Fall 2008 Mid-Season Check

Author: nova

As the season is around halfway through its run, I decided to write a bit about how the shows have been doing so far. All in all this season has been quite impressive with a lot of good series around and I am more than satisfied. But without any more intro babble, let me present you another spreadsheet since it seemed to work so well previously.

You may notice the absence of some shows that I included in the season start post – these have been dropped for one reason or another, explained below. I also picked up Index shortly after composing the first chart, so it has been added to this one. I ended up dropping four shows in total: Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka, Kurogane no Linebarrels, Kyou no 5 no 2 and ef ~a tale of melodies.

Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka isn’t the kind of show that’s really fun to bash, because it’s obvious that it isn’t even trying. Akane-iro combines the poor animation of H2O with uninteresting storyline and thus is nothing more or less than a textbook ten-penny eroge-adaptation. What amazes me is that such a high-profile fansub group as Eclipse has bothered wasting their time on this. Long story short: Akaneiro is crap you have seen dozens of times already. I guess one reason for its popularity is the combination of Hirano Aya and Kugimiya Rie which to an average streetsperson translates as “Haruhi + Shana”, but you might as well say all Uwe Boll’s movies are good because they’re based on decent games. Then again, if you live in a trailer park, have a Confederacy flag on your wall, enjoy your pastime by shooting cats with a shotgun and think boning your sister is AOK, then you might want to check it out.

However, as lame as it might be, Akane-iro rarely was actually painful to watch – unlike GONZO’s latest brainfart Kurogane no Linebarrels. The most annoying male lead of the year 2008, the ultimate fuckface who would make Itou Makoto look like a choirboy, makes Linebarrels truly a unique series to watch. Ah yes, you will shit bricks and barbed wire while something warm is gushing out of your ears. Oh, and if you thought something was learned of Dragonauts, you were wrong.

Kyou no 5 no 2 hardly needs any explanation. Read the manga, watch the OVAs, forget about the TV anime. Nothing further, your Honor.

ef ~a tale of melodies wasn’t a bad series at all, but I ended up dropping it temporarily due to crappy situation with the subtitles. With Menclave lagging behind and Chihiro on the wheel, I’d rather enjoy the show to the fullest by watching it when Menclave or some other decent group has finished it. All good is worth the wait.

Chaos;HEAd is facing similar problems as well, as apparently m.3.3.w has some problems with the encoding and Dark-Rebirth has taken point with their subtitles of rather questionable quality. While I’m not really in the position to bitch about the translation accuracy, I’d at least like to see the character names spelled right. For those who can wait, I strongly recommend waiting for m.3.3.w to get back on their feet again.

Kannagi has been a great positive surprise and Nagi-Tsugumi-Zange-combination has taken the hearts of many by storm. The director Yamamoto Yutaka (who was canned by KyoAni after directing the first few episodes of Lucky Star) and a seiyuu-cast riddled with a bit less-known names succeed in bringing something fresh to the business. Tomatsu Haruka does a wonderful job as Nagi in charming the audience and the low-keyed voice of Sawashiro Miyuki as Tsugumi is music to my ears, after listening to Rimi’s ear-tingling speech in Chaos;HEAd. It’s also fun to see the director being capable of some healthy self-irony.

Gundam 00 2nd is moving like a cargo train at full speed – steady, fast and unstoppable. The first season had little parts with quiet waters to begin with and in 00 2nd Sunrise tosses even the last of them out of the window. However, I must express my worries over the excess introduction of new plot elements – Sunrise is building up a lot, and I sure hope they don’t realize too late that they need to disassemble the whole monster of a plot at some point. Also, what the flying fuck is this Mr. Bushido-shit? Honestly, even To Aru Majutsu no Index has yet to introduce as ridiculous element as this guy. Thankfully the scenes he appears in are left scarce, so I don’t need to be facepalming myself to bruises.

Speaking of To Aru Majutsu no Index, the show isn’t all that bad but plagued with small problems. It has good raw materials to start with: Decent animation, solid characters and setting and good source materials. However combining all these seems to be where the bulk of the problem lies. JC Staff just appears to be just as confused as the viewer, which results in poor directing and pacing. A lot of shit goes down but not much is explained to the audience in sufficient detail. JC Staff needs to cut down on something because of the vast abudance of source material, but they don’t seem to be sure what to prioritize. An entire episode is dedicated to a single scene, hell, to a single conversation of which 90% is just empty blabbery that could be cut down to a few sentences – while another one is pumped full of action and plot elements that nobody aside from those familiar to the manga and novels can fully comprehend. Index is a problematic show, but in a way rather amusing to watch. Also, Mikoto is so much win.

Thankfully the another JC Staff show of the season, the /a/’s favorite subject, Toradora, proved itself better than I expected. Kugimiya Rie with her bitch voice as a pseudo-loli sounded too much like Shana and Zero no Tsukaima, both of which are hopefully never seen again in animated format or otherwise, but luckily Taiga isn’t as prominent character as I thought and isn’t in a full bitch mode 24/7. There is silly KONOBAKAINU-slapstick around but not much and the little there is is fully compensated by the charm of Kushieda Minori, one of the best female characters I’ve encountered this year.

I guess that’s all for now. My preordered copy of Call of Duty: World at War just came in and it’s about time to go give it a spin. I will push out the episode 6 overview of Chaos;HEAd ASAP, stay tuned.