Anime Review: Gundam Build Fighters TRY

EDITORS NOTE: Hi guys, sorry everything is so late already this week and as a heads up, tomorrow's post is probably not going up to Thursday since I'll be out late babysitting and really don't like typing out huge posts on phones if I can help it (the autocorrect alone makes it a huge headache).

Much like Log Horizon, I did a whirlwind marathon of Gundam Build Fighters last year as the first season was finishing up and absolutely fell in love with it and was completely on board for the second season. It is seven years later and features a mostly new cast but I'm going to say that yes, you should see the first season first. It'll help you in the long run and come on, if you like this you'll want more of it and that's 25 episodes of more right there.

Gundam Build Fighters Try

Manga Review: Magi (volumes one through five)

In case anyone has looked at their title and then double-checked their calendar, yes this week should technically be a Webcomic Wednesday. However, in March all of my Wednesdays will be Webcomic Wednesday and that means if I don't review Magi now I won't get to it until April, nearly four months after I read it. So fret not, webcomics are coming next week and I would now like to talk about a series which was hot stuff in Japan for a while (and may still be) but never quite caught on in the US the way some other shonen series have.

Magi by Shinobu Ohtaka

Anime Review: Monthly Girl's Nozaki-kun

These days I get most of my manga recommendations from tumblr, although "recommendation" makes it sound as if people are specifically telling me to read them. This time around I was following a blog for another series altogether, saw them posting a group of strips from this series and fell head over heels for it, I had to make sure I didn't just reblog every single one I came across! I immediately started hoping for an anime since I knew it would be a tough sell to convince my friends to read scanlated 4koma and thankfully one was announced quite soon after I first discovered it and I then proceeded to hope that I wasn't hyping up the series too much. Fortunately it seems like my friends have all fallen harder for this show than I did and I'm still seeing new people every week, people who don't even watch a lot of anime, picking up the show and falling in love.

Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun (Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun)

Manga Review: Eat For Your Life (volume one)

Apologies that this wasn't up yesterday, I had a busy week and simply hadn't had time to read my latest e-manga review manga and didn't want to read it and immediately write the review, I wanted some time to digest it first and then talk about it. So now that I've had a chance to do that let's dig into this review and see what such an odd title is about anyway.

Eat For Your Life by Shigure Tsuchiyama (volume one)

Summary: Ohara has a problem, he's such a gourmet that he spends all his money on trips around Japan to sample food that now he's got barely any budget for food to get through the rest of the month. He's then inspired to try a food eating contest but soon realizes that it's a lot harder than you'd think to eat X amount of food within Y amount of time but it seems he's caught the attention of a professional competitive eater whose more than willing to give him some tips to help him save his budget and win the fights.

The Good: This was a surprisingly fast read, I was rather surprised when I reached the end of the first volume since I felt like no time had passed at all* and that's a good sign. The pacing was rather quick, both for the actual contests, thank goodness considering how each eating contest Ohara finds himself in is under an hour long, and for the story in general, it wastes no time introducing Ohara to the world of competitive eating and finding him a mentor for it. I also expected Ohara to be a bit of a snob about the food he eats, after all he is a gormet, but instead I was pleasantly surprised that he's a true food lover and enjoys everything he eats, in one contest he begins to tire of the food so he brings out condiments and proclaims that now the food is interesting and delicious again which I think help sets the tone of the story as well. It's not silly or goofy but it is rather light-hearted and just has fun with the whole idea, which paired with the quick pace makes it much more of a fun read than I expected.

The Bad: I was a bit surprised at how shonen this story felt even though it's labeled as seinen as well as shonen (probably because of the characters, you can't exactly have a story where the point of it is kids trying to beat each other in eating contests without people complaining that you're promoting obesity). I can just feel the story setting itself up for a tournament arc, what with the character introduced later on who wants to make competitive eating into a sport in Japan like sumo, which makes me wonder how long the story can stay interesting. For one volume it was fine, I liked seeing the food and it was fun seeing old shonen tropes (the different styles of fighting, I mean eating, the slightly mysterious mentor who picks the protagonist out of a crowd to succeed and proclaims before contests have started how they'll end with unnerving accuracy, etc) re-used but that's a novelty which I'm sure will soon wear off.

The Art: I was a bit surprised at how detailed the art was, it's no Bride's Story but it has a lot of details in it's food and I actually did get a bit hungry from looking at all of it. The characters were also pretty distinct and the backgrounds didn't look terrible either, no problems here!


I'm giving this one a 3 out of 5 for being a fun, fast read but not one I think I'll follow up on in the future. Much like last time, while this is labeled volume one DMG doesn't appear to have any of the other volumes (I guess that all depends on how well it does, hence why so many people are reviewing the same dozen titles from them right now) but for those interested this volume is available digitally, no print copies however.



*although, last time Obento had been a bit of a slow read so that could have played a role in my surprise

Spring 2013 Anime Round-up

And the spring shows have started folks! Trying to get this out a bit earlier than usual so for all of the shows here I’ve seen just one episode and I’m cramming everything into one post, should be fun to check back in three or six months to see what I actually kept/dropped. And as a quick note, I’m still following three shows from the winter season, Chihayafuru 2, Doki Doki Precure, and Space Bros. So far Chihayafuru feels a little weaker pacing wise than the first season (they only spent a few episodes at Omi Jingui and had completely wrapped that arc up by episode 15 but here we’re at 13 and still in the team matches, I’m wondering if the rest of the season will be spent at Omi Jingui and I really hope not) but it still has my attention and it’s managed to flesh out the two new club members better than I had hoped and the rest of the gang continues to grow (even if Arata still isn’t showing up on screen much, I finally found a word to describe him though guys, he’s a tritagonist!). Doki Doki Precure isn’t as good as Heartcatch so far but it’s self aware enough to make me laugh along with it and have fun casually watching it each week, although I’m having real trouble with the villains each time (instead of focusing on the monster/victim of the week like Heartcatch did we see a quick shot of them thinking a selfish thought, being mature and saying “naaaaah” and then they turn into a monster anyway, this idea is as awkward as it sounds in writing). However, unlike most of the shows I watch I don't feel super motivated to find fansubs for it each week and if this season gets busy I'll probably drop it and check back on it later to see if it's worth picking back up. And finally it looks like Space Bros is in for the long haul, it sounds like the anime is somewhere around volume 10 out of 20 volumes so far and I want to say I heard that the manga-ka is predicting it to go on for around 30 volumes. I’m really curious how much longer this one is going to be sticking around, it would be hugely impressive if it went all the way to the end, at the current pace they have about a year’s worth of material to animate still and in the past the manga-ka churned out an impressive four volumes a year but last year only produced two. I guess in theory the manga could stay far enough ahead (and it seems like the anime pads a bit with recap bits to help with this) and the show just got placed in a new timeslot which is right before Detective Conan on Saturday afternoon/evenings which is apparently a really really good sign. Regardless I still enjoy it’s humor, all the space stuff, and all the stuff involving it’s multiple sets of siblings now which makes me reflect on my own relationship with my siblings, although I do feel like a mediocre big sister when compared to Mutta.

Arata the Legend (Arata Kangatari)
Arata (no not that one) switches places with Arata (again, not that one) from another world.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure this is Yuu Watase’s only non-shojo work and it’s always interesting to see when an author (of any medium) who is very heavily associated with one genre (in her case shojo) switch to a different one (shonen) and seeing just what tropes carry over. You could actually make this into a shojo very easily so I'm wondering what this genre switch will bring besides male main characters (which she's had before, Alice 19th had them for sure and a lot of her earlier works have a good amount of action as well). Also, I noticed on a scanlation site the other day that in Japan that the story is over 150 chapters yet the show is only going to be one cour, how the heck is that a good idea? With a story that long I can almost guarantee that individual arcs in the story are going to be longer than 13 chapters and, even if the pick up the pace and put multiple chapters into one episode (like they did here) they’ll still have a freakisly hard time making that work. Really at this point that’s what’s keeping me from getting really excited about this series, while it has potential I just don’t know if it has the time to make it work.

Arata the Legend is streaming on crunchyroll but only for United States and Canadian viewers and it might be for subscribers only. If it is subscribers only, the wording is a bit strange, I 'll have to drop it since I'm using a free subscription now to save money and won't be continuing with it.  

The Devil is a Part-timer (Hataraku Maou-sama!)
Satan escapes a crusading Hero and flips burgers.
Someone pointed out this one to me a few months back when they noted that a voice actor I had heard and liked had landed the leading role here so I checked out the manga (adaptation of the light novels this is based on that is) and found that the humor worked surprisingly well there. And here the humor continues to work, the first episode starts off a bit slow as it gets through the backstory of “how the hell a conquering demon lord is now trying to become a full time McRonald’s employee” but once it hits the second half it pulls off the situational humor pretty well. So I have high hopes that the entire show manages to stay funny and keep my interest, if that manga adaptation is any indication then it should fulfill those expectations very nicely.

Funimation has picked up the show for streaming and can be viewed either on their website or on hulu.



Devil Survivor 2 the Animation
Kids summon demon’s with their cell phones.
Initially this wasn’t on my to-watch list since I’ve never played any of the Shin Megami Tensei games of any franchise but, since I saw a number of good reviews for it and that reasoning hardly stopped me from watching Persona 4 the Animation, I gave it a shot and yeah, that was pretty solid. Thankfully here they’ve chosen to give the main character, in the game the player avatar, a real personality instead of trying to develop him as the show went on a la P4tA and the story gets to the action pretty quickly. I can still see that this was adapted from a game (“oh here is the exposition, this one is probably the tutorial fight” etc) but it doesn’t feel like I’m just watching a Let’s Play of the game so for the moment I’m sticking with it.

DS2tA (DeSu2A?) is streaming on crunchyroll for people in : USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Scandinavia..

Gargantia on the Verduous Planet (Suisei no Gargantia)
Mech pilot accidentally space-warps to backwater Earth
This was one of the shows I was most excited for going into the spring season. Scratch that, I was curious about a number of shows but only really excited for this one, it's a low-key season for me this time around, and I had such a hard time waiting for the second episode that I eventually found a fansub of the second episode (ripped from a DVD given out a few weeks earlier) with subpar subtitles and still enjoyed the heck out of it. Somehow this one just worked for me, I've seen a lot of people say that the first half moved a little too slow for them but I like space battles and space operas so I was just fine with epic-scale outer space fighting (and no the CGI does not look bad, it's not quite as nice and neat as Majestic Prince's was but it's perfectly fine guys, the show in general looks fantastic) and I was also okay when the story did a pretty large genre shift for the second half of the episode/for the rest of the series it seems. I’m okay with how they’re handling the shift to a quieter, not exactly slice of life but certainly smaller in scale story following the remnants of humanity on Earth living on boats and endlessly moving on the all-encircling ocean.

Gargantia is steaming on Crunchyroll for United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Portugal. 


Karneval
Two boys get entangled in secret, colorful, organization.
I’ve been a bit worried about Karneval for a while now since I’ve read the manga and I can say first hand that this series has it’s strong points and it’s weak ones and the beginning is most certainly one of the later. The anime works with the source material as best as it can, namely by compressing the first three chapters into one episode which does cut out some problems (I don't think the manga-ka even knew what they wanted Circus to be in the very beginning) but the pacing as a result just does not work. I’m tempted to say that the staff spent more time trying to figure out how to make the story look cool than how it was going to make sense and I’m really hoping that it gets smoother as the series goes on but that’s another thing I’m worried about, the length. This has been confirmed to be a one cour series and based on what characters have been posted on the website I can guess at least how far they’ll go and frankly I don’t think there is a really good stopping point after just thirteen episodes. All all I'm nervous about this series, I've seen manga fans say "yep that made about as much sense as the manga did at this point" and non-manga fans optimistically say that they think they like where it's going but yeah, I'm going to hold off recommending this show until it ends and I can say whether or not it worked.

For those willing to risk dazzlement and confusion, Karneval is being streamed by Funimation for Region 1 viewers.

Majestic Prince (Ginga Kikōtai Majestic Prince)
Five failing teens are flung into mecha fights.
Another of the mecha shows this season and one where I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I went into it. The good news is that the snark I saw in the trailers was present in the actual show, but a bit of snarking alone isn’t enough to make me keep watching a show especially when it’s got weird character designs (seriously, here are the original designs, here’s some promo material, and here’s an actual screenshot, I think a side character in the first few minutes stole everyone else’s noses in order to have a large schnoz, this is even worse than the Moyashimon Returns character design changes) and nothing new about the premise in general. Heck, while it is also fast paced and has some nice fight scenes it’s seriously lacking in the explanation department (or perhaps the common sense department, I want at least a line about why they took the worst teen mecha pilots and gave them the best robots they had AND someone at least noting that they seem to be working much better as a team than they were just a few hours earlier) and sure that can be remedied in further episodes but with so much other stuff coming out this season I’m not going to stick around to find out.

Majestic Prince is streaming on crunchyroll for USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks.


My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru or literally My Youth Romantic Comedy is as Wrong as I Expected)
Teacher forces student to join service club.
Intially this wasn't on my to watch list since, well, the premise on the lists and charts of the upcoming spring season didn't interest me and it sounded like Brain's Base was just redoing a less interesting version of My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun) half a year later. But after seeing a couple of good reviews, plus the fact that I wasn't interested in that show before trying it either, I gave it a shot and nope, my instincts were spot on. The show actually reminded me more of Bakemonogatari in how it sets up two of it's lead characters, the guy's appearance to a small extent, how it tries to be artsy with flashbacks and such, and guys, if you're going to be similar to another show you had better be better than them and that's not what happened here. I'd like to say that I'm not saying that one light novel series copied the other here but this one is certainly the weaker of the two and I'm not a huge fan of the -monogatari series to start with. Also, as I was watching this I thought "the author here feels young" and yep, the original author is only 27 and since this series is now on it's fifth or seventh book he must've started when he was even younger and it shows. Neither he (I believe it's a man) nor the director/writers of the show were able to make the characters believable or even interesting and the idea of a group/school club that helps people is a pretty tired premise yet they didn't do anything to spice that up either. 

Another dropped show for me but those interested in checking it out can go over to crunchyroll, provided you live in United States, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. 

Red Data Girl
Girl breaks computers and boy is broken.
So I caught one of the rips of the niconico stream a week or so back and man, maybe the fact that I was watching the worst quality video I’ve ever seen that wasn’t a copy of a copy (etc) of a VHS tape but this first episode just didn’t grab me. Looking at other’s screenshots I can say now that yes the art looks fine, lesson learned there, but the first episode just felt a bit awkward. We can see the characters acting but we don’t know why, why is cutting Izumiko’s hair so important (it’s not like this is Crime Edge, heck that makes this the third anime this year to place a focus on hair so I'm declaring 2013 "year of hair" at this rate) and why is Miyuki’s dad so insistent that he’s going to help her? Since there are a few more episodes out I’ve seen some people say it gets stronger I am going to give it a few more episodes (especially sine Funimation is streaming it) but there's another problem, the legal streams (and the tv broadcast) are a full three weeks behind, almost a month in Funi's case, the internet streams which is going to make avoiding spoilers for the series nigh impossible. I have absolutely no idea why there's such a huge delay, it was weird enough last season that there was a three day delay between when the first tv stations showed From the New World and when the main station/crunchyroll did and this is even stranger. Oh well, at least I'll have something to watch on Wednesdays.

As noted above, RDG is being streamed by Funimation, also make sure you use the hastag #rdg_anime on twitter or apparently you'll offend a small town in England.


Valvrave the Liberator (Kakumeiki Valvrave)
Average teen meets mech, gets messed up
And the award for the show which made me snark the most this season so far goes to Valvrave! Seriously folks, this show has some okay moments (when part of the what looks to be a good sized cast chilling in school), some bad moments (maybe I'm getting jaded but I couldn't take any of those military operations/people seriously), and then, well, one rather large WTFDIDIJUSTSMOKE moment at the veeeery end of the episode, make sure to watch past the credits guys. I seriously don't know how to feel here, the show looks great but the plot alternates between being generic and feeling like the creators are trying to hard to replicate their past successes, namely Code Geass. Here's the thing, I liked Code Geass (or at least the first season, the second season promised to reveal some things which it didn't and that annoyed me) and even Guilty Crown (which I believe also shares a lot of the same staff) didn't have me snark-raging as much as this did. Honestly in that respect the show reminds me a lot of K but with K I tried the second episode and went "you know, I think the writers are aware that what they're writing is kinda silly and they're just rolling with it, I can deal with this" and enjoyed the show, I don't think that's what Valvrave is doing. I'm going to give it another episode or two (mainly because of how pretty it is) but if this doesn't get at least more amusing then I'm going to find other shows to spend my Fridays watching.

Valvrave is streaming on crunchyroll for  US, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. 


SO, now that I've finally gotten through everything, my final verdict? I am following Gargantia, Chihayafuru, Maou-sama, and Space Bros for sure (and most likely Doki  Doki) and I'm gonna be pumped for them each week. And I'm going to continue with Arata, Karneval, RDG, Devil Survivor, and Valvrave for now, if any of them fail to keep my interest for a few episodes I'll drop them with no hesitation. And dear lord, all of those shows except Precure and Space Bros (maybe Devil Survivor, Valvrave is apparently confirmed as split cour) are going to end this summer, I am going to be very busy come late June/early July with reviews.

Manga Monday: Yumekui Merry

This title is a bit of an odd one, I picked it up before the anime adaption came out, didn't like the first episode of the anime so I didn't follow it, read scanlations, and now it's been licensed by JManga. The only thing is that they licensed it several months ago and there haven't been any releases beyond the first chapter, oops. I've asked on twitter and they swear it's coming, I just hope it's sooner rather than later. Also, I don't know if this is related or not but I haven't seen many scanlations for it lately (could be because of the license, could be that the group prefers to buy volumes as they come out and scanlate those instead of buying the magazine each month) so I'm starting to get a little hazy on some of the details here (also, did not know that another translation of it is Merry Nightmare, JManga is just using the untranslated Japanese title for now).


Yumekui Merry (Dream Eater Merry) by Yoshitaka Ushiki

Yumeji has lived a pretty normal life but he does have one odd talent that his friends love to make him use, he can see the kind of dreams people had the night before. It's not always perfect most of the time but it can always tell him when someone has had nightmares and lately he's had a lot of those himself. It's always the same dream until one day a girl falls out of the real world into his dreams and Yumeji learns about the world of dreams and the dream demons who are coming from there to try and take over his world.

Even though the story is currently 8 volumes long (and it feels like it has several more to go) it still feels rather quickly paced to me and it's always nice to have a story that doesn't linger or draw out it's mysteries too much. In fact, one of the biggest mysteries at that start of the manga was "what exactly is Merry and how did she get here?" which has been partially answered and maybe fully answered, again it's been a little while since I read that particular part of the story (and it feels wrong to re-read scans when I know a legal version is coming). Honestly what I'm most happy about however is how involved Yumeji has become in the story, I've seen a number of stories which involve a normal person becoming mixed up in the affairs of another world and being unable to do much about it. Yumeji, really all of the main cast, has a lot of great moments and none of the main characters feel like they could have been cut without hurting the story (which isn't exactly the case for the side characters, they are side characters after all, however there are few enough of them that I don't feel like the writer is trying to fluff out the story by just introducing new characters). The plot is moving along nicely and has grown over the past few volumes as well so, while it's never super complicated or very difficult to predict, I am more than entertained reading this and plan on buying the volumes as they come out on JManga. 

Fall Anime Round-up!

Once again it’s time for a whole slew of new anime to premire and time for me to be a bit later than everyone else with the reviews since I’m trying to cram them all into one batch again. But before I get to the fall anime I do need to talk about the summer anime a bit first since that was a bit of an odd season. Since I’m only continuing with two shows (Space Bros and Sword Art Online) I’m not going to make a full post about them, it should suffice to say that I still like Space Bros (probably because I identify more with adult characters in anime today than teenaged characters so I welcome a show with adult characters and enough episodes to really develop all of them) and as for Sword Art Online, well, obviously I’ll talk a lot about this when the show finishes up in December, and already did a bit in Accel World, but the author seems to write okay main storylines that are based on some cool ideas but doesn’t really get how to write short stories so they all turn out rather similar and not as good. There are two other shows that are kinda continuing as well, apparently when Eureka 7 AO was given it’s 24 episode timeslot everyone forgot to account for the Olympics taking over that time for two weeks and, since the main network (TBS?) doesn’t want anyone else to show the last two episodes before them and doesn’t have any free time until November they simply aren’t getting shown until then (and since I’m blogging differently in November, same as last year, that review probably won’t be up until December). Kokoro Connect is also a weird case, it’s going to have another arc that is made up of DVD-only episodes and that normally wouldn’t cause me to delay a review but since this is four, cohesive episodes I’m going to delay that one as well. The only problem is that the first DVD comes out in late October so, even if they release one a month, that review probably won’t be until late January/early February. I already have the majority of the review written up and ready to go, I’ll just add to it/edit it based on whatever happens here.

As for fall shows I will mention that my most anticipated show of the season, the Kyousogiga series, isn’t on here because apparently that is going to be an OVA series and the first episode came out back in August. Looking at the air dates for that, I would like to have the review for that one up around Christmas but don’t know how likely that’s going to be and that’s also going to be tricky since I just recently learned that the manga adaptation actually fills in some of the gaps in the series so I’m going to have to figure out how to address all of that. So, with allllllllll of that in mind, here’s what I actually tried out and what I thought of it.

Blast of Tempest

Mahrio’s friend Yoshino vanished a month ago and, while Mahiro is a little worried about him, he’s not overly concerned especially since he’s still coping with the murder of his sister a year earlier. So Mahiro is completely caught off guard when he’s confronted by a young lady with a gun demanding where Yoshino is and claiming that he’s become wrapped up in a world altering plan involving disasters and magic. But Mahiro doesn’t have a chance to doubt her when strange things start happening around them as well.

I’ve read a bit of the manga and I have to say that the first few chapters of the manga were a lot easier to follow than the first few episode of the anime which does worry me. The pacing was smoother and exposition felt more natural and I have seen people say the first episode was confusing and it shouldn’t have been that confusing. On the positive side, the series looks great and the OP is quite catchy (with decent Engrish! Then again, considering this season has also given us K’s Engrish practically everything is going to sound better by comparison).

Blast of Tempest is an Aniplex show so it’s streaming on Crunchyroll and will have a (probably overpriced) physical release down the line by them.

Chunibyo Demo Koi Ga Shita (which has been given the truely strange title of  Regardless of My Adolescent Delusions of Grandeur I Want A Date!)

Chunibyo translates to “second year diseases” in English and it’s a belief possessed by many 8^th graders that they possess magical powers and do crazy things as a result. Yuuta is a recovering Chuni and would quite like to forget about that part of his life. However, when he comes across another sufferer at his new high school it looks like that might just be a pipe dream of his.

My cynical side wonders just how much anime is responsible for this disease and also thinks that it certainly explains more than a few things. In any case, this was an okay first episode. Everything was set up and it wasn’t boring but didn’t catch me either (probably because, as weird as my friends and I were at that age, we were never this weird, or if we were we went through that period yeeeeeears earlier, like elementary school) and the show was trying too hard to be “cutesy”. Normally I’d give the show another episode and see how it does but the problem is that The Anime Network is making this a subscriber only stream beyond the first episode and I'd rather save up my money to buy one of their physical releases instead of for streaming a show I'm not sure I'll like

Chuunii is one of Sentai’s pick-ups this season, however since it's going to be subscriber only I'm going to have to skip this one.

Code:Breaker

Sakura is a high school girl who isn't the girlest of girls and is completely capable of kicking anyone's ass and has a sense of justice as well. So of course she's going to investigate when she sees what looks like people being burned alive in a local park although she may have gotten involved in something truly dangerous indeed. 

I read a little bit of the manga when the anime was announced to see if it was my thing and, while okay, I decided that I wasn’t really interested in the story since it didn’t seem to have a real goal in mind. But I got bored, checked out the first episode of the anime and that was a really solid first episode (even if for some reason it looks like it came out of the 90s, I think it’s Sakura’s hair). Since Funimation is streaming the show and it’s only supposed to be 13 episodes long I’ll stick with it, really I’m staying with it not because we have random people with super powers running around, that idea has been done way too many times since the dawn of time, but because I like Sakura, having a competent main character dealing with magic who isn’t magical is something that happens much less often. Sadly after poking around it seems that she’s going to be less and less useful as the story goes on (and it seems the story gets worse after a bit as well, honestly if a series goes for more than 100 chapters it’s bound to “get worse” for everyone at some point) but with such a short run I hope that it stays interesting and ends on a good note.

One of Funimation’s pick-ups, can be watched on their site. 

From the New World (Shin Sekai Yori)

Based on a sci-fi novel (not a light novel but a “real” novel) and set in Japan 1000 years into the future it’s hard to tell that the story is set in the future at all. Technology seems to have regressed and instead everyone possesses physic powers that manifest when they’re rather young. Poor Saki was the last one in her class to get her powers and but when she goes to her new school she’s told she was the last, everyone seems to have forgotten about her other classmates. Combined with things overheard from her parents it seems like this brave new world is a rather scary place indeed.

I haven’t totally warmed up to the show yet, thank goodness it has two seasons to get through all the material since it’s a bit slow to get going, but I like it so far. I especially like how the show looks, the outfits in particular are really nicely designed (not the school uniforms but all the casual outfits Saki and her family wear, they have a level of detail put into them that I don’t normally see, and as a cosplayer I am always staring at the outfits). So far the direction the plot seems to be taking isn’t something completely new and unexplored, actually I recall reading a lot of “looks like a utopia, really a dystopia” stories for school, but hopefully this story will be able to pull it off well and I’ll be able to point to it as one of the better examples in that odd sub-genre.

Airing on Crunchyroll, licensed by Sentai  

K

In a city where "kings" run around with their entourages and fight each other, Shiro is rather confused at the accusations and video that shows that he killed one of the kings and gets involved in all kinds of shenanigans. 

My god, this is the most “animu” anime of the season and it alternates between playing all it’s tropes straight/unironically and being completely aware of it. The first episode amused me and I thought I might follow it for a few until I got bored/it crashed and burned. The second episode wasn’t tons better but you know what, I think the show is at least a little aware of how silly it is and has decided to roll with it. And for me that can make all the difference, a serious show not realizing it’s silly is painful and calls for watching with friends and possibly involving a drinking game, a show that knows it’s silly is just fun and much easier to recommend as well.

K is Viz Media’s lone pick-up of the season and can be watched on hulu.

Kamisama Kiss (Kamisama Hajimemashita)

After her father gambles away all his money and runs away, Nanami is turned out of her apartment and has no where to go when she meets a man stuck in a tree in a local park, terrified by the dog beneath him. She shoos off the dog and tells him her story and he says that while he is off traveling she is welcome to stay at his place and then leaves. Fully expecting to be conned she goes to the address he left behind, only discover that it’s a shrine and that she has become the new land god of the shrine and has inherited not only the shrine, magical powers, and two will-o-wisp spirits but also one very cranky familiar.

I’m a bit familiar with the original manga (it’s published in the US under the same name by Viz) and so far I think it’s been a pretty nice adaptation. Nanami has spunk which makes her quite fun to watch, the pacing is quick but not too fast, and I think that a lot of the gags have translated well from the manga to the anime. The show does look pretty cheap (there was even one brief, less than two seconds, clips in the second episode where it looked like they literally didn’t finish animating part of the background) but hopefully I can enjoy this one based on what it does, not what it looks like.

Kamisama Kiss is streaming on Funimation’s website, although as a warning the player has been a bit stranger lately so hopefully they’ll put it up on hulu as well, same warning applies to their other shows but everyone seems to have had the most trouble with this show.

Little Busters!

Riki became close to his friends when they comforted and befriended him as a kid after his parents died. They're growing up however and this is their last year of school together so they're going to try and make it as special as possible and hopefully make some more friends in the process.

I have not played the original game, really I don't know much at all (although I did find out who the “main” heroine is), and I think this is a show that was made more to appeal to it’s fans than new people. Yes yes yes I know it’s not about baseball, that part was pretty obvious, it’s just that none of the characters really grabbed my attention in this first episode and everything feels quiet clichéd as well. If this was being simulcast by someone then sure, I’d give it a few more episodes, but since I do have to use fansubs here (and my rule with fansubs is one per season and only of something I’m almost guaranteed to buy) I think I’ll hold off and give myself time to watch something I really enjoy instead.

Magi

Inspired by 1001 Nights, Aladdin is a young boy with a djinn in a pipe, a promise, wants to make friends, and wants adventures, all of which sounds like the makings of a shonen show to me!

Well that was more enjoyable than I expected, like Code;Breaker I read the first chapter of the manga and wrote it off as not for me but Magi actually starts with a different chapter (which I think was a good idea), again is streaming legally, and just did something right. I didn’t like all the boob jokes (there was just too many of them), and forgive me twitter, I was teasing all of you in my head for getting confused over Aladdin’s gender and I totally understand why now (if it helps I was confused by the lead in Little Busters, both are way more feminine than most boys ever sound). But the action was solid and if it’s streaming for free then sure, I can give it at least a few more episodes and see where it goes.

Another Aniplex show so it can be viewed, a few days after the original broadcast but without the one week delay for free users  on Crunchyroll.

My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun)

Shizuku isn’t interested in anything accept getting good grades at school and the only way she can be convinced to bring handouts to an absent classmate is being bribed with a study guide. The guy in question, Haru, was suspended at the beginning of the year for fighting with bullies and has no intention of going back to school, except that it turns out that he’s quite friendly and seems to like Shizuku so maybe he’ll start going back because of her….

Another shojo series that has quite a bit of comedy in it (KK seems to be more comedy than romance, MLM it’s closer to 50-50 and Sukitte has no comedy in it at all yet) and while not everything is perfect (yes I know that Haru is supposed to be socially awkward and just not get some stuff but his actions/words feel more like, well, how a not-well-adjusted character in an anime would do/say, not a real person, and I dislike that kind of fakeness of character) it’s amusing and I’m going to stick with it. Also, I may or may not be shipping the chicken with the duck from tsuritama.

Streaming on Crunchyroll

Psycho-Pass

In a future where everyone's mental state is constantly monitored and some people are criminals without ever having committed a crime, there is a section of the police dedicated to chasing down those whose mental patterns have become erratic and erasing them if necessary. Akane is the newest member of the force but who knows if she'll last or if she'll succumb to all the stress and become a latent criminal herself.

One half of the noitaminA timeslot, eh. It's cyberpunk, it's "dark and edgy" and it's way too early to tell if it'll do anything new, crash and burn, or just be a cop shows that plays around with deeper idea but never makes use of them. I think, and hope, that it will look at it's system, acknowledge the flaws, and then play with it (a bit like what Un-Go did last year), if not it's going to be a boring and frustrating two quarters.

Funimation picked this one up and it's streaming on their site  

Robotic;Notes

The year is 2019 and in the true, "Steins;Gate" timeline Katio and Akiho are the only two members left in their school's robotics club and Akiho is determined to complete the giant robot the club has been building for years. But the club is in trouble of getting disbanded so they have that to worry about as well so building a working mecha might end up being the least of their troubles.

The other noitaminA show (and yes, it's the same universe as both Steins;Gate and Chaos;Head, I checked the worldline numbers and spoil me on anything and it won't end well for either of us) which had a rather quiet first episode. I'm not entirely sure why but it clicked with me more than P-P did, possibly because I remember how slow S;G was to start and how I nearly dropped it later on. I've been warned that the series is a bit slower paced (since it's set over an entire school year) but I'm okay with that as long as the plot works.

Another Fuimation pick-up, it can be viewed on their site for free but does have a one day delay.

Say “I Love You” (Sukitte Ii na yo)

Mei has been ostracized by her classmates for most of her life so when one of the most popular guys in her grade starts taking an interest in her she of course thinks it's a prank. But for whatever reason Yamamoto does seem to have fallen for her whether she's happy with this idea or not.

Ah, if KK and MLM were lighter, more comedic shojo series this is the more "serious, realistic" (angsty) shojo show, which might explain why those other two are being streamed and this one wasn't. If it was being streamed I'd watch more but as it stands it's just too "angsty" for me, Yamamoto strikes me as creepier than Haru from MLM (at least there the characters are aware that he's kinda crazy, here Yamamoto's behavior of following Mei around and bugging her are presented as if they're normal) and I just don't want to watch an illegal fansub of a show like that. 

So there you have it, I'm watching nine shows total (plus stuff from older series that is complete and live action shows, I'm so behind in those though) and it's certainly an interesting mixture this time around, hope everything either stays strong or gets even stronger!

Spring Anime 2012 round-up

Once again I am later than everyone else but to make up for it I have all my reviews in one place (so, erm, it's long, I had just hit a fourth page on Word when I was writing these up).Did not try Jormugand, Sankarea, Hyouka, Kuroko no Basuke, or Nyarko-san but might later on if I somehow get bored, they all sounded like something that may catch my fancy but I already have enough shows I'm committed to watching to keep me entertained (plus Funimation still hasn't put up Sankarea, y'all sure you know what the word "simulcast" means?). Still following Bodacious Space Pirates and Aquarion Evol in addition to Legend of Korra, thank god MLP:FiM just finished up or I'd be spending my entire Saturday watching cartoons. Funny enough my one and a half fansub shows this season are both mecha (half since I watch Evol on a weird schedule so it only half counts), and the fact that I was already committed to one and a half shows is why I didn't try out Hyouka (the entire reason this is delayed so much, I had expected it to be simulcast which obviously didn't happen). Enough mindless rambling though, let's ramble about the actual shows!

Accel World: Set a few decades in the future, high school life in Japan is similar to today’s except that the technology has rapidly progressed and everyone is now permanently wired into the ‘net. This works in Haruyuki’s favor since he uses his favorite online games to escape the bullying at his school and it turns out that someone has noticed his skills, student body president who is only known by her handle Kuroyukihime, and recruits him to help her in a different kind of game called Brain Burst. I checked out the first chapter of the manga adaptation which didn’t really catch my attention but the anime did. It’s paced well, looks good (do wish Haruyuki was a bit less deformed but I’m not going to obsess over that like some viewers have) and while the plot is a bit on the simple side it works just fine. I can’t tell at this point if I’m going to keep enjoying the series as much as I have, especially since it’s “plot twists” seem rather predictable at this point, but for the moment I’m having fun with it.

Accel World has been licnesed by Viz Media and can be viewed by USians either on hulu or on their site using the hulu player, Canadians are in a pinch here.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (Tasogare Otome x Amnesia): Many years ago Yuuko was a student at a strange high school and died under mysterious circumstances and now her body lies beneath the Paranormal Activity clubroom. She claims that she’s not interested in why she died or any of those details, she can’t even remember them to start with, but when Teiichi comes along and is able to see her she starts to become a little more curious and starts the club in order to find out. Honestly that’s all that has happened in the first two episodes (the majority of the first episode was taken up by a hilarious segment showing the episode first from the point of view of the club member who can’t see ghosts and then from the POV of the two who can) and the show has more fanservice than I care for* but somehow the show has grabbed me anyway and if it’s going to be a short series then I’ll be sure to stick around and see what ends up being revealed.

The show has been licensed by Section 23 and for the moment can be viewed on Crunchyroll.

Eureka Seven AO (Astral Ocean): The follow-up to the original 2005 show Eureka 7: Psalm of the Planets (which I have seen, it was just back in 2009 back when Anime News Network was starting to stream shows), Ao has grown up in Okinawa under the guidance of a local doctor when his mother (who is clearly Eureka) vanished while he was small (no mention of his father but it’s Renton almost for sure) and has endured harassment ever since for being an “outsider”. But when a monster emerges from the alien scrub coral and starts spreading havoc it seems like Ao is one of the best chances they have to save the island. But for older viewers a few things seem off, the series is set on a modern looking Earth in 2025 (instead of 12005 on a changed Earth like the original series) with scub coral attacks dating back to the 1940s. I think it’s an alternate universe here so on the one hand I want to say that people who have read a bit about the original but not seen it can follow but at this point it’s not quite safe to say. Ao is a more likeable protagonist than Renton so far and I never disliked Renton to start with, although I am a little hesitant on who seems to be the female lead Naru but I’m warming up to her fast. At first glance the two shows seemed very different but I can now see a number of similarities and I think I’ll end up liking this a lot.

Fate/Zero II: Continuing mere minutes from where the first half left off, Fate/Zero is a record of the fourth Holy Grail war (10 years before the 5^th war in Fate/Stay Night) where pairs of Masters and Servants (heroic spirits summoned just to fight in this war) fight to the last pair standing to receive the wish granting grail. And fight they do, almost half the servants are gone by the time I write this and there has been fighting amongst the pairs as well, much like the first half the show loves to have long monologues on philosophy and morals between characters and then spend the next ten minutes showing a beautifully done fight sequence. I’ve really gotten into the show now, enough that I’m planning on watching F/STN over the summer once this finishes and even though I’ve guessed/been spoiled enough to figure out how this story is going to end I can’t wait to see it play out, as triumphant or tragic as it may be.

While not licensed per-say in the US, each new episode can be viewed on the Japanese NicoNico site with English subtitles and on Crunchyroll a week later. 

Hiiro no Kakera: When Tamaki's parents suddenly get jobs oversees, something that seems a bit suspicious to her, she moves in with her grandmother and discovers that she was brought there to be the next "Tamayori Princess," someone who deals with the spirits in the area and whose power seems to be growing. In a twist that shows it's dating-sim roots there are five attractive men assigned to look after her and the chemistry begins! While I can easily see the appeal of dating-sim games I don't really see the appeal of the animated adaptions since they take out the best part, actually getting to choose what to do and which guys to get closer to. So this one gets a pass from me, although I am tempted to make a plushie out of that adorable fox ghost mascot.

Hiiro no Kakera is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

Kids on the Slope (Samakichi no Apollon): One of my most anticipated shows of the season, Kids on the Slope makes up half of the noitaminA spot and focuses on transfer student Kaoru who has just moved to Kyushu in 1966 for his father’s job and expects this move to be like all the others, another chance for him to be isolated and lonely in his new surroundings. But things go a little differently this time around thanks to the friendly class president Ritsuko and delinquent classmate Sentarou who introduce the piano playing Kaoru to a new kind of music, jazz. I’ve only had a chance to check out the first episode so far but I really liked the vibe it gave off. The setting was different, the music was great and the characters already feel a bit rounded. I am really worried at how this show is going to compress all nine volumes of the manga into just 12 episodes, especially since it sounds like their aren’t any subplots that can be easily cut out, but fingers crossed and hoping for the best!

Section 23 has already licensed the show and it can be viewed on Crunchyroll.

Lupin the III-A Woman Named Fujiko Mine: I saw the first episode of this show on accident actually, I was watching a livestream and the streamer decided to show the latest incarnation of the Lupin the III franchise (which can be summed up as Lupin is a famous thief who likes to steal difficult things because of the challenges they present).  As I had already figured out from the reviews I’d read, this isn’t the show for me but it’s a pretty cool show. I’m not a big fan of Lupin, like many my only experience with the franchise is The Castle of Caligstro (which I didn’t  like that much) and the whole phantom/gentleman thief genre is hit or miss with me to start with. All of that said, you don’t need much familiarity with the Lupin franchise to follow this show and it looks gorgeous (to quote a friend, “they blew the budget of three anime studios in the first five minutes of this show”) in it’s super detailed retro style. Funny enough the copious amount of fanservice in the first episode didn’t bother me either which I think might be because the show not only has a female writer (Mari Okada whose work I’m plenty familiar with) but also a female director (Sayo Yamamoto who did Michiko to Hatchin which I still need to get around to seeing) and I wonder if that had just enough of an influence on the show to make the fanservice less annoying. In any case, Funimation is now streaming the show and if this sounds at all interesting I recommend people check it out (just be careful where you do however, the first episode is seriously NSFW because of Fujiko’s frequent stripping to distract the male characters).

Show is being streamed by Funimation on their website, you do need a free account to view it however due to the boobies.

Medaka Box: Tried this one out because, well, it was on Crunchyroll and I was bored? I also had a raging headache at the time and I’m not sure if that contributed to my feelings on the show or not but this just didn’t quite work. The premise is simple enough, Medaka is the new president of her high school and her first act is to create a suggestion box for the students and her first request is to clean up the kendo dojo, and by clean out they mean kick out all the delinquents who have taken up residence there. The problem is that Medaka just isn’t that interesting a character, she feels a bit like a Maniac Pixie DreamGirl to the male lead whom I suspect is actually the main character, and is simply so out there (with her proclamations that she will fix everything for no reason other than the joy of helping others) that I couldn’t take the show seriously and didn’t find it funny either. The premise reminds me a lot of Sket Dan, which I read the first chapter of a year or so ago, but at least there the series focused on comedy, here the show just feels disjointed and like it’s trying to do two different things at once.

This show is streaming on Crunchyroll as I mentioned earlier.

Polar Bear Café (Shirokuma Café): The lone josei offering of the season is a strange one, a comedy series set in a world where humans and animals live everyday lives with each other, the first episode shows the character Panda (who, true to his species, is rather lazy and would rather lay around all day eating bamboo) trying to find a job and eventually ends up with part time work as a panda in the local zoo. A large chunk of the show also takes place in the eponymous Polar Bear Café which shows off the best bits of the series humor with it’s strange puns and odd situations (plus, if you’re familiar with Japanese seiyuu then there is plenty of humor to be had in hearing them voice various animals). I did laugh a few times but I don’t think that this kind of humor would stay funny to me for an entire season (and in general I prefer series where humor is a secondary genre, not the main one like here), but I’m sure plenty of other people will enjoy it enough to make up for me.

Currently the show is unlicensed but it is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Saint Seiya Omega: I’m not familiar with the original Saint Seiya at all, beyond a basic plot synopsis that is, but I really liked the art style for the show and that I was familiar with. From the same people who did Casshern Sins and Heartcatch Precure (which I really need to see) I had been reminded of just how much I liked their retro-esque designs last fall when they did an episode of Mawaru Penguindrum and I decided that was enough of a reason to give this show a shot. And it seems that not much knowledge of the original Saint Seiya is needed to get this show, it seems to be a sequel where we start off with main character Kouga who is being put through some brutal training to become a “saint” who will one day protect the goddess Athena and he’s not particularly happy with this choice. It’s a super shonen-esque show with calling your attacks, hot blooded determination trumping experience and mysterious mentors calling upon Kouga to use some kind of inner strength he has, although I have no idea if the original show had magical girl-esque transformation sequences as well (looking at the team’s previous work I could easily see this being their own flair). In the end the show didn’t do enough things differently for me to want to continue, think I’ll just track down Heartcatch Precure sometime to get my fill of the artstyle that way instead.

Saint Seiya Omega is streaming, like a lot of other things this season, on Crunchyroll.

Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyodai): Set a few decades into the future, brothers Mutta and Hibito both had the same dream as kids, to become astronauts and explore space. Of the two however only Hibito has been able to achieve this dream while Mutta has been recently fired from his lucrative job as a car designer for head butting his boss. But even if Mutta has pretended to forget his dream his family hasn’t and he soon finds himself taking the JAXA [link] exams to become an astronaut. Hmm, realistic, near-future science-fiction (can it even be called that?) with an older protagonist? Sounds fun and sounds different, the pacing is a bit slower than most of the other shows out here but it sounds like the show will be running for a full year so it has the time to set a steady pace. I am a bit amused that Mutta has the same VA and similar appearance to Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny last year, then again I remember the VA (Hiroaki Hirata) joking last year that after that role he’s now the “ojisan” actor and maybe that’s coming true…

Streaming on Crunchyroll.

Tsuritama: The other half of this season’s noitaminA timeslot and from the same director who did [C], Mononoke, and Trapeeze, Yuki is also a transfer student as he moves to Enoshima, has also moved around a lot and despite that also still gets panic attacks whenever he tries to introduce himself at his new school. Given the, odd nature of his panic attacks (outwardly he just makes strange expressions but inwardly he imagines being swallowed up by a rising wave) he’s also short on friends and not expecting to make any but self-proclaimed alien Haru, also a transfer student, has taken an interest in Yuki (as well as moved in with them) and seems intent on dragging him and two other guys all over town fishing. This show gave me a lot less to go on than Kids on the Slope and if it wasn’t noitaminA I would’ve considered dropping it since it was just so odd (actually, given who the director is and my strong feelings on the ending of [C] this still isn’t out of the picture). Right now I’m going to give it a few more episodes and see if I get into the swing of it since I have absolutely no clue right now what it’s trying to do.

Like Kids on the Slope, Tsuritama has been licensed by Section 23 and is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Zetman: In a dark and edgy setting, Jin was created as an experiment, a “player” with superhuman and near demonic abilities, but rescued as a baby by a man he grew up to call Grandpa. His grandpa was killed by a rouge player and soon after Jin’s own powers activated and ever since he’s tried to not get close to others to keep them safe. Another case where we’re getting a severely compressed adaptation (the entire manga series in one cour, sounds like they’ve already had 20+ chapter timeskips) but it wasn’t the pacing or such that put me off the series, as a non-manga reader the first two episodes flowed alright even though you can see it was compressed, I’m just tired of seeing “dark and edgy” shows. I might give this a go again later if I get bored, although given how much I have to watch I don’t foresee that happening. So it’s a case where the show isn’t bad, just not for me.

Just like this post started, Zetman has been licensed by Viz Media and is being streamed by them as well.

And that's all from me! So, seven new shows to follow, two continuing, four or five I might try/follow anyway (since it seems like every season I end up following one show I don't even mention here), and a giant backlog for when I get bored. And, given that all the shows I watch air between Thursday afternoon and Sunday evening I do get a bit bored by Wednesday, or I could use that time to catch up on live action shows.... 

*yes Japan, boobs are squishy and bounce when you don’t wear a bra, moving on

Manga Shorts: Soul Eater and Soul Eater Not!

I haven't actually been following either of these series for a few months now, I'll probably continue with Not! though when the volumes start being released in the US, but I still wanted to talk about these series anyway. I really did like Soul Eater for a while so I do want to talk about why I liked it and why I ended up dropping it.

Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo

At the DWMA (Death Weapon Meister Academy, Shibusen in Japanese) students from all over the world gather to study fighting as they split off into pairs of Weapons (people who can literally transform into a weapon, such as a scythe or guns) and Meisters (the people who wield them and are able to sycronize their soul wavelengths to become even more effective fighters). Soul and Maka are the main weapon-meister pair whose goal is to collect 99 human souls (all from Death's list of bad people) and one witch soul (who are supposed to be always chaotic evil) to turn Soul into a deathscythe, a weapon used by Lord Death himself, although they've been having some trouble with that. Also in the background there are growing concerns about what some of the most powerful witches are doing which the adult characters are investigating which brings me to why I enjoyed this series so much, there were adult characters who did things and were very competent at doing them. Soul Eater actually has a large cast and in the early bits of the story (lasting the first 15 or 16 volumes) you had no trouble remembering this, they were all amazing! But, as the story went on, it feel into one of the classic shonen tropes of "because you're the main character(s) you are now the most powerful ones in the story, which doesn't make much sense and we're going to make everyone else suddenly much dumber/less powerful to highlight this even more." I just had to give up after Ohkubo built up several side characters, gave them extra panel time, and then they were useless in the end, it was just too frustrating to continue. For the moment I've stopped collecting the series but I think now I'll pick it back up and continue to about the end of the Rescue Kidd arc since thinking about this series reminds me that I really did like the early parts and maybe it will be that great again later on, I can hope so anyway.
 
 


Soul Eater Not! by Atsushi Ohkubo

 A lighthearted spin-off from the main Soul Eater story, Soul Eater Not! is set sometime before Soul Eater starts and follows weapon Tsugumi, a new student to the school, and her fellow classmates (primarily the meisters Anya and Meme) as they adjust to school life and explores the backstories of some of the characters from the main series such as Kim and Jaquelin (who are my favorites so yay). I honestly wasn't expecting to like this story much at all but it's so fun and fills in a lot of the setting. I haven't been keeping up with this since Yen Press licensed it and I probably won't buy a subscription to their magazine to read it every month* but I do plan on buying the volumes as they come out.


Got one more series to talk about next Wednesday and then November is over and Manga Shorts are done! Seems like November went by really fast this year and I enjoyed doing these posts so I'll probably do this again next year, who knows what I'll have found by then.


*for that I would rather have the JManga approach and just buy a cheaper subscription to read just that, although funny enough the reason I haven't tried out JManga is because I want a all-you-can-eat subscription like I have for Crunchyroll, boy am I picky.