Winter 2009 First Impressions

Author: nova

New season, new beginning!

Hay, dis be nova. I’ve been feeling rather lazy regarding bloggan’ lately and this was supposed to be out days since but forgive me. Originally I was going to focus on just a few shows to avoid dropping a whole lot of them but as the first episodes started rolling down the tubes I saw no choice but to give many additional titles a chance. Can girls, lolis ending up as wet stain on the pavement, motorcycles with legs and batshit crazy spaceships? Winter ‘09, here I come!

Akikan!

What can I say? A guy has decides to have a drink of melon soda and the can turns into a girl. The sheer power of retardedness in Akikan! combined with lazy animation and cheap humor generally focusing on the crotch area leaves little room for discussion. The sole reason to watch this series is exactly its mind-blowing idioticy and fail. Cut it some slack though, it’s not like it’s even trying. Also, try out the drinking game!

Asu no Yoichi

Your bread-and-butter harem comedy about a guy who moves in to live with a bunch of hot sisters. For some additional spice the guy in question is a samurai-in-training and the girls are supposed to be his mentors. I don’t know why but something in the show’s setting keeps reminding me of Amaenaideyo!. Overall the show is rather bland with generic animation and unsurprising characters, but thankfully with the exception of the lead male whose complete lack of understanding on modern city life (thanks to years of training out in the wild) causes some hilarious happenings. AnY isn’t surprising or fresh but manages to be amusing at times, not to mention that the mere existence of Akikan! makes it look so much better.

Chrome Shelled Regios

Combine science fiction with RPG-style fighting action and speedcore music, and you get Chrome Shelled Regios. Speedcore music is a rather unique approach and nice as an idea, but the music is way too loud and ends up being merely obnoxious. What about the story then? The first episode leaves the poor viewer in the dark when it comes to the backstory of the world or characters, but apparently it’s about a guy with kickass fighting skills who moves in to study at a military academy and is recruited into a platoon of losers (Ender’s game, anyone?). As far as pure action goes Regios looks pretty good but more explanation on the background of well, everything, is definitely in order.

Kurokami

I think I’m going to like this show very much – very few series have a little girl get ran over by a truck in the very first episode. Cool and brutal fighting scenes, very slick animation and a simple but interesting story give Kurokami a solid chance to rank up on top this season. In Kurokami’s world there are three “copies” of every person and if these copies meet each other, only one will be left alive. Keita’s mother died after meeting one of her copies and soon people around him begin to meet the same fate. Meeting a strange girl named Kuro and making a contract with her under dire circumstances Keita follows Nishijou “Chaos;HEAd” Takumi for a one-way trip down the highway to hell. Also, Kuro is so damn moe.

RideBack

Another good looking series of the season is RideBack which combines university life, racing and global politics. Backed up by solid graphical execution, there is little doubt about RideBack being a strong candidate for my favorite of the year. Provided that Madhouse retains the current level of graphical work it’s all up to how well the story is executed. Judging from the manga we’re in for some interesting political turmoil but let us all hope that the production team will not follow in JC Staff’s wake in making an adaptation of printed materials (yes, I’m looking at you Index). Check the episode 01 overview for more on the subject.

Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo

If there wasn’t enough AWSOM in the season already with Kurokami and RideBack, we get SoraKake – a whole load of neatly animated scifi randomness. It has cute girls, mad huge spaceships, beautiful art and great humor – and then moar cute girls. In other words, a wholesome entertainment package. When facing an arranged marriage Akiha runs away from home but winds up on a massive seemingly abandoned colony ship that arrives to the Solar System all of a sudden, piloted by a narcissist, neurotic and pompous AI Leopard with suicidal tendencies. He zooms around scattering loads of space junk, attempts to fire massive cannons obviously without caring if it destroys an entire fleet of police ships and kill himself by making an atmospheric entry all just for the pure hell of it, being probably the funniest anime character I’ve witnessed in quite a while – and I can hardly think of anyone capable of fitting the seiyuu role better than Fukuyama “Lelouch” Jun. In fact I’d be surprised if some of Iain M. Banks‘ novels have inspired creating Leopard, he would fit right in the AI crowd of crazed and eccentric Culture spaceships. Additionally, I want to take Honoka and Akiha home.

White Album

So yeah, although it surely wasn’t my original intention this show ended up on my scedule. White Album is basically like your general Finnish TV-drama where everything is made gloomy and difficult, although complete melodrama is yet to be seen. “Dating an idol” appears to be the general idea around which events in the show revolve more or less but thankfully other characters than just the central pairing Touya-Yuki seem to get a fair share of the airtime. You might call it KGNE with lesser melodrama and bodycount, or KimiKiss with animation done right and no high school kids. Well executed background and character art is also a strong selling point for White Album, along with nice orchestral and jazz music. Touya, you damn stud.

That concludes the shows I have on my schedule this time over, of course in addition to yet continuing Clannad After Story, Gundam 00 2nd, To Aru Majutsu no Index, Toradora! and Tytania. Now let me have a word about those who didn’t make it this time over.

Let me start with Genji Monogatari Sennenki. I honestly have little idea what I was thinking downloading this show, but I sure should have checked its profile somewhere first. GMS is a show going for a rather narrow niche-market of those who love tragic romantic stories and reading people’s biographs, because that’s pretty much what this seems to be about. The series focuses on simply narrating the life of the main character Genji and his romantic encounters within the past Japanese aristocrat society. The pace is slow and due to a rather unique approach in art style many characters look confusingly much alike. If you like reading massive romance novels, this is the anime for you. Personally I found it simply boring and uninteresting.

Next up is Maria+Holic and undoubtedly I will now have people calling me an asshat who doesn’t recognize a great show when he sees one. To be honest I recognize the merits of M+H; its setting is fun and audiovisual execution is top-grade stuff. But there just seems to be something about the show that I am unable to grasp. See, I am not going weasel out the easy way by playing the “but I don’t liek SHAFT“-card. The thing just is that for me, Maria+Holic isn’t all that funny. It’s somewhat wacky and stuff but just like with SHAFT’s infamous Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, if you cannot grasp the specific type of humor and gags, the whole show loses its value as an entertainment to you. You see the gorgeous execution and jokes that hit their mark, but only from a distant, neutral view. Your conscious, critical mind knows the stuff is good but the motorcycle-riding caveman in you just isn’t amused.

Lastly Viper’s Creed. I can’t really say that I dropped the show but it’s on hold until some group actually bothers picking it up. From the looks of a RAW-file it seemed pretty damn good but for reasons beyond me nobody seems to be up for the challenge.

Here you have it, Nova’s done for now. Here, have a drunk Nagisa.