Here, we have shows that are really big and will continue for an unknown amount of episodes.

160 km/h

So I dropped Cross Game. Yeah, I’m a terrible person. But you don’t have to be terrible. Cross Game is fantastic and is something almost everyone can enjoy. Really, you should be watching it. Why aren’t I watching it then? Because the subs are released pretty inconsistently and I already read the manga. Hah, it turns out I’m not horrible.

Yes, Cross Game is about baseball and even though the baseball plays a really large part of the story and there will be long games, the real draw is in the non-baseball part of the characters’ lives. Apparently, this is a setup (right down to the tragedy) that Adachi has mastered because he’s been writing 20 years of manga like this.

Ｈ！Ｉ！Ｎ！Ａ！

I really like the Hayate no Gotoku manga and I liked the first season the most when it was animating the manga arcs. Call me a purist, I guess, but I’ve found that more often than not that it’s really hard for people to come up with good stories for characters that they haven’t written. Even for a gag manga like Hayate, a lot of the filler, while pretty good as far as filler goes, just felt really off at times.

So I’m really happy that JC Staff is going back to animate the many manga arcs that were skipped over in the first season that I really looked forward to. Some people seem to think that this season doesn’t deliver in the crazy humour and constant references and I’ll counter this by mentioning that there is some plot this time and that there are still many, many references. If you’d ever taken a look inside he manga, you would be confident that we’re getting the same Hayate that we’ve come to expect.

My favourite part of the first episode? The ED. Hinagiku > all. The OP was less awesome. It was weird hearing Elisa not singing something TENMON composed. They probably should have gone with KOTOKO again.

Equivalent Exchange

Remaking something that only came out five years ago seemed really odd to me at first. Then I remembered that the same happened for Kanon. But then I realized that the first Kanon was pretty bad and that the first FMA, other the terrible WWI end and Hitler movie, was acually pretty good.

Even though I started reading the manga and even though it really was a lot better than the anime I wasn’t sure how I felt about BONES remaking the anime to follow the manga storyline. The biggest problem for me was that the manga still wasn’t finished. What would happen if they miscalculated and we were given another subpar ending?

But another part of me was watching Soul Eater. Soul Eater was, for me, the biggest example of why I should want a new FMA. Everything about Soul Eater’s production was phenomenal. I knew that no matter what I thought about the adaptation of the story, I wanted an FMA that looked as good as Soul Eater.

After the initial announcement, I forgot about it until the OP and ED was announced. Once I heard that YUI was returning with the FMA OP and hearing the song, my interest in the new anime was revived. I went into the first episode eagerly. 「again」 is a fantastic song. The ED, Uso, isn’t bad either, especially when watched with its animation.

Since then, I think my enthusiasm for FMA petered out a bit. It’s not the fault of the show, it’s just that there were more interesting things capturing my attention and the fact hat this was my third time going through the beginning of FMA. It’s not exactly compelling once you know what happens that well. That’s not to say I’ve lost interest in the show completely. I’m certain that once we hit manga material, my interest will be sufficiently piqued.

Haruhiism

Haruhi returns with an unknown episode order. The earliest speculation had Endless Eight at one episode, but now it’s looking like three. I suspect that means Snow Mountain Syndrome won’t get animated, since I would lump it with volume 7. This also pretty much means that Disappearance and Sighs are probably going to take longer than everyone thought.

The ED, 止マレ！, has no dancing, but it does have some shenanigans that you can only pick out if you watch each episode’s simultaneously. The OP, Super Driver, is more in keeping with the eccentric stuff, what with all the subatomic particles floating in the background and comic book onomatopoeias. The songs for both aren’t great, but the animations make them, which if you think about it, was exactly the case for the first season.