Another year finished and another year the wannabe buzzards prognosticate the demise of anime even when the empirical data continues to defy their constructed narratives. I’d compare these people to climate scientists who close their eyes to the last decade plus of weather but I don’t want to get political here .

Instead I’ll point out that this year saw two young studios P.A. Works and Silver Fox create series which signaled their emergence as top quality anime studios. Also, this year saw two studios – Shaft and Brains Base –  take the plunge with original works and the resulting masterpieces pushed these already well-respected studios into the stratosphere.  Nor could it be forgotten how Kyoto Animation and Satelight, two veteran studios, stretched their creative legs and produce great series in genres that their not known for. Or how a quirky little studio, david production, that spun off from Gonzo a few years ago produced not one but two quirky quality series this year and finally attracted the attention of a large number of anime fans.

So, for those reasons and others, it’s easy to see that this was a banner year for anime –  one that I want to reminisce about and remember. There’s various formats that can be used to do so but the one I like involves ranking the anime in various categories because it just seems more orderly this way.

Before starting into the “nice” awards I first wanted to list the anime series that I watched from 2011 that are eligible for the various awards and to hand-out a few “not-so-nice” awards.

Winter Season

Carry-over shows watched this season (2): Star Driver, To Aru Majutsu no Index II

New shows watched this season (10): Fractale, Gosick, IS: Infinite Stratos, Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?, Level E, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu!, Moshidora, Rio – Rainbow Gate, Wolverine

Shows that got dropped (4): Dragon Crisis, Freezing, Onii-chan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!!, Yumekui Merry

Spring Season

Carry-over shows watched this season (1): Gosick

New shows watched this season (20): X-Men, Dog Days, Tiger and Bunny, Nichijou, Yondemasu yo Azazel-san, Hanasaku Iroha, Fireball Charming, Steins;Gate, Hyouge Mono, Hidan no Aria, A Channel, Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera, Maria+Holic Alive, Ao no Exorcist, The World God Only Knows II, Seikon no Qwaser II, C – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control, Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai, Deadman Wonderland

Shows that got dropped (8): Hen Zemi, Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai, Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi, Sengoku Otome – Momoiro Paradox, 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku, Sket Dance, Sofuteni, Astarotte no Omocha!

Summer Season

Carry-over shows watched this season (6): Ao no Exorcist, Hyouge Mono, Steins;Gate, Hanasaku Iroha, Tiger and Bunny, Nichijou

New shows watched this season (13): Mawaru Penguin Drum, Kamisama no Memo-chou, Dantalian no Shoka, Nekogami Yaoyorozu, R-15, Sacred Seven, Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, Natsume Yuujinchou 3, Yuruyuri, Kamisama Dolls, Blood-C, Mayo Chiki, Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi

Shows that got dropped (3): Usagi Drop, No. 6, The Idolm@ster

Fall Season

Carry-over shows watched this season (2): Hyouge Mono, Mawaru Penguin Drum

New shows watched this season (15): C3 – Cube×Cursed×Curious, Fate/Zero, Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!!, Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon, Hunter × Hunter, Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle, Tamayura – Hitotose, Chihayafuru, Persona 4, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Shakugan no Shana III (Final), Last Exile — Ginyoku no Fam, Ben-to, Un-Go, Guilty Crown

Shows that got dropped (3): Shinryaku!? Ika Musume, Working’!!, Mirai Nikki

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Total New Series Watched 2011:       78

Total New Series Completed:              53

Total New Series Dropped:                  18

Total New Continuing Series:             07

Now it’s time for the Anti-Awards. These are awards that the winners probably wouldn’t like winning and instead of spreading them out in the various parts, I’m going to put them here. Also, the awards will have a higher level of spoilers then  I normally use but I will still try to keep them to minimum.

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Best Half and Half

Winner:  Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko
Runner-up: Blood-C

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko was improved by having Shaft/Shinbou adapt it but it was also hindered by being attached to Shaft/Shinbou. Hindered because so much of what Shaft/Shinbou does occurs admidst finding the fantastic in the common everyday hustle-n-bustle of life to the point of this being the expectation. There was Natsu no Arashi:  about a boy whose first crush is a girl he meets working in a café who just so happens to be a ghost of a girl who died in WWII. Sore de mo Machi wa Mawatteiru features a normal high school girl that encounters time travelers, aliens, and visits the afterlife. Bakemonogatari has a typical high school boy getting turned into a vampire (then mostly back to human) meeting gods, spirits, and curses. Arakawa Under the Bridge has a typical salary-man fall for a woman that lives under a bridge and declares that she is from Venus (and might actually be an alien). So, when Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko started with the main female character saying that she was an alien, this primed the viewers a certain way but then to throw this out for most of the series made it difficult to not compare it to other Shaft/Shinbou series and find it feeling a bit shallow.

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Worst Half and Half

Winner:  Fractale

Saying half of Fractale was okay is probably stretching it a bit but among all the problems that it had there were several good ideas and positive aspects floating about. It’s just that these ideas and aspects were very poorly put together and then buried under a mountain of incompetence. I’m still wondering how the creators were able to take one of my favorite voice actresses – the very talented Kana Hanazawa – and made her voice about as appealing as screeching fingernails on a blackboard.

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Most Disappointing Ending

Winner:  IS: Infinite Stratos

Why, oh, why did the creators of Infinite Stratos chicken out and try to tack on a boring “serious” ending to this show? Here’s how the show should have went – the climax should have been the reveal of Charlotte’s true gender and the build-up should have involved the generic male main character having to go to greater-and-greater lengths to hide the truth. It would have complimented the nature of the show much better and not have been such a letdown.

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Most Disappointing

Winner:  Guilty Crown

Any questions? Okay, moving on…

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Most in Need of Being Longer

Winner:  C – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control
Runner-up: Un-Go

One can’t look over the year in anime without complaining about the episode counts that noitaminA series get. Un-Go actually accomplished a fair amount over it’s 11 episode run which allowed C to slip past to win this dubious award. C had some very interesting things to say but the silly CG battles and the compression artifacts from trying to squeeze C into 11 episodes just overwhelmed those interesting ideas.

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The You’re-Doing-It-Wrong Award

Winner:  R-15
Runner-up: Nekogami Yaoyorozu

Both of these shows should have been fun, light entertainment – perfect for the hot summer season – but both failed on a fundamental level and left the viewers saying, “you’re doing it wrong.” The bigger failure was on the part of R-15; the set-up was that this anime took place in a school of geniuses but somehow these “geniuses” were just a pack of boring, cliché characters. (And the one that plays the clarinet, if she’s such a genius then why does she spend the entire series practicing the same simple piece of music?)

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The Best Almost Good Series

Winner:  Dantalian no Shoka
Runner-up: C3 – Cube×Cursed×Curious

In different hands I think both of these series could have been fabulous. C3 probably needed more work to get there since the source material needed a touch of help and the style was trying too hard to look Shaftian without adding anything unique to the animation style. Dantalian no Shoka was so very close. More episodes would have helped but if that was unobtainable then trimming down the number of cases covered and focusing on fleshing these cases out and developing the characters probably would have been all it needed. Even so, Dantalian no Shoka was an interesting experiment in visual style that will probably help Gainax in the future be a better studio.

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The Series That Most Left Me Wondering “Why Did I Waste My Time Finishing This?”

Winner:  Deadman Wonderland
Runner-up: Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi

Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi had the characters and story of a really generic fan-service series and the low level of fan-service that’s typically found in a “serious” anime. Watching it every week left me confused and wondering when it would decide to fully commit to being one type of series or the other. This series was topped by Deadman Wonderland, however. I should have seen the signs early that the creators wanted to make a “dark” anime – like what all the cool kids are doing now – but lacked the ability and talent to do so. I even remember getting a chuckle over how the creators wanted to vilify private prisons but thought nothing of the implications to how the story would unfold. I did learn, though, when Mirai Nikki started resorting to implausible, silly turns-of-events to advance the story and I quickly dropped it.

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Best Series I Dropped

Winner:  Usagi Drop

Usagi Drop was, is, and will be on many lists as a top 10 anime for 2011. Not mines and that’s because I broke a personal rule I have about not checking out the source material before the end of an anime series. Objections to how it ends was just part of the reason for dropping it. The other part was watching a few more episodes after spoiling myself and seeing how the author clearly had the ending in mind when laying out the story and how she forced the characters into that path instead of allowing the characters to develop naturally and organically. Which is a shame, there was much to like about Usagi Drop.

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And on that note, let’s end part 0 and tomorrow I’ll put up part 1, the character awards.

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Top anime 2011 Awards Part 0: Introduction and Anti-Awards <- you are here
Top anime 2011 Awards Part 1: Cast and Character Awards
Top anime 2011 Awards Part 2: Genre and General Awards
Top anime 2011 Awards Part 3: VMA Awards
Top anime 2011 Awards Part 4: The Misfit Awards
Top anime 2011 Awards: Top 13 Anime – #13 – #7
Top anime 2011 Awards: Top 13 Anime – #6 – #1

Filed under: anime, awards

So we finally learn the whole truth behind Fractale: the original makers of Fractale split the original Phryne (who was really just an ordinary girl) into a body and spirit, to make a key and keyhole. However, after 700 years when Fractale was supposed to reboot, the attempt failed.  They then tried making bodies of 10 year old girls and trying to put the soul in them, but that failed.  Finally, Barrot discovered that the girl wasn’t 10, she was 16, and the 10 year old’s personality was actually her personality for her stuffed animal – named Nessa.

However, for the process to be complete, the personality of the “Key” – Phryne – had to be compatible as well.  However, this had to be achieved by inflicting the same harm to this Phryne as the original one: being sexually abused by her father which, in this case, was done by Barrot being this Phryne’s adoptive father.  This finally allowed Phryne to be compatible as the key.

Phryne and Nessa decide to join because they were originally one, and it’s really the only way to save Nessa, meaning that the Fractale system will exist for another 1000 years or so, but with the temple destroyed, it can’t be rebooted again, meaning that they’ve defeated Fractale in the long run, even if it still exists for the meantime.  The merger just merges the two’s personality together into the original Phryne’s personality.

In the end, I thought this was a decent to good series. It probably wasn’t as deep as it could have been, and it seemed like there was a lot of time chasing after either Phryne or Nessa that could have been used elsewhere, such as exploring a bit deeper into the Fractale system. We never really did learn why the original Phryne was used and the purpose of the clones were kind of explained, but it was still a bit confusing to me.

I think part of the purpose of all of that was to stress the relationship between Phryne, Nessa, and Clain instead of getting too bogged down in the background and explanation of the Fractale system, which is all well and good, though I think the series could have used a bit more of an explanation.  We get the feeling of what Fractale is and why people like it, but we really only scratch the surface, learning about it’s pros and cons but not really much else.

Despite some other things I’ve read online about this series, I didn’t find a problem with this series holding my interest.  In fact, I think it’s held my interest better than several other recent series I’ve been watching and catching up on.  I just think some things could have been executed better.  But I still don’t think it was a bad show.

So we learn a bit more about Phryne and Nessa’s role in the Fractale system.  Apparently Phryne is just one of many clones (including the priestess we saw in episode 3, as well as possibly the Head Priestess).  Why this Phryne is particularly special, I’m not sure, but it seems they kept creating clones either to keep the Fractale system running or to finally produce one that was suitable to be the “key” that would allow the system to reboot.

Phryne reveals that Nessa is the “soul” and she is the “body” which must merge in order to reboot Fractale, and she believes that they’ll both die – or at least not be the same person – after they merge.  That’s why she ran away with her, and probably why she didn’t like Nessa when she first met her.

Unfortunately, Phryne is still very headstrong, and decides to go back to persuade her “father” and the Head Priestess to, well, I’m not sure what. To end Fractale I guess, though I’m not sure how far she’ll get with that.

Speaking of her “father” (I’m not sure if he’s her biological father, or just called that because he’s in charge of the clone project), he seemed to be pretty creepy about Phryne, going so far as demanding to check that she was still a virgin, since I’m assuming she has to be to be a valid key.  Phryne clearly doesn’t like him in any case.

In any case, two episodes left, with Lost Millennium attacking the main Fractale Temple, though the Fractale forces clearly seem to have superior technology, so I’m sure the fight will be hard.

So far this has been an OK series.  Maybe not as good as I had hoped, but not that bad either. It at least has rewatch value, I think.

I guess we’re getting what’s going on bit by bit.  Clearly Fractale is a system that was put in place at least 400 years before the time of the story (since the first episode said something about it being 22nd century technology and Clain tried to use a 26th century algorithm to fix the ship in episode 5) which is used to keep the citizenry docile, though to what end I’m not sure of yet.

We know that Fractale has certain benefits: it keeps you healthy, gives you a guaranteed income, and gives one mobility, but at the cost of basically being brainwashed and discouraging truly intra-personal relationships (as in person-to-person and not through dopples).  Lost Millennium appears to be a loosely associated set of groups who all share the general goal of ending the Fractale system.  Groups such as Granitz appear to be generally non-hostile, except towards the people who administer the Fractale system, while other groups, such as Alabaster, trick people into disconnecting from Fractale, and then using their helplessness as a means to recruit new members.

Phryne seems to be the real mystery.  She’s run away from the Fractale priestesses, though we don’t know exactly to what end, though it seems that she believes that if she and Nessa ran away, it would somehow bring an end to the Fractale system.  However, she seems to be somewhat opposite of Nessa. While Nessa has said she “loves love,” Phryne said she “hates love,” though I think she’s lying to herself more than anything when she says that, since she doesn’t seem to mind Clain, and later, Nessa’s companionship.

There is still the mystery of why Fractale is failing and what the priestesses plan to do to fix it, and how that involves Phryne.  Also, there is still the question of what Nessa is, exactly, since Sunda seemed surprised that she was still around, even when they were in a zone where Fractale’s signals didn’t reach.

Spring is around the corner and most Winter anime season have come to an end. Here are a few words on these anime that have ended. Dragon Crisis! For the most part, Dragon Crisis was okay to watch. Wasn’t a fan of Ryuuji. But I dealt with it, I was looking forward to seeing that [...]

The start of this episode definitely perked my interest, with them visiting an “old” village if you will, old being not using all the fancy technology.  And, interestingly, the people there can’t see doppels without visual assistance.

Not everything “older brother” says necessarily make sense (mainly the thing about 1000 years) but it’s clear that the people in the village have rejected the Fractale system, going as far as to remove the Fractale implants.  All of this doesn’t make sense to Clain until they bring him along to disrupt a Star Festival, which is believed by the people to be a religious ceremony that is meant to give you the grace of God – and also has the side effect of allowing people’s doppels to continue to work.  However, as Lost Millennium explains, it’s simply a brainwashing program to keep people from questioning the Fractale system.

So things brings up an interesting point – if it’s a brainwashing system by the government to prevent people from questioning Fractale, then this seems like a means to an end.  The question is what is the end?  Simply to keep people docile, or is there something even more sinister that is the goal?  And the “real” Nessa seemed to be the one in the center of the ceremony – and she appeared to have no connection to the Nessa doppel.  And to top it all off, Phyrne shows up and is revealed to be Nessa’s older sister.

So while Clain didn’t really partake in the Fractale system, he didn’t see anything particularly wrong with it, though present events evidently have started to shake that belief, though we’ll have to see if he is very happy with LM with them attacking the festival as well.

It’s been almost five years since I’ve last seen the anime blogosphere go so completely head-over-heals for an anime like what’s currently happening for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. That last time was for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya and it pole vaulted everything from it’s voice actors to it’s animation studio into instant super-stardom. This time it’s the well-known combination of the Shaft animation studio and it’s super-director Akiyuki Shinbou. Which is a bit surprising, given the prolific nature of Shaft/Shinbou; there isn’t that blank slate to work their magic on which KyoAni had with Haruhi.

And much like Haruhi, the PM3 fascination is well warranted; even for this long time Shaft/Shinbou fan, I was astonished how quickly this anime become special. The logical next step for a blogger would to blog about it but did I really want to be the 89th person that pointed how just how creepy Kyubey is or how dark and twisted this world is or how Shinbou was deconstructing the magical girl genre. The answer probably should have been yes since the alternative – coming up with something slightly more unique – took more work.

I eventually thought of something and all I needed was to call on the power of graphing and Gurren Lagann and an idea that’s been bouncing around in my brain for awhile.

The idea started out awhile ago when I realized, when doing my weekly anime review posts, that splitting an anime series into smaller intervals (individual episodes) and focusing only on those smaller intervals it gave an incomplete picture of the series as a whole. I needed the equivalent of calculus to find the area under a curve when all I had was a handful of rectangles to use.

Conversely, looking at just the final grade for an anime series was helpful in a different way but so much was hidden behind that number. A series that started out great but then coasted could get the same grade as a series that tried to be ambitious and missed the mark by just a little or a series that was mediocre at the start but built up to a thrilling conclusion.

I had a half-formed thought about using some sort of graphing but when my weekly anime posts stopped, I stopped really worrying about implementing a new system. For Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I dusted off these ideas with the view of that I needed a good way to quantify how good I thought PM3 was and how quickly it had gotten good.

The result is the graph below. It’s still not perfect but it’s much closer to what I want then just saying the first four episodes of PM3 have all been 12/12 perfect episodes. Basically, the colored areas overlay my numeric grading system and correspond to levels of achievement that are possible once an anime displays a certain level of quality. These levels are progressively harder to attain and are a reflection of watching enough anime that I can accurately grade an anime. A note for clarification, the stripped triangles for each anime series shows my guess at the future potential of the show.

 

I used Gurren Lagann to compare the new series to because it is my number 1 show and the yard stick to compare all other anime series; though, the path Gurren Lagann took to reach number 1 is very interesting by itself. For instance, the big jump it took at the very end where it goes from being a fringe Top 10 anime to being my favorite anime corresponds to episode 26, aka the best episode of anime ever.

I put Puella Magi Madoka Magica into the “High Quality” level right away. It was during episode 1’s conversation between Madoka and her mom in the bathroom that I just knew. When the second episode showed no signs of letdown but only continued to impress me, it was upgraded to probably one of the best shows of the season (as measured against a “normal” season). The surprise at the end of episode 3 pushed the show into most likely earning the top spot for the winter season, assuming the rest of the series didn’t see a decline in quality, and moved it very close into earning a spot as one of the best series of 2011. (Again assuming a “normal” year, with this being just the beginning of the year, I’m using the past seasons and years as a guide in estimating.) The fourth episode didn’t disappoint either and Shaft/Shinbou made it clear that it had plenty of tricks left to play; meaning, PM3 is now all but guaranteed a spot on my top anime of 2011 list.

In picking the upper and lower bounds for how PM3 potentially turns out I decided even though it’s currently far surpassing where Gurren Lagann was at this point in time – it probably doesn’t have the spiral power to beat out Gurren Lagann in the end. Instead, I used the highest position of a Shaft/Shinbou anime series (Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei) as the probable cap. I could be wrong and it could go higher but I think PM3’s episode count being only half will limit it. For the low end, I just don’t see the show imploding and finishing any lower then maybe #3 for the winter season. My guess as to it’s most probably course would be for Puella Magi Madoka Magica to land in the top 5 – maybe 3 – of 2011 and just outside of my top 10.

I could have stopped here but there was plenty of space to graph several other new shows of the winter season.

The most talked about show behind PM3 is Fractale, the latest creation from disgraced anime director, Yutaka Yamamoto. Some have loved it, some have panned it, some just note the high degree of similarities it has with other well-known anime works. I see it’s potential but it hasn’t impressed me in the slightest, especially since I don’t think Mr. Yamamoto has learned from his previous disappointing efforts. I don’t mind the recycling of ideas used elsewhere if Fractale was going to do something interesting with them. And I don’t mean – “hey lets do a Miyazaki movie but add in fan-service and potty humor”. Better story-telling would help it’s chances, like getting us to like a character before the director kills him off. The result is, unsurprisingly, that it’s been hovering around my drop line (anything below a 6/12 B- is in real danger of getting dropped) and I don’t see Fractale ending that high. Maybe if it does everything right then it might just creep up to around a 9/12 A- level but I don’t think so. It’s more likely to finish in the 5/12 C+ to 6/12 B- range.

Currently keeping Fractale company is the “comedy” Rio –Rainbow Gate– from Xebec. The mere possibility that Rio could finish higher then Fractale is mind-boggling. I don’t think that’s going to happen; I thought the latest episode of Rio signaled that the creators were fast running out of entertaining ideas (the gate battle in this episode was so boring) but the possibility still exists. The problem is that it’s too difficult being unintentionally hilarious week-in and week-out; eventually the animators figure out how to just be generic and that ruins all the fun. Which is a shame because having visited Las Vegas twice, I sort of wanted this anime to be a success.

Another show I wanted to succeed was Mitsudomoe 2. The first season was inconsistent but ended strongly and I had a feeling that a second season would be awesome. So far that’s been pretty much the case but it has a problem as well – it’s only going to be 8 episodes long and I’ve already seen half of them. That makes Mitsudomoe have to work much harder just to keep up with shows like PM3 and Level E when there’s such a difference in episode count. The last episode, in particular, seemed to display the animators at the top of their game and it reminded me of the splendid work they did on Minami-ke S1. If the remaining four episode can stay at that level, Mitsudomoe 2 might just land near the top this season.

The final show I graphed was the anime that most astounded me this season for being actually good – Level E – and the only anime that I think that has a shot at beating PM3. Not a great chance but it’s not zero, which would be enough for Simon from Gurren Lagann.  It should be mentioned that it bears no connection to any other anime that has “something E” in the title, which was why I initially passed it over – I thought it was a sequel. Nor does it rip-off the central idea to Men in Black because the manga actually predates the movie by a couple of years. It’s a SF/comedy series from the pen of the author that wrote Yu Yu Hakusho (which really deserves a new adaptation itself) and it’s refreshingly entertaining. Level E also has the largest potential range because I’m torn between how good it’s been so far and worrying about things that could drag it down. I wonder why this hasn’t been adapted in the 13+ years since it originally came out and if it’s short length (only 16 chapters) means that it doesn’t have a good ending and will the comedy hold up.

At this point, I figure putting any more series on this graph would just be overly messy looking so this is were I’m going to stop for now. I might revisit this graph with different series in the future but we’ll have to see. And in closing, I’ll say it again – Kyubey is freakishly creepy; though, I wonder if Kyubey barbecue tastes good.

Filed under: anime, anime rants/views, first impressions

Poor Clain goes from hanging out Phyrne, with a time traveling girl who doesn’t mind being seen naked to Nessa, a crazy/spunky girl who Clain doesn’t think is human, but who clearly isn’t a dopple either (and who is strongly suggested at the start of the episode to be the “key to the world”).  Oh, and she can make inanimate objects so crazy too.

Clain’s father also said something which startled him later on: that if they lived at home with Clain, then their freedoms could be curtailed.  It’s hard to say whether he simply meant their personal freedom to move freely (by not being constrained to living in a house) or whether it was meant to be something more broad.  In any case, Clain wasn’t exactly thrilled with the implication that his parents were putting their happiness above his which, really, is kind of the point of the whole dopple system, isn’t it?

Of course, we still don’t really seem to have an idea of what Nessa is, but it seems like whenever Clain wants to be around her, she wants to hang around and he can touch her, but if he doesn’t want her around, he can no longer touch her.  In any case, the three stooges are still intent on knowing who (or what) she is.

For that matter, we still have no clue how the dopples work.  We kind of know the theory, but we don’t know basic info such as…where are the people who are running them, and can they do other tasks while running their dopples (and if so, how?)

It started with what I initially thought was a Dilbert comic come tragically to life before quickly shifting into a case of manufactured dorama for publicity before turning into a case of “Anime is Serious Business”. I’m speaking, of course, about the events involving Funimation over the last week-and-a-half; if you’ve missed the story so far, check out here, here, and here from ANN – the most trusted name in anime news (except when they themselves screw something up) – before reading further.

I’m typically too busy actually enjoying anime to bother writing about anime “piracy” by Americans when it’s always the same old arguments anyways. I’d’ve passed this story over without commenting until I read this entry on Funimation’s blog and realized I did have something I can add to this debate.

Mr. Heiskell made the case for the importance of territorial rights in ensuring the efficient delivery of anime around the world. The big problem in this argument is that it relies on an assumption that is so prevalent in America that I can’t really blame Mr. Heiskell in making it. The truth is that North America is not the center of the English-speaking anime fandom population; it’s not even the majority. This truth would have greatly shocked me several years ago when I was just a very casual anime fan. Even when I started visiting anime blogs and forums, I would have still been surprised that what I thought was a sizable minority of fans living outside of North America was actually the majority. I didn’t realize this truth until I started anime blogging myself and decided I was curious about which far-off countries people came from to visit The Null Set.

North America didn’t make up 75% of my audience like I thought it would; that number was consistently in the 35 – 40% range. If I extend it out to all English as the first language countries, I’m still short of a majority. I embedded a second tracker to see if the results I got were in error and the second tracker yielded almost exactly the same results. I found this to be a much cooler result because that meant I got to interact with tons of people living from a diverse set of backgrounds from around the globe without trying to learn a myriad of foreign languages (3 years of Spanish in high school taught me that I suck at learning a foreign language).

Up until now I’ve only used this knowledge when I’m thinking about the audience I’m writing to; for example, it’s easier for me to not write about politics when I know roughly 2 out 3 readers will not care because they live in a different country than me. However, this fact greatly influences the environment surrounding Mr. Heiskell’s argument and the recent events connected to Funimation.

I realize it was possible that my blog was atypical so for this post I decided to examine other anime blogs to see if this pattern would hold up. I found three other blogs that linked to the information I needed – one was a much more popular blog then mine, the second one is about the same size as mine and the third one is a blog that’s gone dormant but still gets a fair amount of traffic. All three blogs displayed a very similar pattern to mine; which I’ve averaged and will summarize now.

The Top 10 Readerships of English Language Anime Blogs by Country:

United States	32.49%
Canada	5.60%
Philippines	4.46%
United Kingdom	4.10%
Germany	3.77%
Brazil	2.87%
Mexico	2.81%
Australia	2.80%
France	2.58%
Malaysia	2.00%

 

The North American share (US and Canada) is only 38.1%, the UK and Australia add another 6.9% for a total of 45.0%. That means 55.0% of the market for English language anime comes from countries that don’t speak English as a first language and it’s not just a few countries that make up that 55% as the next table shows.

Readerships of English Language Anime Blogs

North American Countries	38.1%
Other English First Lang. Countries	6.9%
Rest of the Top 10 Countries	18.5%
Top 11-20 Countries	14.5%
All Other Countries	22.0%

 

If you apply this knowledge to Mr. Heiskell’s argument, it quickly becomes apparent why licensing anime titles by country/territory is never going to work. There are just too many countries to cover and there’s also the question of offering English dubbed/subbed anime in countries like France, Germany, Brazil and Malaysia where there might already be a native language anime publisher that might not take kindly to an outside company poaching fans.

Then again, the nature of the internet makes thinking about problems using physical geography seem very antiquated and doomed to failure. A much better approach would be by language since that’s closer to how the internet is actually split-up. It would be a titanic shift from how it’s done now which means as long as the old ways make money, new methods will not be tested. Which makes it sound like it’s up to the anime “pirates” – once again – to get these obsolete business practices eliminated and get better ones put into place. After all, it was anime “pirates” that have historically driven the advancement and innovation of offering anime/manga from creating the market to pushing publishers into releasing anime by the box set and to offer anime online. (I’ve yet to come across a piracy-hating anime fan that wishes companies would go back offering anime a couple of episodes at time for ~$25 or wanting them to stop streaming anime online.)

Looking at the breakdown of where the fans actually live that would be interested in English language anime also shows why streaming anime (by territory) will only have a limited impact on anime “piracy”. That’s not to say streaming anime hasn’t cut down on anime “piracy” but there is just so much Funimation can do when they only control 38.1% of the market. Proof of this, I believe, appears in the documents that Funimation filed to sue 1337 downloaders of episode 481 of One Piece subbed by yibis.

The number 1337 is not just a random number to internet users which lead me, and just about everyone else, to believe Funimation picked that number of people to sue on purpose. I initially assumed that Funimation could have sued many, many more but stopped at that number but a funny thing happened when I looked over the people Funimation was suing. I saw a great number of obvious duplicates. For example, the very first person, “Doe 1”, was identified as using Verizon Internet Services to download the episode in question at 1/9/11 3:27 AM with the IP of 71.172.24.89. The second person on the list, “Doe 2”, was identified using Verizon Internet Services to download the episode in question at 1/9/11 3:33 AM with the IP of 71.172.24.89. This is obviously the same person which got me curious, how many duplicates where there?

To answer that question took much more work then I initially thought. I attempted to copy the information in the 32 page PDF into a text document so I could import that into MS Excel but that proved impossible; even though the text was selectable and copyable in the PDF, I just got gibberish when I pasted it in WordPad, MS Word and Excel. I ended up having to turn each page of the PDF into a picture file and then use Acrobat’s ability to convert the picture file back into a document with selectable text, copying that into Excel and checking that no errors were made in this circuitous method.

Now that I had an Excel spreadsheet, the answer was very quick to find; I found 255 “Does” that appear to be duplicates. A quick check of the torrent in question, since Funimation doesn’t seem to want to take down the actual torrent file, shows that it’s been downloaded nearly 23,000 times. Why have 255 duplicates if there were plenty of people to sue?

The only answer that makes sense to me is that there aren’t 1337 people living in North America that illegally downloaded this episode of One Piece for Funimation to sue. This thought allows for a few interesting calculations. If the 255 duplicates are subtracted from the initial 1337 people, that leaves only 1082 people who had access to the Funimation stream that choose to download a fansub instead (which was a 720p fansub btw). Next, I don’t know the exact number of people out of the 23,000 that downloaded the episode in the first four days (which is the length of time covered by the 1337 names) but I’m going to assume the number was probably around 20,000 – based on how frontloaded torrents are. This means that just 5.4% of the people downloading this episode of One Piece lived in an area where they had access to Funimation’s free stream.

If we use the North American share of the English anime market that I calculated above, 38.1%, then seeing the share of North American downloaders at only 5.4% says to me that free streaming anime has significantly decreased the amount of “piracy” by North American anime fans. If Funimation would include some sort of download-to-own option for those that don’t like streaming or have computers that don’t do streaming well and throw 720p into the mix then they could shrink that number down even more. (Off the cuff, maybe offer streaming 720p for a small price and downloads at 360p for $1 per episode or 12 episodes for $10 dollars and 720p at $2 – $3 per episode or 12 episodes for $20 – $30 dollars.)

Looking at this list of “Does” was interesting in other ways. The top ISP’s of the offenders looked like this:

Comcast Cable	260
SBC Internet Services	179
Road Runner	172
Verizon Internet Services	141
Cox Communications	79
Optimum Online	36
Charter Communications	34
Qwest Communications	25
BellSouth.net	18

 

College students didn’t appear to be a problem at all; out of the 1082 actual “Does”, only 2 each came from The Pennsylvania State University and the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with 1 each coming from Ohio State University, Northeastern University and the California Institute of Technology. For a total of 7 “Does” or 0.6% of the total.

At this point, it’s pretty obvious where my sympathies lie but I can’t find myself mustering much anger towards Funimation like I have in the past for the MPAA and RIAA. I think it’s because Funimation is getting ground up between the incompatible wishes of the Japanese licensers and those of the anime fans from around the world and yet Funimation is still trying their absolute best. (Hence the picture at the top.) As such, I think this lawsuit that Funimation brought forth was the price they had to pay to get the stream of Fractale back – saying sorry and promising to do better next time wasn’t going to cut it a second time.

I say “price to pay” because I think Funimation knows this lawsuit is a bad idea all around. The RIAA gave up on their large-scale suing of normal consumers a couple of years ago because the lawsuits cost the record industry millions of dollars, were very bad publicity and galvanized people into continuing to download music illegally (no one likes a bully). No matter the thinking behind it, every dollar spent by Funimation on this lawsuit is a dollar that will now go to a lawyer and his/her quest for another new sports car/yacht/mansion instead of helping “support the industry” as the consumers buying a Funimation item most likely wanted.

I’m tempted at this point to launch into a discussion about how to fix anime but I’m already 2000 words into this post and I don’t want to muddle the central point – North America is not the center of English language anime fandom and thus any decision about anime distribution that doesn’t take this into account is practically doomed to failure from the very beginning.

Filed under: anime, anime news, anime rants/views

So soon we’ll see the release of the 3rd episode of the massively (self) hyped work by Yutaka Yamamoto, Fractale. When the 1st episode came out, it receiveda a decidedly tepid response, and deservedly so. This was a Noitamina show. Yamamoto had staked his career on it. Yet there was pretty much nothing about it that was special. The 2nd episode only continued that trend. Indeed, this is a show we’ve already seen before.

By now, magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap is a well established and rather overused genre in the world of anime. The girl isn’t always magical or even a real girl, and she doesn’t have to literally fall into the boy’s lap, of course, although she often does. But this is something that has gone way past being a mere trope and is a full-on cliche, not the good kind. And that’s exactly what Fractale is, with a dash of the bumbling-villain-trio for fun. The only thing that sets it apart is its interesting vision of the future, wherein people have all their needs taken care of and only interact through virtual avatars or surrogates of themselves from afar.

Or does it really set it apart? No, actually, it doesn’t, and not because the setting isn’t particularly original. In fact, the setting is quite compelling, if only for the fact that it’s one that’s unusual, even if it’s not new. The problem is, plenty of shows have already gone down this route. Anime, by its very nature of being animated, attracts settings that are fantastical. It’s no coincidence that the most popular franchises in anime – Evangelion, Gundam, Haruhi – are science fiction, or that fantasy is such an overrepresented genre in season after season of anime. You can make really cool, fascinating, compelling settings in anime.

But too often, these settings act as little more than backgrounds as the same interactions and stories that we’ve seen a thousand times before play out. At best, the settings serve as excuses to justify whatever magical powers the characters might have or encounter.

For me, a recent perfect example of this problem is in the Index franchise. Academy City is a fascinating place, filled with neat bits of near futuristic technology and students studying and researching with academics the limits of supernatural power as set up in this science fiction world. The story, naturally, should play to the show’s unique strengths and explore this interesting concept, right?

No, the setting becomes an excuse to give people magical powers while Touma goes around shouting self righteous tripe while using his plothax fist against generic villains. Oh, and his superpower is to make everyone else normal. Throw in the magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap cliche as well as a generic harem for good measure. The Railgun side show failed just as hard, except that it mainly consisted of a poorly conceived and executed story of friendship. These were just your typical harem and cute-girls-doing-cute-things shows, just with a neat science fiction fantasy setting behind them.

Why take this goldmine and insert the same old characters and cliches we’ve seen dozens of times before? Even in the same series, the MISAKA sisters and the Last Order arcs showed off that the show could be strong when it took its setting and ran with it. In those, the characters and their interactions weren’t just dropped in there but rather integral parts of the settings themselves. The plot actually went into some of the interesting details of the mechanics of the world and came out ahead thanks to it.

Another great example, perhaps a better one to which to compare Fractale due to their sharing the same studio as well as the type of setting, is last year’s Sora no Woto. The backdrop of the post-post-apocalyptic world, while not original, was certainly unusual, and provided plenty of potential for fun world building and exploration. Instead, what we got was cute girls doing cute things, punctuated by them saving nations from war through THE POWER OF LOVE AND MUSIC! Excuse me while I barf from merely remembering this horrible show.

Another example? Last year’s Ookami-san and Seven Companions. Funny and whimsical fantasy premise, torn down by being a typical boy-protects-tsundere story. While we’re piling on J.C. Staff, why not mention the 2nd season of Shakugan no Shana, which decided to eschew all the fun and exciting action from the 1st season and replace it with a typical run of the mill high school harem love comedy?

This is a problem that plagues even good shows. Katanagatari, for example, is a great show, the best of last year in the opinion of some, but the places where it faltered were those when Togame devolved into a typical tsundere moeblob, completely unfitting for the fantastical past setting. Thankfully, those times became less and less frequent as the show progressed, but when they happened, they distracted from the world of the show and reminded us of this stale, boring, and downright annoying character cliche that is so pervasive in anime today.

If I may anthropomorphize a bit, the way I see it is that these shows are not confident in themselves. They have these intriguing uncommon ideas, but they’re afraid of showing them off, lest they be rejected. So they put on their proverbial masks and instead of showing their true selves, they show what has been tried and true, dozens and dozens and dozens of times before ad nauseum, because that’s what people responded to in the past. Unfortunately, that’s how you create unoriginal, boring tripe like A Certain Magical Index or Sora no Woto.

A phrase I think of often is “ambitiously itself.” This refers to works that don’t fall into the traps mentioned above. They are confident about what they are, and, for better or for worse, they’ll go about doing their own thing without catering to what they think you want. Surely, this is a formula that can – and has, often – fail. It can create niche products that appeal to just a few. But it also has given rise to some of the greatest, most memorable works in anime. Look at a couple fairly recent huge science fiction successes The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. They each had a clear vision for what they wanted to do and executed on them, using their unique settings to full effect. That is how they ended up in such high stature, that is how they found success.

So, what am I trying to say here? Certainly, not every science fiction or fantasy work needs to fully exploit its setting. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to see an otherwise normal piece of work take place with something fantastical as the backdrop. What determines the work’s quality, then, is the execution of the narrative itself, regardless of the setting. And that’s something true for all works. Simply having a fascinating world such as the one in Fractale or A Certain Magical Index or Sora no Woto is not good enough. In fact, it’s nothing. The actual story that takes place within must be compelling as well, and for the setting not to go to waste, the story must use it to shine in a way other works can’t.

What is sure to lead to mediocrity is to shove cliches we’ve gotten sick of years ago into the setting and to call it a day. In the end, A Certain Magical Index is just another supernatural harem show despite the really cool city in which it takes place. Sora no Woto is just another cute-girls-doing-cute things show despite it taking place in a post-post-apocalyptic world. And so far, Fractale is just another (genki) magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap show, despite the post-scarcity science fiction setting. I’ve seen this show before. So have you. And we both know that it’s not something worth watching again.

So it’s time for my first show of 2011, and it happens to be Fractale.  This is an 11 episode series about a “Fractale System” that is beginning to collapse, and a boy finds a girl, and they go on a journey, and that’s about all I know other than the fact that it sounds interesting and it has pretty art.  I know that those don’t guarantee a good show, but it’s also amazing how much having good art and having a well thought out story correlates to each other.

So we got some information already:  The fractale system is basically an internet of trillions of computers networked together, and people can basically get a living wage by installing a terminal within their body and uploading their “life log” to a central server.  While we didn’t get any direct evidence of this, I’m assuming the dopples have something to do with the fractale system as well.

Speaking of the dopples, it seems like it’s the whole “connecting remotely” thing taken to it’s logical extreme, where even family members don’t live together, but are still able to communicate and interact via remote means.  Why people like Clain’s parents (and most of the other people who hang around town) use dopples, I’m assuming we’ll find out later, but it seems that it’s out of convenience or perhaps some obligation to the fractale system.  One can’t help but think that there is some catch to the whole “sending your life log for cash” thing, though.

As for Phyrne, I’m assuming we haven’t seen the last of her, and it is strongly suggested that she is a time traveler.  The question is, is she from the past or future?  Clain said that the pendant she was wearing was very old, I think, so it would be interesting if we had a time travel story, but the traveler came from the past instead of the future.  And what was up with the girl popping out of the pendant at the end?

Overall, the animation (and Phyrne’s flying machine) remind me a lot of Ghibli’s work, and Nausicca particularly.  It’s kind of a nice change of pace animation style, though, with kind of an older animation style, but still with good animation quality as far as I could tell (though the stream was somewhat choppy).  I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this series goes.

New season around the corner, or is it already here?, so let’s take a look at the lineup and choose five that look interesting to me. Gosick Last season I watched Milky Holmes for a detective anime, this coming season there’s Gosick to try! And this one looks to be a whole lot better at [...]

So the final TV anime season of 2010 is beginning to come to a close, which means we’re all looking forward to what’s ahead next year. Have a look at what we here at Borderline Hikikomori are (and aren’t) looking forward to for the coming winter season.

Based on these early looks, it looks like we have high expectations for the Noitamina shows – Fractale and Wandering Son. They are following up some amazing shows from this year in that time slot, after all, including my personal pick of 2010, The Tatami Galaxy. We’ve also caught on to the hype for Shaft’s original work Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, as well as Gosick and Freezing which were adapted from a light novel series and a manga series respectively. For those who liked the first series, there are also sequels Kimi ni Todoke and Mitsudomoe to look forward to.

Fractale

Preview
So new I can’t find anything on it beyond the synopsis. Anyway, it looks like it’ll be an interesting adventure style series. It’s also in the Noitamina block, which means it at least warrants a look. I’ll be checking it out when it airs.
As Rakuen said, a mystery, but after this year’s The Tatami Galaxy and Jellyfish Princess, I’m paying more attention to Noitamina shows. That Ordet, the same studio behind the horrible Black Rock Shooter certainly doesn’t breed confidence.
Obviously this show’s animation looks awesome, and the concept isn’t that bad either. I am a bit worried that the whole rescue a girl storyline isn’t going to come off too well, and that the possibility for a whole lot of Meta posts exists for this show, but those are really minor concerns at this point. Plus, the Noitamina slots rarely let me down.
I have extremely high hopes for this. The staff are all top-notch, the concept sounds both fresh and interesting, the character designs are great, and the art in what little footage was shown in the preview was stunning. I’m heavily anticipating this, and I’m sure many others are as well.

Gosick

Preview
I’d say this is the series I’m looking forward to the most. Milky Holmes really didn’t do it for me as far as detective mysteries go. So now we’ve got the mysterious gothic lolita girl… who has a Holmes pipe? It’s got a nice setting too, taking place in 1920’s Europe. It looks like a take on Holmes and Watson, and I’m hoping this one goes places.
The setting is what draws me most to this show. I like that classical, rosy colored vision of rural 20s Europe. The plot sounds like pretty standard fare, but execution is always the key, of course. I’ll probably check out the first couple episodes, at least.
Nothing about this show really seems that bad. The animation looks nice, and it seems like there could be a good story ever week. But, they made that really bad pun, joke, or whatever you call it with the title, so for that reason alone, I’ve decided not to watch this. Plus, I’ll need the extra time next semester to study for my professional license.
I was extremely excited when I heard the news earlier this year that this was being animated. I then heard Bones was going to be animating, and I was practically jumping for joy. I’m a big fan of mystery series, and I’ve enjoyed what bits I’ve read of both the light novel of Gosick and the manga spun off from it. The cases involved are pretty classic whodunits, and the characters are interesting and have good potential for development. I know a few were disappointed with the trailer – the main criticism levied at it was that it felt “boring” – but I was anything but let down. The character designs have translated very well, I feel, to animation, and things look quite beautiful. The staff, too, is good. The director hasn’t done much aside from Heroman, which had a mixed reception, but the series composition, art director and animation director are strong. I’m really looking forward to this.

Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son)

Preview
Wow, the art style is quite something. It gives everything a very innocent, nostalgic feel. I’m drawn to this show based on the looks alone, but the promise of a mature take on the controversial subject matter of 5th grade transsexuals and that it’s in a Noitamina show makes this pretty much a must watch for me.
I really like the whole questioning your gender concept of this show and the preview made it seem like things were going to get pretty real. The only thing that really worries me is that having 5th graders dealing with these types of issues is going to seem a bit unrealistic. I watch this for sure, but there is no way I would try to blog this.
I’ve heard wonderful things about the manga, and I think Noitamina is the perfect time slot for this to air in. Even better, the very well-regarded Mari Okada is doing both series comp and the scripts. The director, Ei Aoki, is more of a mixed bag, helming Ga-Rei: Zero and the first Kara no Kyoukai movie, but also Girls Bravo. All three have very different feels to Hourou Musuko, too. In any case, I’m cautiously optimistic and very much looking forward to this. It will be wonderful to see gender identity presented as a main theme in an anime series, especially in one created by a manga-ka noted for her sensitivity and intelligence. As a side note, this is definitely a departure for AIC – the only series they produced this year that didn’t rely heavily on fanservice or moe was Ookami Kakushi.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica

Official Site
We’ve got Shaft and we’ve got Yuki Kajiura working together on an original anime project about a magical girl. What could possibly go wrong? Well, we’ve got bows and swords in the character artwork, so I imagine there’ll be action involved. I’ve just never been into magical girl anime though. I’ll see what other people think.
This has been getting a lot of hype recently. Given who’s working on it, I can see why. As a fan of Shaft and Shinbo, and as someone who loves the Hidamari Sketch series, I’m also pretty excited, but I’ve also never seen a magical girl anime I’ve liked. Just because of my skepticism of it despite my liking most of the big names associated with this show, I think this would be a fun show to blog. Plus, I’ve blogged some Shaft show for every season possible since I’ve been writing for Borderline Hikikomori.
Shaft has really been letting me down lately. Since it’s Shaft, I’d imagine that there would be some sort of special twist to this show, and that it won’t end up being some trumped up magic version of Hidamari Sketch, but you never know. How long now until the Bakemonogatari prequel?
There’s been a lot of hype surrounding this, and understandably so: Akiyuki Shinbo is directing a Shaft-produced original magical girl anime. Yuki Kajiura is doing the music, Ume Aoki is behind the original character designs, and the cast – Aoi Yuuki, Chiwa Saito, Eri Kitamura and Kaori Mizuhashi are the leads, and the mascot character is being played by Emiri Kato – is positively star studded. Promo material has been released at a steady rate, but we’ve yet to see a trailer with any actual footage. And given that this is original (and that Shinbo is directing), this could go absolutely anywhere. I’m not a big fan of Shaft, but this has certainly piqued my interest and Shinbo can be fantastic. Mostly, though, I’m immensely curious as to what this will be like, so I’ll jump in and give the series a go.

Freezing

Preview (Official Site)
The bleedin’ promotional materials give you panty shots and wrecked clothing. Watching the trailer really didn’t dissuade me from this position. If you want to watch buxom women beat the tar out of each other, this is the series for you this season. At least Infinite Stratos has really cool mecha…
Seems like yet another fairly generic scifi/fantasy show. The fanservice in the previews certainly doesn’t impress. I’ll pass.
While this show seems really similar to Infinite Stratos in concept and the amount of fan service, I’m going to give this one a shot for two reasons. First, the concept reminds me of Simoun, minus the yuri-ness, in that it is using the two people must work together to be successful theme. But more importantly, I want to see the pink haired, pig tailed girl with almost no clothes on.
I’m kind of a fan of the source material, but I’ll be the first to admit this is not for everyone: the fanservice is heavy and a large part of the series is busty girls beating each other up. (I think it says a lot that the series’ website features a series of minigames in which the aim is to knock clothes off various heroines) Nonetheless, I am a fan, and I am awaiting this with glee.
A couple of points to note about this adaptation. Firstly, the director is Takashi Watanabe, of Boogiepop Phantom, Slayers, and Full Metal Panic! fame, and Shana, Ikki Tousen, and Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou infamy. The screen composition guy is behind Ikki Tousen and both seasons of Index, while the screenplay guy did Queen’s Blade, Daimaou and Sekirei. Make of this what you will. Secondly, a plot in the manga only eventuates about thirty chapters in, and this is when things become really enjoyable and the early character development stuff becomes important. Anyway, a certain character is important in the turns the plot takes; she is not listed in the cast or character lists. Further, there seem to be some anime original characters (either that or they’re background characters who’ve been given names). I don’t know if this means a) we won’t get to the meat of the story, b) that this’ll be two cours long (and that said character will appear then), or c) that it means things will go in a completely different direction to manga. I don’t know what any of this means for the series, but I’m hoping for the best.

Beelzebub

Preview
Okay, so this series is on my radar as well. I like the delinquent character archetype, because it leaves so much room for character development. That he’s a delinquent who has to raise a child just puts more icing on the cake. This screams action comedy, which is perfect for me.
Hmm, tough high school guy is forced to raise a kid. Haven’t I seen this before? To be fair, this is a very common trope in all media, not just anime. The promotional material makes it look like it’ll be a wacky comedy. Nothing too compelling as far as I can see.
Too many shows have focused on some sort of devil king recently. Too many shows have focused on delinquents recently. Too many shows have focused on maids recently. So no, I’m not watching this.
The latest Shounen Jump series to get a Pierrot anime adaptation. I’ve known about the manga for a while, but have never really felt the desire to get into it. It sounds vaguely interesting, so I may feel a yen to give it the anime a try, but a couple of things are stacked against it. Firstly, I have a pretty bad record with Shounen Jump series, in both manga and anime form. Secondly, the two previous works of director Nobuhiro Takamoto’s I’ve checked out in the past – Ookami Kakushi and 07-Ghost – completely and utterly failed to captivate me, much as I wanted to like them. A probable miss for me, I think.

Yumekui Merry (Merry Dream Eater)

Preview
I know the magical girl falls on top of the protagonist trope has been played to death. Shoot, I’ve complained about it in the past. This just looks fun though. Merry Nightmare looks like she’d be right at home in a Disgaea game. And really, how can I say no to a war with cats? I’ll give it a shot.
Another girl-falls-in-boy’s-lap fantasy show by JC Staff? You’ll have to excuse me if I’m skeptical. I feel like JC Staff has gotten very good at pumping out these types of shows over the years, but they’ve yet to produce a good one. And the massive success of the Index franchise has only encouraged them to keep going, methinks. I’ll stay away.
Bar the usual cliches, the premise is interesting and the director of Casshern Sins is at the helm of the project. I also thought the trailer was very impressive; the art and animation looked gorgeous. If there’s good action and characterization here, I’ll definitely be on board. Checking this out.

Level E

Preview
The synopsis… I have no idea where this is going. However, it looks like the people who have read the source material are pretty vocal about liking it. A comedy with an amusing asshole of a prince… maybe.
Preview and synopsis don’t capture me. Looks like a generic scifi thriller. I’ll pass.
The concept doesn’t sound like my thing at all, and the trailer was unimpressive. Not interested in this.

Infinite Stratos

Preview
In just the first few seconds of the trailer you can tell this is already going to become a harem anime. However, I really like the design of their mecha suits, and if they can offer me some entertaining battles, I’ll probably tune in just for that. I suppose the obligatory TnA is extra.
This just seems like a whole lot of fan service that won’t let its characters get into any sort of drama that can’t just be fixed by some sort of reset ending. I suppose I could be wrong, and in that case I would likely go back and watch this at some point in the future, but this show just doesn’t seem to be breaking any new ground.
The PVs showed off an interesting visual style – a mix of very flat, angular looking characters and polished, CG-heavy mechs/armour, which actually worked quite fantastically – and some sleek action scenes. The staff and studio here are really interesting, too. We have studio 8-Bit making their debut, the director who did Macross Frontier, and the series composer who worked on the Key/KyoAni trilogy of Kanon, Clannad and Air. The school life/mecha action combination can be really enjoyable when done well, too, so I’ll give this a go.

Haiyoru Nyaruani: Remember My Love(craft-Sensei)

Official Site
Holy long title Batman! So we have a Cthulu deity who happens to enjoy the form of a pretty girl who ends up with, you guessed it, an ordinary high school student. I wonder, is “Did You Just Kiss Cthulu” a trope?
Seems all the cool legendary or fantastical characters are getting little girl representations. There’s the obvious (and surprisingly excellent) Strike Witches series, this season’s Squid Girl, and wasn’t there a show about Lubu from the Three Kingdoms a few years back? I couldn’t get into Squid Girl, and I’ll pass on this.
I watched the first episode of this, even though I wasn’t planning to, because it was only four minutes long. Essentially, it’s entirely mediocre. There’s nothing particularly good here, but nothing terrible either. Anyway, this is a gag show. Nothing is going to change, the characters won’t develop, the plot will be non-existent, etc. The character dynamics are good enough, though, and I think that’s the single most important thing in a show like this. But I doubt I’ll follow along.

Houkago no Pleiades

Official Site
My first reaction was to once again yell, “What the hell, Gainax?” My second reaction, upon seeing the staff list, could be summed up as “…huh.” We’ve got an episode director from FLCL, a concept artist from TTGL, and the designer of Hanamaru Kindergarten. Who knows, this might actually pull through somehow.
Gainax making a promotional anime for Subaru, the car company… well, Gainax certainly is a company that knows how to monetize its products. I haven’t been able to find any details on this show, but given Gainax’s history, unless it involves mechs in some form, it’s probably not gonna be very good.

Wolverine

Official Site
Last time I checked, Iron Man wasn’t doing too well, so I’ll pretty much pass on all of these Marvel shows.
I was hugely underwhelmed by Iron Man, so much so that I’ll proceed with much caution if end up trying any of the other Madhouse/Marvel collaborations. Anyway, I found that most of the community tended to share my views on that first project so, while I don’t intend to check out Wolverine, there’s a small chance I might be tempted to change my mind if reviews of it are glowing.

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? (Is this a Zombie?)

Preview
This looks like it’s trying to capitalize on the current zombie craze without actually using any of the things that makes zombies cool. Just another generic fantasy magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap show from, as far as I can see. I’ll pass.
I can’t help but feel I’ve seen this “fight in my place against an evil organization” plot line before. Plus, do I want to watch something about zombies again? No?
The concept sounds like a lot of mindless fun to me, honestly. I mean, vampire ninjas, necromancers, zombies, magical girls and an “anti-magical girl system?” The art was displayed in the trailer was great, aside from the character art, which looked unpolished and strangely ugly. Staff-wise, the director has only previously helmed Macademi Wasshoi!, which I didn’t get into, while the series composition guy has done a truckload of ecchi series… but also Katanagatari, which was brilliant. Anyway, as I said before, this looks like it could be enjoyable, so I’ll check it out.

Rio -Rainbow Gate!-

Preview
This show really doesn’t have anything going for it, but I do like cards, so maybe?
Nothing in the promo material I’ve seen for this has really grabbed my attention, though series comp is good here. The tournament/quest-ish aspects that seem to be a part of the show could be interesting, but it looks as though this aspires to be more of a fanservice comedy. I doubt I’ll be watching.

Dragon Crisis

Official Site
The premise here is pretty cliche. The tweaks that have been made to the usual formula, however, were novel enough for me to consider checking this out. Then I heard Rie Kugimiya in the trailer, with her voice seemingly more irritating than ever before (I know! I didn’t think it was possible either!). I don’t know if there’s enough good here to counterbalance the cliches and Teh Rie, despite the fact that Hideyuki Kurata is doing series comp. I think he’s excellent, but, naturally, how good his adaptation work is depends on the source. I suppose he might be enough to get me to try to brave through a little of the series, though.

I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!

Official Site
Looks like it’s trying to cash in on the siscon fetish which, while very old, has seemingly exploded in popularity in mainstream anime in the past few years. Probably gonna be worthless.
The brocon trend continues. This really isn’t my thing. No thanks.

Starry Sky

Official Site
It seems as though all there is to this otome game adaptation is a reverse harem of bishies and a fantastic cast. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much beyond that. Perhaps with a good director I’d be more inclined to give the series a try, but Nobuhiro Takamoto is helming this (see Beelzebub). I don’t think I’ll be watching.

Kimi ni Todoke (Season 2)

Official Site
The first season started out as good, wholesome fun, but got frustrating toward the end as nothing kept happening. Maybe the 2nd season can provide more of that innocent entertainment while having the relationship actually advance. But the real question is, will Aya Hirano return to voice her character?
I loved the first season, except for five or six episodes that focused on Kurumi. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again. Aside from that, I am hoping for a little quicker pace this time around, but then again, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. A must watch for sure.

Mitsudomoe (Season 2)

Official Site
Despite the first season being really crude at some points and that it recycled a lot of jokes, I laughed harder at this show than anything I’ve watched recently. Since it’s only 8 episodes, I’ll probably wait until it’s finished and marathon it.