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!
