After watching some episodes from the Winter anime lineup, I found that I have too much anime to watch that would take up my precious time if I were to watch them. They have to go. There are many 2nd (or higher) season anime this winter.
The difference between not picking up, and picking up but drop it later is that I was curious about it, but for various reasons, had to drop it. What determines anime I would like to drop? Here are some, but not all (can't remember every reason), of the points:
Not looking forward to the next episode.
Falling asleep while watching
Attention span wanders off too often
Found myself at, for example, the 12th episode and still determining if I should watch it.
Turned out to be boring.
There are other anime in the same season that are a lot better.
Design of characters looks worse from the previous season.
Too much obvious filters or fanservice
How the characters are dressed, and how the camera angle is pointed at them
More than half of the episode is spent talking about the same thing.
More than half of the whole season takes place in the same room
So, what are this anime that I dropped, and why?
Robotics;Notes (Autumn 2012): I watched it because it's related to the two anime I watch before called Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate, but by 16th episode (yes, that far), I don't see any, and I found myself not interested with the anime itself.
Vividred Operation: So much stereotypical things of a magical anime, and look at what they are wearing, on top of the seemingly deliberate camera angles at the girls. Need I say more? Oh, the title is also hard for me to spell or pronounce.
GJ部: First episode looked promising, but it went downhill from there. OP theme song made me want to sleep, and rapid speech at the beginning isn't helping either. The scenes in the episodes reminds me a lot of...
Seitokai no Ichizon Lv.2: What do you know, the anime in question is here too. The same location for the whole season with (as I recall) no other scenes shown. Not even the corridor just outside. Kadokawa, a main sponsor of this anime, oddly released all of their episode trailers (all the way until the last) on their YouTube channel months before it even first aired on TV. This tells me that they know how boring it is since every scene in those trailers looks the same as they all take place in the same room.
I am thinking of dropping Chihayafuru 2 and Minamike Tadaima too, but I haven't drop them yet.
Yes, it's that time again. Time since the last post on this blog seems like it happened only recently, especially when it takes two weeks to write each part of my blog story, waiting for my new Kindle to arrive, worrying about serious real life stuff, and such. Forgive me for not writing much here. m(_ _)m
That aside, another batch of new anime, or new seasons of earlier ones, for the winter season, and the first for 2013, has arrived. Just because winter (and Summer) do not have much popular anime to watch, it does not mean there aren't any to watch.
For the first time in probably a long time, I never looked at any preview trailers or saw a table that lists all the anime for this season. I wasn't really looking out for any anime in particular, or expecting anything, especially when you had watched anime for years and experienced all the different kinds. (High School-based was still popular even back then as it is today.) I just looked at the guide and do a search on Google to see what it is about, including images relating to it.
Here is a brief summary of each anime in the winter season, listed in the order of which I had watch the first episode of that anime first. That also means that, at the time of writing, might have already had 2 or more episodes aired and opinions written here include the newer episodes.
Minami-ke Tadaima (みなみけ ただいま)
This is actually the 4th season of the Minami-ke slice-of-life series. (First season was in Winter 2008) Most anime don't even have a second season (not including anime with more than 12 episodes in a season), but a fourth is kind of a lot.
I don't know if I would watch this. Watching because I had watched earlier seasons, but not really wanting to because there are more interesting anime in the season. This would be the first to go if I need to make time.
Love Live! (ラブライブ！)
In order to save Otonogisaka Academy (音ノ木坂学院) from declining enrolment, a group of High school year 2 girls form an idol group that represents their school. Finding people to recruit and to compose songs doesn't seem as easy as it sounds. On top of that, they themselves have to train their bodies to build up stamina to perform.
What do I think of this? Well, it seems almost all of the girls are blushing or wear make up. Not that I am complaining or anything, but aside from a brief delusion in the second episode of a boy's back, males seem non-existent in this anime.
Tamako Market (たまこまーけっと)
This anime follows a girl whose father is part of the committee of the shopping street his shop is a part of, and see the operations of a shopping street. (We get to see what they do for Valentines in episode 2.) One day, she visits a flower shop there and finds a strange bird there who seems to hang around her.
Obviously a slice-of-life anime. As it's produced by Kyoto Animation, they execute things quite well.
By the way, what's with the bird? GJ-bu (GJ部)
Words fail for me to describe this anime.
(They never really show any scene outside the room, do they?) Sasami-san @ Ganbaranai (ささみさん＠がんばらない)
Note: Main character not shown
This follows a girl who seems to have a problem stepping out of her house. She also stalks someone who appears to be her brother at times, who is a teacher at the school she attends.
It's funny that the brother's face is deliberately covered. Not with some odd camera angles, but actually using an object over his face. I don't know if they are really siblings because of he calls her as "Sasami-san" like she's his superior.
Did anyone notice that the interior of the house appear a lot bigger on the inside than the outside? That's SHAFT for you, where they don't follow real-life logic.
(SHAFT is the animation company behind Madoka, Hidamari Sketch, Bakemonogatari, and so on, if you didn't know.)
Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai Next (僕は友達が少ないNEXT)
This is the second season of the Haganai anime. (First season was in Autumn 2011) It seems to start off better than the first season. Kotoura-san (琴浦さん)
This is a strange one: In the trailer below, you are given the impression that this is a love comedy anime, but if you watched the first 10 minutes of the anime (above), it throws you off into a different direction into how you would see this anime.
Kotoua, the main character, has the ability to read people's minds. Since she has this ability at birth, she can't seem to be able to differentiate what people think from what people actually said.
Chihayafuru 2 (ちはやふる２)
Continuing on into the second season (First season was in Autumn 2011) is centered around the traditional game of Karuta. They manage to recruit a lot of first-years, but how many of them would hang around?
Vividred Operation (ビビッドレッド・オペレーション)
The world is being attacked by unseen forces, and the air forces are helpless. Who do they have to call? Two magical girls! While at it, let's turn the old man into an animal as their assistant.
I watched two episodes of this, and I don't think I would watch more of it. I don't understand this anime, and it seems too typical of a magical girl genre. Since I feel bored watching the two episode, I don't think I would want to watch more of this.
Seitokai no Ichizon Level Two (生徒会の一存Lv.2)
Another anime that has another season (First season was in Autumn 2009).
For some odd reason, Kadokawa has released the next episode trailers months before the episode airs. Well, the previous and immediate next is okay, but for the whole season before the season even starts?! That's madness.
There's so much second (or higher) seasons in this Winter season alone. Have you also noticed that all of the anime I listed above takes place in middle and high schools? On top of that, some has the majority (or all) of the scenes to take place in the same room!
Well, the reason for not covering this earlier is that I had to see what the anime was like and, based on past experience, I had wasted time writing on anime that I'm not even remotely interested and adding of time schedules and channels they aired on takes up a lot of my time that could be spent doing other things.
Excluding Sword Art Online (Summer 2012), there aren't any other anime I watched from earlier seasons that overlaps into this season, though I can see that at least 3 of the ones stated below would overlap into the following winter season. Too bad that there is no such luck for a second season of To Aru Kagaku no Railgun, or its main series, usually airs in Autumn.
There are no screenshots of anime mentioned here that I had dropped prior to writing this post.
K
This snapshot describes everything.
There is somewhat a love-hate thing with this one. Character design, animation, background details, music is nice, but the green-blue tint visible throughout the whole anime is too distracting for me. I'm not saying that the anime is bad, but it's just not my taste.
Other contributing factors that made me want to drop it:
Fighting scenes
Men with white/long hair
Girls in a Gothic lolita dress, and likely to be holding a doll and accompanied with an older man
Main character looks like a loser
The girl seen in this episode and the ending animation
Need to adjust the colour to black and white to not get the green-blue tint be distracting.
Status:Dropped at episode 2
Chuu Ni Byou Demo Koi Shitai! (中二病でも、恋したい！)
It's produced by Kyoto Animation. Nuff said.
Status:Watching
Robotics;Notes
I heard that the world it is in is indirectly related to Steins;Gate (Spring 2011) that is set at a later time, so I'm kind of curious what this is like. Those numbers in the first scene (1.048596) tells us that it is the same divergence as at the beginning of the anime. Of course, I'm expecting nothing more than a minor reference in this anime.
Status:Watching
Shinsekai Yori (新世界より)
The first few minutes of the first episode attracted my attention, but it didn't take long afterwords that to realize that the rest of the episode, and the next, takes place in a different world where supernatural abilities are common that looked like pre-Meiji era japan.
Status:Dropped at episode 2
Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo (さくら荘のペットな彼女)
A high school boy stays at a school dorm known for having crazy people there. He's staying there only because he wants to keep cats, that his previous dorm. When a teacher tells him to pick someone up, things at the dormitory have gotten even more interesting.
Status:Watching only because I'm curious
Code Breaker
A girl saw a man fighting another group of men while in the bus. When she gets back to the scene, they disappeared without a trace that they were even there. She meets the man himself later on when she tries to save a dog from thugs who were attacking it which, in the process, she gets attacked.
Status:Watching to see what happens next, but visuals are... dated-looking from other anime I'm watching.
Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun (となりの怪物くん)
A girl who is obsessed with studying is sent to ask a classmate who sits next to her to say that his suspension has ended, but she feels empty inside when she finally came in first place. Out of the blue, he kisses her and she couldn't stop thinking of him since.
Status:Watching
Sukitteiinayo (好きっていいなよ。)
Traumatised of being blamed for causing the death of the class pet back in primary school, she prefers not to have friends that she only has two numbers on her phone: work, and home. However, she is forced to call a guy from school who has been trying to be friends with her when a stalker follows her and nobody at home answers it.
Status:Watching because it is, in some ways, similar to Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun mentioned above, but don't know much about it
Btooom
Accel World (Spring 2012), Sword Art Online (Summer 2012), and now this. It's in an RPG-like world, except nobody remembers (at first) how they are suddenly at a remote island or have a green gem embedded in their left hand. It's unclear at this point if there are fixed main characters, or multiple different ones at this point.
Status:Watching - don't really know what's going on, but not enough to determine to drop it
Hayate no Gotoku: Can't take My Eyes Off You and To Love-ru: Darkness
I had watched previous seasons of these two before quite a while back, but I am unsure about watching these. It's hard to not watch or drop something I've watched the previous season of no matter how boring it may be.
For Hayate, I had watched the first season before (Spring 2007; 4-chors), but not the second season (Spring 2009; 2-chors). It's one of my first (non-children targeted) anime I had watched, but of course, anime back then weren't as interesting as this, but in the second season, the graphics seem to have went downhill from the previous season (which apparently is the same as in this third season). I mean, triangular-shaped mouths? Strong colours? I know the young rich girl is being targeted, but her attitude is so unbelievable. Also, around the same time the second season was being aired, anime like K-On was being aired at the same time. We all know how popular K-On turned out.
For To Love-ru, let's just say it's something you shouldn't watch with people around, and there's no real plot progress. Like what I said for Hayate, and with anime I wrote above that, my likelihood to continue watching these two is doubtful, and even more so since there are other better anime airing in this Autumn season.
Status:Watching, but unsure of continuing
(I know that the list on the right of this blog at time of writhing is outdated: Preparing images and updating them is a pain. Also, I'm editing the tags of earlier posts so that it would be easier to sort by year or season, rather than the name of the anime that are likely to not have a second season. Since I don't cover every single episode of each anime, that tag is somewhat wasted and taking up space in the tag cloud.)
Don't get me wrong, but Tari Tari is a 13-episode anime from the Summer 2012 season. It's so good that I would recommend you to watch it. What I'm writing here is pointing out hints how you would be disappointed that there won't be more of it.
Based on a group of third year of senior high school students
continue into college other than as a epilogue are uncommon
starts in the summer before summer holidays
In Japan, this means that it's around the 3rd or 4th month since the school year started
Creation of a club made up of only 3rd years
Late into the series, works to replace the school with a condominium began and stopped accepting new students for the following year
spinoff that takes place at the school later is unlikely
nobody make an anime at a place that has construction everywhere
The anime started with people who just met each other, with one (Wein) being an exchange student from Austria. At the end of it, everyone went off their separate ways.
This means that a new series based on this season as the prologue or epilogue is not possible
Before I become aware of it, the spring anime season has ended. None of the Winter 2012 anime that I watched were carried over, and only four spring anime listed here continued into the summer season. Of which, I'm only watching one of it.
As I mentioned before, I might not write about the new Summer anime season yet, as I have not yet decide what anime to watch yet.
Dropped
Accel World (アクセル・ワールド)
I am already hating the main character's appearance (not shown), but things go downhill when they introduce his sister (also not shown) and battles that drag on forever. The decision to drop came when I heard that there would be a total of about 24 episodes.
Uchuu Kyodai (宇宙兄弟)
I felt that the pace was too slow. Unlike most of the other anime I had watched, this is primarily targeted for kids.
Sankarea (さんかれあ)
I wasn't expecting it to be only 12 episodes. The way the finale ended leaves me questioning on what would happen from there.
Acchi Kochi(あっちこっち)
Sadly, there isn't a thing I could remember about this anime. I actually considered dropping it, but there isn't a strong reason to do so.
Natsuiro Kiseki (夏色キセキ)
This has a storyline that I could actually follow and understand, though there's something peculiar about the character design. Too much green too.
As the title suggests, this takes place in one particular summer.
Haiyore! Nyaruko San (這いよれ！ニャル子さん)
I dropped this once before, and picked it up again later on. It's a slapstick comedy, but not really the kind I would enjoy watching. Characters can be somewhat irritating in my opinion.
Saki -Achiga-hen- episode of side A (咲-Saki-阿知賀編 episode of side-A)
Centered around Madoka's old friend of the earlier season, a group of girls formed a Majong club to be in the national championships.
The amount of mahjong matches shown varies a lot from very little in the beginning, to a lot at the later episodes. Character development-wise, I felt that not much was shown in there.
Continued into Summer season
Hyouka
This anime started a lot latter than the ones mentioned above. The stories are visibly divided into several arcs to solve mysteries where there are a lot of unknowns and have to analyze the situation to solve it. Almost like a detective case.
So, what has changed since I last updated this list? Here is to list a few:
Uchuu Kyoudai, Tsuritama, and AKB0048 dropped. (Unappealing to me)
Latest episode watched for the remaining titles range from 8 to 10.
Noticed some Summer anime titles being mentioned, with one of them being Cocoro Connect. Have yet to see trailers of them though.
I lost track of what the latest episode numbers I was watching.
Having dropped those anime, I do not have screenshots of the said anime in question unless it was taken before I dropped it.
Why did I even drop them in the first place? There are many reasons. Could be because of other anime airing at the same time that are better, or I just simply fell asleep watching it. However, for this year's spring anime, it's hard for me to decide because there are many good ones.
12 June 2012 16:32 edit: I forgot to mention that I have added "Haiyore! Nyaruko-san" to the list I am watching now.
(Author's note: this review below is as it is on 27 March 2012 and not modified since. I did not notice this as unpublished until right after publishing the AKB0048 review on 17 May 2012.)
Apart from the artist who sung the opening theme and the full-sized eye in the OP animation, Another (アナザー) is one of those anime where I had no expectations, or know what is to come.
Being taking place in 1998, you have to keep in mind about the technology at that time. Cellphone signals are analog and aren't strong, so static being heard in the call means a weak signal and/or interference in the area. Since then technology has improved and/or problems fixed, so the "scary" element might not be posible today.
The popular all-female music group AKB48 (and its sub-groups) has its own anime.
If had followed a manga called AKB49〜恋愛禁止条例〜 (Ren'ai kinshi jōrei), which is about the behind the scenes of the group (present-day) through the eye of a crossdresser who somehow made it past their auditions, prepare to be disappointed as it's completely different.
Even if you didn't read that, or not really a fan of AKB48 in general, you might find this anime to be different. Approach this anime different from what you would do with most other anime, and you would actually enjoy this.
To those who are curious about the voice cast and the music in it, they are voiced by inexperienced (read: new) seiyuus and actual members from AKB (and its sub-groups like SKE). Not much of the usual seiyuus are involved.
Note: This anime is still ongoing, and I have not dropped this anime yet. I'm saying this as I usually write reviews when either two situations has happened.
Spring has came with a batch of new anime that, except for a new, are completely brand new. Due to my unfamiliarity with the titles and me being back from a long break since just before the last episode of the Winter season aired (2nd episode of Spring has been aired at time of writing), I have to be brief about it.
Due to massive backlog and not in the mood to write, I might not write anymore reviews of the Winter 2012 anime
Likely to watch
Accel World
I'm oddly starting to like this anime for some reason. The main character may look... strange... but at least he's more intelligent than Shuu of Guilty Crown (Autumn 2011). Well, these two are different, but you get the idea. The character designs of the other characters and interesting plot made up for it. I don't know how far into the future this is in as not much besides the inside of the school was shown, but phrases like "motorcycles of the past century" was mentioned.
Natsuiro Kiseki (夏色キセキ)
A group of four girls who had known each other since childhood made a wish with a large stone that appears to have actually worked.
They had wished to be a popular girl band when they get older, but over time, stopped releasing new songs. The relationship between the girls are put to the test.
Sankarea (さんかれあ)
A guy's pet cat has been killed in an accident and was figuring out the unknown missing ingredient to bring it back from the dead at an abandoned place when he noticed a girl from a school near his, admired by his friends for her beauty.
Unknown to others, the girl's father "wants the perfect life for her", but it's apparent that he doesn't let her have friends and destroys any existing ones. The daughter in question, however, can't take it anymore.
Acchi Kocchi (あっちこっち)
Unlike other recent slice-of-life anime like Nichijou (Summer 2011) or Danshi Kokosei no Nichijo (Winter 2012), this one has both guys and girls in it instead of only being either one.
If you are looking for a plot, and slice-of-life is not your thing, I suggest you skip this and watch the other titles I mention here.
Tsuritama (つり球)
The way of living and fishing on the island of Enoshima and having strange encounters.
To those not familiar about where it is, it's an island in the prefecture of Kanagawa that is a short day trip from Tokyo by train. To be more specific, around the coordinates of 35.3001, 139.4803 on the map.
Space Brothers (宇宙兄弟)
Anime that airs around sunrise don't usually fall into my radar as those are targeted at kids, but this seems to be a rare exception to that.
Seen, but didn't like it
Well, as what the sub-title says. I have watched it before, but didn't like what I saw.
Upotte - "The girls are guns and the new homeroom teacher does not know how to handle them." Wait! How on earth are girls guns?! That wasn't explained, and these girls always seem to use another gun to shoot.... Argh. My head got fried.
Nazo no Kanojo X - This one is kind of weird: guy likes to lick the drool of a mysterious girl who falls asleep in class. Since the guy needs her drool daily, this was shown often, which itself is making me uneasy. Had to stop watching it before I puke. Also, the character design is very visibly dated.
Saki of the Episode One (or something like that) - This is actually a spinoff instead of a continuation of the first season of Saki (Spring 2009) and focuses more of the characters than Mahjong (though there's some focus to some degree). I like the characters, but not the game, and I never fully watched the first season anyway.
As you can see here, all of the above titles takes place in High school, with the exception of Space Brothers (and Accel World, but that's in Middle school). It's like a fad in recent anime.
The arrangement of seats on this train looks strange.
Guilty Crown (ギルティクラウン) is somewhat like a mixed bag to me: artwork seems to be at par with anime like Hanasaku Iroha (Spring 2011) with attention to detail and fantastic OP, but, storyline-wise, it's as bad as anime like To Aru Majutsu no Index (Autumn 2008/2010) where I rage at how slow things progress, or how much of an idiot the protagonist is.
Well, at the beginning, this showed promise of how this would be, but it later unexpectedly took a turn in a direction different. I was expecting a more diplomatic and peaceful approach, not a mad scientist with his own government and spreading a virus. Having war with a group of students on top of that. (Speaking of which, where are the teachers of the school? They seem oddly missing the whole time.)
If you're just picking this up, I would recommend just starting from the special that comes after episode 11. You are likely to be glad that I mention it because it sums up the major plots of the earlier episodes, which has a lot of filters.
Pretty much sums up of Shuu's character throughout the anime.
Starting form the second half, the atmosphere has become completely different. It's as if it has gone in a different direction from the first half and has become irrelevant.
In the last few episodes, I somewhat gave up try to understand what is going on. It has become a big mess that is difficult to untangle. That's the problem with introducing too many characters: there's no room to have character development given the number of episodes.
Guilty Crown does have the factors to be a good anime like character design, detail to background, opening/ending songs and so on, but the major flaw is that the storyline is a mess.
Based on other anime that I watched, it's always those that have male protagonist (who is usually not knowledgeable, is perverted, and/or being ordered by others) that gets featured. Besides anime where the females are the only ones, or primarily focused on, girls/women seem to always to have a role that is no higher than being the main supporting character of the (male) protagonist: never as the main character.
P.S. Speaking of which, Shuu Oma's cowardly behavior would be more tolerable if he was a girl, with the personality unchanged.
