28/02/2012

What's on right now?: The anime of Winter 2011/2012


Check it out y'all, there's a post on here again. I believe this blog is now an outlet for when I feel like doing some writing, so allow me to regale myself with a tale of the anime currently airing on TVs in Japan!

Sorry to disappoint, but it's mainly a load of dross...

I guess we'll start with the shows I dropped pretty much instantly. Some of them even lasted a whole two episodes!:

Ano Natsu de Matteru 
So you guys remember Ano Hi Mita Hana- blah blah blah, right? Well it's immediately obvious from just looking at anything related to Ano Natsu (including the name) that they're going for a similar feel with this one. In fact I don't think even AnoHana gave out as strong 'AnoHana' vibes as Ano Natsu is clearly trying to do. I can't really blame them I guess, given that it's the same director and swiftly following on from the success of Ano the 1st, but it just has a resoundingly 'done' feel about it before you're even five minutes in to the first episode. This time there's an alien girl rather than a dead girl, and the crowd of quirky friends are out shooting a movie, but heartstrings are out to be plucked and quaintness abounds. I couldn't stomach more than two episodes. Maybe it'll turn out good, who knows?


Another (or Ano-saaa)
I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not exactly sure what this show is supposed to be, but I thought that it was going for a horror vibe so that's how I approached watching it.
There's a girl in an eye-patch. She should've died a while back. Everyone seems suitably put-out by this fact. Scary, huh?


Area no Kishi 
FOOTBALL DRAMA! IT'S HERE!
I should say that I'm not intrinsically against the idea of sports anime, but I'm yet to see a good one (classic baseball episodes don't count of course). Area no Kishi seemed like good fun for a while, but it seemed to me that they were perhaps trying to draw too much exposition out of the premise 'football'. Also it's probably not a good thing that a sportaphobe such as myself knows more about the sport in question than the show appeared to. So it was bye-bye for Area no Kishi as well (despite the great English name of "Knight in the Area"!)


Mouretsu Pirates 
This has probably been my biggest disappointment of the season. I mean come on, the English title is "Bodacious Space Pirates!", how can it POSSIBLY be bad?! And yet I never cease to be amazed at how people manage bastardise the concepts of both pirates and the word "bodacious". Simply put, when there's more talk about what piracy consists of than actual piratical acts, you're not going to hold my attention for very long.

  
Rinne no Lagrange 
Girl who likes "helping people" gets herself a mecha. That's about all I gleaned of what was going down in this show before I got generic'd to death.



So then, what currently broadcasting series am I still watching? Not exactly the cream of the anime crop, but at least they didn't have the audacity to call themselves "Bodacious Space Pirates" and then suck:

Highschool DxD 
Demons + girls + late-night timeslot. I think you get the gist. The fact that it took a LOT of scrolling down google images to find a header picture for the article from this show that was even remotely family-friendly should say something about its nature. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I persist in watching this one just to see what they think they can do for some semblance of a story tying together the gratuitous ecchi. I'll probably give up before the end of the season rolls around...


Inu x Boku SS 
The show starts off with a monologue from our teenage protagonist who professes to possess immense communication problems and as such has been granted permission from her rich family to go and live alone in an apparently infamous hotel/complex/thing. Upon arrival she is issued with her own personal secret service detail (hence the SS in the title), and as it transpires all the residents of this spooky hostel have their own agent. Things progress in a mundane style for a while. Then it turns out they're all freakin' fox spirits or something. I seriously didn't see that one coming, so kudos to you Inu x Boku SS! But seriously, apart from the first episode which was slightly bland, this show has actually been really entertaining. The humour is great - the timing perfect - and the way the show shifts seamlessly between the normal appearance and its little chibi world has captured me for the long haul.


Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai! 
If there was one thing this season was missing up 'til now it's a show about a girl falling irrationally in love with a male relative much older than herself. If anime has taught me anything about Japanese culture then it's that this is pretty much a staple of every healthy Japanese family. For the most part this is as one might expect, and not particularly thrilling, but I must say that they've done the 3-year-old really well. She so kawaaiiiiii!


Senki Zesshou Symphogear 
You had me at the line "Is this.....Aufwachenschlagen?" "GUNGNIR?!?!" It was Aufwachenschlagen. But yeah, this series is a good laugh. It's basically Nana Mizuki and some other girl facing-off against the forces of evil with the power of J-pop on their side (also ancient artifacts and stuff). I'm led to believe that it's very Macross'y, but I haven't gotten around to watching Macross yet so I couldn't tell you. Either way, it's almost as colourful as Penguindrum and gets me my generic trancy J-pop fix for the week, so I can't really complain. Also some of the characters are so terribly written it's hilarious.



And that's about it. There are other shows that I haven't touched on, naturally, but meh. The only other one that I've actually seen any of is that 'Recorder to Randoseru', and I dropped that even though the episodes are only two minutes long so yeah....

Ah well, at least we have loads to look forward to next season! *looks at next season's line-up*
Well that's a shame. See you in Summer folks!

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