Fall 2014 Anime Season: First Impressions

Fall 2014 Anime Season: First Impressions

For a better look at the Fall anime chart, click this!

Coming in like a speeding bullet, here is the 2014 fall anime season! This season looks amazing, so let’s not waste any time. Here are my first impressions of the 2014 fall anime season. 

Tribe Cool Crew- This is an anime directed towards kids, which is admittingly something I don’t usually watch in anime, or at least go into blind like this. I am usually recommended shows like this, and they have been around for a while. This time, I have no such luck. It looked bright and shiny and I wanted to watch it. The show is about dancing, specifically more hip hop and street and break dancing. Our protagonist is a kid with mad ups, meaning he jumps great, and loves dancing. His hero, a world renowned singer and dancer, speaks to the kid’s heart, and inspires him. One day, he finds online a video of a girl dancing in a similar style to his that also really speaks to his heart. It turns out that the girl actually watches him dance, and one day they meet and secretly/accidently end up dancing together. The boy wants to form a dance group with her, but the girl is afraid to, for reasons we don’t really know yet. The key word for this show is fun. The show just has a really fun energy to it. Just watching the main character jump around and watching everyone dance is just really fun. The animation is really fun too. The art for the character designs are very stylistic, kind of almost cartoony, and I am really liking it. Also the use of CG animation for the dancing scenes I feel work well, though the transitions are sometimes a bit jarring. I think this is a fun, simple show about kids dancing and having fun and I like it. It isn’t deep or looks to be super intelligent, but sometimes all you want is fun dancing. Watch this show if you like fun.

Denkigai no Honyo-san- This is a comedy about a group a people working at a manga book store in Japan. The shop, and subsequently the show, are filled with otaku of every verity, from the doujinshi author who is always dead beat from working too late into the night, to the average otaku with his waifu and dedication and love of manga, to the zombie obsessed girl. The show is a mix of a realistic look at working in a store like this, with late nights shrink wrapping books and having to deal with government workers who have to regulate what porn is sold and how they are sold, with ridiculousness, like one character called the Sommelier who can tell exactly what type of porn you want just by looking at you, and then will give you the porn you didn’t even know you want. (To be fair, he doesn’t necessarily only give out porn, but he mostly gives out porn.) While the show is a mix of glorification and making fun of otaku and otaku culture in Japan, I like this show. It is sometimes stupid and silly and sometimes a bit too fanservice-y, they have a special character that all the sexy stuff happens to, and it definitely hinges on anime clichés and tropes, and reveling in them because the whole show is about anime. But I still like it. The show is actually pretty funny. There is a wonderful bit where the quite, young looking girl, first reveals that she loves zombies and zombies apocalypses to the point where she makes up another characters face in zombie make up so she can beat him with a metal bat, and later when she gets into a competition she just starts cursing everyone out in the adorable moe voice. Any show that has the super stereotypical moe girl calling everyone a bitch and telling them to grow some balls has my vote of approval. This is a dumb show, but I really like it. Watch it if you like shows about nerds doing nerd things and shows that make fun of anime and otaku culture in general.

Garo: Hoono no Kokuin- As you know, I am doing a weekly review series of this show, so anything I say here will most likely already have been said there, though hopefully in a more detailed form. So without rehashing what I have already written, just on the first episode, I like this show. It is action packed, the story seems interesting, and the show feels like a Garo series, which I feel is important for an animated series like this. If you have watched the Garo series, then I fully recommend this show so far, and if you haven’t seen anything form the Garo franchise at all I still recommend it. I think this is a good starting point for someone who has never seen Garo before. I recommend it, and I hope you enjoy my weekly posts on the show.

Step Up 2: The Animation

Log Horizon Second Season- I’ve been really excited for this show. The first season of Log Horizon was a solid show, not exactly the greatest thing ever to be subtitled on the internet, but fun and surprisingly logically put together. And of course it was miles about other shows of the same nature just by having likeable characters. The first episode of the second season though gives me a little bit of pause. The episode was told by showing what I presume to be the ending or middle sections of some of the major stories of this season, which admittingly threw me for a loop until most of the way through the episode. But it made sense after a while. It seems like this season will be creating a larger story then the previous one. The first season’s focus on the people trapped in this world that was once a video game they played and how they both adapted and starting actually living in this world was an interesting story. I think my hope was that the second season would be more of this, at least at first. We would get to see how the adventurers are thriving and inventing more and more, and then after a while something new would happen, maybe less than half way through the season. But with the sort of preview of the big plots this season it kind of undercuts the whole actual reveal of this change to the series. But this, to be fair, is a minor quibble. Overall the first episode was good as an episode from the series, an average episode at the end of things. One thing that seems very interesting is that we have a time frame of which the series will take place. It is beginning around a few days after Halloween, and it looks like it is ending sometime around Christmas Eve, based on a scene at the end of the first episode. I hope the second season of Log Horizon can keep up the same quality that the first season did. I hope they stray away from the non-temporally linearly storytelling that the first episode partook of. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am worried about the show, but not enough to stop watching. I still like Log Horizon, and if you have watched the first season then I would say watch the second. Just don’t hold your breath if it doesn’t go how you want it to.

Cross Ange: Tenshi no Ryuu no Rondo- I kind of struggled for a while with this show. Let’s start at the beginning. It’s the future and mankind has magic and that magic has led to world peace. There are only two real problems in the world. One is interdimensional dragons that come in and attack, but the world has that covered with giant robots. The other problem is that some people, only women, are born without magic, and actually have the accidental ability to disrupt magic with a touch. These people are considered violent, lesser humans and are separated from the public, for the ‘good of society’. Those who are separated are put on a prison island and are forced to fight the dragons. The show follows a princess, of the whole world I assume, and is going to eventually be the queen. Everyone loves her, and she is a good princess. And more importantly, she is kind of human. They have this little moment I really appreciated where she hated losing this future rich person sport, and she wanted to win, something that is a natural feeling when you lose a big game. But she couldn’t show the world that, or people would think that she was petty or greedy. It gave her just a twinge of humanity. Unfortunately right after that we get to see how indoctrinated she is to the racism of the world, that non magic users are lesser beings who need to be eradicated for the good of the whole. Plot twist! She herself has no magic, though she didn’t know it. It was hidden from her by her family and she had maids do all the magic she needed her whole life. So on the day of her birthday her mother is killed and she is brought to the prison island. Now up to this point I was mostly for this series. The show opened with this surprisingly cool scene of a bunch of people fighting dragons in mecha suits and a girl who was probably our lead heroin, sometime after the events of the first episode, was badass and cool, singing a somber song as she straight up killed a dragon. And then then the final scene of the episode happened. I am not going to dance around it, she was raped. Now, rape is always an awful thing, and when used in literature or fiction, it is almost never used properly. But as a way of fully destroying and bringing down this character, taking literally everything away from her so she starts at the bottom, basically if it was handled properly, I would not have minded as much. I still would have thought it was a colossal misstep of the show, but I probably could have looked past it, if the rape was actually shown as a horrible thing. But it really wasn’t. The scene was meant to titillate the audience, it was fan service at its core. And that was just terrible. I was really looking forward to this show, I was hoping for an action packed, badass girls show that was all about a princess kicking ass and saving the day and it would have been awesome. But once you use rape to titillate your audience, I can’t watch a show with that anymore. This show had potential, and it was squandered. I am dropping this show.

World Trigger- There are monsters that come from another world. No weapon known to man could stop them, until one day a young man with a strange blade killed one, and then an organization started up to kill these monsters who only appear in one spot in japan. I think. Sometime later, at a random high school, we follow two kids. One has a bit of a hero complex, always willing to do what is right and go against the bullies, even if it means getting his ass kicks, but isn’t outgoing, usually being silent and cold. The other is the white haired new kid in school who doesn’t understand how to deal with human things, how to humanely deal with antagonism without breaking the dudes arm, but seems willing to learn. The cold kid is already part of the organization, who use weapons called triggers to fight, and the new kid is not part of this organization, but already has one of these weapons. This is an entirely generic show that I cannot care about. Everything about this show is boring and cliché and dumb and I couldn’t be bothered to care about it. If you like entirely generic shows, watch this. If you like anything else, just let this one pass.

I know this is from season one, but I love the Devils in Glasses

Nanatsu no Taizai- In this western style fantasy anime, one day 7 incredibly strong people attacked the kingdom, and killed many of the valiant knights that protect the kingdom. Years later, the kingdom is in peril. It seems the 7 warriors were not villains, but instead were heroes framed by the knights of the kingdom, now those knights are making their move to seize control. The princess of the land, in order to protect her kingdom and her father the King, goes out and tries to find those 7 warriors, called the Seven Deadly Sins. And the first one she finds is a young looking bar owner with a near bladeless sword and a talking pig. So the show seems to be a comedic, action/adventure story with an ensemble cast made up of the 7 warriors plus the princess. Going from the first episode alone, this show seems like a fun ride. The action seemed tight and I am always in for a fun adventure series. I am not sure if this show can keep up the quality though. A show like this can have a great first episode, and then every episode afterwards is just boring.  For now, it is not on my drop list, but if the show cannot keep up its quality, then it will probably be put on pause.

Gugure! Kokkuri-san- A young girl lives alone in a big empty house. She lives alone, she only eats instant ramen and junk food, has no friends, and has retreated within herself so much so that she believes herself to be a doll, who has no need for emotions and friends. One day, while playing a game like an Ouija board but with a coin on a piece of paper, she summons a fox spirit, the titular Kokkuri-san. And seeing this girl in this pitiful state, he takes it upon himself to haunt her, and become her guardian. In response she gouges his eyes out. This is a really great comedy. One of the things that works for the show is how the main comedy duo consistently switches who is the straight man and who is the funny man. Every joke seems to switch it up, with really keeps the jokes fresh. The show also isn’t afraid to go the more dramatic route. The show isn’t afraid to show us just how sad the lives of the little girl and the fox spirit really is, and how much they really need each other. This is a really funny show, that sometimes gets really dark, which sometimes just makes the jokes even funnier. I plan on keeping up with this show, though that decision might be influenced by the disco influenced opening theme. Those guys can really boogie down.  

Shingeki no Bahamut GENESIS- Another western style fantasy anime, Rage of Bahamut is based on a Japanese mobile card game, and of course is nothing like a card game would be. The series follows a bounty hunter just trying to make a living. Our hero is a lying, cheating, asshole of a guy, which means he is incredibly awesome. He goes after criminals who use magic somehow, like summoning monsters, or demons themselves. When he defeats them they turn into cards (see the connection) and turns those cards over to a god of sorts, who acts as the liaison to the bounty hunters. One day, while drinking and pitching woo to a couple of bar maidens, he claims he knows a secret route to Helheim, a barren, frozen wasteland to the north that few adventurers ever return from. A woman overhears this and believes him, possibly because she is not human and doesn’t fully understand how human lies work yet. She forms a contract with him, giving him a demons tail, and primes to remove the tail when he takes her to Helheim, which of course he doesn’t actually known how. Now both of them are being chased by the government, the army, and other bounty hunters, all while our main character tries to bullshit his way all the way to the frozen north, or die trying. Also the girl can turn into a crazy one winged angle/demon of death. She is pretty cool. This show is one of the best ones this season has to offer. It is really fun, the action is amazing, and the characters are perfect. Each one feels well rounded and human. Our main is self-serving and greedy, but in a human way. He isn’t a monster, he just looks out for number one. Most of the second episode is him trying to kill the girl who cursed him, which is a logical, if not moral, thing to do. I am going to have a lot of fun with this show. Any show with really great, human characters is favorable in my book. Watch this show, it is good.

Any anime that has boogie-ing down is alright in my book

Orenchi no Furo Jijou- This is a micro series about a merman who lives with this dude in side of his bathtub. They are both handsome and BL shenanigans sometimes happen. There is never much to say about comedy micro series like this, it is kind of funny and not bad. It is also just nothing special. It is a complete average micro series about handsome men living in an apartment together. I will probably keep up with it.

Yowamushi Pedal GRANDE ROAD- This is one of the few shows this season that I have been waiting on the edge of the seat for. I love Yowamushi Pedal, it is a great sports anime about bicycling. It has a great main character, Onoda, who at first wanted to join the anime club because of his love of anime and junk, but because of that clubs disbanding before he could arrive at school, he accidently ends up meeting people related to the cycling club, and because of his accidental extreme personal cycling training, he is a natural for the club, and eventually becomes friends with everyone there and joins the club, even becoming one of the members of the main team. I love this show. It is a really great sports anime, perfectly using all the tropes and clichés of the genre, while still giving us something new and fun. I think one of the things that make this show so good is that, at the end of the day, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The show knows everyone in it is ridiculous, from the dude who talks to his abs to the enemy cyclist with the tongue that could touch his own eye. Yeah, they are cycling for the good of the team and they want to win and all that good stuff, but it still takes time to crack a few jokes at everyone’s expense, which is good for a show like this. This is a top notch sports anime, if you aren’t already watch it, watch the first season and then start watching this one.

Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de- A straight up harem comedy anime, something which I realize I watch less and less now-a-days, about a literacy club. They only male in the show, the harem’s center as it were, has chuunibyou, and consistently acts like he has super powers and all that junk. Until one day, while explaining why it is always possible for people to randomly get super powers, he actually does summon some bright lights, and everyone in the club gains powers. One girl can control fire, water, wind, and earth. One can summon anything out of nothing, the power of creation. One can stop and slow down time. The fourth girl is the healer, being able to return stuff to its original form. And our hero, the one who is most prepared to have powers, can summon a black flame that isn’t hot or powerful or really anything good. But now that they have these powers, they realize that there is nothing to do with their powers. There is not secret organization or evil threat to the world. So they must go about their everyday lives with their crazy powers. This show is a very generic harem comedy. It has all the usual cast of characters, from the loli to the tsundere to the girl who kicks the main characters ass. And of course all of them are in love with the main, but only the tsundere will get him because that is just how harem shows work. The whole draw of this show, that it is a daily life style show but with super powers, can be a decent enough to get someone into a show, but I am still not sold on the series yet. But there are few things that make me want to watch this show. The first is the studio. This show is done by the same studio that made Kill la Kill, Studio Trigger. Their sort of mix of cheap and incredibly well done animation is in the show, mixing cartoony animation and decent anime style animation, is fully on display here. The second thing bringing me back is a bit of a gut feeling I have for the show. There was a bit of foreshadowing that there being an actual secret organization or plot going on behind the scenes, but that isn’t what I am talking about. I can’t really explain it, but I have a gut feeling that this show is going to become something. There is something there, maybe later on in the show that will completely change this show form a generic harem anime to something good. I could be completely wrong, but I have a little bit of hope for this show. I will keep up with it for now, and if it is proven wrong then I will probably drop it.

I like the idea of serious Onoda. He would kick all of the asses.

Akatsuki no Yona- This show is almost like a better version of Cross Ange. In a more eastern fantasy series, (the names indicate a Korean style world but for all I know it is supposed to be more Chinese) a princess to a small country surrounded by powerful forces turns 16. There is a large party and everything is happy. Her father, a peace loving man who hates weapons, has done everything he could to give his daughter whatever she wanted, but is revealed that the one thing she really wants he cannot and will not give her, the lover of her life. She is in love with her cousin, (which is not as weird as it should be because of royalty and olden times stuff) one of the two people she spent much of her youth with. The other is a powerful warrior who is the general to the king’s army. The princess love of her life is a gentle, kind man who has tried to protect and nurture the princess all of his life. And then, the gentle, kind man who the princess loves murders the king in the middle of the night, right in front of the princess. And then tries to kill the princess. The show is a fantasy action piece, about a princess trying to reclaim her kingdom from the man who stole it. We see in the opening and the first part of the show that she gathers a small group of heroes who will fight for and with her, and she herself knows her way around a bow and arrow. For the most part, this show is a lot like Cross Ange. Both are about a princess whose life is turned completely upside down, are thrown from the top of the world to the bottom, and now must claw their way up to the top again. The difference is how they present their female leads. Cross Ange uses its female lead to titillate the male audience, she is there for fan service at the end of the day. Akatsuki no Yona’s lead character feels like a real character. She is well rounded and has wants and desires and is never presented as just a sexual toy to be played with and watched. I really like this show. I can’t wait to see our heroin take down the man who stole away her life. I can’t wait to see her convince her team to form around her. I want to see her fight with a bow and arrow and I want to watch her master it. I am defiantly going to watch this show in its entirety.   

Gundam Build Fighters Try- The second season of Build Fighters is upon us! I am super excited for this show. The first season was a perfect balance of goofy fun and great action, with just enough Gundam references to give fans something to seek out, but not so much so that it bogs down the show for non-fans like myself. The second season seems to be focusing more on the step-child of the Gundam franchise, G Gundam. Our main character is a martial artist who can hear the voice of his opponent through their fists, or at least through there plastic models. His gunpla is also a version of the Burning Gundam that Domon Kasshu uses in the world tournament. His introduction to the series was even exactly like how Domon was introduced in his series! The big thing for this series, as opposed to the previous season of Gundam Build Fighters, is that the tournament this year is a team battle. We aren’t just following one pilot or one builder this year, but a small group of people who all specialize in different things. It will prove to be an interesting set up for the fights. I can’t wait to watch this show. It is going to be a fun, crazy little show, and I am super excited for it. Go watch it, and have some good old fashion Gundam fun.

Hitsugi no Chaika AVENGING BATTLE- This is another show I am excited to see come back. It is Chaika, the Coffin Princess, a fantasy show about a girl trying to find the remains of her dead father. The beginning of the second season starts us off right where we left off. Gillete, the man after Chaika and her crew is dead, and the woman that loved him is revealed to be another Chaika, though she didn’t know that either. I am going to go with my gut right now, and say Gillete isn’t dead. We never saw the body and there was so much more we could have done with him. He can’t be dead just yet, though I look forward to be proven wrong by the show. I have already said all I want to say about this show a few seasons ago. It is an alright show, though nowhere perfect, and still relies a bit too heavy on anime tropes, but on its own it is pretty good. I do like the bit of expansion on how the magic guns work in the show, but it wasn’t deep enough to go past anything more than a comment. If you liked the first season, watch this, it is basically more of the same but in a good way.

THIS HAND OF MINE IS BURNING RED! IT'S LOUD ROAR TELLS ME TO DEFEAT YOU!

Shirobako- Shirobako is about the behind the scenes, production side of how anime is made. And it is fantastic. I have always wanted a show like this, ever since I saw Animation Runner Kuromi years ago as a kid. I wanted a show that goes into the details of what makes an anime, from the sketches to the animation, from the voice acting and music stuff, and then actually having the show air. And this show has all of this. The show is about a small animation company having their first show in years, a magical girl idol show with moe girls. We get to see how the people behind the scenes run around like headless chickens, trying to get each episode finished, but stumbling around accidents and mistakes that occur during such an endeavor. The show follows a young woman who has a passion for the industry, and also her 4 friends who in high school all made a little anime, and now each works in the industry in different ways. One of the things that makes this show so good is that it really expresses the dread but also hope that comes with make a show of this caliber. Any little trip up can end up completely ruining weeks of work, and when you have to have the show out weekly that hiccup on production schedule can really fuck you over. This is a fairly realistic show about what goes into making an anime, and I am really into it so far. This is going to be a really great show, and I recommend it to any anime fan who wants to know how your animes are made.

BONJOUR♪Sweet Love Patisserie- Another micro series, this time about a girl who wants to become a pastry chef, and is admitted into a very good school for pastry chefs on a scholarship. But the school has one major rule, do not date the teachers. But the teachers are all hot men! What is a girl to do? Also there is another hot guy who is actually a student, and she doesn’t care about romance she just wants to open a pastry shop. This is a reverse harem anime about Patisseries and it looks harmless. It isn’t necessarily deep or complex, but I like good reverse harems and I am sure this will turn out to be a better than average reverse harem. There isn’t much to say, if you liked singing pretty boys fawning over a girl I am sure you will like baking pretty boys fawning over a girl.

And that is the 2014 fall anime season. The highlights for new shows are definitely Rage of Bahamut, Shirobaku, and Gugure! Kokkuri-san, while the second seasons of Gundam Build fighters and Yowamushi Pedal are both making me very happy for this season. I do want to say real quick I will be also watching the new Mushi-shi season, but I didn’t want to hold out until that show came out to write about it, especially when I would just be writing all the same things I have written before about the show. Over all this looks like an incredible season. I can’t wait to see if all my predictions are proven fruitful, or if I am just completely wrong about everything. So until next time, have fun watching.

I had no where else to put this, but...just look at this.