Fall 2009 Season Midterm Grades

Author: NovaJinx

Sorry for the recent silence, been rather busy and tired.

So yeah, I suppose it’s time for me to take a break from hitting F5 on OEG and fart out a mid-season evaluation. You pretty much know the drill, first some spreadsheets and then the verbal rambling. Oh, and I’ve heard people complain I don’t post enough pics nowadays so this time I decided to throw anything semi-relevant I could find in between the paragraphs.

That’s the TL;DR for you busy ones. Now on with the speeches.

durpan.

Let’s start with 11eyes. Dogakobo didn’t fail my expectations, after a few eps the show falls apart in every possible sense and joins Chaos;HEAd as another miserable VN adaptation with a 10-penny budget. Dropped.

Saten knows her shit.

A Certain Scientific Railgun did somewhat better, but that isn’t much of a praise. As expected, JC Staff decided to start dicking around with filler eps with story elements stretched out so that each is about as deep as a sheet of A4. Episode 6 was a sort of mixed sensation but it was just generally retarded and corny. It did have some potential but don’t let me start on that again, this is JC Staff and talking about potential with it is about as futile as talking about money at the Finnish parliament. Railgun is already halfway through its run and we’re still left waiting on the Level Upper arc to actually start. Will Railgun end up as an Index-ish pacing nightmare with the first half stretched out like a general fight scene in Naruto and the second part drowning the viewer with a super-compressed storyline? Likely yes. And besides the lack of railgun in Railgun leaves me in despair. I didn’t know the show’s actual title was A Certain Homosexual Teleporter. Excuse me. This shit deserves its place in the miserable mid tier. It could be salvaged yet but hey.
>>JC Staff.
>>Salvage.

Unless you’re a blogger. Remember kids, you don’t have to!

How about Kämpfer? Being the happy bottom-feeder of the season, Nomad is blatantly whoring almost every corner of the fandom with reverse traps, lesbians, crazy lesbians, crazy bisexuals and crazy straight girls, blatant seiyuu/anime references and all possible clichés related to the aforementioned elements. It’s simply throwing in all the mainstream popularity features the production crew can possible think of and counts on all those with a hunger big enough to ignore the awful taste to keep it afloat. Simply put, Kämpfer is a horrible show that’s painful to watch even with a bit of helping hand from ethanol-tan. If you like Kämpfer, your taste is absolute shit. Get the fuck out of my blog.

I’m not sure if that’s a positive statement on someone’s manliness…

Up we go from the shit tier towards the windy top, as Letter Bee is up next. And what can I say? Easily the second-best show on my list, Letter Bee shows how a good ol’ adventure anime is done. Pleasing animation, very interesting story setting and good, likable characters ensure an easy victory for Studio Pierrot. What concerns me is its rather slow pace considering that it’s at its midpoint already. Letter Bee has been doing great so far but from this point on the pacing will become a very critical element. Let’s hope for the best.

Kaede is always fine too.

Nyan Koi!…sigh, I really hate to do this since I initially vouched for the show but I guess there’s no helping it: I am very disappoint. The solid humor show that didn’t try to score easy points by riding on the popularity of reference parodies and camp shows is nowhere to be found now. Instead we’re facing some bastard child of Seto no Hanayome and Hatsukoi Limited that’s unable to decide whether it’s supposed to be a romance, comedy or romantic comedy. The clean and innocent but genuinely funny jokes from the first few eps have been replaced with half-assed slapstick and forced romance emo. Besides Sumiyoshi is an annoying bitch no matter how you try to look at her. I’ll be watching it for Kaede’s cuteness but otherwise looks like Nyan Koi! is a bust. The main character is a bro, the post woman is cool, the cats are fine too and Kaede is cute as hell but the rest of the cast is a bunch of condensed annoyance. Better luck next time.

I’d sure forge her a thing or two if you know what I’m saying.

Let’s proceed with The Sacred Blacksmith. I appreciate the effort to create a serious fantasy anime but it doesn’t take much of a critic to see that Blacksmith isn’t working as smooth as it could. The biggest mistake Manglobe is making here is mixing in moe elements that really don’t work with the story of a satanic cult bringing about the next end of the world. The pacing is decent though and there’s a notable lack of fillers, something JC Staff could learn a thing or two about. All in all Blacksmith is plagued by mediocre story and setting that gathers all possible fantasy clichés like a generic Korean MMORPG. The production crew also seems to be rather inexperienced with making actually dramatic scenes and thus episode 4 with all it’s dead serious bsns only manages to come out unintentionally hilarious. Blacksmith is not outstanding in any field but manages to evade at least the most obvious land mines that many of its rivals repeatedly plow into.

Speaking of plowing the minefield, Seitokai no Ichizon is up next for a great example. Seitokai is what you get when you repeat Lucky Star choco-cornet conversation in every episode, just change the foodstuff with harem. And references, lots of references. Now personally I’ve always thought of reference parodies as somewhat easy way out with a comedy series but by dear God Studio DEEN, even with cruise control you will still have to steer. Seitokai is a show that simply lists all kinds of references in a manner that’s not especially funny or entertaining unless you thought Scary Movies, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans were the best shit ever. It attempts at general slapstick humor as well with generally poor results. Seriously, when cracking a joke you don’t have to instantly elaborate to make sure everyone got it. That’s not funny, it only makes the viewer feel the show thinks he’s too much of an idiot to follow through otherwise. The characters aren’t really working as a redeeming quality as they’re mostly flat as a planed 2-by-4 and the mostly rookie seiyuu cast isn’t making it any better. Especially Mafuyu, for the heaven’s sake, I know she’s supposed to be the sickly pseudo-loli type but making her sound like she’s constantly stoned goes a bit too far. Bottom line: Seitokai no Ichizon is a comedy made by people with no sense of humor, attempting to follow in Lucky Star’s slipstream but losing control at every possible turn.

Say hello to the DEEN-effect.

Sora no Otoshimono is a bit harder to judge. It managed to deliver when it wants but it seems that AIC ASTA isn’t quite sure where to go with it, so the show varies between emo and totally over-the-top camp humor. When the latter happens, it works pretty damn well (rocket panties, exploding panties, pantzer break, virtual island romance etc.) but too often the former takes over, leaving one thirsty for more of the latter and cursing the lenghty forced drama scenes. It’s not the next Seto no Hanayome but it sure could get pretty close if it wasn’t as damn bipolar as it is now. But I’ve had quite a few good laughs with it so I guess it’ll be worth keeping in the schedule.

Fuck yeah bagspin!

Oh well, time to check the God tier. Trapeze started awesome and has only been getting better by every episode, and as such there is no doubt about its ranking in this competition. Toei boldly goes to create something refreshingly original without even trying to please everyone and that’s a good thing after all this loathsome fan-pandering that I’ve been witnessing lately. If you have a provocative sense of humor and psychological stuff is up your alley then Trapeze is a must see. Many people seem to be unable to get past its extremely unconventional graphical look but personally I think it works quite well in helping the viewer to achieve the right kind of mindset for the show. After all, we follow the antics of people with various mental conditions that an average person can’t usually fully relate to. Thankfully graphical design is the only really abstract part of the show – plot-wise it’s very straightforward and doesn’t contain all that much symbolism. The helpful interventions of Dr. Fukuicchi explain everything the viewer needs to know, at least the essentials. So Trapeze isn’t only entertaining but somewhat educational as well – before this I sure had no idea what yips was or what obsessive-compulsive disorder meant in practice. Also, the second episode with the case of penile ankylosis was probably the most hilarious stuff I’ve witnessed in a while (especially at the end when the whole episode turns out to be a one huge pun). Trapeze is a genius show that one can only either love or hate.

That’s all for now. My Singapore/Malaysia-trip is drawing close (less than a week to go) so there probably won’t be any more posts til I’m there. I will do my best to blog the AFA and other adventures that I may find in the Southeast Asia. As for my Singaporean colleagues, I hope to see you soon.

Tags: 11eyes, a certain scientific railgun, kämpfer, kuuchuu buranko, letter bee, nyan koi, seitokai no ichizon, sora no otoshimono, the sacred blacksmith, tl;dr, unfunny