With the Fall season well upon us, I thought I'd take this opportunity to get some feedback from our readers as to which series they're planning to follow or looking forward to the most. While I'm sure a lot of people will include the highly-anticipated sequels -- Gundam 00 Second Season, CLANNAD ~AFTER STORY~, and ef - a tale of melodies. -- in their responses, I feel that there are a lot of other good shows out this season, hence why I've tried to touch upon as many as possible in my revival of Patrik's Snapshots. Rather than simply being posts with summaries and impressions, one of the main objectives of the Snapshots was to provide an unbiased view on new series alongside plenty of visuals, so that everyone can make their own informed decisions. After the first week, Omni and I have already covered 24 of the new series between the two of us, with potentially four more posts about CHAOS;HEAD, Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter, TYTANIA, and Michiko to Hatchin coming when they finally premiere. While this is by no means every series that's airing (nor even every series found in Omni's Fall 2008 Preview), it does cover every series that either him or I have shown some interest in -- enough to check out the first episode anyway. As such, I hope I was able to give everyone a better idea of what's out there, particularly for the new shows you may have simply overlooked, and am now curious as to where your interests lie. With that said, I strongly encourage everyone to share their picks, especially those who normally don't comment (feel free to remain anonymous), as we may use this feedback to ultimately decide what we end up blogging. Aside from Gundam 00 and CLANNAD which are guaranteed to be blogged by Omni, everything else is up in the air right now. On a personal note, it's questionable how much time I'll be able to commit from here on while I shift my priorities around, so I'm also trying to assess how much "demand" is out there (for lack of a better word). So without further ado, here are all the shows that we've put some consideration in, broken down by air dates and linked to their respective posts: (Note: Tales of the Abyss is now considered a Saturday show, in light of the two-episode premiere on MBS and CBC.) Sunday: Gundam 00 Second Season, GA-REI -zero-, Macademi Wasshoi!, Kyou no 5 no 2, Skip Beat! Monday: Vampire Knight Guilty, ef - a tale of melodies. Tuesday: Hakushaku to Yousei, KUROZUKA, Mouryou no Hako Wednesday: Toradora!, Casshern Sins, Rosario + Vampire CAPU2, Hyakko, Michiko to Hatchin Thursday: Shikabane Hime Aka, Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka, Kuroshitsuji, Yozakura Quartet, CLANNAD ~AFTER STORY~, CHAOS; HEAD,           TYTANIA, Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter Friday: Linebarrels of Iron Saturday: Kannagi, To Aru Majutsu no Index, Tales of the Abyss, Kemeko Deluxe! All other comments are welcome as well, including ones about series that I haven't mentioned.
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As usual, our worst fears have not been realized. Some people expected a second-rate season this fall, but there are lots of entertaining new anime in various genres.I enjoyed many of the first episodes I've seen, but the two that rocked my soul were Kannagi and ef - a tale of melodies.In ef - a tale of melodies, Oonuma Shin once again weaves his magical visual rhythms into the musical rhythms of a wonderful score by Tenmon and Yanagi Eiichirou. Every frame a masterpiece. This is real art, visual, musical, and dramatic.Stories begin to develop, featuring deep characters with dark pasts and potentially romantic futures. The addition of Itou Shizuka and Gotou Mai brings some recognizable names to the cast of no-name game seiyuus.In Kannagi, the story may seem cliched on the surface -- a goddess moves in with an ordinary teenage boy -- but the animation, direction, and voice-acting are world-class, and elevate this show into something special. This is Tomatsu Haruka's breakthrough role. The nimble twists and turns of her voice are virtuosity with artistic meaning. She's hilarious and real.Kannagi marks the return of director Yamamoto Yutaka, whom Kyoto Animation fired as director of Lucky Star after four episodes. He was an important aesthetic force behind both that show and Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, and he demonstrates the same comic genius here. The episode flows like a stream, moving us smoothly through the story, bubbling up humorous and touching moments just when it should.Those are just the two shows I liked best in a season that looks as if it will give us many good shows.Hyakko is a daft comedy whose protagonists spend the entire first episode lost in their own school. An unusual group of seiyuus all take unusual approaches to their roles: Orikasa Fumiko, Neya Michiko, Hirano Aya, and Ochiai Yurika. But this show is on a knife-edge. It is so bizarre and delicate that it could either rise to sublimity or collapse into meaninglessness at any time. I'll be watching to see which way it goes.Kurozuka through one episode is a beautiful and bloody tale of immortal love, originating in medieval Japan and running up to the present day. Paku Romi, in particular, but Miyano Mamoru with her, are absolutely brilliant. This is a less brutish, but no less brutal, spiritual successor to Claymore, directed by the director of Death Note.Clannad - After Story gives us a large helping of the same melancholy magic moe that delighted fans of the first series, myself included.Vampire Knight - Guilty picks up where the first series left off, in a dark romance soaked with blood and desire. I loved the manga, liked the first series, and liked episode one as well. I've read the manga past the beginning of this series and I'm eager to see animated what I know is coming.Skip Beat! is one of my favorite mangas, and the anime seems faithful to the original. I was not thrilled with episode one, but I was not thrilled with chapter one of the manga, either, so I expect to be borne along on the shoujo tide as we go forward. This is a delightful combination of idol-making with romance and revenge, and its protagonist is fascinating and mutifaceted. I only hope Inoue Marina can bring the character alive.Mouryou no Hako seems like another winner. A mysterious story in which the blood is just little enough for every drop to make an impact. And a touch of yuri never goes amiss. Good voice work from Takahashi Mikako and Tomatsu Haruka, with more Kiuchi Hidenobu (Hei in Darker Than Black, Ren in NANA) to come.I thought Iguchi Yuka was just da bomb in To Aru Majutsu no Index, playing a moe but mature little magical nun. And the male lead was not a mere cipher.Kemeko Deluxe and Macademi Wasshoi! are both deeply bizarre comedies with hilarious animation. And both look to me as if they could be one-episode wonders, with the humor not sustaining in the long run. But their first episodes had me exploding with laughter.Hakushaku to Yousei doesn't seem great, but the lead characters and the story -- Regency romance crossed with shoujo adventure -- somehow captivated me.Toradora is a well-made harem comedy featuring Kugimiya Rie as an even more tsuntsun tsundere than in any of her previous tsundere roles. In Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka, she is a gentler tsundere -- except for that kick. Too bad she is becoming so type-cast. And too bad Akasaka gave me hints of the director's low bluntness and sensationalism. He directed Amenaideyo and School Days.I found some other shows enjoyable to watch: Kuroshitsuji, Shikabane Hime Aka, Yozakura Quartet, Today in Class 5-2. I haven't yet seen Jigoku Shoujo 3 , One Outs, or Bihada Ichizoku.On Thursday, the potentially epic space-opera Tytania begins, as does the new season of Nodame Cantabile. I'm looking forward to both.I think I'm judging these shows at least partly on actual quality, but it's certain that my own particular tastes come into play, so be warned. I loathe monsters and really have a lot of trouble with many shounen memes.This season, many people like Tales of the Abyss, which I found boring and childish. Few people seem to like the highly anticipated Kurogane no Linebarrels, which seemed a train-wreck to me, too. Ga-rei Zero had some well-planned action, but the only thing that really pleased me was the surprise ending.Casshern, however, is extremely stylish, and had some moving and mysterious moments, amidst the meaningless killing and artsy self-importance. I can imagine someone who likes shounen reversing my feelings about ef melodies and this show: one a masterpiece, the other pretentious with redeeming qualities.In any case, these are only first episodes. A lot can happen, for better and for worse, from here on out.
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OP Sequence - Rondo by ON/OFF It’s still to early for Christmas for this song to play… Kidding aside, I actually like it better than  the first one song-wise only. I quite miss the action-packed OP of season I though and I’ll miss some specific scenes where uber-gothic cool Rima throwing her umbrella; Shiki unleahsing his [...]
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Lol I’ve been chronically changing my banner like, almost everytime I wanted to… With Enma Ai winning Anime’s Next Top Model, she deserves to get a fabulous banner so here it is *drumrolls*… Once upon a time, a few minutes ago at my house, I am downloading the raws of Vampire Knight Guilty and ef -a [...]
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I’m still not certain I can make it through this one… Impressions: Not really a ‘new’ show perse, so I’ll skip the usual stuff. It’s basically the exact same as I remember it, picking right up where the show left off more or less with a few flashbacks to remind us of generally what happened [...]
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Macademi Wasshoi Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets loved by two cute girls. Highlights: As if this season hadn’t already enough annoying and overly cute girls… Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10 Really, I was sure that Kemeko Deluxe would have won the title for most unrealistic series of the season, but this series sure proved me wrong on that one. [...]
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I've been slacking off quite a lot from posting about otome games lately, and I took this time to think of what my otome game posting plans really are. I've become lazy to continue on with the Otome Games Digest, because it's a drag thinking of what to write about the other games I'm not wholeheartedly interested in. Instead of posting otome games news snippets in digest form, I just decided to dedicate a separate post for otome games which peak my interest enough to merit such an attention. This is also a much better 'hook' than the Otome Games Digest, given that the title itself hints on what game I'll be talking about. They might be noise posts for some readers who subscribe to the blog, but whatever, so long as I'm having fun sharing about them, then that's all that matters :D
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As I see my taste drifting further and further from that of a lot of other anime fans, I thought I'd just run through the year and figure out which anime have been my favorites so far.My favorite show of the summer season was definitely Mahou Tsukai no Taisetsu na Koto -- Natsu no Sora. Lots of people have criticized the photographic backgrounds and simplified human figures, but I think both of those work brilliantly. The music has been outstanding, especially the OP by Thyme, and the ED and insert songs by micc.The story built up slowly, letting us learn about the characters from their words, their actions, and their silences. And the final four episodes have been moving and deep: events and feelings reaching an almost spiritual peak, with nary a cliche in sight.Hanazawa Kana's voice is not to everyone's taste -- one person has said it sounded like a ten-year-old's -- but for me she has one of the most moe voices in anime, one that is always able to move me. In this show, the combination of her moe vulnerability, powerful magic, and strong determination were a heady brew.My favorite show of the year, if it isn't Natsu no Sora, may well be true tears, the conflicted romance drama that aired last winter. Takagaki Ayahi gave a taste of just how good her acting is, and she confirmed that with her performance in the second season of Da Capo 2. The complex emotions of all the characters were both interesting and powerful.From the spring season, I enjoyed Daughter of Twenty-Faces and Macross Frontier for most of their runs, but both ultimately let me down.Hirano Aya's voice work was brilliant in Daughter of Twenty-Faces: a bit stilted, but full of passion. And the fantasy 1950s Japan setting was unique. But the story, after a first half that was strong and moving, began to spin its wheels. Twenty-faces' numerous deaths and resurrections, and Chiko's numerous skin-of-the-teeth escapes, eventually became too much even for me.I kept defending the show as being something like Batman, but now I remember that I never liked Batman that much. I still love both the OP by 369 and the ED by Hirano Aya.There's no getting around it, Macross Frontier has wonderful music. The BGM by Kanno Youko is great, and all the OPs, EDs and insert songs are moving. May'N's strong voice and Nakajima Megumi's touching one work beautifully. And the battle scenes, complete with music and light shows, were sometimes brilliant.But the story just broke down for me. It was all logical, but it became convoluted and pointless. And the lead male character was too hard to read. I thought they wrote Alto poorly, making him inconsistent just for the sake of preserving the Macross romantic triangle.The gentle yuri comedy Candy Boy was a revelation, giving us more in its 15-minute episodes than most anime do in twice that time. The feelings of the characters are conveyed beautifully by the plot and the excellent voice-acting of Nabatame Hitomi and Yuzuki Ryouka.I have to mention a couple of other spring shows. I just watched episode 25 of Itazura na Kiss, and ended up with tears rolling down my cheeks. The show often tried my patience through its run, with puerile and repetitive humor and a lead male who took around 20 episodes to stop being a complete jerk. But it was a fine shoujo anime, in the end, with some uniqueness about it, especially in the final few episodes. And the ending is supposedly what the mangaka -- who died tragically before finishing the manga -- originally planned.Another shoujo show, Vampire Knight, did even more for me, with its strong male voice-acting from Miyano Mamoru and Kishio Daisuke, and its atmosphere soaked in blood and suppressed sensuality. The manga is better, but when was it otherwise? I'm looking forward to season two, which starts next Monday night.Kure-nai was a good show, with outstanding voice-acting all round. The basic situation, and the personality of the little girl, Murasaki, were fascinating. But it also seemed to lack direction, perhaps because the motivations of the characters were not shown enough: I knew what they were supposed to be, but I couldn't feel them. And sometimes people did things I just couldn't believe.Three episodes of Kara no Kyoukai have popped up through the year, and every one of them has been excellent. This is how to plot an anime, with everything leading in the same direction: direct to and from the hideous murders that are the heart of the show. Sakamoto Maaya is at her best.Bounen no Xamdo snuck up on me. I didn't know anything about it until several episodes in. But it seems to be a very well made shounen adventure in the tradition of Eureka Seven or Last Exile. It suffers from the standard puerile humor and the presence of silly monsters (my personal bugbear), but the story has worked so far and the voice-acting is outstanding, particularly from Orikasa Fumiko and from Sanpei Yuuko, who played Renton in Eureka Seven, but is the Eureka character here.I also want to mention another show from last winter, Spice & Wolf -- not for the show, but for the voice-acting of Koshimizu Ami, who stars as Horo, the ageless wolf-goddess who usually takes the form of a teenaged girl. Her voice wraps itself around a very complex character quite brilliantly. For me, hers is the best seiyuu performance of the year so far.You may have noticed the new banner image at the top of the page. It is from an old painting of the two sisters who are important characters in the last ten chapters of the Tale of Genji, the first real novel in the world, written by a Japanese court lady around 1000AD. The sisters lived with their father, a disgraced prince, in a little house near the bridge at Uji, south of Kyoto. Because they lived near the bridge, they were called the "bridge princesses," or "hashihime."
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The official website for Vampire Knight Guilty has started streaming a new promotional video (right button on right-side video player). Broadcasts will begin on October 6.
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