Anime Series of Spring 2010

I can bet you didn’t expect this to show up on a technically WoW-themed blog, did you. ;) Well, the main reason is that continuing to restrict myself to blogging only about WoW was a really bad idea – especially if there is nothing interesting happening to me in Azeroth, as it happens quite often lately – and you can see the results of that from the sparingly appearing posts here. So, here it is – my second big hobby besides gaming. There will be more coming, but don’t count on me blogging about each new episode that gets aired. ;)

With that short introduction out of the way, lets get straight to the meat of the post. The series presented here are ordered in the way I’ve liked them so far – remember though that I’ve seen only one or two episodes of each, as they are still new and being currently shown on Japanese TV. The pictures below are linked to the full (or almost full, as most of these are in 720p and I’ve resized them for web) versions of the screencaps.

Kaichou wa Maid-sama!

So, what do we have here. A girl who enrolled in an all-boys high school that recently turned co-ed, and is now the president of the school’s student council. The same girl  happens to absolutely hate all males and wants to turn the school into a nice place, one more suitable for girls. The very same girl also works part-time in a maid cafe (in a different district of the city of course, so the students of the school won’t use it against her) after school to support her family. Then it just takes a few of her classmates to discover that fact, and we have the story rolling.

Well, what can I say about it. Somehow I tend to watch and enjoy these kind of anime, and Kaichou has all the qualities that I need – nice and simple art style, an explosive female protagonist and lots and lots of humour. Which is why it’s placed here as the show I’ll definitely keep watching this Spring.

B Gata H Kei

Once again we have a school and a beautiful girl, but this time, her plans are completely different. Her dream is to have sex with a hundred different guys, and she just has to find a nice (possibly inexperienced as well so she doesn’t get laughed at) guy for a good start! Of course she does – by accidentally falling on him in a book shop and thinking he sacrificed himself to save her. It doesn’t really help that she proceeds to scare him away right after that, and she didn’t even remember his face. Fortunately for her (and conveniently for the viewers), the poor guy is sitting right next to her in the classroom on the next day. Things go more crazy from that point, as both of them are inexperienced virgins and afraid of basically everything. That’s what makes it really fun, though.

It’s simply hilarious to watch, and manages to not turn into something focused mostly on showcasing pretty boobs and asses, for which it gets a lot of bonus points. It’s a really strong contender for the first place in this season for me, whatever might that tell about me. ;)

Senkou no Night Raid

Away from pretty schoolgirls for a bit, here’s something a bit more serious. This story is set in a year 1931 and takes place in China, where a small group of people with supernatural powers (teleporting, telekinesis, telepathy and improved vision) is sent to infiltrate a camp of an armed organization and rescue a kidnapped president of a Japanese company. Fortunately, even though they mostly rely on their powers to succeed, it somehow doesn’t feel like it’s going to turn into a superhero movie type of thing.

There have been only one episode of this anime so far, and they haven’t really explained anything in it other than what I’ve wrote above. It might be fun if the studio can put an interesting story behind it, but it’s really hard to decide after 24 minutes of almost pure action. I’ll definitely watch at least one or two more episodes, as the first one surely did a good job at capturing the viewer’s interest.

Arakawa Under the Bridge

Another comedy show this season, this one is a bit more of the weird variety. A young boy is saved from drowning by a homeless girl living under the bridge, and because he hates being indebted to anyone (and especially over something that big), he asks her what can he do to repay her. She doesn’t want money from him or a new house, and instead asks him to fall in love with her.

The first two episodes are really strange. I’m still not totally convinced if I like it – they have some good moments, but most of the situations just keeps me amazed at the absurdity of them, rather than laughing. Oh, and that also includes the opening animation. Still, it’s not really that bad, so I’ll see if it becomes more interesting later.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Guess what, it’s another school comedy. This one is a magic school though, so at least it’s somewhat different from the others. Here we follow a young boy that just recently transferred here, and managed to become the center of attention for the whole school from the start. How? Well, the school has a mysterious hat assigning students to the houses bird foretelling the students’ futures, and this very boy is told that he will be a Demon King, instead of a good high priest that he dreams to be. With news of that announcement spreading around the school, soon the boy will find himself right in the middle of panic, destruction and, for some unknown reason, naked female body parts.

Well, the last part is what makes this anime (or rather, the whole ecchi comedy genre that it belongs to) a bit strange. They could’ve drop it and it would be a standard show, not especially bad or good, but instead they insist on putting our hero in weird situations as a way to show off boobs and make silly jokes about him being a pervert. Nothing too excessive though, so I don’t really mind, at least as long as they keep in on that level. It’s not a show to be a fan of, but it won’t hurt your brain to watch it as well.

Angel Beats!

Another school – but this time it’s also an afterlife. Should it surprise anyone then that everyone inside is already dead and can’t die again, no matter what happens to them? Probably not. What should surprise you though, is that there’s some sort of a resistance group here that is fighting against God and the angel (who is conveniently named Angel, and looks like a normal high school girl – that is, if we overlook her immunity to any damage and ability to summon huge blades from her wrists) that supervises this world. With guns. Lots of guns. Why the Angel lets them do so, is a mystery though.

So far it’s mostly a silly comedy show, but I’m hoping that will change and there will be some sort of story in it as well. Doesn’t really help that it’s drawn and animated in a weird style, especially all the male characters – and after the first episode the fandom already found a number of animation mistakes in the video. I’m not the one to care too much about some mistakes, if it also happens to have an interesting story, but so far it sadly doesn’t. I hope it will pick up speed in the few next episodes.

Heroman

A kid finds a broken robot toy, tries to repair it, the toy suddenly gets hit with a lightning bolt and comes to life as a giant robot, granting the kid (named Joey btw, but it’s not like anyone should really care) a freaking big controller glove in the process. Don’t ask me how that works. Together they save the kid’s almost-girlfriend from a nasty gas explosion, fight aliens and who knows what else.

It’s a series done by Stan Lee and Bones, both big names in their respective areas. Unfortunately it turned out to be rather annoying to watch – sure, the animation quality is what you would expect from a big animation studio, but the characters are drawn in a very weird way that I don’t really like at all. And the fact that almost all we can hear from Joey’s mouth is “HEEEEROOOOMAAAAAN ENGAAAGE” and similar things (the second word is variable here, “HEEEROOOOMAAAAAAAAAN” unfortunately isn’t), doesn’t really help.

Or maybe I’m just getting too old for standard Marvel comics stuff, who knows. One way or the other, I was very disappointed after watching the first episode – and then I’ve tried the second with a very slight spark of hope that things will change and Joey will maybe learn how to be a proper protagonist, utter more than two decent sentences for an episode and shout at his robot less. He didn’t.

So, “HEEEROOOMAAAAAAAN DELEEETE”. I won’t miss it at all, I’ve got enough good shows to watch instead. Too bad though, as I was really interested in it when I saw Bones and Stan Lee together in the preview.

More?

Of course it’s not all, and to be honest it’s not even the half of the new shows, but the rest are hardly interesting for me. They’re either too cute, too focused on boobs and fanservice, or some kind of sports anime, which I have no interest in at all. Then there’s also a few shows that I simply didn’t have time to check out (or that haven’t started yet), being mostly RAINBOW Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin, Saraiya Goyou and maybe one or two more that I’ll try to check out. There’s also a new season of K-On! and Durarara! still hasn’t ended, so I’ll have something to watch anyway. ;)