Fall 2011 Anime Season: First Impressions.

Fall 2011 Anime Season First Impressions

New anime!! Woohoo!! Alright everybody, its that time for all the new stuff to be talked about. This is my first impressions of all the new first episodes this season. I admit though, I have seen the second episode of a few because one particular show took forever to come out. But I might be getting a bit ahead of myself. Lets look at the new stuff!

Hunter X Hunter: I love the manga to Hunter X Hunter. It is funny, tragic, dark and light, and just creates a world that seems to real, yet so fictional at the same time. It might be one of my favorite manga of all time. The anime, so far, seems to be sticking incredibly close to the manga, and that looks like it will be a good thing. I have high hopes for Hunter X Hunter, and I think that it will be at least as good as Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood was. Though it will most likely never end.

Chihayafuru: This looks like it will be interesting. It is actually using a traditional game for its card game, instead of making a whole new game to profit on. The characters look interesting, and the story itself looks promising. My only complaint is that the first episode was mostly flashback. It makes me worry that half this story is going to be told in flashback, and even then, if it is done right, then there is no problem. I look forward to more episodes of this show.

Kyoukai Senjou  no Horizon: Dear lord, this series. I have no clue what happened in the first episode. This show is a combination of everything otaku and nerds love. It has mecha, random bits of religious randomness, huge ass weapons wielded by people who shouldn’t be able to wield them, a system of magic and fighting completely non-explained in the first episode, and fan service. Dear lord the fan service. At least half the women look like they have bowling balls taped to their chests, and would eventually have severe back problems later on in life. This looked like what someone’s idea of a table top RPG would be, if they haven’t balanced one yet. Everything thrown in to some random fantasy world. This show is insane. I plan on watching at least the first few episodes, but god is this show crazy, I might just have to drop it.

Kimi to Boku: Every anime season it seems I find a show that I shouldn’t like at all, and end up adoring. It is usually a moe-moe fest type of show, but this season, it is Kimi to Boku. This show looks like it is the male version of shows like Yuru Yuri and K-ON!. It is just four dudes, soon to be five, hanging out and doing nothing. And I just know I will watch every one of these episodes. If it gets too boring, I will drop it, but as of right now, I will be sticking to this show.

Maken-Ki!: This show is a combination of Mai-Hime and Ikki Tousen. And I hate it. Ok, that is unfair. I don’t completely hate it, but I am not going to be a fan of this show. It is a fan service fest, with disproportioned women fighting each other, most likely for the affection of one male character. I will not be watching this show. I think this show has had more panty shots in it then the entirety of this season combined. Just so much gratuitous fan service. It has been dropped.

Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle: Of all things, I actually got a weird Yugioh GX vibe from this show. But not in a bad way, oddly enough. This show looks like it will be, at the very least, interesting. But the episode itself had no staying power in my mind. It became part of the background of my mind. I can’t tell if this show will the insane genius puzzle solving show I hope it will be, or a show that replaces card games with puzzles. I will keep watching it for a bit, I have no plans on dropping it yet.

C3: Oh C3. This is one of the shows that I saw the second episode to, and I admit, it changed my opinion of the show. From the first episode, I thought it was going to be a generic harem show with a mystical subtext about inanimate objects becoming sentient because of various reasons. Comedy would ensue. The second episode changed that initial idea. Now I think that it is a rip off of Toaru Majutsu no Index. Now, I love index, I think it is a cool story with an awesome religious versus science subtext. C3 seems to be all the action of Index, but none of the heart or story. I just doesn’t look good. I think I will stick to this show for a few more episodes, but I might ultimately drop it.

Ben-To: Ben-To  looks like it will be my anime of the season. It sounds like my anime of the season. It is about people beating the crap out of each other for cheap, half price food. And I pray that it doesn’t get any deeper then that. I don’t want them to start talking about some spiritual powers, or having to save the world, or anything like that. I want this show to be only about people beating the crap out of each other for half price bento boxes. I think I love this show. It is so over the top, and so cool, that it will be just a fun ride from start to finish.

Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!: I couldn’t even make it past the first episode. It bored me. About half way through I just couldn’t watch it. This might be a good series for some, but for me, it was just nothing.

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai: A show about people who do not have friends. This show is a quintessential harem anime. This show literally has one of every type of harem fetish you could ask for. It has the maid, the loli, the nun, the tsundere, possibly the older sister type, the teacher/scientist type, and possibly more. I shouldn’t like this show. But I honestly think that this show is honest about what it is trying to portray. It is a show about a group of people who have trouble making friends in some shape or form. It is the classic rag tag group and how they will over come their problems and find friends. And I like it. I will be keeping with this show for a while, I don’t plan on dropping it in the very least.

So those are my thought about the new season. It looks like it is going to be a good season, with a good list of very different shows. I hope you enjoy. Until next time, have fun watching

Final Thoughts: Summer 2011

Final Thoughts: 2011 Summer Anime Season

Hey peoples! Well, it is that time again. A new anime season has started, and with that, the old one has finished. So I want to give some quick thoughts on what I watched last season. I’ll have the list of what I’m watching for the Fall 2011 anime season up soon, but for now, enjoy what has come to pass.

Double-J: Double-J was…weird. But an enjoyable weird. The art style was different, the jokes were hit or miss, but over all I enjoyed it. But I can defiantly see why others would not. I am someone who loves to see the more experimental stuff, the show that might not fit into what everyone was expecting, but is still enjoyable. Whether or not the experiment was a success is up to you, but I think I wouldn’t mind seeing more of that frog manga that Ichirou was drawing.

Yuru Yuri: This was the random moe-moe anime they show just about every season. But you know what? I liked it, and I really shouldn’t. It was pandering to an otaku audience. It was jokes about girls likening girls, and cute moe-moe blobs of characters I have seen done better in K-ON!. But for some reason I loved this show. It always made me laugh, the characters were bright, colorful, and most importantly, fun to watch, and it was just a nice show. I dislike the concept of moe, but god damn it, I keep falling for shows that are nothing but moe. *sigh* Next anime please,

Kamisama Dolls: When I first saw this show, my first thought was that it was a darker spiritual successor of Shingu Secret of the Stellar Wars. And I can still see that comparison, but it is, at least, different from that. This show had a lot of great characters, and an interesting concept, but I felt that it was still lacking something. The pacing was a bit off, the fan service was awkward and random, and timing of the comedy or dramatic bits could give a person whip lash. But it was solid, and I think it will become a better show in its second season, whenever that will be.

Morita-san wa Mukuchi: This show was three minute ray of sunlight once a week. It is a small simple show that is just nice to watch. The key is that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. A show like this would become annoying and dull if it was the length of a regular show. But because it is only three minutes, it is able to keep me interested, yet still wanting more. There is now a second season of this show, and I am incredibly happy because of that.

Nyanpire the Animation: Nyanpire got annoying. It was another short anime series, episodes only lasting a few minutes, but after a while it became grating. It wasn’t anything bad, it just lost what made it good.
I would recommend watching the first few episodes of the series, but it might get annoying after a while. But there was one thing that always made me happy, the ending theme. Dear god that ending theme was amazing in its insanity. Also, Double-J’s ending was good too. Just thought I would bring that up,

Usagi Drop: This might be a bit of a spoiler, so go ahead with caution. While watching Usagi Drop, I had heard a spoiler that the show would have an incredibly depressing and just cruel ending. I heard that the manga ended that way, and that this was staying awfully close to the manga. (I have yet to read the manga, so I have no clue if that has an incredibly depressing and cruel ending.) So when I watched the last episode, all I could do was try and figure out how they were going to hurt the small family that I had been watching grow and change over the past three or so months. And you know what? It didn’t happen. It had a sweet ending, the ending I was expecting. A happy ending. And I felt trolled. But I loved this show. It was nice, and normal. I felt as if these characters could really exist. The stress of that ending did not detract from  the show at all, I completely recommend this show.

Dantalian no Shoka: If this show had come out a season or two later, I would have called it a clone of Kami-sama no Memo-chou, just with more magic stuff. But it isn’t, so I can’t. what I can say is that this show was not fun to watch. It wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it was dull and the main characters were just annoying. Ok, I admit that Huey was a good nice guy character, but he had no personality, he was just there to do pull out the books. But god I hated Dalian. She was annoying and greedy and was the type of tsundere I just end up hating in a show. And the ending, dear lord the ending. One of the shows saving graces was its supporting cast. They were at least interesting. If they were to make a second season of this show, I would hope that they would follow the other people with book princesses, like the book police, or the mad scientist. At least then they might be able to make a lick of sense of that ending. Dear god that ending.


Kami-Sama no Memo-chou: This was a good detective show. It was the complete opposite of Dantalian. The characters were interesting, the stories were deep and realistic, and you really felt for the characters. This is one of the few series that made me tear up at the ending in a long time. I think it was one of the best series of the season. This was a show about broken and hurting people coming together to try and do something, anything good, even if it is only a little. It is a show about people, not characters. I loved this show.


Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni!: The first season of this show was great. And the second season was able to keep up with it. I liked the advancement of the relationships, the lessened focus on Akihisa’s sister, and the bits of back story they put in. This is one of the few shows that can make me cheer and root for the main characters doing something horrible, like peeping on the girls in the hot springs. They made it seem like some deep battle for justice against an immovable enemy, and it made you cheer. I am looking forward to  the next season.

Ikoku Meiro no Croisee: This was another simple series. It was very slice of life, with interesting characters and just nice stories. But it didn’t seem to have any staying power. Towards the end I just got bored with the series. I still liked it, I just wasn’t into it anymore. Which is really unfortunate, because I genuinely  liked it. It was just boring.

So that was the 2011 summer anime season. Had some good and some bad. Look forward to my fall 2011 season first impressions coming soon. Maybe even later today. Until next time, have fun watching.