll prob­a­bly still love this /o/
Honya: As far as I’m con­cerned as long as both par­ties truly love each other I’m fine with it even if it is frowned upon by the rest of soci­ety. Of course the drama that will inevitably hap­pen due to the afore­men­tioned stigma will also be inter­est­ing given the extreme mea­sures that many char­ac­ters take in these sorts of situations.

Arakawa under the Bridge x Bridge [Site]
Pro­duc­tion: SHAFT
Syn­op­sis: Con­in­u­a­tion of the first sea­son about a young upper-class man obsessed with not being indebted to any­one, who ends up being saved by a home­less girl named Nino and finds him­self liv­ing along­side the extremely unusual res­i­dents along the Arakawa river.
Aorii: As a com­edy fea­tur­ing both orig­i­nal humor and deep soci­o­log­i­cal themes, the first sea­son of Arakawa was bril­liant, even if it did start to drift off a bit towards the end of sea­son (but still funny). Hop­ing they’ll pick the pace back up with the new char­ac­ters (>^_^)>
Honya: Unfor­tu­nately I never did watch the first series so I’ll have to pass on this at least until I do decide to watch the original.

Motto To Love Ru [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Xebec
Syn­op­sis: Con­tin­u­a­tion of the first series about Yuuki Rito and Lala, heir to the throne of the planet Dev­iluke who decides to marry Rito so she could remain on earth; but in order to do so, Rito must defeat Lala’s seven evil ex-boyfriends…

Honya —————— Aorii

Haku­ouki Shin­sen­gumi Kitan 2 [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Stu­dio DEEN
Syn­op­sis: Con­tin­u­a­tion of the first sea­son about Chizuru Yukimura, who went in search of her van­ished father, a Dutch-trained doc­tor, and ends up being drawn into Shin­sen­gumi and the tur­moil of the age after watch­ing one of them trans­form into an ogre.
Aorii: Other than the use­less main hero­ine, I rather liked the first sea­son. Half of it is def­i­nitely the his­tor­i­cal par­al­lel involved in the series, and the other half is… okay fine, it looks great, and been quite pleas­ing to watch the devel­op­ment of every­one except Chizuru.
Honya: I didn’t watch the orig­i­nal so I’ll have to pass again.

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Prob­a­ble Keepers

Kurage­hime [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Brains Base, directed by Takahiro Omori (DRRR!, Jigoku Shoujo, Nat­sume Yuu­jin­chou)
Syn­op­sis: Tsukimi Kurashita is a jel­ly­fish otaku, who moves into an apart­ment com­plex that is full of fujoshi with a no-men-allowed rule. But one day, Tsukimi invites a styl­ishly fash­ion­able woman to stay at her room, only to dis­cover the guest is not who “she” seems to be.
Aorii: Trap min­gling amongst fujoshi xD you gotta give that one for orig­i­nal­ity. Great promises here.
Honya: True that. *imag­ines crazy shenanigans*

For­tune Arte­r­ial [Site][Game Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: ZEXCS, Feel, directed by Nawa Munenori.
Syn­op­sis: A visual novel adap­ta­tion involv­ing Kouhei Hasekura, who trans­fered to his new school on a remote island, and dis­cov­ers that pop­u­lar Sendo Erika of the stu­dent coun­cil is actu­ally a vam­pire.
Aorii: Trans­fer stu­dent goes to town he used to lived in to meet child­hood friends and find changes — pretty generic premise. For­tune Arte­r­ial is very laid back and cute though, espe­cially in the angst-filled genre of vam­pire fic­tion. But as an August­soft eroge adap­ta­tion, hope­fully this won’t turn into another Cab­bage Love.
Honya: Not quite sure I want to watch this or not. I’ll prob­a­bly take a wait-and-see approach until I fig­ure out if I want to add yet another anime to my list.

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Check­ing Out

Sore­demo Machi wa Mawat­teiru [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: SHAFT, directed by Shin­bou Akiyuki (Arakawa, Bake­mono­gatari, Hidamari, Zetsubou Sen­sei).
Syn­op­sis: Sea­side is an odd but tra­di­tional ‘maid tea shop’ located in an oth­er­wise ordi­nary shop­ping dis­trict in a mun­dane neigh­bor­hood in Tokyo. There Hotori Arashiyama works and day­dreams about being a high school girl detec­tive.
Aorii: Detec­tives? meh, but trailer looks like pure shenani­gans humor; also seri­ously, this director’s resume is just too ridicu­lous! I’ll def­i­nitely check it out in case it’s awe­some like Arakawa was.
Honya: That would be great if that is the case. I usu­ally find Shaft to be hit-or-miss but I hope this one’s a hit.

Otome Youkai Zakuro [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: J.C.Staff
Syn­op­sis: In the Meiji Era of a slightly alter­nate Japan, the fox-eared girls liv­ing in the youkai part of town are about to be put to work together with a del­e­ga­tion of young human sol­diers to pro­mote inter­ra­cial under­stand­ing. So what will hap­pen when Zakuro’s strong per­son­al­ity col­lides with human sen­si­bil­i­ties?
Aorii: Pretty~ and feels some­what mahou shoujo in a ways. Although, those are the worst uni­form designs I have ever seen =_=
Honya: I believe this is the Touhou fan in me speak­ing but I love the idea of humans and youkai work­ing together and form­ing relationships.

Tan­tei Opera Milky Holmes [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: J.C.Staff
Syn­op­sis: In an imag­i­nary world where pri­vate detec­tives and phan­tom thieves over­whelm the cities, four girls aim to become great detec­tives.
Aorii: Mahou shoujo milky sher­lock holmes… huh? Wut?
Honya: This caught my inter­est because it had a funny name. Look­ing at the trailer though it does feel like a mahou shoujo which means there’s a decent chance I’ll enjoy it after the ini­tial lol­wut fac­tor wears off.

MM! [Site][Trailer]
Pro­duc­tion: Xebec
Syn­op­sis: Tarou Sado is a nor­mal high school boy who dis­cov­ered a side of him­self that is into masochism. He tries to fix this through his school’s “2nd Vol­un­teer Club” while hid­ing it from his high school crush.
Aorii: Wutis­dis; I am totally not inter­ested in this not one bit.
Honya: I hope this show isn’t painful to watch or if it is it bet­ter be the plea­sur­able kind of pain.

Agri­cul­ture Musume [Site]
Pro­duc­tion: Toei
Syn­op­sis: Hikari and Hikaru Koshino, two sis­ters who take care of the rice paddy they inher­ited from their par­ents. Together, they grow rice while hang­ing out with their friends.
Aorii: First the anime about mak­ing bread, then bak­ing cakes, and now… an anime about grow­ing rice? In the name of my Asian-ness I must at least check out this series!!!
Honya: Each grain of rice con­tains 8 gods. Know your rice!

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OVAs

Koe de Oshig­oto [Site][Trailer]: I dis­cov­ered the manga way back and thought it was so cute and hilar­i­ous. Finally I can hear voice-acting in my voice-acting series. Also tells you the stuff a seiyuu must do to earn their pay­check >.<
Kuttsuk­i­boshi [Trailer]: Yuri~! No really yuri~! We’ve been seri­ously lack­ing yuri anime.
Mayo elle Otokonoko [Site]: I love cute boys dress­ing up as cute girls.
Mirai Nikki [Trailer]: I’ve been lack­ing my dose of yan­dere lately.
To Heart 2 adnext [Site][Trailer]: I don’t really have to say any­thing other than that I’m a To Heart fan.
To Aru Kagaku no Rail­gun OVA: Kuroko. That’s all.
Tamayura [Site]: Slice of life series with the same Direc­tor as ARIA!? I’m sold.
Gan­bare! Kieruna!! Shik­iso Usuko-san [Site]: It looks cute so I’ll be keep­ing this on my radar.
Time Pal­adin Sakura [Site][Trailer]: Da Capo pre­quel about mahou shoujo Sakura, I’ll take that \o/

[kuwashima haji­mouto]

and Every­thing Else

Star Dri­ver [Site][Trailer]: Not a super-robot fan, may check it out if club mechaphiles make this out to be near TTGL-level.
Iron­man [Site][Trailer]: Live-action movies were enough for my inter­ests.
Psy­chic Detec­tive Yakumo [Site]: Might be inter­ested if there wasn’t already a bil­lion other shows need track­ing.
Let­ter Bee: Reverse [Site]: Too occu­pied to bother watch­ing sea­son 1.
Togainu no Chi [Site][Trailer]: Kinda cool but, wasn’t all that inter­est­ing.
Panty & Stock­ing w/ Garter Belt [Site][Trailer]: Pow­er­puff Girls x Per­verts x Gur­ren Lagann pro­duc­tion team = Wut.
Hyakka Ryouran: Samu­rai Girls [Site][Trailer]: Queen’s Blade =_=
Sora no Oto­shi­mono: Forte [Site]: (=_= )
Super Robot Wars OG: The Inspec­tor [Site][Trailer]: Mecha fan­boy series.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Fab­u­lous Fall 2010 Quick Impres­sions and Sec­ond Episodes
• Kurage­hime ver­sus the Revolution
• Kurage­hime and the Heart of Char­ac­ter Portrayal

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 17:46 and is filed under Anime, Local. 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.