5. The Sacred Blacksmith

Everything about this is completely underwhelming. Quite honestly, I expected it to be this way, but I’ve been avoiding these fantasy/RPG types of shows for a while because this is exactly what I expect when I think of those. So far, I haven’t dropped it simply because it’s only twelve episodes, but it’s not soon after the start of the episode that I get the urge to.

4. A Certain Scientific Railgun

I didn’t get very far in Index. That said, while the premise of this is still kind of stupid, the first few episodes have kind of been amusing enough that I don’t mind. Yeah, people are complaining about how it’s boring school life and Kuroko is annoying and all. Oh well, I think it’s doing alright for a show about a girl who is a railgun.

3. Kobato

There are some shows that I wonder why I’m watching them and it turns out the answer is that it’s because they are nice. Clannad was once of these the first time I watched it (although now, I watch that sort of stuff without a second thought). I don’t find Kobato’s retard moe to be annoying like I did with Yui, but that may just be that there’s no Mio to compare her to here. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Her ignorance of how the world works does make me cringe sometimes.

So far it seems like a pretty nice going to help people out sort of show, kind of like Natsume Yuujinchou. Of course, people who are more familiar with CLAMP seem convinced that weird crap is going to eventually happen. Oh well, what could go wrong?

2. Darker than BLACK: Gemini of the Meteor

It’s still too early to piece together what happened in between the first and second season (and I guess there will be that OVA to help with that). At twelve actual episodes (not “twelve” two-episode arcs), I’m not sure how far they can bring the story and I’m pretty sure that we’ll be seeing another season. And even though they dropped the episodic format, they still seem to be introducing cool contractors and then offing them by the end of the episode. Everything’s still as well produced as I remember, so this’ll be pretty good.

1. Kimi ni Todoke

This is the show of the season. If you don’t like this, you are a bad person. Well, I guess if you don’t like shoujo, then you probably wouldn’t like this, but that’s okay. Kimi ni Todoke is one of my favourite shoujo manga, probably second only to Kare Kano. Of course, that’s based on the tiny number of chapters that are released and scanned. There’s a very good chance that it can top it.

I really like the anime. I wasn’t too thrilled with Noto Mamiko’s voice in the first episode, but I guess I got acclimatized to her voice so the second and third episodes weren’t as bad. So far, the anime is pretty much following the manga in lockstep. I’ve noticed a few people who were pretty unhappy with the direction, but I really haven’t noticed anything bad. And the production values on this thing are great, as expected from Production IG.

Fall? More like fail

This is a pretty bad season, a fact which is magnified by the fact that summer was one of the best seasons in a while. With FMA and Umineko, that makes seven shows, two of which are middling and would be dropped as soon as I don’t have enough time. I guess there’s always those extra episodes of Hidamari Sketch and Bakemonogatari to look forward to.