天下制覇

Starry☆Sky
http://sta-ska.com/
Studio: DEEN
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers December 23rd/February 3rd

Summary: 
12 pretty pretty boys each with their own Zodiac sign seduce a generic female. Over and over and over again.

Personal Thoughts: 
The first ‘episode’ already aired, and it’s on some kind of bizarro webcast schedule until February, whereupon terrestrial broadcasts begin and will pass the webcasts around the start of March. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Luckily, the first episode was really really bad, so it’s all a moot point anyway. On the other hand, the main character’s lesbian parents were kinda hot.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
…Wanna do it?

Rio RainbowGate!
http://riorainbowgate.com/
Studio: Xebec
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 4th

Summary: 
Mint is brought by her multi-millionaire grandfather to a resort island. She’s quickly bored by the ‘kiddy’ attractions there and wanders into a casino where she becomes infatuated with Rio, the fabled Goddess of Victory. When a man takes Mint’s prized stuffed animal hostage, it’s up to Rio to win it back in a high stakes game of poker. That’s only the start of Mint’s adventures with Rio.

Personal Thoughts:
It pained me just reading that, let alone writing it. Don’t get excited for this being Xebec and their stock on the rise lately either. This is Xebec’s trash squad, best known for TLR and almost a decade’s worth of Rockman.EXE. It is basically an original work based off of character designs from old pachinko games and I fully expect it to be about as deep and intelligent as them.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Now let’s paint us a happy little rainbow.

Reaching You – Second Season
http://www.ntv.co.jp/kiminitodoke/index.html
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 4th

Summary: 
Sequel series. The continued waffling of a shy ‘scary’ girl who just needs some penis, any penis, to make everything right in the world and change her from a social reject to the belle of the ball.

Personal Thoughts: 
Wanted nothing to do with the first season, I cannot imagine I’ll want anything to do with this one. I believe the word ‘hackneyed’ entered my original impressions multiple times, as well as swearing at Noto spewing out breathy wallflower female role #424 for her.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Get drunk and get laid already, you twits.

Magical Girl Madoka ★ Magica
http://www.madoka-magica.com/
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Shinbo
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 6th

Summary: 
There are girls. They sign contracts with talking rodents to become magical girls. Assumably, they then go to rehab for meth addiction.

Personal Thoughts: 
They’ve been oddly tight-lipped regarding anything relating to the plot or scenario for this series. Given Shaft’s recent production woes, I assume it’s because they still haven’t finished the first episode. I’m not even sure why people are excited about Phantom’s VN writer being involved. Haven’t we learned already that VN writers don’t transition to anime composition well, or do we need to forcefeed another Angel Beats viewing? Besides, he already tried writing for anime once. It was called Blassreiter. Ew. Shinbo can (sort of) do magical girl though, at least assuming that he learned anything from doing the first season of Nanoha, which was (sort of) okay. And now the bar is set low enough to maybe make this show okay again.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Four magical… girls.
     

IS <Infinite Stratos>
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/is/
Studio: 8-Bit
Genre: Action, Comedy
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 6th

Summary: 
Ten years ago, the advent of Infinite Stratos, a near invincible exoskeletal weaponry system, revolutionized the world. However, IS can only be activated by women, causing gender conflicts to erupt once again. Orimura Ichika accidentally becomes the first male to be able to activate an IS and is then forced to attend a specialized IS training academy filled with nothing but women, disrupting his desired peaceful life.

Personal Thoughts: 
Ahh, the love child of Duel Savior and Dual! The characters come off as the most generic thrown-together mecha cliches imaginable, right down to the ace male lead fighter who turns into a bumbling twit whenever he’s within fifteen feet of a pair of ovaries. It does have KyoAni’s old writer at the helm. I’m not sure experience with Air and Kanon will help, but the FMP experience should. Still 8-Bit’s a newbie to actually producing a full series. The promos do look good, but new studios traditionally splurge on the first episode/promo material and then collapse shortly afterwards. That puts this as a giant question mark with a lot of potential at both the good and bad ends of the spectrum.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Nodamiki IS: ENGAGE.

Dream Eater Merry
http://nightmare.ponycanyon.co.jp/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 6th

Summary: 
Yumeji has been haunted in his nightmares by cats contiuously attacking him. He meets a girl named Merry who says that she’s a nightmare that has somehow been transferred into the real world. His dreams are other nightmares trying to escape by consuming people. He’s drawn into the battle between the real world and the dream world to protect his friends thanks to his ability to see the colors of people’s recent dreams.

Personal Thoughts: 
Head director’s a vet of lots and lots of brainless action, so that’s a little promising. Then again, JC Staff has not exactly excelled at action series lately. Exposition series pretending to be action series, sure. Plus, they’re practically rubber stamping every "slender possibly-magic girl paired with normal boy" series they can get their greasy mitts on. I expect it to be watchable, but not too much more than that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Five nightmare cats.

Wolverine
http://www.animax.co.jp/marvelanime/wolverine/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 7th

Summary: 
Logan’s search for a woman leads him to Japan where he’s attacked and loses most of his mutant powers. The battle between him and the crime syndicate that kidnapped his ladyfriend is just beginning.

Personal Thoughts: 
Iron Man and Wolverine’s first episodes were both screened at some US con about six months back. Iron Man was the one everybody was excited for while Wolverine was universally panned. Now where does that leave us? Doomed, I say. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED. I do admit some morbid curiosity seeing how the highly individualistic Wolverine will be rewritten to appeal to a collectivist culture, but I imagine that I can simulate the experience by growing mold on tapioca in my fridge and inhaling a great big lungful of spores once a week.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Nobody gets between Japanese Rape-Spiderman and his poon!

GOSICK
http://www.gosick.tv/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Mystery
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 7th

Summary: 
Kazuya transfers to a new school where he meets Victorique, a beautiful girl who spends every waking moment in the library reading. Her idiot detective brother uses her keen intellect to solve cases that have the police baffled. When Kazuya becomes the primary suspect in a murder, he’s forced to turn to her for help.

Personal Thoughts: 
Do note that ‘Gosick’ is an incorrect transliteration of Gothic, which would be a sensical name for a gothic show. Sigh. Sometimes I think Japan does this specifically because it annoys me. The director’s a total nobody (Heroman being the only major work), and this is one of three (three!) shows that the writer’s working on this season. She’s known for awful endings to her shows anyway, so it’s a perfect fit for Bones. I can’t say that I’m a fan of mysteries in general, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, despite numerous overtures towards ‘mystery’ series, Japan has little idea how to pull off a mystery anyway.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
But can she discover their true identities?
        

Cardfight!! Vanguard
http://cf-vanguard.com/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Advertising
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 7th (late night)

Summary: 
In the near future, Bushiroad decided that they needed a new franchise to sell cards to small children. They set out on an ambitious adventure to advertise the hell out of their little pieces of paper with dragons drawn on them.

Personal Thoughts: 
Let’s not mince words or have any illusions about this. This will clearly be the awesomest of awesome awesomeness and cannot be contained by some any mere description. Jam Project are such corporate whores these days.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Three and a half true game masters.

Freezing
http://freezing.tv/
Studio: ACGT
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 7th (late night)

Summary: 
The Earth has been invaded by aliens called the Nova and only super powered teams of a male and female can fight them; the female Pandoras acting as the fighters while the male Limiters suppressing the Nova’s abilities. Kazuya is a brand new student in the military academy and accidentally makes the stern Pandora, Bridgette, lose her first training battle ever. To make it up to her, he decides to look past her reputation as a heartless terror and be her Limiter when no other man would.

Personal Thoughts: 
Staff’s experienced with a wide array of both good shows and bad, so there’s not a whole ton interesting to say about that. I’ll keep the snide comments about male leads with powers to suck the energy out of battles to a minimum. …Yeah, right. What I’ve picked up, this is kind of like Regios in that the monsters are there as an afterthought and most of it is various psychopaths running around school attacking each other for no reason. Sounds fine to me. Besides, it airs in its own little evening time zone anyway.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
How many shows about schools training magical girl psycopaths do we need this season?

I Don’t Like My Brother All, You Know!!
http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/oniichan/
Studio: ZEXCS
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 8th

Summary: 
Nao is madly in love with her perverted brother ,Shusuke, and when she learns that she was adopted, there’s nothing left holding her back. Except that he still sees her as his sister, as do all of their friends, and are going to do everything they can to keep her from her pseudo-incestuous desires.

Personal Thoughts: 
Experienced director, newbie writer, and Zexcs. Big Z’s been backsliding the last year or two, but they still make mostly watchable shows. They’ve reached this bizarre middle ground where they either make terrible setups better or good setups worse. This is part of the former, but these kind of horrible setups still require solid execution to be tongue in cheek instead of just plain horrible. I’m really hoping this ends up more like Tarou’s family life in MM than… other shows which are better off not named. Other than the half-assed incest twist, which is already ingrained into the harem setup half the time anyway, this really looks like just another brainless T&A comedy to me.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
"Stop touching your brother or I’m turning this preview around!"
                                                

Mitsudomoe Expansion
http://www.mitsudomoe-anime.com/
Studio: Bridge
Genre: Comedy
Information Links: ANN Entry
Premiers January 8th

Summary: 
Sequel series. The continuing adventures misunderstandings of the perverse Marui triplets inflicting various forms of torture on each other and the people around them.

Personal Thoughts: 
My patience with the first season was running pretty thin at the end. It started off hilarious, but then production plummeted and they recycled the same very forced misunderstanding joke week after week after week, just shuffling around which characters were involved. Every now and then, a glimmer of creativity would come back, but soon got buried under the introduction of a new character just so they’d have another character for the cast to cycle through the same joke with. I’m hoping Bridge learned from their mistakes, but I’m not holding my breath. Not that this is a short ‘season’ of just 8 episodes too.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Marui harassment is smalltime.

Beelzebub
http://www.shonenjump.com/j/rensai/beelzebub/
Studio: Pierrot
Genre: Being Terrible
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 8th (late night)

Summary: 
Oga’s a punk that loves to fight and pick on his classmates. He discovers a man floating down the river who splits in half and the son of the Devil crawls out and bonds with him, causing instant death for Oga if the two ever seperate. Oga now has to fight to protect and raise the baby Beelzebub even though using his newfound demonic powers threatens the fate of the world.

Personal Thoughts: 
Ewwwwww, Jump. Pierrot’s spewing out yet another Sunday morning Jump action show with terrible staff at the helm. Can I just leave it at that? No? Damn. It’s not the crappy characters, it’s not the juvenile humor, it’s not the poor production for 95% of the show, it’s the pacing. Months spent going nowhere seems to be a virtue for the rag with flashbacks of exposition tossed in to explain how these power levels are totally different from the last power levels. And to be completely honest, it is also the characters, humor, and production too.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Classification not applicable.

Is This a Zombie?
http://newtype.kadocomic.jp/zombie/
Studio: DEEN
Genre: Comedy, Action
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 10th

Summary: 
Ayumu’s life seems to end when he’s murdered, but he’s revived as a zombie with superhuman abilities by a mysterious girl and agrees to take her in and act as her bodyguard in exchange. Soon after, he also accidentally depowers a magical girl in her unrelated fight against otherworldly monsters and has to take over her job as well.

Personal Thoughts: 
This premise reminds me entirely too much of Guardian Hearts. Now there’s a bad memory. In general, I think that at some point in this piece’s development, the editing process was tossed out the window and literally everything got let through. This is Macademy’s director though and one of the few things that Deen consistently does well is comedy, so I am cautiously optimistic that they’ll run with the mess instead of trying to turn it into a sensible setting.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Six disgruntled mobile dolls.

Dragon Crisis! 
http://dragoncrisis.jp/
Studio: DEEN
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 10th

Summary: 
In a world of magical artifacts, Ryuuji’s cousin forces him to help her steal a crate out from under a criminal organization’s nose. When they open it up, they find a girl who immediately becomes infatuated with Ryuuji and is supposedly a mythical dragon. As word of the escaped dragon spreads, different organizations begin trying to kidnap her for their own uses.

Personal Thoughts: 
DEEN, inexperienced director, and the writer for TWGOK and OreImo. I can barely contain my excitement. Well, I’d like to say that, but since it and Zombie are the only non-Jump shows airing on Mondays, I don’t want to think about what that’s going to do to my sanity when I try to watch it simply for something to do. This is also the sixth of seven new shows this season about magical/pseudo-magical girls with witless male protagonist sidekicks. That doesn’t even count Index. Give it a rest, Japan.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Organized crime? In my city? I don’t think so.

Level E
http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/level-e/
Studio: Pierrot/David
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 10th

Summary: 
Yukitata has finally moved out on his own, but when he arrives at his apartment, he finds someone already there. The man calls himself Prince Baka (sigh) and claims to be a crash-landed alien with amnesia and declares that he’ll be sharing the apartment with Yukitata and demands to be waited on hand and foot.

Personal Thoughts: 
Because if there’s nothing better than Jump, it’s old Jump. And if there’s nothing better than old Jump, it’s old Jump being worked on by Gonzo’s refugees at David. At least they’re experienced, and not the dregs of Gonzo’s dregs. The source this is based on also consists of only 16 chapters, so a healthy chunk of it will be original anyway… or stretched out thinner than the cels it would have been animated on if this was made back when it was… not even that popular?

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Not fabulously naked enough.

Fractale
http://fractale.noitamina.tv/
Studio: A-1
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 13th

Summary: 
One day, Crane finds an injured girl and falls in love with her. She mysteriously disappears, leaving behind only a pendant which houses an artificial being called a Doppel named Nessa. The two set off together in search of the mysterious girl and to hopefully find a way to restore the failing Fractale system that maintains their idyllic world.

Personal Thoughts: 
Another totally original show with very little promotional material. This is a noitaminA show though, so I’m anticipating this about as much as I do all noitaminA shows, which is to say, only slightly less than a Justin Bieber/Mick Jagger sex tape. A-1’s been having some… issues, shall we say… lately as well. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for this as anything more than some vapid piece where the only things of note are the backgrounds and the ‘atmospheric’ music. The main notable things are that this is the second of three shows Okada is writing for this season and that the director’s said he’ll quit if it fails, which is less of a threat than one might think since he’s only actually fully directed one series (Kannagi) and was already kicked off another for sucking (Lucky Star).

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Fractale System’s 100 Year Warranty is Vault-Tec Approved!

Wandering Son
http://www.houroumusuko.jp/
Studio: AIC
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers January 13th

Summary: 
Nitori seems to be a shy boy and Takatsuki seems to be a tomboyish girl. However, both are transgendered and they turn to each other to help in growing up and dealing with the issues that confront them.

Personal Thoughts: 
And here’s the third series Okada’s writing for. Luckily, she has the director of Girls Bravo and Ga Rei:Zero in charge of this so… uh… wherever I was going with this, it was not going to end well. This would be the other noitaminA show, so everything I said above still applies. I’m not even sure how this stuff works. It’s effectively an after-school special on gender dysphoria that lasts four hours. In the same time, you could learn how to use an entire library. Those things have books! And the Dewey Decimal System!

Preseason Swing Rating: 
HRRRRRRUUUNNNKK
   

Suite PreCure♪
http://asahi.co.jp/precure/
Studio: Toei
Genre: Selling Magical Cellphones
Staff/Cast List: ANN Entry
Premiers February 6th

Summary: 
Another in the endless Pretty Cure reboots. This time we’ve moved onto musically themed magical girls.

Personal Thoughts: 
I again point to the year I spent watching ZKC live, which was preceeded by about 3 minutes of watching PreCure girls elbow drop giant scorpions with the power of hitting buttons on their cellphones. As far as magical girl series directed at 10-14 year old little girls go, you can do worse, but I have the feeling at this point that they use the PreCure name just to hide the fact that they’re recycling the story with new characters over and over and over again.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Calling it now, next one’s going to be Suite and Soeur PreCure.