Fall
2012 Anime Season
Once again it is time to look at all the
brand new releases that Japan has to offer. This season we are getting a lot of
interesting shows, and some that might even become classics in the future. So
let’s get right to it, these are my first impressions of the fall 2012 anime
season.
Shin Sekai Yori- I’m gonna be honest, I
have no interest in this show. It’s a horror show similar to Another, in that
it has some gore and I don’t plan on watching it in the near future. The show
itself is some supernatural mystery show involving Buddhism, superpowers, and
children, which is an odd combination any day of the week. It is reminiscent to
the flashback parts of Kamisama Dolls, with a small secretive village and many
hidden secrets. But I honestly don’t care about the show at all. I am sure if
some people will like it, with its creepy atmosphere and mysteries, but it is
not for me, it is a pass.
Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun- This is actually
one of two shows that have the exact same basic description. Girl who only
cares about grades, and doesn’t give a crap about friends and relationships
finds herself making friends and finding a life outside of herself, and even
love. This one so far has been the better of the two. The girl really only
cares about grades and just doesn’t care about people, until she meets the
resident screw up. He is a social idiot and doesn’t have many friends also, and
gets into fights at the drop of a hat. He is also the smartest kid in school,
setting up a bit of a rivalry between the main two leads. I like this show. It
is bright and has a lot of energy to it. The characters are really fun to watch
and the romance seems nice and pure. I do fear it will become really dark
eventually, someone dying or just too much drama, but some drama wouldn’t be
hated. I plan on watching My Little Monster this season.
Kamisama Kiss- Kamisama Kiss is an
interesting show to be sure. It is a shoujo, possible reverse harem, about a
girl, who is usually known for her awful luck, who becomes god. Well she
becomes a Shinto god of the earth, and has to deal with demons and deities
alike. It is basically every shoujo comedy reverse harem show that has been
around before. But I do like it. The art design is very nice, and I like the
world they are building around the main character. I plan on keeping up with
this little show.
Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!- For many
people there is a time during adolescence where we imagine that we are much
more then we really are. Instead of being some random kid like so many others,
I am special, I am a hero, or a dark prince, or the last, best hope for
humanity. This is 8th grade syndrome, and one of the main focuses of
this show. Chuunibyou is all about a kid who once had 8th grade
syndrome, and now that he is older and wiser he has realized how ridiculous he
was being. Now he is out to be the normal high school student. Unfortunately
his new neighbor is currently going through 8th grade syndrome, and
is threatening to reveal his dark past. And by dark I mean embarrassing. This
is genuinely a good show. The art design mixes darks and bright colors really
well. And the characters are lively and really interesting. The world the main
female lead imagines for herself is fascinating, yet perfect for her. And the
main character’s Dark Flame Master past is hilarious. I look forward to
suffering through 8th grade syndrome this season.
BTOOOM!- For some reason the sub-genre
of videogames turned real life is getting hugely popular lately. With Accel
World and Sword Art Online from past seasons, and at least two more from this
season, it is really taken off. BTOOOM is another among this growing genre. A
first person bomber originally, BTOOOM follows a bunch of people stranded on an
island to play a game I presume they are all already good at, but with real
life consequences like death and such. It is also really fanservicey, though
you only get the bare minimal of that in the first episode. Really, this show
holds nothing for me. BTOOOM as a video game seems a little interesting; an FPS
with no guns, so strategy is paramount. That alone seems interesting. But the
main character was boring, and really an awful person, taking out his
aggressions by yelling at his mother and throwing a controller into a wall. But
I have no interest in BTOOOM! Though I will give it this, it has a really fun
name, and the main character looks like Light Yagami from Death Note, so that’s
always funny.
Busou Shinki- Have you ever seen Angelic
Layer? With the fighting dolls, and CLAMP, and it being a prequel to Chobits?
Yeah, this is a worse version of Angelic Layer. It’s the future, presumably,
and humanity has these little doll things that we can make fight for fun. But
the main human is not doing that route. Instead he just has three, and later
four by the end of the first episode, scantily clad animate dolls running
around his house helping him and serving him. It is a slice of life about dolls
made for combat. It is like if Medabots stopped being about robot fighting and
became a high school drama, with the robots having the relationship issues. And
the dolls themselves just look awkward. They are showing entirely too much
skin, but are still dolls so their joints look like toy joints. But they looks
really creepy under that look likes moving flesh. It is like they just have
random bevels and holes on their shoulders and joints, it puts me off. Also,
second episode has an octopus attack. There were tentacles, with tiny
underdressed women. Yeah, this show is dropped.
Zetsuen no Tempest- I am really of two minds
of this show. On the one hand, it is kind of cool. The show is basically about
a high school kid who is friends with a dude who has sworn to kill the man who
has killed his sister. The back drop to this is a world going mad, with a
secret cult resurrecting huge…something’s from the ocean with magic that
accidently turn people to metal. The only thing stopping this from happening is
a magical girl trapped on an island with communicating with the friend of the
main character. So there is mystery, magic, and some interesting characters. On
the other hand there is nothing really tying me to the show. We barely know
anything about the characters, though it seems they are revealing more about
them as the show goes on, and the events just seem really random. It might just
be that we don’t know the reason for anything yet, but I want some sort of
explanation. Also I have no interest in the fighting for some reason. I mean
there are good moments once in a while, but it just seems bland to me. But
something some things has drawn me back. There are a few mysteries I want
answered, and the main character is hiding some big secrets. So yeah, I think
will keep up with this for a little while. I might drop it after a while if it
becomes too much of a hassle, but it seems like an interesting show at least.
K- Swag the anime? Possibly, this is a
heavily styled show. But that is not the point. K is, apparently, an alternate
world with some technological advances and magic. Everyone is after to kill
this one dude who is not really the dude they all want to kill, and there is a
cat that can turn into a girl who needs some more clothing and that I think no
one else can see. Those are all the definite things I can say about this show
really. It hasn’t really explained anything yet, but the hints it has dropped
has allowed stuff to be discerned, like the use of magic is something there,
but not exactly known or cared about by people. Also the show has some tonal
problems to it. While comedy seems to be the underlining tone, or at least
humor in a situation, the action scenes communicate drama, and the fact that
people want to kill the main character, not even just hurt him, they want him
dead, really should go against any humorous undertones. But I feel these
problems will be fixed with time. Over all I liked K, it seems like an
interesting show if it gets fleshed out later in the season.
Onii-chan Dakeko Ai Sae Areba Kankei Nai
yo ne- It’s the incest anime of the season. That really should be all I should
say on the series, but it’s not. The basic plot is that twins, a boy and a
girl, who haven’t seen each other in years, finally reunite and live together
while going to the same high school. The sister has a major brother complex and
is spending plans on spending her time together with her brother wearing down
his defenses, showing how much she loves him, and getting into his pants. She
thinks she has all the time in the world to get this done, living alone with
him and all, and one Gilligan cut later we see that three more girls, all who
also want in his pants, have also moved in. This show is, for all intents and
purposes, a terrible, a by the numbers, moe harem incest show. But for some
reason I find it hilarious. It might be so bad it’s good, it might be just one
of those guilty pleasures we all have, I have no clue. All I know is that I
plan on keeping up with the incest show with the incredibly long title for a
while longer.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (2012)- Well
bizarre is a proper word to describe this show. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a
long running manga series about, stuff. I’ve never read it myself, but I know
it involves the supernatural, vampires, and punching things. I think adventures
are in there somewhere too. And the anime so far has almost none of that. To be
fair, they are starting very early in Jojo’s life, and we are getting a lot of
back story right from the beginning. The show itself is, in a word, ridiculous.
Everything is over the top, people are almost always talking about their
motivations and feelings on any given subject, and everything is just
incredibly over dramatic. And that is why I plan on keeping up with this
series. It is completely over the top and ridiculous, and knows it. It is like
the drama that goes on in wrestling, only better acted and with smarter plots.
I am really looking forward to how insane this show gets.
Little Busters- You know Air, Clannad,
and Kanon? Well here is another one. Little Busters starts off about a group of
high school students who are trying to hold on to their closing days of
adolescence, most of them graduating in a year and the leader of the group
graduation in less time. In order to do this they decide to make a baseball
team. And to do that they need 5 more members, who will all be cute girls
inevitably. Little Busters feels strange. The humor in the first two episodes
are spot on, and the characters seem interesting, from the muscle head to the
slightly air headed leader to the only sane man among them. But I know the
other shoe will drop. All of the shows I mentioned above are like this. They
start out really sweet and simple, and then the world gets turned upside down,
and someone turns into a bird, and everybody is sad. And they have already
showed signs this in the second episode. I would like to state my prediction
now! The whole show will turn out to be the main character’s dream. He has
already stated that he is a narcoleptic, and some other possible hints, if I am
reading them correctly, seem to hint at something more that is going on in this
world. I do plan on keeping up with Little Busters, it does seem like a really
good show. But if I have to drop anything, this might go on that list. Either
way, I look forward to seeing if my prediction is true.
Sukitte Ii Na Yo- Remember the show I
mentioned above, about the girl who don’t care about social life, and then
meets a guy and suddenly has friends and stuff? This is the second one. And it
is defiantly the worst of the two. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad.
Compared to My Little Monster, it is much more adult, with references to sex
and a lot more kissing. Also it feels more… rapey. In that I would believe
someone to have been raped, or someone will be raped from this show more the My
Little Monster. Sukitte is also much about high school drama then its
counterpart. While the male lead in My Little Monster is a social outcast, the
one for this show is the most popular kid in school. And it defiantly has the
feel of a popular kids story. This is a story about someone gaining friends
from outside their original social circle, and having to deal with the issues
of popularity or some other form of first world problems. My Little Monster is
more about finding friends from anywhere and having to deal with having friends
for the first time. If you can’t tell, I like My Little Monster more than
Sukitte Ii Na Yo. If I need to drop one of these shows, it will be Sukitte. I
am not sure if I will drop this show at the end of the day, but if I need to
drop something then this will be on that list. It will be interesting to
compare these two shows as they go on though.
Code:Breaker- Another show I can’t
really say much about. There is magic, and murder, and dog mercy killing, and
just strangeness. It seems this show is about a person who commits evil and
kills those who are evil and kill. With fire magic. He moves to a new town,
starts going to school, and the most popular girl in school notices something
is up, and accuses him of murdering a bunch of dudes. He says no, even though
he totally did murder a bunch of dudes. To be fair, I liked the popular girl.
She had a good sense of honor and duty, and I could see her becoming a good
lead character. And then the first episode ends with her head being burned by
magic fire. For now, I am assuming she died, like the coffee girl in Elfin
Leid. This show barely kept my interest when I watched the first episode. I
really liked the female protagonist, and then she probably died. I just stopped
caring. Someone might find this enjoyable, but it is not for me.
Maji- Aladdin meets anime? Not so much,
but it is borrowing heavily from 1000 Arabian Nights. The show is an adventure
story, it seems, about Aladdin and Ali Baba. The world they live in is an Arabian
style desert world filled with strange monsters out in the desert, slavery, and
large towers the randomly pop up called Dungeons. These dungeons apparently
hold riches beyond imagination, and some might even hold djinn. Aladdin, the
small one of the duo, partially controls a djinn, and has promised to find its brethren.
Ali Baba wants to find riches in order to live an easy life and, in my opinion
of his character, never by indebted to anyone again, like live free. I really
liked this show. The comedy was spot on for the most part, and the character
bits were interesting, making me want to get to know these guys more and more. The
fanservice bits did seem to drag a bit, but they were for the sake of a few
really funny jokes, so they were forgiven. I like Magi, and look forward to
finding out more about the characters and the world around them.
Teekyuu- It made Softenni look good. I
do not plan on watching it. It is one of those three minute short shows, about girls
playing tennis, and it was boring and really lame. Dropped.
Ixion Saga DT- Oh my god was this show
great. Like it really shouldn’t be, but it is. Remember way back at BTOOOM how I
mentioned another show about real world and video games and stuff? This is the
second one and man is it better than BTOOOM. Ixion Saga DT is a comedy about a
geeky kid who accidently ends up in a magical world of swords sorcery and
transvestites. Also dick jokes. I’m serious, half this show is just penis
humor, and it works for some reason. There is an episode of Gintama where a
bunch of the main characters are turned into, or a part of them, are turned
into screwdrivers. To find out where the aliens who did it are, they have to
play a MMO, and they make gamer jokes and video game jokes, and Gintoki’s penis
was turned into a hexagonal screwdriver, and it was a good time. This show is
that episode turned into a whole series. And I love it. It just works for me.
Sometimes dumb comedies are just fun to watch, and I look forward to see more
of this show this year.
Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo- Sometimes
doing the right thing can lead to negative consequences. The main character in
this show learns this by being forced to move into the misfit dorms after
saving a cat off the street. Now his goal is to find a home for this cat, and
the many more he has subsequently adopted, and move out of the house of crazy
people. This is complicated by the main character now having to take care of a
new student there, who has some troubles of her own. This is defiantly one of
the stranger slice of life shows this season. But so far I like the strangeness
of it all. The main character is obviously good person, if a bit too much
wanting to be average. And the rest of the cast is very lively and fun to
watch. I plan on keeping up with this little show this season.
Girls und Panzer- It is a show about moe
girls and tanks, what’s not to love? To elaborate, Girls und Panzer takes place
in the future(?) and the height of femininity is the martial art of Tankery! The
show proper is about the new girl in school who doesn’t like tankery at all, but
is forced to partake in her schools tankery classes because she has experience,
and they want to win. The episode had some great character moments in my
opinion, from when our lead girl first makes some friends, to when they completely
defend her against the student council, who are forcing her to take tankery
against her wishes, to just the main girl checking her door to make sure that
she locked it properly. It does seem to be taking itself a bit too seriously,
but I feel this could work for the show over all. It makes the world they live
in seem all the more real that way. It does suffer a bit for being so moe
though, and the show seems to think that it has to fall under all the classic
moe tropes and idioms. But I like Giurls und Panzer. Again, it is ridiculous and
silly, and that’s what it is completely awesome.
Medaka Box Abnormal- If this was any
other second season, I would just say that it is the same as the first and move
on. But that is not the case. Medaka box, the manga, went through a few genre
changes, going from a student council manga to a high school fighting manga,
and then eventually it becomes a parody of high school fighting manga. We are
right in the beginning of the fighting anime part, and I am not looking forward
to it. I am not looking forward to it so much, I am thinking of dropping Medaka
Box this season. I liked the student council, I liked the whole helping people
idea they had from the beginning, I liked the greedy swimming girl. Now, I don’t
care at all.
So those are my first impressions of the
fall anime season. There looks to be some really good stuff this season. And some
stuff that is so bad it’s good. I am actually really excited for this anime
season. So until next time, have fun watching.
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