A scene from episode 3 that was also used in the trailer.
When this anime was in it's first few episodes, nobody knew what this anime was about. The first few trailers was about love and destiny, but, out of the blue, we have a trailer that shows a cat crashing into a penguin, and the fish that the cat was carrying hit a girl (Himari Takakura) nearby and a lot of crazy action that contradicts the earlier trailers. You were probably even left wondering what on earth you watched by the end of that trailer.
Masako Natsume
To sum this anime up: here's a summery of what I though of this anime.
Arch 1: Himari is declared dead, but mysteriously comes back to life when the hat bought earlier revived her again. Around this time, the penguins are introduced.
Arch 2: Himari asks the brothers to retrieve a thing called a "penguin drum". It was latter found out that it was a diary that a girl (Ringo Oginome) that she has in possession.
Arch 3: The Takakura brothers start the hunt to retrieve the diary by finding the right time to steal it while unaware. It was through this that the brothers found out that she stalks an another man.
Arch 4: The hunt is made more difficult when Ringo made friends with Himari.
Arch 5: The love relation between the man Himari was stalking, and an another woman.
Arch 6: At this point, I don't even know what the hell I was watching. Not sure why I didn't drop at this point.
Arch 7: It was found out that the Takakura siblings aren't actually related by blood, and there are more conflict with the characters.
Some guy
Arch 8: It turns out that Ringo's sister and some guy was split into two black rabbits and two hats 15 years earlier around the believed terrorist attacked in the subway, with one being featured in the first episode.
Arch 9: Epilogue. The Takakura brothers became random children on the street. Himari appears to had a different set of parents and no siblings. No memories from when she had those "brothers" were brought over, but seeing traces of it made her cry without knowing why herself.
Storyline-wise, it's one big mess. Too many characters were introduced, obvious and unnecessary diversions form it. The penguins introduced in the beginning, and one more (for Kanba's actual ferternal twin, Masako Natsume) seemed to be completely forgotten and give nothing more than background distractions. Seems that they must show a subway train interior of some sort in every episode, along with "Today's slogan", in the place of where ads would usually be, different in every episode.
Also, I thought Ringo is a minor character that would only appear for a while, but it seems that she appears in every episode! She looks ugly, and the colour scheme of the uniform, which I have to tolerate, is awful. That, or the design seem to be stuck in the early 2000s. (If you watched K-On, you would know what my standard of a good-looking character is now.)
Would I recommend this? If you are bored, yes. Otherwise, a strong no. I don't care how many other people say otherwise.
Well, I know that there is only a week or two left for the Autumn anime, but I would be dropping two anime at this time: Haganai (僕は友達が少ない) and Kimiboku (君と僕。). In exchange, I would (again) be picking up Ben-to (ベン・トー).
I tried to follow Haganai and Kimiboku, but I didn't find myself dreading watching them. That's a sign that I'm not interested with what I'm watching. As to why I picked up Ben-to, well, let's just say it's more interesting to watch and make up the boredom I suffered while watching the other two.
I'm also thinking of dropping Mirai Nikki, not because I'm saying that it's not good (though I do have to say that the main character is annoyingly a big coward), but that I had read through the entire manga that it is based on from the start all the way to the end. I mean, there isn't really any meaning watching suspense if I already know everything that happened from the start, all the way to the end. It's just a waste of my time.
This was what I thought when I saw certain points of the anime. Episode 1
Burning car? What happened?
Huh? What's this?
Oh, the previous image is super zoomed from this, but why place it at the very start of the opening animation? It's long and making a viewer pause just to read this (which you can't while it is being aired) is bad. Also, the name of the anime comes from the given name of the main character.
His chin is quite sharp and angular. I wonder if you can cut things with it?
She may be the first character you see after the opening and appear in this episode the most, she's not the main character.
The man who could solve criminal mysteries, but he doesn't ever leave his chair. Father of the girl in the previous screenshot.
Yes, he's pratically glued to the chair. I never saw him get out of it. This is the only thing I remembered about this episode: the lazy smart guy who makes his daughter (and other people) do everything for him.
Episode 2
Not this again.... and there's nothing right before this.
A new case: culprit is a cross-dresser.
While solving, the main character come across a girl who could sing well. Turns out that she's the victim's daughter of the case they were on.
There's a problem here: the episode and case has abruptly ended.
Covering three different anime at the same time. That's something rare of me to do, but long time readers would remember that I would put up a longer list and a short summary of it, but that didn't allow me to write much.
C³ (Cube×Cursed×Curious)
So the father's protagonist sends to his son a mysterious parcel from overseas. Then a girl who seemed to lack common sense pops out of it like magic. Then the protagonist dares to leave her alone while she knows nothing about the world, resulting in having a house in a wreck.
I can't watch this anime: from the characters lack of intelligence, and character design. As for the opening and ending themes, you may like the song though.
Kimi to Boku (君と僕。)
I'm not sure why I dropped this. I watched it again and found nothing wrong with it. Maybe I'm just disturbed on seeing a guy with long hair...
I think I'll watch it again.
Ben-To (ベン・トー)
Another strange anime: it's about groups of people fighting over half-priced lunch boxes towards the end of the end of the day. There's even a club dedicated to this kind of thing.
Just looking at the opening alone, and the way girl's bodies are portrayed, it's obviously not the kind of anime for me. I rather watch Haganai (僕は友達が少ない) than this anime that doesn't even make sense.
Other anime
As of the time of writing, there are quite a number of anime on my watch list. Other anime I'm thinking of dropping, but not yet, are:
Mawaru Penguin Drum: It's starting to become a girl's love fantasy drama who is rudely awakened to reality than a pair of brothers doing whatever it takes to prevent her sister from dying from a strange illness. I was expeting Ringo Oginome (girl in a green and white sailor uniform)
Sakugan no Shana 3 -Finale-: I felt that the end of season 1 as an Autumn 2005 anime was the true end of it and my attention for it's future season, are just extensions of it. Also, as of the second episode, there's too much talk and little action. A deja vu of To Aru Majutsu no Index (season 1 & 2), which is also produced by the same animation studio.
I had watched the OVA that was released months before the anime, and the first episode of the anime itself. It about a girl who had gain interest on taking photos with her late father's (analog) camera.
There isn't really anything wrong with this anime I should say, apart the image quality appearing up-scaled at 720p, suggesting that it was upscalled.
However, this anime is just... too normal for me to catch my interest. I tried to watch this, but because it failed to catch my attention, I would find myself falling asleep. Possibly even more quickly than an anime that I would drop in later episodes.
Add this to the amount of anime I watch at the same time (e.g. Penguindrum, Mirai Nikki, Haganai), and the other things I do, this has fallen out of favour.
As I was watching God's Notebook (神様のメモ帳), I sometimes question the intelligence and common sense of the characters. My impression of this anime has dropped by a lot since I wrote a post when it was still new back in May.
There is a lot of potential in this anime, but it seemed to have gone to waste. I see a lot of talking, physical fighting, and some scenes that just doesn't realistically happen in real life. I see the potential relationship between Narumi and Ayaka, but seems to be forgotten mid-way. In fact, it would seem that Ayaka is nothing more than an unimportant character in the background until episode 10. Like No.6, it's a potential main character that has gone to waste.
Episode 9: An obvious filter episode
Episodes 2-9 seemed very much like filter episodes that, except for 4 and 9 (sarashi thief and baseball episodes), don't seem quite obvious. This makes the last few episodes seems quite rushed, which makes up for only a third of the total episodes. Steins;Gate, which I was watching at the same time, had every episode related to the main plot and spaced out evenly. It also doesn't have annoying mini arches.
To be fair to the animation studio, these filter episodes and arches were also in the manga with the same name that was released earlier than the anime. For the chapters relating to the anime's episode 2-3, I could see that the story is expanded in the manga. Most of the parts in episode 1 are also an anime original.
I did say before that I had dropped Hanasaku Iroha at mid-point for this, and I'm kind of regretting that decision because, storyline-wise, is too predictable. I might reconsider watching it again, but I won't be writing about it when I do. Speaking of which, I have decided not to watch Ro-Kyu-Bu I mentioned a few days ago. Maid outfits are a huge turn-off for me.
By the way, how many anime features a female as the main character instead of a secondary/supporting character? Not much. One who also has intelligence and looks beautiful (well, more than what I had watched), but does not boast about it herself or not take place in some poor or rich/elite (especially the latter) place? Even fewer. Well, that's Chihaya...
Wait I'm going off topic here. This shows how much I want to forget about how bad this was.
In memory of Ayaka the forgotten girl, who, as of the finale, is still in hospital and unconscious.
Now, this is one of the few anime I keep looking forward to: Nichijou (日常). For the first 12 weeks as part of the Spring 2011 lineup, it was aired together with A-Channel, which is also a slice-of-life anime based on a manga of the same name. It's not fair for me to compare the difference between the two, since they are completely different and have nothing in common except the categories both fall under. What I'm glad about is that Nichijou did not have mention or exaggerated on girl's bodies, or have episodes heading to the beach/pool that most anime that seems very predictable. In fact, the time of the year things happen is not mentioned, but clothes people wear, and the plants in the background gives a not-so-obvious hint.
Misato's friend, though doesn't appear much
Each Nichijou episode is divided into several skits instead of a story that spans the whole series, though the skits are in chronological order. It features several characters that, may not know another character featured, and their friends too. Of course, the main characters (Mio, Mai, Yukko, Nano, Misato, Sasahara) are the more frequently shown characters.
As the episodes go by, I noticed that certain main characters don't see, or even know each other, even though the two have a mutual friend in common. Example: We didn't see Mio meeting up with Misato even though both knew Sasahara and Mio's older sister.
If you are looking for an anime that takes a break from action, fantasy, the typicality of other high school-based anime, or are busy and just want to watch without worrying who's who, what happened previously, this might be the one just right for you.
I have heard of Ro-Kyu-Bu (ロウきゅーぶ！) back when the summer anime lineup was announced, but did not pick up interest because it contains the following keywords that would have me to automatically not watch it:
primary school (小学校)
centres around a type of sport (basketball)
lolicon
What is having me reconsider is that I only have 1 anime to watch as most of the other anime have ended and the above music video relating to the opening theme song.
Honestly speaking, I wasn't really paying attention to this anime. I was watching it, but couldn't remember much about it at the top of my head. All I could say that it's about first year middle school girls feeling affectionate to each other. Sometimes one-sided and annoy others.
Would you believe me if I had watched No.6 at the same time as this? It's a whole different type of anime to begin with.
If you are looking for something family-orientated or heart-warming, you would find that Bunny Drops (うさぎドロップ) would be just the anime for you.
Bunny Drops centres around a single man, Daikichi, in his 30s. At his grandfather's funeral, he discovered that he had a child that is 6 years old. None of his other relatives are willing to take her in, so he took the initiative to do it.
As time passed, he realized how mature Rin is, but still has to juggle with work. It was difficult at first, but he found a way to get around it. Rin's friends, and staff of her school even thought that Daikichi is her father. Along the way, she made a new friend with Houki and grew up together.
If you had read the manga, you would notice that the anime ended at the chapter right before the time skip by ten years. I would say that it's a good point to end the anime as after that, it would be from Rin's point of view mostly, and I'm already too familiar with anime taking place in high school.
I have mixed feelings for No.6. It has a good storyline and visuals, but certain elements with the design of supporting characters (Safu was okay), episodes that progressed very slowly, and the behavior of the main character, makes it difficult for me to recommend or re-watch it as I dread happening.
When I watched it, I was thinking that Safu would appear more frequently than Nezumi, but the opposite happened. Explanation of the other cities, except for a brief moment of No.5 where Safu did her overseas studies, were not even mentioned.
What I could see about No.6 is that it is being run by a fascist government that spreads propaganda, conducts experiments on it citizens, and killing those who did not follow, or come across some truth that the government does not want them to know. How those bees got into people, or how it made them age rapidly wasn't explained. In fact, a lot of things weren't explained and leaving me puzzled about things.
Also, is there a significance with the baby Shion saved in episode 9? I fail to see how, and it appearing near the end of the final episode seemed unnecessary.
I never noticed it until close to the last episode, but I didn't realize that there wasn't a very tall wall in the first episode, or the slum in the desert on the other side of it used to have beautiful houses and green hills.
Note: This story centers a lot around the Radio Kaikan building in Akihabara, right outside the JR station. If you haven't heard, to damage from earthquakes, particularly the M9.0 in March 2011, and built at a time where building codes to withstand it are not as stringent as today, the building has been dismantled since July. It would be rebuilt with modern building codes by 2014. Most of its tenants has moved to 3 buildings nearby.
Steins;Gate centers around time-travel and "world lines" (different course of routes resulting from a particular action if something at a particular point in time happened, did not happen, or happened differently). It centers around Okabe Rintarou, Mayuri, Makise Kurisu, and Akane Suzuha. It mostly takes place at their "lab", which is just a rented apartment unit above a CRT store, but Radio Kaikan is an important place relating to events.
I liked how the anime was expressed, the suspense of mysteries and wanting to know more at the end of each episode. It managed to describe the complexity and paradox of changing the past. At times, I even found myself shocked of what has been revealed during the anime for the first time, if it weren't for the spoilers from the visual novel it's based on.
Steins;Gate is one of the best anime that I've seen so far for this year that ranks among anime like Purella Magica Madoka (魔法少女まどか), and Anohana (あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない。). It managed to stray away from the norm that are quite predictable, obvious filter episodes, and at the same time, has good storyline, and attention to detail. Character design could still be improved on, but is enough to overlook on because of the good storyline.
With regards to the paragraph at the very top of this post, I had to say it because phrases such as "since it can't change places while time machine, this time machine remained at the same spot" would conflict with a newer, taller, building in its place if referred to in real life, with about a 20 year gap of the time Suzuha came from.
In memory of Amane Suzuha (born 2017, died in 2001 at around 60 years of age) [in one of the timelines; calculating age is complicated if time travel is involved]
Cute girls just starting in middle school doing cute things and a catchy opening song (ゆりゆららららゆるゆり大事件) to sing along with, but is this the anime to watch?
Well, I would have my expectations to be currently lower than anime like A-Channel (Spring 2011). Don't forget that I'm also watching Kami-sama no Memo-chou and Steins;Gate at the same time. Oh, and No. 6 too.
I don't know... I'm leaning more towards dropping it though, but... they're so cute.
Having watched several different anime, I'm starting to notice something that has been rather common: a whole episode dedicated to playing by the beach in the summer with a group of people. This theme has been used too much.
So, why the dislike towards it? Here:
too common
always takes place during the summer vacation
a lot of emphasis on the girl's swimsuit
the whole episode (and maybe the ones around it) is focused mainly on it
no meaningful storyline development
etc.
On top of that, I'm starting to watch more of the more serious ones. Love comedy ones are also fallen out of favor.
Japanese name: 神様のメモ帳 (Kami-sama no Memo-chou)
Season: Summer 2011
This first episode was a 1 hour special and aired ahead of its regular schedule. It also confirmed my wanting to "drop" Hanasaku Iroha after episode 12 and 13 failed to keep me from watching it and a lot of positive/negative reasons on it. I don't want to say anything bad about it, but let's just say I'm looking for something with a faster pace and more action.
This 1-hour special allows us to see more what this anime is about, character background, and the first case being solved of a group that deals with hunting down NEETs. The first case involves helping Miku on finding Sakuma Shouko, her senior, who is with her boyfriend. I need to watch this again to catch what happened as my watching of this episode has been interrupted with several hour gaps in between.
In terms of how similar to other anime this anime is let's put it this way since there are so many:
more real-life/serious version of Ookami-san (Summer 2010)
Has the same kind of atmosphere that Sigofumi (Autumn 2008) has, and oddly mixing it with N.H.K. ni Youkoso! (Summer 2006)
visual-wise, by the same artist who did Hanasaku Iroha (Spring 2011)
Steins;Gate (Spring 2011) for the mouthful/detail explanation of things (and Dr. Pepper references)
Somewhat like To Aru Kakaku no Railgun (Autumn 2009), but in a more ordinary setting and without lengthy fighting scenes.
This anime is exactly what its genre falls into: slice-of-life as what it should be and, in the anime timeline, ended a year later.
For the insert songs, at first I thought it was the ending theme due to it being so close to the end of the first episode. Another shocker was that there were insert songs that were all good and matches the scene it was played at, with the exception being the final episode.
The anime is heartwarming and has this warm and fuzzy feeling. It's fun to see Run making mistakes, which are easy to tell from her eyes when she's prone to.
Despite the nice things to say about it, re-watch value is kind of low. Not recommended if you want action and not want nothing to happen.
Japanese name: あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない。 (Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai.)
Season: Spring 2011
This was a heartfelt anime that (almost) made me cry. It ended on a good note.
At some point in time, I actually felt like dropping this anime. What had me to pick it up again was the many positive reviews it had. Watching it over again, and paying close attention, I'm starting to like it more.
This follows a group of childhood friends, Jintan in particular, shut himself out from the outside world when the spirit of Menma kept pestering him. It turns out that only Jintan can see her, but Menma can interact with objects. Jintan gathers his other childhood friends to help send her back to heaven, though they think he's crazy. Trying to achieve exactly Menma wants was not easy, like money to make fireworks, and conflict among each other.
Japanese title: 花咲くいろは (Hanasaku Iroha)
Season: Spring 2011
Might have dropped at: I don't know what's going on anymore (Episode 12), maybe until an episode with a new opening and/or ending sequence to know for sure.
Well, this anime is on the borderline of continuing to watch this, and the possibility of dropping it completely. I'm kind of lost.
Visual and music wise, there's nothing wrong actually, one of the best I've come across to tell you the truth. The reason for dropping is mostly because of my diminishing interest and the lack of any interesting progress in storyline. Almost too slow.
Why I'm even considering is my schedule, not knowing that this a 24-episode anime, A-Channel ended at 12 episodes instead of the expected 24, and the recent end of Anohana.
Japanese title: [C]
Season: Spring 2011
Dropped at: just before the collapse of the Southeast Asian financial district (episode 7)
This anime was dropped quite a while ago, so I might not remember clearly on why I dropped it or details of the anime itself.
This anime started off interestingly of receiving a lot of money, but in exchange of having to fight battles weekly with others in the same situation in the "Financial District", an alternate world. Loosing a battle means having misfortune that could range from failing a minor test, to having one's child to be unborn.
Well, I kind of tolerated the character design, but the creature attached to the protagonist (called Myshuu or something) was kind of... not visually appeasing.
As the episodes go on, it starts to become clear that the battles that I wasn't interested in became the main focus of the anime, and nothing interesting to watch. At some parts, English was spoken, but spoken with obviously simple vocabulary with a Japanese accent. I'm not making fun of the voice actors behind it, but it does make me uneasy having heard real American and British accents for quite a while. Combining all the tiny things that I have been tolerating has become a reason for me to drop this.
I'm going to rework the way I post things on this blog, seeing that the current way of doing things had resulted in me not following it.
When I had stopped watching an anime ("dropped") that is currently on TV in Japan that is at the 3rd or more episode, I usually don't write a post about it except for a brief mention on twitter and the anime in question disappearing from my "Anime Watch List" section at the sidebar, but do give a detailed description at the end of the season. The problem with this is writing a very long list, plus writing the preview of the next season, and possibly having forgotten in detail of why I had dropped it. Anime dropped before this month (June 2011), but after the spring anime started, are not reflected.
With that, I am no longer writing the end-of-season review, but write each one of them individually as soon as it ended or had them "dropped". Anime that has been dropped after many episodes are usually ones that fail to progress in storyline (entertain me in the case of slice-of-life) or had tolerated it for quite some time due to other reasons like being related to an another anime (To Aru Majutsu no Index 2), or had very detailed landscaping (Hanasaku Iroha).
Note: Since writing part 2, I've dropped Sket Dance as of episode 2. Clearly it's not something I would continue watching, especially with many other, better, anime.
The World God Only Knows 2
神のみぞ知るセカイII
Well, after dropping the first season, and only watched it casually again later on, it seemed fitting that I would watch the second season casually too. Some of the reason for not picking it up regularly is probably the same as not picking it up at all, except the part of having an interesting plot.
The main reason for not picking it up is the it's-neither-good-nor-bad character design, Elise being so annoying, and a change of route every one or two episodes (this also applies to Sket Dance, which I've just dropped), and maybe the Austin Powers-like main character design.
Electromagnetic Girl and a Teenage Boy
電波女と青春男
(Warning: You might find the opening a pain to your ears.)
If you weren't paying attention to the credits, you probably wouldn't think that this is another SHAFT anime due to the obvious lack of their signature strange style of theirs, and Maria Holic Alive that they too produced also being in this season's lineup. The protagonist's aunt looked somewhat like Kawashima Ami of Toradora (Autumn 2008).
This episode is just mostly an introduction. Protagonist moves from the countryside and into the city, a lot of conversation over the dinner table, and nothing new here. What is the strange one is an unnoticed girl lying around in the house, wrapped most of her body around in a futon for most of the episode. Oddly, she doesn't want the the futon externally tied around her to be removed, until close to the end of the episode where we get to see her for the first time outside that futon as if a butterfly has hatched out of the cocoon as she was pretty and instantly mature, which is the last you would expect from a largely ignored girl who was previously only seen wrapped in a futon and behaving childishly.
Well, I'm hoping that it wouldn't take a turn for the worse. I can't really compare this with other anime made by SHAFT.
We Still Do Not Know the Name of the Flower We Saw that Day.
あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない。
Well, I don't really like anime that feature a group of primary (elementary) school kids partly because of my own history during those days, or their older selves looking back, how people have changed, and how something happened to one of them. I would probably need to watch again to get what's going on. I only picked it up because of the ending theme below, or maybe something about one of the preview trailers.
This video seemed to lack animation as only the song and the credits are displayed in the closing minutes of the episode, and only parts of this video was used for the ad of the ending song album.
[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control
C
So, this anime starts with a salaryman trying to use all the cards he has on an ATM, but all failed. His very last one would give him all the money he wants and access to the surreal Financial District, but on the condition of exchanging it for his life.
I really don't get what's going on, but it seems to have that same atmosphere that Death Note (Autumn 2006) has. It's certainly more interesting to watch than Aria mentioned below. Also, it's rare for an anime where the protagonist is not in High School (college in this case), which most anime seems to be based on these days.
Aria the Scarlet Ammo
緋弾のアリア
Watched a bit of it only because it was one of the titles I wrote down while looking at the previews of all the spring anime and I don't know what I had just watched. Guns? Bombs? Machine gun-mounted segways that moves by itself? Also, the level of male-orientated fanservice makes me feel uneasy and disgusted.
Sorry to say, I don't want to write much about this. Unless you are a guy that likes pretty girls with guns and in combat, I wouldn't want to even mention this anime.
To sum it up, this spring season offers plentiful amount of new anime that meets that standard of giving me a warm, fuzzy feeling, wanting to watch more, and quite good character and background design. Detail is not important as you could see that I'm watching Nichijou (least detailed BG, happy-go-lucky lifestyle), and Hanasaku Iroha (most detailed BG, goes through hardships) at the same time. This is the first time in a long while that I've seen so many good anime. Spring and Autumn are the usual season when this happens.
Will we see another time like this? There's a likely chance there won't be, at least, among the well known names we know now: the recent Touhoku Earthquake on top of the already strained economy, some of the screenwriters passing on, amongst other unpredictable reasons.
Here's the second part of the Spring anime, covering the second week of April. I'll promise you that it will be longer than part 1.
Steins;Gate
The story follows a man called Okabe, who calls himself a Mad Scientist. He attends a meeting in a building near Akihabara for a conference discussing the theories of time travel.
He was soon brought out and questioned by a lady (Kurisu Makise) he has never met before, questioning what he had wanted to tell her, but he is sure he he was elsewhere at the time she claimed to have met him.
Not long afterwards, Makise was found dead, and there's a satelite crashed into the building he was in. What's even stranger was that he was told that the lecturer of the meeting he attended never turned up, puzzling him further on what just happened.
At his base, he talks to the TV with an image of an Llama with a human face, use a space gun-like remote control, and mobile phone operated microwave oven. It's funny to see his reaction when the TV broke and thinks that somebody has been sabotaging his "equipment" and sent it to be repaired. It's a bulky CRT TV, so it is troublesome to carry.
Back at the base again, he noticed that his friend never talked about a message he sent to him. On being asked, he said that the message was sent days earlier. Something strange is happening. What's even stranger was that Kurisu Makise is somehow alive again, despite Okabe seeing her lying on the floor lifelessly in a pool of her own blood. Looks like some time traveling is involved.
"If these two are images of the same woman, and the left image taking place earlier than on the right, how is this possible?"
Sket Dance
(Audio only; A company listed in this anime's credits might remove the video version via content ID)
Every aspect of the anime seems as if the odd mix of Setokai Yakuindomo (Summer 2010) and Bleach (Autumn 2004; ongoing) were mixed together, but it has that energetic, feel good feeling.
Sket Dance follows the misadvantures of the Campus Support Group, which solve problems brought to them by students and staff, along with the abilities of its members
Although not as obvious as A-channel or Nichijou, this is an another slice-of-life anime with no real plot. It seems that every episode might have a new client. The first episode got me confused as it focused on the said client instead of the group: I actually thought that he would actually join the team.
Members of the group: Bossun (lying down), Himeko (reading magazine), Switch (with computer)
Maria Holic Alive
まりあ†ほりっく あらいぶ
Knowing SHAFT, this opening can't be the one you will be seeing for the rest of the season. There's this song, the old-school music, oddly huge typeface size, and the animation in this opening itself appearing to be a summary of what happened in the first season back in Winter 2009.
Still in Amenokiseki Academy, Kanako still nosebleeds on thinking too much of girls, although she's a girl herself. I didn't liked the first season and wanted to see if this was better, but it seems to be the same. Looking at the other titles, I would say that this would be the first title to drop.
A-channel
Aチャンネル
Well, this is that other anime by Studio Gogumi that supposedly competes with KyoAni's (Kyoto Animation) Nichijou that is also in the Spring lineup (see part 1). Studio Gogumi is so relatively new that the only other anime you could search is the OVA of Koe de Oshigoto from last year. On closer look, you would notice that most of the staff are the same people form GONZO who worked on Saki (Spring 2009). GONZO has been in the news around 2009 for having financial problems.
Screenshots:
The opening seemed warm when compared to Nichijou, which is energetic.
Characters from left: Nagi, Yuko, Toru, Run
Being one of the few anime with character design meeting my standard, here's an another slice-of-life anime to enjoy. It looks like there might be some yuri involved, especially when Yuuko and Toru are in the same scene like Toru whacking Yuko's breast (twice in this episode) because she's so jealous about its size, though poor Yuko herself doesn't seem to know about it. Toru is so fond of Run that dates back from before Run had met Nagi and Yuko, that she whacks anyone else in the way, including Run's male friends.
Seemingly out of nowhere, there's an insert song not long before the ending theme that wouldn't look out of place as the final scene in the final episode, but this is the first episode and there's a scene between this and the ending theme.
That's all for part 2. Part 3 would cover anime airing soon, which looks likes there's another 5 more anime that I would be interested in that would stretch for an another week.
