less blkmage

So yeah, I sort of implied that there’d be more days of fall impressions, but I got lazy and wanted to talk about other important things as well. To make up for my failures, I will offer up my watchlist for this season.

From spring

There’s one show that’s still around from spring, and that’s Soul Eater. Soul Eater follows a fairly standard shounen plotline, having to save the world and get powerful and all. The gimmick for this series is that the protagonists are students that fight as weapon/master pairs. Yes, the weapons are people. Also, the overarching evil theme in this world is insanity. But as typical as it might seem, it manages to pull it off with a unique style, and stellar animation and music, and coupled with pretty good pacing, it hasn’t really hit a weak chain of episodes two seasons in.

From summer

Summer would have been fairly uneventful if it weren’t for Xam’d: Lost Memories. It’s an original BONES production, which you can tell right from the very start, with its style very reminiscent of Eureka Seven. And like Eureka Seven, it offers an interesting and mysterious world to explore with a very strong cast of characters and very high production quality. It’s gone through half the series and it is shaping up to surpass Eureka Seven. The only downside is the terrible, terrible method of distribution: exclusively on the Playstation Network.

Fall!

Although it started strong, I had a feeling that Toradora! might end up making me hate the characters. I’m glad to say that three episodes in, that hasn’t been the case. At the same time, it’s been entertaining, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the series takes us.

The most surprising show I picked up this season was Casshern Sins. I’d seen a tiny pic of it in the fall preview picture and wasn’t too impressed with it, but it turned out to be completely unrepresentative of what the actual show was like. I’m not too familiar with Casshern, which is from the 70s. However, what I did know was that Casshern Sins has really beautiful art and animation and a very distinct style, which is given to us by Madhouse, the fine studio that brought us Death Note. The setting and story are still a mystery, but it’s a really dark one. I can’t see this one going wrong.

Kuroshitsuji was interesting based on the description, but was panned almost universally as being nothing more than yaoi-bait. Luckily, we were all proven wrong, and we were treated to a dark rendition of England and a first episode that oscillated between amusing and creepy. Having a look at the manga, I’m still not entirely sure where it’s going, but it looks like it shouldn’t be too bad.

The first season of Gundam 00 felt rushed to me, because of the fact that it seemed like the writers were trying to do a typical 50 episode Gundam series in 25 episodes. Now, I suspect that that was what they were trying to do for whatever reason, but what we have left in the second season is something that doesn’t fall into that sequence of events anymore. So far, Gundam 00 has managed to stay interesting, as we take off four years after the end of the first season. If it continues to go well, it may make me reconsider how I thought about the first season.

The most surprising first episodes of a series this season goes to Ga-Rei Zero for a super plot twist at the end of not one, but two episodes. It’s certainly got me hooked and I hope that it will continue to deliver interesting stuff while we get into the series proper. Also, I enjoyed the fights, especially the one with the bike.

The only anime that I’m still not 100% sure about is Skip Beat. I’d heard excellent things about the manga, and in my impatience while waiting for the second and third episodes to be subbed, I dove into it. It’s been pretty good so far and it’s got me fairly interested in Kyouko’s development as an actress. The anime looks kind of off visually, which kind of bothers me. I guess I’ll reserve judgement for it later.

The show I was waiting for this season was Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter. So far, it’s been more Nodame Cantabile, which is everything I could have hoped for. The only thing that is bothering me is JC Staff’s pacing. A huge amount of stuff takes place in Paris in the manga, and based on the characters that I’ve seen in the OP and the pacing of the second episode, the amount of content that’s potentially going to be dropped is fairly worrisome.

I haven’t seen Legend of Galactic Heroes and being a 100+ episode OVA released over the span of a decade, I probably never will. However, I hear that Tytania could turn out to be a taste of that epic space opera. So far, it has brought space combat at a grand scale, political maneuverings in houses of nobility, and a hotshot protagonist with Kamina’s voice. What could go wrong?