Summer Anime Quick Reviews

So I'd heard that the summer season is a dumping ground of sorts. All the crap tends to end up here, likely because people tend to go outside a lot more during summer. It's like how in America, a lot of new shows start airing in summer, and most end up being crap.

After reading other blogs, and watching the first couple episodes of the new shows, this summer anime season is indeed a dump.

Here's a short list of what's airing:

Seitokai Yakuindomo: Similiar to Seitokai Ichizon and B Gata H Kei, but not funny. Pass.
Mitsudomoe: Practically a clone of Kodomo no Jikan, but replaced good characters with stupid jokes. Pass.
Amagami SS: Could have a decent plot, but the characters, style, pretty much the whole show, is dull. (A lot of people say the character design is dull, but I actually like it.) Pass.
HSOD: More blood and sex than I've seen in anime in a long time, also the only real zombie apocalypse anime I can think of. Watch.
Ookami-San: Faily mediocre, but the characters are fun enough that it's entertaining mediocrity. Watch.
Asobi ni Iku Yo: Haven't been able to get the first ep of this yet. I hear it's a surprisingly good twist on the generic harem genre.

Edit: Saw the first episode of Asobi ni Iku Yo. It turned out it actually does have a plot. Honestly, it seems to me that it's actively trying to turn the whole harem genre on it's head.

Also saw the first episode of Nurarihyon no Mago. Not going into huge detail here, but I'm still on the fence about it. It probably won't be amazing, but it could turn out okay.

Full Reviews of Asobi ni Iku Yo and Nurarihyon no Mago are forthcoming. Too tired to think about writing them, but I have some ideas in my head for each.

HSOD Update

So after watching the second episode and reading a bit of the manga, I've rethought my position here, and will definitely be watching this.

My main complaints about HSOD were the shameless fan service and the utter predictability of the first episode.

The first complaint isn't really that fair, I've realized. Realistically, most shows these days will tone down the fan service in a manga-to-anime adaptation, or will be so completely moeshit that fan service wouldn't really work. HSOD is an exception here though. It's anything but moeshit, and the show is actually very faithful to the manga, both in plot and style.

The complaint about predictability wasn't really fair either. The first episode of HSOD was so predictable because it was full of zombie tropes. Tropes exist because more often than not, they work. They can add drama, humor, or even just familiarity, which is more important than most people realize. In TV especially, completely new shows, devoid of tropes such as these are fairly risky. When an audience isn't familiar with something, they have trouble relating to it, and that's one thing tropes help to accomplish.

As for zombie tropes specifically, such as killing the freshly zombified best friend, even when you expect them, it allows for character and plot development without alienating viewers.

Now, the second episode of HOSD was still fairly predictable, but that was mostly because we know who the members of the adventuring party are, and we knew they would have to get together fairly early to avoid a lot of floundering about in the plot. Predictability is not always a bad thing, as it often occurs because there are only a couple of ways to do something that really make sense.

Ookami-san to Shichin no Nakamatachi

Ookami-san to Shichin no Nakamatachi is one of the shows I'm most interested in this year. At first that was due to the main character, Ookami Ryoko looking exactly like Aisaka Taiga, just with longer legs. Now that I've seen the first episode, I actually find the show itself interesting.

The basic plot follows Ookami Ryoko and her seven companions, hence the name of the shows. They run a sort of club that helps people in exchange for favors down the road. Near the beginning of the episode, a boy named Morino Ryoshi that has been stalking Ookami confesses his love to her when she forces him out of hiding. It turns out he has a phobia of being looked at, due to being brought up in a very rural area. Ookami's best friend, ironically named Akai Ringo, hears this, and insists he join their club, as his ability to follow people unnoticed may prove useful.

As far as over-arching plot, that's all that really happens. There's a short plotline involving Morino's first "mission" with the club, but it seems irrelevant to the main story.

This show also has a kind of theme running in it. The characters seem to be a play on characters from childrens stories. The main characters all relate to (even look like, in Akai's case) characters in Little Red Riding Hood. The whole first episode is like a re-telling of Cinderella. Even the name of the show: "Ookami-san and Seven Companions" can be compared to "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves".

In addition, Ookami-san is produced by JC Staff, who apparently do nothing but light novel adaptations. It contains many VAs from their other shows. Narrator = Kuroko(Index/Railgun), Akai Ringo = Saten(Index), Ookami Ryoko = Itou Shizuka(Railgun), Eika(Sky Girls), Wilhelmina(Shana), Rachel(Baccano), and Hinagiku(Hayate).

All in all, I like this show so far. If not actually a very good show in itself, it's pretty entertaining.

Also Ookami has cat-knuckles. I'd post a picture if I could find one.

Mitsudomoe

Mitsudomoe is a new anime this season about a new elementary school teacher, who happens to be a virgin. In his first class, he has three problem students, who happen to be girls. The teacher decides that as a teacher, he needs to figure out why these three are the way they are, and try to help them overcome it.

Sound familiar? It should, because that's the exact same plot as Kodomo no Jikan. However, to be fair we should note the differences between the two shows. I've made this handy table just for that purpose.

Kodomo no Jikan	Mitsudomoe
The girls are very good friends, but not related.	The girls are sisters.
The girls' quirks are believable	The girls' quirks are ridiculous
It takes time for the girls to open up to the teacher	The girls immediately decide they need to hook up the teacher and the new school nurse.
Kokonoe is very possessive of the teacher, pretty much from the start.	The girls immediately decide they need to hook up the teacher and the new school nurse.
The girls tease their teacher about his virginity.	The girls take pity on their teacher about his virginity.
The girls, while precocious, act like grade school girls.	The girls act like they're in high school.
I found the Kodomo no Jikan manga interesting, and thought it made an interesting commentary on how we, as a society, view children.	I found Mitsudomoe uninteresting, and thought it made a sad point on how easy it is for crap to get on air.
The teacher is pretty much the same.	The teacher is pretty much the same.

Seriously, I couldn't stand this show, and have no intention of watching any more of it. I rarely make this sort of judgment call, but I get really annoyed when a show so blatantly copies another one. At least in the case of Lucky Star vs Azumanga Daioh, the similarities were mostly in the area of style, not story.

On another note, I heard recently that there is actually an anime of Kodomo no Jikan, which is one of my favorite mangas (manga? mangi?). So look forward to a review of that whole show once I get my hands on it.

Strike Witches 2

 

Strike Witches 2 is a sequel to Strike Witches. If you liked the first season, you'll probably like this one. If not, you're one of those people that disliked it purely because of the fan service, and completely ignored the plot itself.

Seriously though, I really liked Strike Witches, and I'll probably like this new season. It seems to be off to a good start. Hopefully they'll actually explain what the Neuroi are this time, rather than ending the show right when they seem to be about to.

Probably my shortest review ever, but I've never had much success with getting people to understand why I like Strike Witches, and as a second season, pretty much any explanation would ruin the first.

High School of the Dead

So High School of the Dead was one of the shows I was interested in, mostly because it's pretty much the only zombie apocalypse anime I've ever heard of. Okay, first off, this show has an unbelievable amount of fan service. The picture above was the only one I could find that wasn't a manga scan, and wasn't practically porn. Not that that's a bad thing, I just think it's hard to take a show seriously when it has more fan service than Ikkitousen (Battle Vixens, for you dub-watchers).

Now that that's out of the way, we can talk about the show itself. I won't talk much about violence, as it's a zombie anime, and thus expected to be encountered in large quantities. The show has (I think, Kevin would probably disagree) interesting characters. They have definite personalities, and while they may be somewhat stereotyped (Why do all male leads either do badly in school or are geniuses?), they react believably to the situation. So if the characters are interesting, that means the show is pretty good, right? Unfortunately, that may not be the case here. This show is easily the most predictable show I've ever seen. It follows pretty much every zombie movie cliche out there, [spoiler]right down to the main character having to kill his best friend, who happens to be going out with his unrequited love.[/spoiler] The main character, who seems to be somewhat of a loser, as far as I can tell, sees a zombie attack outside the school when he's skipping class, sees it for what it is,  pulls his unrequited love and his best friend out of class in an attempt to save them, and from that most of you can guess pretty much the entire episode's storyline.

Some of the things the show does very well include an accurate depiction of how most people would react to a zombie apocalypse. One teacher jumps out a window, people turn on their friends to save their own lives, most of the students are simply too confused to react in time, resulting in quite the zombie horde. The main characters' emotions are very well communicated, and like those of the rest of the cast, seem very human.

It might just be me, but the show itself was somewhat depressing, but it made me want to watch more. The last line sums up the general mood of the show: "On the day everything I knew came to an end, [spoiler]I killed my best friend[/spoiler], and embraced the love of my life for the first time."

Note: Highlight spoilers to see them.

Amagami SS

Amagami SS is yet another show based on a visual novel that seems "iffy". The main character is incredibly pathetic, even for this genre.  When the show opens up, he's talking about his past a bit. Apparently, two years ago, he asked a girl out, she agreed, and then stood him up. In his mind, this was so emotionally scarring that it's still affecting him a full two years later. Now that he's a second year in High School, apparently he's ready to start dating again, before the seniors graduate.

My impression of the first episode was that the show is very generic. So far, none of the characters really stand out, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Often in shows like this, some characters are too over-the-top, and just have ridiculous personalities that provide comic relief at the expense of a stronger storyline.

From what I understand, the show will have a format that involves "rebooting" the show after each girl's arc, which is something I usually don't like, as it means many weaker plots rather than one strong plot. In my experience, it's best to modify the story so that you get to "meet" each character, and learn a bit about them, but it doesn't actually go down each path in sequence.  That's what Clannad did, and it worked pretty well, as opposed to Kanon, which didn't actually restart after each path, but went down each of them in sequence anyways, making it seem very disjointed. The only time this method really works is when the VN itself was intended to be played like that, where you are supposed to go down each character's path in sequence, like Ever 17. Now, this VN may have been like that, I really don't know much about it.

A couple things I did like were the character design and lack of any real fan service. The character design is pretty standard stuff, but there's something about it that seems fresh. I can't really put my finger on it. The lack of fan service could mean that the show has a sense of shame, as opposed to shows like Mayoi Neko Overrun or High School of the Dead, which is a good thing, although pretty rare these days.

All in all, I'm nervous for this show. I hope it turns out to be more interesting than the first episode hinted it would be.

Still to come this season:
High School of the Dead
Ookami-san to Shichin no Nakamatachi
Mitsudomoe

Possibly:
Seitokai Yakuindomo
Strike Witches 2
Shi Ki
Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
Nurarihyon no Mago

I'll make an effort to at least watch to first episode of most of those.

B Gata H Kei and Arakawa Under the Bridge

While Durarara and Angel Beats were both among the best shows I've seen in a long time, B Gata H Kei demonstrated how easy it is to have an interesting/entertaining concept, but not really go anywhere. B Gata H Kei started out as an attempt to turn the "Guy trying to get laid falls ass-backwards into true love" stereotype on it's head by replacing "Guy" with "Girl". While this kept it interesting, the "trying to get laid" part served only to provide humor, and really didn't make for believable situations or good storytelling. The show really shined in it's characters. While there were a few cliche characters, such as Kyouka, the ridiculously wealthy antagonist that was disturbingly similar to Martina from "Slayers", the rest were pretty well done for the most part. All in all, it was an enjoyable show to watch, but is by no means an amazing work of art.

Arakawa Under the Bridge isn't really comparable to any other shows, mostly because it seems like an anime adaptation of a 4-koma manga. It has an incredibly weak storyline, and was chaotic enough that any storyline that did exist was nearly impossible to follow. Like B Gata H Kei, Arakawa was all about the character interaction, which made for a very funny show, due mostly to the sheer insanity that seemed to permeate the cast. Unfortunately, it got somewhat boring near the end, as it got to the point that it was just repeating jokes to keep itself going. It attempted to have some sort of conclusion, but the storyline was already so weak it didn't really make much sense. Much like B Gata H Kei, it was fun to watch, but not much else.