Ahhh… It’s been a long time since I did one of these posts,
all you Russian spambots who read this.
In fact, it feels like it was exactly one year ago. Time really flies, doesn't it?
This season is going to be a big one, especially considering
all the high-profile sequels coming out.
New Black Butler, new Free… the internet will be a veritable
swarm of fujoshi. There’s also a new Sword Art Online, but we don’t talk
about that in these circles.
(also, I’m not talking about everything, because I don’t
have a lot to say about every new show.
I mean, what to say about the new Sailor
Moon? “Um… new Sailor Moon, watch
it if you like the original.” That’s
pretty weak.)
Akame Ga Kill (Crunchyroll)
When I first heard this manga was getting an adaptation, I
was pumped. Having actually read some of the source
material previously, I’d say it was prime material for getting adapted. Its characters and plot are good, and it is
very enjoyable. In fact, out of all of
the manga I've read (which admittedly isn’t very many), I’d say this is
probably the one of the ones I’d like to actually see animated the most. The manga’s pretty famous for its brutal
fight scenes, and I think they would translate to animation quite well. However, that makes me worry. Usually, at least from what I’ve seen in the
past, really violent manga get their violence toned down a bit or censored,
especially when the studio’s going for a more mass-demographic appeal. This may not be the case, but I worry a bit
when I learn the staff is not the
group that handles White Fox’s action shows.
I’m not saying that the violence made
the manga, but it did help it stand out a bit and it contrasted hilariously
with the rather moe character designs. It
contributed to the dark, bleak nature of the series and overall made it more
memorable.
Also, I’m a bit worried about its length. The manga is pretty long, and this anime is
likely going to do that stupid thing most shows do nowadays where it releases stuff
season-by-season and just ends if it doesn't make enough money. This anime may just get a crap ending and
stop before the manga gets better.
Also, it’s entirely
possible that White Fox will neglect this show in the animation department,
which would damage this fight-based series a
lot.
Aldnoah.Zero
(Crunchyroll)
This has the potential to be anime of the year. Cross your fingers and hope Urobuchi doesn’t
self-destruct and pull another Gargantia
on us.
Ao Haru Ride (Crunchyroll)
Wooo another high school romance where everyone blushes a
lot and there’s soft piano music and everyone has wide doelike eyes wooo
...eh. I’ve tried to
sit through Kimi ni Todoke. Couldn’t do it. I’m fine with shoujo romances, but I like
them with a bit of teeth (and for them not to take place in a school).
This just looks like sugar on top of more
sugar (with some totally super-duper innocent high schoolers, because we all
know teenagers are paragons of innocence, right?). If you liked Kimi ni Todoke, you’ll probably like this. If not, then weeeell this doesn’t look like
it’ll be changing any minds. Those
shoujo character designs make me itch.
Come on, Production I.G., you can do so
much better than this. If you must
do a school romance, at least do something where all of the school kids are
perverted assholes to each other like Watashi
ni XX Shinasai (though that has its own mammoth share of problems).
Bakumatsu Rock
(Crunchyroll)
Several problems here:
First, being a person who listens to a lot of rock…
Nope. That PV’s music is
unsatisfactory. If your anime is about a
group of young men who form a revolutionary rock band “for freedom and
justice”, you can’t make it j-pop rock.
It actually has to sound, I dunno, gritty, raw, something other than
produced, poppy crap. REVOLUTIONARY.
Second, the character designs. They are silly and ridiculous. I don’t know what it is with shows aimed at
girls, but they always seem to have way-overdesigned bishies with ridiculous
clothes and hair (think Amnesia for
one). They just look really dumb to
me. I have no clue how people are
supposed to think these are hot, and this is coming from someone who
understands moe and can sit through stuff like The Tatami Galaxy without any complaints about the style.
Third, the source material.
It is an otome game. I’m not
hating on products aimed at girls, but I can’t think of a single anime based
off of a video game that wasn’t total crap.
Even good games get crappy treatment (that Devil Survivor 2 anime had me foaming at the mouth ten minutes
in). And, I dunno, a rhythm game about
j-rock and ogling ‘hot’ (at least, they’re supposed to be) guys doesn’t sound
like prime anime fodder.
And, lastly, it’s by Studio Deen. I’m sure that their a-maaazing animation
needs no description. Just watch the PV
again to check it out.
Barakamon (FUNimation)
Here’s a plotless, meandering show with a city guy in the
country and a cute little girl. It looks
like it might be good for some light down-time for the SOL fans. It really looks like a Silver Spoon sort of deal. It’ll
probably be fine. Muh, I’m just not
feeling this one. What’s next?
DRAMAtical Murder (Crunchyroll)
Another otome game adaptation with dumb character
designs! But this one is better because
it has gay sex! YAY! Or at least I think it does. I dunno.
Maybe they’ll cut that part out.
Now, to be fair, the plot description does have some
potential, even if the PV animation is pretty meh. However, I pity the fools who see the tags
‘action, sci-fi, psychological’ and go into this thinking it’s the next Psycho-Pass and not a BL game
adaptation. Personally, I like to go
into things with an open mind, and I won’t just mock it for being a BL
adaptation… but it still doesn’t look like it will be all that good. It looks like it may have fights in it, but
the studio is brand-new and are
possibly producing another thing this season (Re: Hamatora), so the chances of them looking any good are quite
low.
…wait. The show has a score of 9.5 on MAL, you say? That means… THIS ANIME WILL SURPASS FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST!
Free! Eternal Summer (Crunchyroll)
the abs scare me
Futsuu no Joshikousei
ga [Locodol] Yatte Mita. (Crunchyroll)
This anime already pisses me off. I mean, look at that title. I’m never going to be able to spell it
without looking it up. Hiss.
I don’t get while all of these cute-little-girl shows are
always labeled as ‘seinen’. My mind
always classified ‘seinen’ as the genre with gritty, mature themes. However, these shows rarely have anything
that someone with the maturity of a five year old couldn’t get. They’re always very simple and silly, with no
subtlety or intelligence at all.
Muh. Do the makers really think
that the only people they’ll ever get to watch these darn things are grown men
who ogle children? Seems like a faulty
business model…
But yeah, a 4-koma adaptation, guys! With idols!
Made by Feel, the studio that makes bad moe and harems! Directed by the guy who directed KissxSiss diediediedieaaagh
…um, never mind. So,
spambots, what’s your ruling on that Locodol pun? Cute or stupid?
Gekkan Shoujo
Nozaki-kun (Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun) (Crunchyroll)
Wasn’t there an anime about a male manga writer and his
female assistant last season? Am I just
stuck in some sort of groundhog day-esque loop here? Eh…
Well, this one seems to be less perverted than that, at least. However, it stall falls into the trappings of
being a school-based romance series, though with a more comedic edge than a
tastes-like-diabetes one.
It seems to be fairly well-liked, especially by girls
(strange, given the fact that its genre listing is ‘shounen’). Hopefully, that means that the ecchi will be
toned down.
However, its big downfall is that it’s a 4-koma
adaptation. Since 4-komas have little to
no room for plot and character development, the only thing this anime has that
could go for it is its sense of humor.
Unfortunately, the typical Japanese sense of humor (especially in
4-komas) is pretty dull, at least for me.
Basically, every joke is the same:
Character A: *does something quirky*
Character B: Wow, that is quirky.
…add some heaping piles of ‘explaining the joke’ and ‘puns’
and you basically have the whole package.
Occasionally, you get some shows that are a step above this in terms of
comedic stylings, but I can name at least three anime right off of the top of
my head that do just this.
Characters
have a single trait, and they shout it out at every opportunity they get, and
that somehow constitutes as a joke. People doing quirky things can be fun, but the
writers think that methodically explaining why it is quirky makes it so much funnier. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
But who knows? Maybe
this will be a fresh, funny take on the formula. However, I’m not going to be holding my
breath.
Glasslip
(Crunchyroll)
Their eyes are just a little too big. Just a
teeny bit… It’s a bit uncanny.
But yeah, another P.A. Works anime. If you’re looking for some sappy, sweet
overblown teenage drama, here ya go.
Complete with a tired, dull premise of a group of teenagers meeting and
doing things together during the summer, this promises to have no intrigue or
teeth whatsoever. If you’re looking for
something calming and relaxing to slowly fall asleep to, this looks like the
anime of choice.
…I’m sorry. This just
looks really boring to me. And P.A.
Works has a known track record of making overblown drama, which is okay when
the premises are somewhat grand but falls flat when it’s about a group of
people faffing about. When they actually
put some life into their works, they can turn out to be quite good (I’m not the
only one who watched that amazing show The
Eccentric Family, right?). However, this
show just looks boring.
Hanayamata (Crunchyroll)
Damn it, why are there so
many boring slice-of-life shows this season?
And this one’s by Madhouse! You’d
think they’d at least spice things up with something more action-y, but
nope! Let’s run down that checklist!
Cute girls? Check.
Listed as a seinen show even though the characters are all
young girls? Check.
The characters look way younger than they are? Check.
A “normal” main character? Check.
Five cute little girls in the promo art? Check.
A golden pun opportunity lost by not having Hanaya do the opening song? Check.
An obscure manga with very little information about it
anywhere despite the fact that it’s been out for three years? Check.
(In fact, I actually looked at what little I could find of
the manga. Pretty lame and cliché, a
girl randomly meeting a fairy and the fairy takes an interest in her for
unknown reasons and then the fairy transfers to her school… I don’t even see any potentially-interesting
cultural stuff to keep me invested.)
Jinsei
And the winner of the prestigious “most generic title” award
goes to…
“Life”.
Yeah, that’s
what it means. In fact, this probably
has the most generic premise of the season, even beating out stuff like Glasslip (hell, at least that has some
sort of subplot about glassmaking). Guy
joins club, three hot chicks are also in the club. You even get your pick: they have a fiery sporty
redhead, the glasses-toting flat-chested science nerd, and the blonde with big
breasts (as that in itself is definitely a character trait). Based off of an ecchi light novel, no
less! Is this an anime premise, or is it
a sure winning card of cliché bingo?
Decisions, decisions.
Love Stage!! (Crunchyroll)
Ohmygod!! It’s Love Stage!! An adaptation of a yaoi manga!! I’m going to stop this, it’s
getting annoying!!
So, as a concept, I have nothing wrong
with shows about men in gay relationships as a concept. However, the big problem with shows with the ‘yaoi’
tag is they’re often completely stupid.
Due to the existence of crazy perverted yaoi fangirls (Not all yaoi
fangirls are crazy, but some scare the crap outta me… I mean, just go look up
Kingdom Hearts on fanfiction.net if you want to see what I mean), these shows
are often made to cater to the lowest common denominator. I mean, it’s basically porn (Yaoi is, I mean. Shounen-ai and Yaoi are not the same thing). Have any of you ever watched a hentai
with a deep, involved story and cleverly written dialogue?
…
…
Yeah, I thought not. Maybe I’d watch more of these shounen-ai
stories if they tried to do anything other than appease the fangirls. However, if a show is going to do that this
season, it’s going to be something with an ambitious premise like DRAMAtical
Murder and not this tale of cross-dressing boys in the entertainment industry with
very shounen-ai character designs. I
mean, I can name a few shows that are borderline shounen-ai that were quite fun
to watch because there was other stuff besides the pretty boys. Nabari
no Ou, Pandora Hearts, maybe even
Hetalia have other reasons to watch
them besides the fact that fangirls get to watch two attractive (at least, they’re
supposed to be) guys touch each other.
This? I don’t think so. I could be wrong, but I’m not reading the
source material to find out.
And the nail in the coffin?
It’s animated by J.C. Staff.
Majimoji Rurumo (Crunchyroll)
Now, this does look very
shounen. Perverted teenage boy
summons witch, and the two have to work together. Also J.C. Staff.
However, compared to a lot of the other shows this season, I’m
comparatively looking forward to this one.
It promises to be rather dumb, but at least it seems like it has some
energy. Ecchi is annoying to me, but I
can take it in small doses. Otherwise,
this looks like it has a lot more fun and life put into it than, say, Glasslip. I doubt that it will be anything great (or
even good), but it may just be a bit of fun to pass the time, sort of like what
Nobunagun was for me a few seasons
ago. I've always had a bit of a place in
my heart for shows like this that aren't harems. They very rarely turn out to be great, but
occasionally they turn out to be a nice little treat.
Momo Kyun Sword (Crunchyroll)
I’m getting a whiff of a potentially so-bad-it’s-good
candidate here. Looking at the promos,
it’s about a bunch of women fighting while wearing panties/outfits with… erm…
what do you call them? Boob
windows? It looks like it’ll be awful,
and I’ll probably not watch it, but I’m sure ecchi fans will rejoice to see yet
another bag thrown onto the trash heap.
RAIL WARS! (Crunchyroll)
“So, what have you been watching lately?”
“RAIL WARS!”
“You seem awfully excited about it.”
“Well, yes, with such an exciting premise, the title should be in all caps with an
exclamation point.”
“So it must be as exciting as Love Stage!!, right?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s
about people fighting off those who want to privatize railways.”
“Sounds boring.”
“No, don’t worry. It
has some cute big-breasted chicks in it.”
“Oh, thank god. For a
second, I thought that we would have an anime that was actually about
something.”
“No, don’t worry. It
has a thinly-veiled depiction of the JR Group, which is a real
organization. However, they’re now
strawman terrorists, because businesses are evil.”
“Sounds reasonable.
Do they also glorify the government?”
“Yup. The promotion
material calls the story about a government-owned railway system a ‘dream
railway paradise entertainment story’.”
“Good. I think that
hot anime babes are a perfect way to bring attention to a political cause.”
Rokujouma no
Shinryakusha!? (Crunchyroll)
There was an anime about a guy being haunted by a cute girl
ghost recently. It was called Nanana’s Buried Treasure. It’s being copied already? These bandwagoners are already jumping aboard
before there’s even really a bandwagon to board!
So, with my mythical powers of clairvoyance, I can tell this
is going to suck. Why? Look at the promo art on MAL. Notice something? Seven girls.
The main character isn’t even there!
He’s so unimportant that the creators just pretend he doesn’t
exist. That’s pretty sad. If the creators don’t care about the main
character, I won’t either and will not watch this show. If I have to watch anime babes throw
themselves at something, I’d rather it be a brick wall than a boring teenage boy. At least it’d
be funny.
Sabagebu! (Crunchyroll)
I really don’t know what to say. It’s another rip-off, this time of Stella Women’s Academy, a show that I
don’t think is popular enough to even really warrant a rip-off. More little girls doing survival games? Why can’t someone just change things up a
little? Maybe make that anime about a
bunch of cute boys doing survival
games? I would at least have something a
bit more substantial to say about that.
Seirei Tsukai no
Blade Dance (Crunchyroll)
Unlike Majimoji Rurumo,
this actually is a harem. Otherwise, it has quite the stereotypical
shounen plot (boy sees girl bathing, ends up making contract with her). Strange it’s listed as a seinen, then. My favorite
part of this is the top MAL review of the light novels, which states that the
plot is cliché and then gives ‘story’ an eight out of ten.
Lots of ecchi, obsession with ‘purity’, girls with creepy
eyes that are way too big, lazy PV, same studio as School Days and High School
DxD (same director as High School DxD,
too)… I think this is another skip for me.
Shirogane no Ishi:
Argevollen (Crunchyroll)
While I do appreciate anime-original stuff, this is 1.)
produced by kings of mediocrity Xebec and 2.) a mecha show, which usually
pretty generic. Also, another mecha
anime coming out this season has much more clout behind it and will likely
completely overshadow this. The director
made Kanokon, paragon of quality that
it is, and Ladies versus Butlers!. The plot description is not blowing my mind,
and, honestly, I think it would have to if I was going to watch this. However, it doesn't, and I’m probably also
relegating this to the ‘skip’ pile.
Shounen Hollywood
-Holly Stage for 49- (FUNimation)
More like “BiShounen
Hollywood”, right? It’s apparently a
sequel to something that never got an anime adaptation. That’s okay, I wasn’t really planning on
watching it, anyway.
Tokyo ESP (FUNimation)
On the topic of things I actually want to see, look at this baby.
The insanity appears to be strong with this one. I've heard a lot of praise for the source
material, and it looks like a lot of fun, to boot. Studio and director aren't impressive, but
this looks like so much fun I’m eager to check it out.
Tokyo Ghoul (FUNimation)
Finally, an anime with some good old fashioned violence and
horror. Shows like this seem to be a
rarity, with darker content getting cleaned up or Pupa-ified. It also has a cool PV. It
actually makes me want to watch the show and shows some actual animation
instead of a bunch of stills with narration, which is a nice touch considering it's not coming from one of the powerhouse studios (take notes, some of you comedy anime). Looks like there’s lots of fun to be had
here. Might be the underdog hit of the season. Well, it and Tokyo ESP.
Zankyou no Terror
(FUNimation)
All aboard the hype train, toot-toot! A psychological thriller about
terrorism? Sign me on! I’d love to see some antiheros and some good,
wholesome explosions instead of cute-girl-SOL #3958. Btooom!
taught me all about how much explosions can add to the fun level of a
show. And this one’s directed by
Shinichiro Watanabe, a man so famous that he requires no introduction. Sooo happy…
AAAND I AVOIDED THE BARAKAMON PUN FOR THE WHOLE POST! I think that gets me a gold star, eh, Russian
spambots?
No comments:
Post a Comment