Winter 2011 Anime Preview, Bake Sale, and Marshmallow Roast

December 28th, 2010

Snow? No thanks. I already have record breaking rain.

Apologies. I had meant to post this a few hours ago. I set all the PVs to encode to a common format right before I left in the morning, and long story short, some days you molest MEncoder until it does what you want, some days MEncoder molests you until you do what it wants.

I always feel the need to remind people that none of us doing these things really has anything but at best a random guess at how shows are going to turn out, and at worst are using woefully inadequate information copied off of someone’s poorly translated website blurb. If you’re taking any of these ‘previews’ as anything aside from idle chatter and self-indulgent ego stroking (myself included), then shame on you. Last season is a good object lesson on how expectations and these previews often mean zilcho. The particularly clueless breed will crow over VAs and pretend like a VA has ever even once been the deciding factor as to whether a show is worth watching. I’m personally dead wrong in my assessment of at least two shows per season in these previews, and there’s indisputable physical proof that I’m awesome.

This doesn’t include OVAs, things made in Flash, or ill-defined shows about magical girl cars with no specified airdate but some transient promise that episodes will be posted on YouTube eventually. I know you’re not going to, but do try to look things up before you start complaining at me about a show that you think I missed. I plan on watching at least the first episode of almost everything but direct sequels to shows I despised, and while I may not have much intelligent to say about those that lie outside my sphere interests, I like to give everything its fair shot.

I’ve also put together all the intelligent released PVs and CMs I could find as of last night. This season was especially bad for crap put out. Madoka Magica alone spewed out 8 CMs that were nothing more than the character sketches already on the website and a few Windows Movie Maker effects. Multiple other shows also vomited out half an hour’s worth of cast interviews for no reason… each. Stuff that contains no actual footage of the show itself is only included if it’s terrible enough to be hilarious. The only shows without PVs in the pack are either sequels or have already aired. 

Of course, it never fails that new things appear right after I post this. Here’s a Magica PV from Comiket 79.

Megaupload
Hotfile
Torrent

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.

Overall Thoughts:

Seven bloody shows about a magical/special girl with a doofus male sidekick. This is adding on to Index’s already story-not-in-motion. This season may have been baptized with virgin goat blood under a harvest moon. I guess we’re going to keep squeezing this stone until every last drop is gone. At least almost every show looks like it has the potential to at least be decent, which is a good thing because there aren’t many shows this season. Action shows also tend to be a lot more fun to write about because even when the machinations spin off into the truly inane, there’s still usually some random guy with a nonsensical plan to rape the moon, eat all the pies, or both. Still terrible, but ambitiously terrible than generic misunderstanding #28 designed just to stretch nonsense out for another six episodes. The relative lack of maudlin overblown dramas and corny romances slash porn adaptations slash slash in general gives me hope enough. 

Of course, to maintain cosmic balance, that means that next season is probably going to have six different adaptations of Circus games, five of which will be related to Da Capo in some way, every one made by Feel. Hopefully we’ll burn that bridge before we get to it.

Posted in Season Preview | 37 Comments »

37 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Celestial says:

    There’s 18 extra shows here. What happened. Notodoke is the only show airing next season.

    ??

  • Sporklord says:

    I don’t think I got though any of those summaries without laughing or smacking my forehead.

  • Moogy says:

    Eh, to be fair, apparently the director of Blassreiter was all over Urobuchi and inserted a bunch of generic Gonzo crap into that thing. I’m willing to give him the benefit of a doubt with Madoka, since he’s writing all of the episode scripts personally this time around. That said, I can’t see it really ending up in any sort of middle ground – either it’s a hit or it’s a total failure. And I’m honestly really not a huge fan of Urobuchi either – Saya is the only game of his I’d really say is great, though I did enjoy Django as well. Still, it’ll be interesting to see what results, at least.

    I’ll also be checking out Zombie for the Macademi director, Fractale because I liked the anime-original episodes of Kannagi, Infinite Stratos because it has a Kuribayashi OP, and maybe Dragon Crisis because Shimono paired with Kugimiya sounds hilarious.

  • Amyable says:

    Your intro tasted of delicious copypasta, but the overall writeup was nevertheless funny and (wait for it) awesome. I appreciate your existence.

  • Nanaya says:

    @Aroduc – Fractale isn’t anime original, if thats what you meant, there’s a manga for it. Or you were being sarcastic, it’s hard to tell sometimes.

    And about the Freezing protagonist sucking the energy from a fight… you have no idea. Be prepared for tears and heartfelt speeches. So, yeah.

  • LELOUCH says:

    NO R3 I GUEST!? -_-

  • rincewind says:

    Okey, this season looks even worse than the actual.

    Im planning to watch Kimi ni Todoke, the first season was nice. And maybe Fractale.

    Hopefuly the next season brings some good yuri title. Im yuri-starved!!
    And a S2 for Panty & Stocking… Curse you, masters of trolling, curse you GAINAX!! (>< Geeez, Im tsundere for GAINAX now…)

  • alex says:

    I hope Infinite Stratos will be good, I like mecha musume

  • NightShadow2239 says:

    BlazBlue’s Taokaka and Arakune huh? Funny since I only recently picked up that game.

  • Jack says:

    I’m interested in GOSICK, but let’s just get this out of the way:

    Shinku.

    Done.

    I do like Bones work usually. It’s not like they’re untalented hacks like many, its just that they’ve run into a bit of bad luck here and there.

    • InvalidName says:

      I’m looking forward to it. The novels were decent enough. And yes:

      Shinku.

      Original reason I even picked up them up, actually.

  • Mesousa says:

    I get the Feel joke, by the way.

  • sora says:

    I actually enjoyed and excited about Kimi ni Todoke it was WAY better than some of the animes you suffer through…

    • Chen says:

      I’m pretty sure Aroduc would die from an aneurysm. That or boredom. I almost did and I’m a romcom junkie.

    • Yue says:

      Insecurity happens to be a natural reaction to anyone not swayed by “Kimi ni Todoke”. You then reminisce your ill relationship experiences during middle-school or high-school.

      [shouts from the rooftop] “I’m so pathetic!

  • TJR says:

    I’m a bit interested in seeing where DEEN heads this coming year. With fewer projects available, it isn’t like they can get away with their poor quality control forever. Indeed, they now have a renowned animator overseeing Dragon Crisis.

  • Dual says:

    Angel beats was pretty good, but it is true that Urobuchi doesnt has Maeda’s writing skills and SHAFT cant match PAWorks in terms of production. We will see how Madoka turns out.

    IS, Freezing and Gosick look promising as well.

    • sage says:

      Angel beats was pretty good

      Not sure if serious.

      but it is true that Urobuchi doesnt has Maeda’s writing skills

      HAHAHAHA What the hell are you saying!? If by that you mean that Urobuchi is not a hack that uses magical AIDS as a plot device in every single one of his stories, then sure.

      and SHAFT cant match PAWorks in terms of production

      Not to be a zealous SHAFT supporter or anything (I’ve got a lot of beef against them), but… 1. SHAFT is bigger than P.A.Works. 2. P.A.Works’ production ranks between just “ok” at times with some really mediocre episodes most of the time (your own “Angel Beats!” can serve as an example in this case) while SHAFT with the same budget can be impeccable (see: Bakemonogatari). 3. P.A.Works is a second tier studio that only got promoted a few years ago. SHAFT has been around for decades already.

      Anyway, my point is… what the hell were you smoking when you wrote that nonsense!?

      • Dual says:

        Angel beats being good is pretty much the general consensus now. You may disagree, but thats just your opinion. I know it sucks when your own opinion doesnt match the consensus, but you will learn to live with it.

        And Maeda is better writer than Urobuchi, Japan agreed, dont bother them about it. Unless you want to pretend the average weeaboo knows more about visual novels than the japanese themselves.

      • Aroduc says:

        Haven’t actually read too many… or any… Japanese writeups on it, have we? Well, don’t let it stop you from invoking them as an authority to back up your opinion. Let the fact that it’s a giant fallacy do that.

      • ubu says:

        Dual cracks me up. Angel Beatsgood? Sorry, 24 minutes per week of emotional incoherence, a.k.a: Lost: The Anime just doesn’t cut it for “good.”

      • Solaris says:

        Well let’s say Angel Beats could have been better… I see much wasted potential there.
        And Shaft… and Bakemonogatari… pls, I know it sold well enough, but general popularity doesn’t automagically imply a good job: Go back and watch the start of the snail arc. Still frames, pointless chitchat and a huge deus-ex-machina to end it well.

      • Nanaya says:

        Not to redirect to this topic, but I found bakemonogatari’s endings really odd and unfinished more than deus-ex-machina’d, especially the last part… Based on what I’ve read of the prequel novels, at least. Or maybe I’m expecting too much causality from the author.

  • Ozu says:

    Looking forward to watching Freezing, just because I did enjoy the manga quite a bit. Although if there’s one thing I hate, it’s last names that sounds like first names and first names that sound like last names.

    Other than that I might check out Magical Girl Madoka Magica, IS and Gosick, see where that leads.

  • Travis says:

    Where I come from, Gussick can mean ‘White Devil’ – and Usik can mean ‘walrus dick’. Do any of these have any relevance to Gosick?… Only time will tell.

    Wandering Son and Gosick, laughs aside, look potentially interesting. Part of it is my desire to give Okada one more chance, as potentially cancerous as she can be. Barring that the only thing I can unilaterally despair it is Rio. What. The. Hell.

    Finally, and of most import – Shochu, Vodka, Absinthe, Brennivin, Ludefisk. Er, aquavit.

  • Fhoenix says:

    You don’t like snow? I guess you would hate living in Sapporo)

    Your idle chatter is fun to read in itself. By the way, where do you get your icons for the preseason ratings?

  • Yamibakeru says:

    You know, amongst all the anime previews out there, Aroduc, yours is probably the one I look forward to most.

  • Arthur says:

    Kazuya is the new way to call “generic male protagonist”?
    Two shows this season has a protagonist named Kazuya, and they are both new/transfer students.

  • ark noir says:

    Is there an anime there without a mysterious girl in episode 1? Level E has a mysterious guy, but one without a mysterious character! I’ll even watch the card game if no mysterious girl falls out of the sky.

  • Yue says:

    Given how strong fangirls here become cult followers of shoujo shows, the May2011 anime convention would be cramped by StarrySky and Reaching You cosplayers.

    I have to admit though, it’s fun to take group photos along with them only to have HaadoGei jumping in. XD

  • The Phantom says:

    O god, so many shitty series /facepalm. The preview video looked much more promising than this. I think I will “try” to follow: Dream eater merry, stratos, zombie and dragon crisis.