Fall Remainders and Scheduling
October 11th, 2007 by Shirukii
OIIII, HIIIRAGIIII!
With the fall anime season well under way and the premieres of most series in the wild and subbed, it’s time to decide on a schedule. Picking which series to blog this season was especially difficult, I want to blog them all, but the reality is that I don’t have the time to do so.
The four series I will be covering this fall are:
1. Clannad
2. Shakugan no Shana II
3. Myself; Yourself
4. Da Capo II
Which surprisingly is quite close to what I thought it would be except for Myself; Yourself sneaking in there. Da Capo II was almost swapped out for Bamboo Blade, but there are ample bloggers covering it already and the speed of the sub releases would have put me a week behind the raw bloggers, as opposed to DCII, which I’m blogging raw.
With the administrative stuff out of the way, here are some truncated first impressions on the other series that I checked out this season:
Ef - a tale of memories -
lawl, is dat some Touhou?
SHAFTed. I thought that maybe, just maybe SHAFT would decide to drop their usual style and approach Ef seriously, I was wrong. Not that the series is terrible, it’s just that SHAFT’s random mindfuck inserts destroy the continuity of the show. One minute you’ll be in the middle of a deep and serious dialog, the next you’ll be staring at a gray scale shot of a character’s shadow, it breaks the flow of the scene and makes me feel like I’m watching anime on an acid trip. While this may be AWESOME for shows like PPD and Zetsubo Sensei, the effect is quite detrimental with Ef which uses character drama as its main source of entertainment. I’ll keep watching because the premise is interesting and the art is pretty, but the series will never be as good as it could have been with SHAFT pulling their usual tricks.
Bamboo Blade
:3
It may have been because my expectations of it weren’t hyped to the max or possibly my love for katana wielding bishoujos, but I really enjoyed the first episode of Bamboo Blade. I was scared it might end up being sports shounen except with girls, but thankfully it ended up being school comedy with some sports thrown in, which is far superior. The premise is simple, the series follows a teacher who bets that he can assemble an all star kendo team to take on an established team of l33t and his struggle with a year’s worth of food on the line. Depending on the character development and comedy elements, this show could end up really good. So far I’m a Kirino fan, Tama-chan is too Rei clone for my tastes and Miyako is an airhead. If subs for Bamboo Blade weren’t trailing already, it would have most likely replaced DCII, but since they are and I’m not 100% confident I could raw it and not miss a lot, I’ll have to content myself with just watching it.
Kimi Kiss Pure Rouge
I’d help her conduct her experiment, if you know what I mean
Another romance drama, but one which has characters that don’t instantly fall into a stereotypical moe classification, it’s crazy, I know. The source material is a dating sim so I’m not expecting anything particularly deep in terms of story, which is already looking pretty standard. It’s pretty obvious that Mao has some hidden motive or reason behind coming back to Japan with only a year of high school left and who is going to end up with who is already starting to become evident. Kimi Kiss looks like more standard eroge to anime adaptation, but I’ve never been one to turn that down, so unless it starts to fail hard, I’ll keep watching.
Shugo Chara
Formula Fansub’s Drinking Game: Drink each time you see pink or plaid
Death by alcohol poisoning in a couple minutes, tops.
This anime was weird and unexpected. After the first half of the episode I was settling in and preparing for a high school comedy about a girl who was cool and collected on the outside but really as girlish as they come on the inside, sorta like Yukino from KareKano. But a mere five minutes later we’re caught up in this convoluted plot involving magical eggs, guardian angels with multiple personality disorder, Humpty Dumpty’s locket of power and a random nekomimi bishounen. What. The. Fuck.
If it doesn’t degenerate into a mahou shoujo series, I might keep watching, but otherwise I’ve been deceived and I’ll be bailing out of this series asap.
Night Wizard
Divine Buster!
So far Night Wizard looks like a mash up of shounen, in that it has a male lead with a magic sword and other characters with similar magically endowed weapons savin the day, and mahou shoujo, in that a civilian girl is introduced in the first episode and thrust into a world of magic, her task to gather a bunch of magical jewels. Hinano said it reminded her of 90s anime where everyone finds out the have magical powers and go off to save the world just for the hell of it. While I agree with the concept, I’m not really content with the execution so far, it just didn’t succeed in pulling me in. And in terms of nostalgia bombs for that era of anime, Busou Renkin is probably as good as it’s going to get. I’ll give Night Wizard another episode, but it’s probable that I’ll end up dropping it.
Rental Magica
Go back to Hueco Mundo Gin
Contrast to Night Wizard, which sort of falls into the same genre as this, I liked the first episode of Rental Magica. The plot revolves around a bunch of companies that rent out magicians to those who require magical assistance, and while I fear that it may become too episodic as things go along, I’ll stick with it for now, hoping that a coherent story will form. Character wise, I find the male lead, Itsuki Iba, interesting enough. Outwardly he’s weak, cowardly and a failure of a magician, but when he pulls off his eye patch he has some geass thing going on and suddenly becomes a capable leader with excellent battle tactics, dealing out precise and effective commands. Even if this becomes a repetitive, flavor of the week, series in terms of story, it stands a better chance than Night Wizard at filling in my fantasy fix for the season.
Dragonaut
I’m going to keep watching Dragonaut, but mostly because so far I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. They literally threw us in the middle of the plot with no map, I watched the episode twice but still haven’t found anything to base a concrete plot on. There were a bunch of characters and organizations introduced, but aside from naming them and giving a brief sample of what they do, no clue is given as to who the good guys or bad guys are and, nor their goals. The character designs and animation were quite nice though, it’s some much needed healthy fanservice to balance out my usual diet of DFC. I’m a bit scared that Gonzo is running the show, but interested enough that I’ll risk it and keep watching anyways.
Oh, and it has dragons, being a dragon myself (Chinese horoscope) I have a natural affinity with anything relating to them.
And with the exception of Minami-ke, Sketchbook ~full colors~ and Kojikan (subs, where, etc.) that concludes my first impressions for all the series that I’ve picked up this fall. So far it’s a nice change of pace from what summer had to offer, going from hot blooded action and gore to light hearted slice of life and romance drama makes you appreciate the slow pacing of shows like Myself; Yourself and Clannad that much more.
I also checked out Gundam 00 because a friend had it on a PMP and the alternative was listening to a boring lecture. I won’t be watching the rest of it, but I will admit that it seems A LOT better than the last Gundam I watched (GSD). But lol, fat gundam is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
I also haven’t gathered the courage to watch Maple Story yet, it’s just sitting there on my hard drive. I watched up to the OP and couldn’t bring myself to go any further. It doesn’t even look like it’s worth watching for the lulz, from what I’ve seen, watching it would be the equivalent of pouring concentrated hydrochloric acid into my eyes.
~ Shirukii ~
19 Responses to “Fall Remainders and Scheduling”
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I must be the only person in the world who liked the first episode of ef.
Man, I totally saw that schedule coming. Every blogger has their little niche…you’re definitely right about bloggers taking care of the other shows you are watching too. There were so many unexpected hits this season. lol, Shugo Chara was freaking awesome.
I lol’d so hard that I woke up my sleeping room mate. GG sempai.
AT lolikit: Joke. I loved it.
THAT GUNDAM IS JUST BIG-BONED *sob*.
@ lolikit: I think my review came off as too negative D= I -DID- like the episode, I just thought it could have done without SHAFT’s random inserts.
@ Totali: You could see Clannad, Shana and DCII coming from a mile away, as they’re the only first episodes that I numbered, rather than using “At a Glance”. Myself; Yourself was totally random though.
>> I lol’d so hard that I woke up my sleeping room mate
AnimeArimasu, depriving university students of sleep since 2006 XD
fuck you shirukii, im through with you playing with my feelings T___T
@Shirukii
Recommending SketchBook ~ Full Color’s ~ for personal relaxation.
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Virtue Gundam is FAT +1
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i can nvr have enough of those Touhou jokes XD
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i, too, am one of those who wasn’t expecting much from BambooBlade but ended up liking it.
it does look like hiragi =O
ive counted abotu 16 series i wanted to watch from this season
and it everything there except for shugo chara and a few more (:
am i considered crazy wanting to watch 16? =O
bambo blade got mixed reviews, but its looks good XD
The top picture on your blog reminds me of Lucky Star XD *is killed*
All of these shows sound good, though none of them really appeal to me. I mean…is there no yuri anime out this season?!
Two things really popped into my head whilst reading your summaries:
Shuga Chara reminds me of the first episode of Kannazuki no Miko. Normal normal normal…wtf mecha lesbians. (Not that that is a bad thing at all! ;)) Maybe it’s randomness will pay off?
Kimi Kiss Pure Rouge is based on an eroge, but so was Nice Boat, so you may get some unexpected twists and turns in this story(unless, of course, it is basically just a boring dating sim thing and they’ve kept it as such to appease the eroge fans after what happened in Nice Boat…hmmm).
Ah well, I’ll keep checking your blog to see what you think of the seasons you are tracking.
@lolikit: *hug*
OH. Also, I’m a little disappointed you didn’t choose Blue Drop; I’ll have to go to a different anime blog to see what happens T_T
Yeah, I too might be better off skipping Kodomo no Jikan, since there’s already censorship issues with that show, and it’s not guaranteed that they’ll show that series in its entirety.
Besides, I don’t wanna go to hell XD
@ Kabitzin: Yea, just like the dorm rep in Blue Drop =P
@ lolikit: Oh come on, it’s an eroge to anime adaptation, you of all people should now how readily I eat that stuff up.
@ Nightingale: I’m waiting on subs for sketchbook, I’ve heard of it’s greatness, is it anything like Hidamari?
Touhou reference was awesome, but that spell card is so easy, how could she have died on that.
@ wxndy: I’m up to 15 myself, and I’m still waiting on Ghost Hound, so that makes us even. I think an inherent bit of craziness comes from being an anime fan.
@ TheChichiSlaughterHouse: That picture is supposed to be an LS/Clannad cross over, you’re not seeing things lol.
Blue Drop is yuri, or at least seems to have yuri subtext. Sorry I couldn’t cover it, there’s just too much this season.
I think I was a little too surprised by Shugo Chara to appreciate it, I’ll keep watching it, this time expecting the whole sugar and spice, and everything nice bit, maybe it won’t be so bad.
Nice boat was eroge with a twist though, it was infamous for its bad ends. Whereas no such rumors exist for Kimi Kiss, it’ll probably end up being standard eroge adaptation, which isn’t all that bad either.
@ ItAintEazy: I’ll watch KnJ for now, if the censoring begins to completely ruin the show, I’ll stop and wait for the DVDs.
Lolicon is victimless, pedophaelia is not. We’re not going to hell XD
I’m watching Gundam too…..you know it’s awesome….
>> Lolicon is victimless, pedophaelia is not. We’re not going to hell XD
QFT
Yea, this morning my roomie was totally like “man, wth was that last night? Are you crazy?”…..it was pretty awesome xDD.
Well, hard to argue with that logic, and one of the show’s redeeming quality is that they’ve refrained from showing aureolas or labias even when characters engage in full frontal, as per the Japanese Constitution.
@ Shirukii
I cant say if it’s like or not like.
It’s the very slow pace Slice of Life type of show with a little dreamy relaxing elements that will ensure u a good night sleep (i swear i do not mean boring.)
If u liked ARIA the NATURAL series, then u mite very well like this.
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O yea that spell card should have been Mountain of Faith stage 6’s final spell instead XD
Oh God, Miya-Miya is hot lol ;)!
I’m loving bamboo blade thus far…..it’s a nice change of pace from all the serious anime I’ve been watching lately :)
Being in seminary school right now, with loads of Hebrew and theology papers, I can’t afford to procrastinate and watch ALL the shows I want this season :P
Clannad I’ll stick with for sure, because I’m a sucker for Key adaptions thus far :) It doesn’t hurt that KyoAni is behind it either.
Blue Drop is another one which I think will be one of the shows I stick with……While it seems like it could hae some predictable elements…..something about it intrigues me…….
@ Totali: I think I’m just too traumatized from GSD to ever think about going back to Gundam.
@ ItAintEazy: Doesn’t make it any better when you parents/roommate/ random passerby walks in on you watching it.
…not that that has happened to me. I swear.
@ Nightingale: I LOVED the ARIA series, I totally understand where you’re coming from.
MoF on what level, I’ve beaten normal and gotten up to stage 5 on hard, stage 4 on lunatic.
@ Kanon_fan82: Miya Miya is a tease, lol.
KeyAni usually ends up being quite win, Clannad should be a must watch for you, especially with an alias like Kanon_fan, haha.
Blue Drop is going to be delicious yuri goodness, I can feel it!
Are you going to be watching Shana?
Busou Renkin has set a high standard. I mean how many shows have men with butterfly glasses wearing mankinis and characters with names like “Moon Face” and “Captain Bravo” :D
@ Shirukii:
I just finished downloading season 1 the other day…
There seems to be a HUGE Shana fan-base (ie. the character of Shana) in the blogosphere…so I decided to see what all the fuss was about :)
If I like what I see the first time around, I will likely pick up this season :)
P.S. I’m also looking forward to some subtle (or maybe not so subtle) yuri tones in Blue Drop :)
Gundam00: I fell like i want to watch this one when i saw the main character makes the first step take the action destroy the bad guys instead of let the bad guys destroy the good guys first and then raise the main character from the beginning to become a Pro. It seems fresh to me. Still not too sure about it yet but let see a few more episodes.
Clannad: If i dont watch it then i will never forgive myself.
Blue Drop: I will watch it but I’m a little scare of yuri because i dont feel the existent of any main male characters in this series at all.
Bamboo Blade: It is an interesting series to see but I’m a little scare after i saw SquareEnix.
Da Capo II: I guess it is “YES”
Goshuushou-Sama Ninomiya-Kun: It entertains me somehow, lol, I guess u know what i mean.
Myself; Yourself: Why not give it a try?
Night Wizard: It seems to be interesting.
Shana II: YES?
Kimikiss ~ Pure Rouge: Too much good series in this season but i will give it another shot.
Dragonaut: It is not that bad but i hate the idea of breast fighting. Can they at least make something simple instead of showing big breast of every single girls? It is on my Drop-list if it doesn’t getting any better I will drop it for sure.
Genshiken 2: I have no idea what it is about yet, it is on my Drop-list.
KnJ: i guess it is too much for me to take it. 0_0
Maple Story: The best EVER, but how should i vote it? The best of Worst Ever?
You’re Under Arrest! Full Throttle: The ancestor of Lara Croft? Even God said i dont have a license to watch it yet.
Kaiji: WOW!!! something like this still exist?
Shugo Chara!, ef - A Tale of Memories, and Rental Magica, I still have no idea yet. I still want to see Prism Ark.
@Hinano: LOL, Busou Renkin? The truth is I dont really like it but I can admire that it has a great ending.