Around this time of the year I like to pretend that it’s still summer because I know when I stop pretending, the coming winter will just depress me. Of course, the falling leaves and cool temperatures make it hard to pretend it’s something other than autumn. This extends to anime as well, just today, I watched two of the new fall shows and I realized that I can’t be dragging my feet anymore – it’s time to award my summer seasonal anime awards.

This season turned out to be a very impressive one. Between the carry-over shows and the new shows, I think just about every genre had at least a couple shows to pick from and at least one of those shows were a winner. Nor was there any shortage of fuel to fan the flames of fandom. KyoAni took the title “Endless Eight” way too literally, at times Shaft/Shinbou couldn’t quite pull off doing two shows at the same time, Bones left some unhappy over the “scientific” Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, and the animators behind Phantom didn’t seem to mind that the ending of their show was rather “nice boaty”. So it was an all-around good season for anime, and now let’s head for the first group of awards the cast and character awards.

Below is a listing of the shows that I watched this season and are the pool from which the picks for all the awards are coming from. There were a few shows that should be listed since I intended to watch them and I still intend to get to them but for various reasons (time, releases suddenly slow, and apathy) they didn’t get watched. They’ll be included during the yearly awards, assuming I finish them up by the end of the year.

Also a reminder, I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum but there’ll be some because of how they’ll relate to specific awards and for the continuing shows, only the part of the series that ran during this season is under consideration for this season’s awards.

Carry-over shows watched this season (8): Phantom ~Requiem of Phantom~, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Hayate Season 2, Cross Game, Kemono no Souja Erin, Tears to Tiara, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009), Hetalia Axis Powers

New shows watched this season (10): Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Bakemonogatari, Spice and Wolf 2, Taishou Yakyuu Musume, Aoi Hana, Sora no Manimani, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei S. 3, CANAAN, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Umi Monogatari

Shows that got dropped (3): Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!, Needless, Kanamemo

Best Female Main Character

Winner: Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari

Runner-up: Erin from Kemono no Souja Erin, Horo from Spice and Wolf 2

I really, really wanted to award Erin best female main character because she has shown her worthiness multiple times over (and I felt bad that I took so long before catching up with the series which probably cost her the best female main character award in the spring season). I even penciled her into the winners spot but seeing Senjougahara as the runner-up spot just didn’t seem right because Senjougahara is a truly great characcccter that will long be remembered and loved. The Senjougahara fascination movement has reached levels that I really haven’t seen since the Melancholy of Haruhi came out in 2006 and she is certainly worth the fuss. Much like how Araragi’s vocabulary was insufficient to describe the night sky in episode 12, I don’t posses the vocabulary to accurately describe why Senjougahara deserves this award – words like awesome, interesting, unique, intelligent, witty, and strong seem too shallow and my thesaurus isn’t giving me anything better – so instead I’ll just submit episode 12 of Bakemonogatari as the needed proof.

Best Male Main Character

Winner: Kou from Cross Game

Once a character or show has won in a particular category one season, it becomes very hard for that same show to win the same category again in a later season. I think this helps guard against having the past goodness of a show affect it’s chances in the current season. However, if the show continues to make a convincing enough case then I will reward it a second time.

Kou won best male main character for the spring season which makes it much harder to win a second time but there wasn’t another male character that was able to compete against Kou. He continues to display all the attributes – maturity, selflessness, kindness, understanding, being an awesome pitcher but still being humble, and his continued remembrance of Waka – that easily ensured that he’d win this award the first time.

Best Supporting Character

Winner: Roy Mustang from Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I just have the feeling that I’ll get at least one person who will comment that Mustang is a main character and not just a supporting character. So let me say that while he is an important character to the show, the only characters that I consider main characters are Ed and Al because these are the only two characters that the entire show revolves around and are in the show enough. Nor is there anything wrong with just being a supporting character because this doesn’t lessen the greatness of his character.

In the first incarnation of the anime, the climax of the first season should have prodded Roy Mustang into action and it didn’t – which ultimately lead to the inferior anime-only ending. This time around, with the source material in place, this climax event propels Roy Mustang into action and allows the viewer to get the full measure of his character. His quixotic quest to find justice, along with his fierce loyalty, and being a true bad ass (see episode 19) makes him an easy pick for this award.

Best Screen-grabber

Winner: Shamisen from The Melancholy of Haruhi (2009)

Runner-up: The pitcher on the female baseball team from Cross Game

This award goes to those characters with small roles to play in an anime but are still able to leave a big impression. In the case of Shamisen – the talking cat first seen three years ago in Haruhi’s awful movie – his appearance in the renewed Haruhi series was the answer to a figurative itch I’ve had for these past three years. After all, as everyone knows talking, sarcastic cat = epic win and making us wait for more Shamisen was just cruel. Or to put his epic awesomeness in another way, Shamisen was able to wash the lingering distaste that Endless Eight left right away and made me excited about the eventual true second season of Haruhi.

Best Couple

Winner: Kraft Lawrence and Horo from Spice and Wolf 2

Runner-up: Senjougahara and Araragi from Bakemonogatari

I sometimes wonder if I watch different shows then other people because the talk about this series was that it was a boring show about economics and merchants but I found Spice and Wolf to actually be about the relationship of a normal guy, who happens to be a merchant, and a wolf harvest goddess that takes a nearly human form (add a tail and ears). Each person has their own strengths and this allows their relationship to be a balanced one – which is somewhat rare in anime because one side of a relationship is normally shown as the much more dominant like in Bakemonogatari. One of the things I really liked in this season was the dawning realization by Horo that humans don’t live a long time when compared to gods which is starting to color how she interacts with Lawrence and adds even more complexity to their relationship. Hopefully, a third season will be on it’s way so we can see how the story unfolds and maybe this time they’ll do a 26 episode run – 13 just isn’t enough time.

Best Character Ability/Power

Winner: Haruhi’s ability to alter reality to suit her whims

I have been able to resist the temptation to read further in the light novels so I’m still really in the dark about what exactly is Haruhi. For all I know, Haruhi is within the Matrix and one day she’ll meet Laurence Fishburne and we’ll find out that Haruhi is “The One”.

Whatever the root cause to Haruhi’s powers, the thing that the new episodes really showed is that she does have vast powers and under the right conditions, she’ll use them quite frequently. The only drawback, at least from Haruhi’s standpoint, is that she’s unaware that she has this capability. Maybe it’s a good thing that she has these powers since the world has been largely unaffected and could you imagine if a normal, hormonally driven teenage boy got these powers – I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that the only woman ruined for marriage would be Mikuru.

Best Cast of Characters

Winner: Cross Game

Some shows lose steam as more characters are introduced because the plot quickly bogs down; some shows, however, thrive with a large cast and Cross Game is one such show. Every character is unique and interesting; no cookie-cutter characters here. I get excited whenever a new character gets introduced because there’s always a good reason for that character’s introduction even if it’s not apparent at the beginning and it’s sometimes surprising to see how he/she will interact with the other cast.

Best Character Development for Cast

Winner: Umi Monogatari

Recently I wrote how Umi Monogatari kept itself simple and was able to end up being a good anime. One of the reasons why this show turned out good was, instead of relying on unlikely coincidences and contrived events that force the characters to change and grow, the plot was left to the characters acting according to their own strengths and weaknesses. The result was that we still got to see the cast face challenges that caused them to grow but Umi Monogatari felt natural and more real than many other shows that aired this season.

Best Character Development of a Single Character

Winner: Erin from Kemono no Souja Erin

As much as I’ve love Kemono no Souja Erin, I realize that even after 35 episodes – the animators are still building Erin’s character and getting her ready for the hero role that she’s going to have to play in the future. This has entailed two time skips and enough hardship that many people would have despaired. Erin hasn’t, she resolutely moves forward to face the next problem and to protect those that she feels need protected. When all the plot threads that have been hinted at finally come together and whatever the exact crisis turns out to be, Erin’s going to be ready to face it and overcome it. I really can’t wait to see how the rest of the series will play out.

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That’s the end of part 1; I hope to have the second part up within a day. Comments and feedback are always appreciated – I’d love to see what others would pick.

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Posted in anime, series review

What a difference a year makes; last summer I was watching only a handful of shows and thought only a couple were truly great shows – this year there’s so many watchable shows that I’m considering dropping at least a couple B-level titles to free up needed time. I don’t think it’s too early to proclaim this as the best summer season of anime in recent years and there’s a good chance that when it’s over and we look back at it – this could be a golden season like Spring 2006 was.

Below, I collected links to my earlier written impression posts that cover each of the new summer shows that I watched. These were written over the span of many weeks since some shows were easier then others when determining quality and how likely a show could maintain a certain level of quality. I’ve taken this opportunity to rank them by the average score that they earned at the time of the impression post because it provides a quick-n-dirty way to rank the many new shows.

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Tokyo Magnitude 8.0	5 episode average – 10.7/12	2.5/5 anticipation
Bakemonogatari	3 episode average – 10.7/12	4.5/5 anticipation
Spice and Wolf 2	4 episode average – 10.6/12	4.5/5 anticipation
Taishou Yakyuu Musume	3 episode average – 10.3/12	3.5/5 anticipation
Aoi Hana	5 episode average – 10/12	3/5 anticipation
Sora no Manimani	3 episode average – 9.8/12	3.5/5 anticipation
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei S. 3	2 episode average – 9/12	3/5 anticipation
CANAAN	4 episode average – 8.75/12	2/5 anticipation
Umineko no Naku Koro ni	2 episode average – 8.5/12	3/5 anticipation
Umi Monogatari	2 episode average – 8/12	3/5 anticipation
Kanamemo	5 episode average – 6.2/12	2/5 anticipation
Needless	5 episode average – 5.6/12	2/5 anticipation
Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!	3 episode average – 2/12	0/5 anticipation

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As you can see, a pretty strong season of new shows and I’d be happy if it was just these shows but there’s also several shows continuing from previous seasons as well that are great as well. So, to get the full picture of how good this season, I want to talk about them before further covering the new shows.

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood: The first dozen or so episodes of this redo of the Full Metal series condensed 30+ episodes of the first incarnation and as a result it lacked the narrative punch of the first series. Once over that hurdle, the show shifted to new material and I was quickly reminded how good this show can be. The world was expanded – hinting at very interesting future plot points, new characters where introduced, and existing characters where given an awesomeness injection. The results have been spectacular; Episode 19 contains a fight that easily makes my top 5 anime fights of all time and was so good that I seriously had to remember to take a breathe when it was over because I hadn’t in awhile. Then I was worried that I’d be let down but episode 20 came right back with it’s own shocking revelations showing that this series has plenty of curve balls left to throw it’s viewers.

Kemono no Souja Erin: I’ve recently posted how I’ve finally caught up with this series and the few episodes I’ve watched since then just continue to prove to me that this is a great show. Recently the show has been very character driven with the plot fading into the background which has been okay since this show has good characters. I do think the show is getting ready to swing back towards advancing the plot because in the latest subbed episode, episode 30, another time skip occurred and now Erin is 18. Definitely old enough and with enough experience to the save the kingdom like I think she’ll have too (I like that they’ve worked at making Erin a believable hero).

Cross Game: Cross Game continues to chug along, offering it’s viewers the same level of goodness that we’ve grown to love. This season has seen some characters leave unexpectantly, new characters get introduced, and existing characters develop in surprising ways. Something that I’ve really grown to like about this series is how most of the characters that seem to be the “evil” characters of the series are given a chance to rehabilitate their image (at least the non-adults are).

Hayate the Combat Butler, Season 2: This summer J.C. Staff has really hit it’s stride with Hayate. They’re still focusing on advancing the story of the series but the humor level has increased steadily and I’m finding it as funny as the first season. I wish this was going to run ~52 episodes like the first season and not end at 26 episodes, especially since J.C. Staff is proving that they can do 3 shows at once. I’ll guess I’ll have to console myself with saying that J.C. Staff likes to do sequels so maybe a third season will be coming around soon.

Haruhi, Season 1.5: My thoughts about Haruhi would run a full post so I’ll just include a couple. The first is that from the beginning, I’ve refused to call this season 2 and now that we see how the extended episode count was used – it really does feel like a fleshed out first season. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a true season 2 announcement within a month or two. Also, I do think that the fans put Kodakawa and KyoAni in a bind because whatever they did, the fan’s expectations about Haruhi would not be met and much wailing and grinding of teeth would happen.

Phantom ~Requiem of Phantom~: One last huge plot twist means, even after amazing me for 18 episodes with great plot and character development, the show still hasn’t peaked and that the ending promises to be amazing. There has been one immediate side-effect of watching this show; namely, for being so accomplished at creating a realistic feeling plot even with fantastical elements (super-powered assassins) it makes CANAAN’s storyline and it’s attempt at being serious seem laughably fake.

Tears to Tiara: Yes I ended up continuing to watch this show. While I wouldn’t call this a top-tier show, it’s a solid second-tier show. It’s well animated with pretty decent fight scenes and has a touch of humor to itself. I haven’t really gotten wrapped up into the show’s story so how the good guys will prevail isn’t a big concern to me but there’s still plenty to like about Tears to Tiara to keep watching.

Hetalia – Axis Powers: The second season picked right up where the first season stopped. I really wish it was more consistently funny but there’s enough to love about this show to keep watching.

Further Thoughts on the New Shows

It used to be, I’d be happy if J.C. Staff could turn out something decent since they were so hit-n-miss with their shows – even within a show (I still can’t reconcile how bad the first half of Shana 2 was with how awesome the second half of Shana 2 was). Recently they’ve done superb work with Toradora and Hatsukoi Limited and promising work with Hayate, so when summer season rolled around – I was cautiously optimistic about their two new shows Aoi Hana and Taishou Yakyuu Musume and sitting at the halfway point I’m really glad that both turned out to be hits. Aoi Hana is a love story done right; it doesn’t take the easy way out by throwing in a bunch fan service or by making things absurdly dramatic – instead, there’s a realism about the characters and how they drive the story forward that is refreshing and enjoyable. Of course the gorgeous animation, great music and voice work along with all the attention to detail only enhances the experience. Taishou Yakyuu Musume has done a very good job of separating itself from the other currently running and recent slice-of-school-life shows. The setting, 1920’s Japan, is helpful in this regard and does make for an interesting twist on things. Also, the focus on the characters having a goal and having to actually work towards it provides all the structure and drive to continue watching. I still don’t see how they can beat that boy’s baseball team but hopefully by the end, they’ll be able to do it.

Another huge question mark about this season was how Shaft would be able to do Bakemonogatari and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei S. 3 at same time. I’d like to say that Shaft was able to flawlessly execute both shows but that would be stretching the truth. I’m currently re-rewatching season 1 of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and being able to compare the two seasons crystallize my observations on the new third season. Namely, the humor and comedic situations have held up well but the art work has definitely suffered this season. It still does it’s job but it feels like what you’d get when an a third party was asked to ape a particular style. Which is probably the case since Bakemonogatari definitely displays the artistic creativity that you’d expect from the Shaft/Shinbo team. Bakemonogatari also is chalk full of witty dialogue and unexpected plot developments – it really is a good match for Shaft/Shinbo’s talents.It always seems to be able to keep the viewers hungry for more, like the recent week where there was no episode, it was a killer wait to get to see the next episode.

A couple of shows (Sora no Manimani and Umi Monogatari) are performing better then I thought they would. I know I gave both relatively high marks initially but I also thought my liking of these series would wane as I watched more episodes. That’s not the case, however. Sora no Manimani has been able to use the astronomy angle to fullest effect, overcoming it’s very poor animation (though it has very good night sky animation) and somewhat clichéd characters/school situations to be an enjoyable series to watch. The informational tidbits about astronomy have also been interesting. In the one example, they explain how to take pictures of stars with just a normal camera and it’s so easy I want to try. For Umi Monogatari; a combination of animation style, some very nice background music tracks, and characters ranging from watchable to scene-stealing has gotten me to like it. That’s not to say it’s a smashing success, the plot feels very generic, even for someone who is not a fan of the magic girl genre and thusly doesn’t which shows have used this type of plot before. There are little touches to the plot that I do like. In a recent episode, the one human character needed to find a family heirloom that has magical powers because it would allow her to breathe underwater. She eventually finds it – the mom had been using it to make their pickles taste better.

I find it funny that as soon as I started to like the characters in Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, the story would start to threaten my enjoyment of the series. In episode 5, the brother and sister main characters finally stopped being annoying and I was set to like the rest of the series when the next two episodes pushed the story’s shortcomings forward. The one focused on the woman that’s been helping the young brother and sister since the earthquake. She’s been very admirable so far but she turns down the opportunity to quickly check to see if her own child is okay to stay with the brother and sister. (Heck, she could have driven to where the brother and sister live and see if their parents are okay.) I would call her a very bad parent in real life but since this is an anime, this really felt like a not-so-subtle way to extend the episode count of the series. The other episode was a fairly cute episode featuring robots that were helping in finding survivors trapped in the rubble but again, it felt like the series is trying to extend it’s episode count by using another careless parent. In this case the robot nerd’s parents didn’t see the danger of their child running around a bunch of building that are tittering on the verge of collapse. (This episode also kinda felt like a 25 minute commercial created for a company that makes robots.)

And I can’t forget about Spice and Wolf 2, which proves that anything can be made interesting if done the right way. I’m not much of an economist or merchant; the closest I got was after a college economics class that I aced even with a super hard professor – I received a hand signed letter from the dean of the economics program saying that I should consider changing my major to economics. In the end I didn’t because I thought it would be too dull but maybe I was wrong, though there’d be very little chance of a pagan wolf goddess accompanying me while I worked. I can now concur with the general consensus that this season has improved over the first season since I’m now almost done watching the first season but I still don’t understand how so many said the first season was boring.

Dropped Shows

This time there’s not a huge list of dropped shows. The only for sure one at this point is Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!! (of which I won’t speak of any more). Needless and Kanamemo are on the borderline right now. I have no real desire to watch any more episodes of either (I’ve seen 7 and 6 episodes, respectively) which is normally the point at which I drop a show but it’s not official yet. The only other show that has the chance of being dropped is CANAAN, though that’s very unlikely. There are some very genuine reasons to continue watching this series which will probably get me to continue watching to the end. At the same time, CANAAN’s attempt at being a serious show has so laughably failed that I wish I hadn’t started watching it in the first place.

Conclusion

Looking over this 2300+ word post I realized there’s a facet to being an anime fan that reminds me of being a science fiction fan. Namely, there’s serious grumblings within the last couple of years about the long-term health of the anime industry, with more then a few voices talking about the death of anime. This type of talk has surrounding print SF for the last couple of decades. People would try to get you to believe that soon, maybe only a few years from now, there’ll be no more science fiction. In both circumstances if one just looks at what’s being done – it certainly doesn’t feel like they’re about to die. There’s still too much vibrancy in both to feel like they’re dieing anytime soon.

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For reference, this was my preview for this season – it’s interesting to compare the two.

Posted in anime, first impressions

I think this will be the last summer anime impression post I do. There’s at least one other show I’d write a post up about (GA – Geijutsuka Art Design Class) but the subs have been really slow and I don’t want to wait another month to get enough episodes to be able to do a post. (I’m not complaining, stuff happens, I just don’t want to do a summer impression post when it’s the fall season.) There’s another couple shows I might watch (Princess Lover and Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou) if I can find the motivation to do so but there’s already so many shows I’m watching now that I probably won’t.

Moving on, I have not watched the first season of Spice and Wolf, knowing only of it’s reputation in the anime blogosphere. A change in animating studios between season 1 and 2 – Brain’s Base is now in charge – made me want to start watching this series right now so with fingers crossed, I started watching.

Rating: episode 1 – 10/12 A
Rating: episode 2 – 10.5/12 Strong A
Rating: episode 3 – 11/12 A+
Rating: episode 4 – 11/12 A+
Anticipation Level: 4.5/5 – High

Brain’s Base once again proves why they are the kings of the slice-of-life show.

The story presumably picks up where the first season left off and follows the daily tribulations of a traveling merchant, Lawrence, as he tries to eek out a profit in medieval Europe while being accompanied by a pagan wolf goddess, Horo, who has taken a mostly human form. A rather odd pair so I checked some spoilers from the first season and find out that Horo was revered by a small town in return for providing bountiful harvests. Eventually, though, the villagers advance their farming technology to the point that they no longer need Horo and she decides she wants to leave and return to home village up north. Lawrence decides that having a goddess like Horo with him will help his merchant business and agrees to take Horo with him. (And, secretly, I think he’s lonely.)

Maybe it’s a direct result of Brain’s Base involvement but I was surprised how quickly I got sucked into the show – this was completely at odds with all the talk of Spice and Wolf being a boring economics show. There is definitely economics involved but it’s far from boring. Watching episodes from this first story arc left me on the edge of my seat in anticipation as the prices of pyrite fluctuated and what these prices meant to the various characters of the show. Then again, I think any show is at least watchable if it has good characters and Lawrence & Horo are a great pair of characters. They actually share a lot of similarities with Araragi and Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari, at least in their relationship with each other. Though there are differences, Lawrence has quickly learned how to counter Horo and also, since he’s an accomplished merchant, he doesn’t have such an air of being a loser and Horo can be excused if she acts a bit haughty since she is a goddess. It also doesn’t hurt that the show has high production values in animation, music, and voice work.

Another reason why I feel drawn to this show is the rather unique setting in comparison to most other anime. It doesn’t take place in Japan, or in modern times, or involves a school; instead, it’s set in a fairly normal version medieval Europe. Obviously, none of those other settings are bad but, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, it’s nice to have variety in what one watches – if for no other reason that it helps avoid making a person think all anime is the same and thus not worth their time to continue watching.

And as I spend half an hour trying to think of something else to say about this show I remember that it’s much harder to talk at length about a show without glaring negatives then a show that’s full of them. So I’ll close here saying that Spice and Wolf is a wonderful show, with a pair of great main characters and high quality production values. I strongly recommend Spice and Wolf season 2 to those reading this, especially if you enjoy a little spice in your anime watching.

Posted in anime, first impressions