Alright, I wanted to do an awards for the summer season, based on the awards that The Null Set always does. But I’m one of those people who wants to give everyone an award, and I thought this be a good way to introduce all the canidates for the catogories. So without further to do, let’s give out the awards.

Aoi Hana: The ‘most sudden growth of a backbone’ award
One of the best moments in Aoi Hana is when Fumi stands up for herself and turns on Sugimoto. Well done Fumi!

Baseball Playing Girls-The ‘awkward’ award 

Koume and Akiko were told they had to become like man and wife. Nuff said.

CANAAN-The ‘got me the most interestings comments and pingbacks’ award
CANAAN was apparently serious business this season! From angry fanbrats to rather serious comments, CANNAN blog posts never made my day boring.

Cross Game-The ‘cutest minor character’ award

I'd hit that so hard.

Haruhi-The ‘most epic fanwank award’

There was no lack of fanwank in this season of Haruhi, especially with Endless Eight. It was all very entertaining.

 NEEDLESS- The ‘anime that pratically makes motivational posters itself’ award
Usually, one has to wrack their brain for a clever comment to put with a motivational poster. Not with this shows odd sense of humor.

Pandora Hearts- The ‘most ridiculous number of outfits’ award
The 27 dresses episode showed Alice in a ridiculous number of outfits, but we got to see Alice in more outfits then that. From a schoolgirl to a opera outfit to a lovely nightgown, Alice sported more outfits then the typical anime character.

Sora no Manimani-The ‘best references to other anime’ award
Sora no Manimani wasn’t afraid to reference other anime, from the older and kinda obscure Galaxy Express 999 and Rose of Versalies to DBZ, their wasn’t plently to fangirl over.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.o-The ‘best ending’ award
Not only was this season fairly lacking in the good ending catogory(although to be fair, I haven’t seen the end to Sora no Manimani or Baseball Playing Girls yet), Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 did a really good job wrapping up the show, ending on a strong note.

Umineko-The ‘creepiest loli’ award

On top of that, she wants to be eaten by her mother…

I had to think about what I wanted to say for my final impression for quite a bit. Nothing seemed to click, and a lot of rough drafts got thrown out simply because something didn’t fit. Something about the show bugged me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then Steelbound of The Null Set posted about his thoughts on Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 that emulated my feelings perfectly(http://thenullset.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/thoughts-on-tokyo-magnitude-8-0/#more-4963). To me inparticular though, it didn’t feel real, but rather contrived instead. The characters were also fairly boring.

I still will stick by the opinion though that those robots were absolutely adorable.

One aspect of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 that I came to realize is that not much is revealed in the characters words so much as their actions. Imagery is used to inform the viewer, and there was a lot of symbolism. While this was very cool, I tend to be very bad at symbolism, as well as a lot of stuff going straight over my head.

Probably what I got out of this show most of not the actual show, but the fandom surrounding it. The show didn’t really click with me since episode 1, and I never expected to love it, but it was a lot of fun to hear everyone’s comments and read their blog posts about each episode. I really felt like I was a part of something for once rather then just looking in from the outside <strike>pointing and laughing</strike>. Thanks for the fun ride guys.

Would I rewatch this? No.

I finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 a couple of days ago (watching episodes 10 and 11 together) and it’s left me in a mood. I really wanted to like this show and for small stretches of the series I did but my issues with it kept piling up and the twist at the end was too much.

I normally keep my posts spoiler-free for my readers but I felt I had to diagram my exact thoughts on this show which require huge spoilers. So, for those readers that don’t want to be spoiled, I’d suggest stopping here and waiting for my series review.

Let’s start with something positive. With the premise of the series – a huge earthquake hits Tokyo, several different angles could have been used for the series. They opted to show it through the eyes of a small number of normal people who is a good choice since it allows the viewer to form emotional attachments that make the series more compelling. Another show that did this as well was the recent adaptation of War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise and if one thinks about it and strips the Martians out, they’re left with a show that’s very similar to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 in terms of structure.

Comparing it to War of the Worlds, however, starts in on my problems with the show. A key difference between War of the Worlds (WotW) and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (TM:8) is the length of the show. WotW ran for 117 minutes (~2 hours) and TM:8 ran for 220 minutes (~3.7 hours) if you count actual show time. The result was that WotW did not pad the experience and TM:8 had too. And I’m not talking about how long it took to get to the actual earthquake because establishing characters so we care about them is essential if the animators aren’t going for the epic disaster/destruction angle. I’m talking about having the main characters go to Mari’s office in episode 6, the “gee-whiz aren’t robots great” episode 7, the “let’s drag out the fate of Mari’s family for as long as possible in episode 9, and the “let’s mess the viewer’s mind and stop telling a coherent story so we can see how long we can drag Yuuki’s death out because we need a twist” in episodes 8-10 as prime offenders. So if this had been done as a movie, I think it would have worked much better.

Speaking of episodes 6 and 7, that reminds me of another issue I had with the show. Too much of the series was built off of coincidence and bad/implausible decision making. For coincidences we have how the bridge decides to fall just as the main characters are in position to have there life’s in peril but luckily the characters got on the boat they did because the other one got sunk by the tidal wave. Or how Tokyo Tower decides to fall just as two of the main characters happen to be standing where their lives would be put in danger. Or when at the end of episode 8, the no-longer-with-us Yuuki says that he can hold his bag and, luckily for the animators, Mirai says that she can hold the bag for him.

Or how when the main characters finally get to Mari’s house and can’t find the grandma and child they head to the makeshift morgue and there just happens to an unidentified 50-year-old woman and 4-year-old girl found in the area where Mari lives. It turns out that these 2 aren’t Mari’s family because Mari’s family is okay but think about the coincidences that lead to this turn of events. First these two unidentified people must have been found together because they were placed together in the morgue and they just happen to match the age, gender, and haircut of Mari’s missing family members and happen to live in the same neighborhood. What are the chances? And how do the morgue workers know these unidentified people are in fact 50 and 4 (presumably the same ages as Mari’s family) when they obviously have no identification on them.

Then there’s the bad/implausible decision making by the characters. Let’s start with Yuuki getting beaned in the head by Tokyo Tower. A sizable chunk of masonry has just gotten Old Testament on Yuuki’s skull, leaving a sizable bump and no one thinks to have it checked out ?!?!! Seriously. I’m supposed to believe citizens of a country where earthquakes are common are not aware of the dangers of blunt head trauma. I can’t help but think that a prompt CAT scan could have saved Yuuki’s life.

Or there’s the frankly very implausible turn of events where Mari turns down the chance for someone to look after Mirai and Yuuki and a motorcycle so she could quickly check to see if her own family is okay. I can understand Mari’s desire to look after Mirai and Yuuki but I’m supposed to believe a mother passes up the chance to see if her own child and mother are alive. Especially when someone you obviously trust is willing to look after the two for the hour or two it will take to check. And am I to believe that Kento’s parent(s) allow Kento to run all over creation chasing robots when aftershocks are still happening and buildings are still falling down? Do the Darwin Awards cover animated characters?

By the end of episode 9, I had the inkling I was going to write a post like this but at that point I was going to focus on how the show was pulling it’s punches. I was angry over how they teased us with the fate of Mari’s family then ultimately couldn’t kill the characters off. I decided at this point that Yuuki’s and Mirai’s parents where alive because the show didn’t have the guts to actually kill anyone off. Turned out I was right about the parents but not about the show not killing anyone important. (I figured something was up with episode 8 but since I didn’t check the online chatter, I didn’t quite put it together.)

I still think it could be argued that Bones pulled it’s punches but it’s not as clear cut and how they treated Yuuki’s death is a bigger issue so I’ll leave that alone for now.

The fact that they killed Yuuki and the way they handled it was obviously their way to put a twist into the show because they felt (as did I, even early on) that merely showing the earthquake and following the characters home made the show completely predictable and without dramatic tension, the viewer has little reason to tune in week after to week. How they handled it was, in my opinion, about as good as if they used the “it was all a dream” twist.

And my disposition isn’t helped when it looks like Bones actively tried to hide Yuuki’s status until they could reach the maximum emotional effect and give themselves the twist. I say actively because even with how episode 8 was done, there would be one really telling difference between Yuuki the ghost and Yuuki the person – a shadow. And in episode 11, after Mirai realizes the truth about Yuuki, the animators do a scene where the viewer (and Mirai) sees that he no longer casts a shadow. Great but what about earlier? A check of the time between Yuuki’s death and this scene shows that Yuuki cast a shadow. See below.

Here's a shadow

and here too

and here as well

But now there's no shadow

Nor here

And, of course, this is on top of the standard coincidences and lucky turn of events that keep Mirai in the dark for so long. I’ll give Bones the combo of shock over Yuuki’s death making her forget it happened and the appearance of ghost Yuuki to allow Mirai the belief that her now deceased brother was not deceased. However, this belief should have been found out rather quickly and not dragged out for another 2 episodes. For starters, what happened to the death certificate that Mari was given? If you were Mari, wouldn’t you give it to Mirai? Also, if you were Mari, and Mirai started to act like her brother was still alive and next to her – wouldn’t you do something? Even if you instantly thought that it could be his spirit, wouldn’t you get her admitted into the hospital to make sure nothing was wrong with Mirai as well? I’d be real sure that I wouldn’t have to meet Mirai and Yuuki’s parents and tell them that both of their kids were killed while I was watching them. Also we have to believe that Mari never once mentioned Yuuki passing while talking to Mirai or that Yuuki was able to make it look like he still needed to eat, use the restroom, etc. or that Mari never did something that tipped Mirai off that she could no longer see Yuuki.

Then there’s the question of if Yuuki should have been killed off in the first place. In most situations I feel the only time an anime character should be killed is if there’s a good reason for that death. Of course, there’s exceptions and in real life people die all the time without a “reason”. Since Mirai had already learned the lesson about being thankful for the blessings that she has before Yuuki got sick, I’d be inclined to say no. However, I do think someone major had to die to help get the point across about how bad the earthquake was but Bones could have done a better job of communicating the “lesson” we’re supposed to have gotten. Yuuki’s name means hope and Mirai’s name means future, so as the show stands, hope is a lying little brother who manipulates the future into moving forward.

There are better ways they could have handled the ending. For instance, one could keep the shock/ghost Yuuki angle but clearly show the audience that this is in fact what’s going on. From there, I’d have Mirai find the truth out from either Yuuki being up-front about things or from Mari. Mirai would breakdown, maybe run away from Mirai because she decides that she can’t face her mom after allowing her brother to die but Yuuki could talk enough sense into her to get to continue moving forward. Then reunite Mirai and Mari and have Mirai push the increasingly worried Mari to actually go home to find out what happened to her family. From there, we could still have Yuuki use his “knowledge-from-beyond the grave” to find Mari’s family and Mari getting stuck to look after her Mom. And now that Mirai knows the truth, there’s no need for the extensively long reveal, instead Mirai and ghost Yuuki could go home and from there we could get the final good-bye to Yuuki and the montage of his life that had so many (including myself) shedding manly, not-so-manly, and normal tears over.

And I’m sure other people could come up with even better endings. If there’s one weakness that Bones has shown for as long as I’ve known them is they have real problems with the endings of shows – think first Full Metal Alchemist series, Eureka 7, X’amd: Lost Memories, and The Daughter of Twenty Faces (with Soul Eater the only Bones series I liked how it was ended).

After saying all that, though, I still can’t call Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 a failure because I still cried over the montage of Yuuki’s life and I’m reminded that I need to be more thankful for the happiness in my life. So I guess Bones did something right.

There’s a lot of crying in this episode.

Booo

There really is, especially in the first half. I do have to give the show kudos for a realistic portrayal of depression. It’s interesting to see Mirai start to pull herself out of it, and Mari’s role in that.

I was also pretty excited to see that my theory of Yuki being a ghost rather then a hallucination was right.

I thought the montage of Yuuki shots at the end was pretty cool. Some of them were really cute. Overall, the episode wrapped up the series very strongly, and was pretty good for a last episode.

Interestingly enough, there was another vase of flowers besides Yuuki’s. A small reminder’s that Yuuki’s family wasn’t the only one affected by death.

The background music in this episode was truly exceptional. Has it been this good all series, and I just noticed now?

Final impressions post coming soon.

Well, boys and girls, it’s been the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

*gasp*

This is the episode I’ve been waiting for, but I found this episode to be executed really poorly. I was really surprised that Itsuki wasn’t bothered by Marai’s behavior. He may be young, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. At least, that’s how it should be. Instead, he just dumbly believed Marai, and failed to be tipped off by the fact she was talking to no one. The scene where she was crying, and didn’t no why was also silly. 

I guess the question remains whether Yuuki was a figment of Marai’s imagination, or a ghost. I’m in the ‘He’s a ghost’ camp. I don’t think Marai could have deluded herself to be having all those conversations with Yuuki, or a figment of her imagination just happened to save Itsuki’s life.

One thing that bothers me though, it while I can guess, it’s never revealed what Yuuki died of. Maybe I’m just morbid; however the lack of this detail bothers me. I guess it just doesn’t seem realistic to me that a little boy could get sick and die like that—outside of meningitis. That’s my current guess.

This episode made me cry a little. It was pretty intense.

This is a cheerful optimistic image.

I think probably the strongest aspect of this episode was the imagery, especially as there wasn’t much dialogue. I know I won’t be forgetting the image of the pink tricycle anytime soon. I’m starting to think the imagery and symbols are what Bone is really focusing on, they say a lot using them rather then information drop through dialogue.  Some of the images also show more then just a causal thought put behind them.

...

I’m really glad that Mari got a happy ending. Not just happy, really really happy. It was so sweet to see her reunited with her daughter. We also now know what happened to Mari’s husband…she’s had one heck of a tough life. Not to say that everything is going to be rainbow and sunshine for her now, she’s lost her house. But still, she has what’s most important to her.

And interesting implication was presented at the beginning of the episode—that Mirai might go into robotics because of Yuuki. She’s showing a newfound respect for them that we didn’t see two episodes ago.

An interesting possibility...

There was one thing I was really wondering about…Mirai left Yuuki’s backpack with Mari. I wonder what this says.

So when a show’s not working out so well, what should one do? Make it dark and depressing!

Honestly, this seems to work. As upset as I was about this episode, I also have to say, this was the strongest episode I’ve seen yet out of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. While we don’t really know yet, it seems that Yuuki most likely is dead. I’ve been reading a lot of commentary and have gathered the following hints that indicate that he’s dead and Marai’s in denial.

1. The bag and the fact that Marai is carrying it instead of Yuuki.
2. Mari never once really looks at Yuuki, or has a conversation with him.
3. Mari’s facial expressions in the conversation with Marai. I don’t think she’d be so upset if Yuuki had survived.
4. In the final screenshot, you see Marai and Mari, but no Yuuki.
5. This is getting picky, but I actually just had the introvirus, which imitates the symptoms of mono and last for 5-7 days. Yuuki would not be better already.

I’m not quite sure what would have done him in, but by my guess would be meningitis. By the time they got him to the hospital, it would have been too late to save him.

I’m not feeling too optimistic about Mari’s family. I’m expecting one of two scenarios, one is where Mari’s family is dead, the other is Mari’s family is fine, and seeing Mari’s reunion will make Marai realize Yuuki is dead.

I’ve also tossed around the idea of Mari and Marai only having each other left in the world.

Nonetheless, the change in the show is enormous, and I am now engaged when I was originally barely interested. The next few episodes will be interested. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe he’s alive.

But if I’m not, let’s have a moment of silence for the small guy. He may have been fictional, but he still was too young to die.

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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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.

When I first saw this, I wondered if I had downloaded the wrong series...

    I didn’t like episode 6 very much. Now, I’ve never been a mother, but I cannot comprehend how she could turn down the chance to check on her own daughter. No matter the reason the anime gave, it just didn’t make sense!

It's so cute! I want to take it home with me!

Episode 7 really made up for it though. I found the addition of the robots interesting, and liked seeing some of the way they could utilized in a disaster situation. I also just like robots in general, which helped. This episode also introduced me to the first character I’ve really liked in this series, Kento. Even though doing so was stupid, I liked how he tried to save the robot.

Girls just don't understand...wait, I think I just contridicted myself.

While it wasn’t important, I thought the frog collection was a nice touch. They were more interesting then the main characters, that’s for sure.

Ribbit

I am worried about Yuuki. I hope he’ll be okay.

<3 So cute!

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is another title that took me awhile before I was able to write up my thoughts on the series. This might surprise some, especially looking at how high I ranked the individual episodes, but there was something that really made a verdict hard to come to with this series.

Rating: episode 1 – 10/12 A
Rating: episode 2 – 11.5/12 Near Perfect
Rating: episode 3 – 11/12 A+
Rating: episode 4 – 10/12 A
Rating: episode 5 – 11/12 A+
Anticipation Level: 2.5/5 – Average

The story is actually very simple. Within the next 30 years, there’s a very high probability that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 will hit Tokyo. This show bumps it up and postulates a Tokyo getting hit by an earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale. The main characters where at a museum on a small island just off the coast when the earthquake hits and the series follows them as they try to get home.

What’s hiding behind the rather high scores that made it hard to rank this show was my dislike of two of the main characters. The young teenage girl is a self-centered spoiled brat that has no basis to complain about her life but spends every available second complaining. The younger brother is less troublesome but he is always and I mean always super happy and positive to the point that when the older sister picks at him – I feel it’s totally justifiable. I’m sure many people know people that fit either character type and so do I but both of these characters are much more bothersome then any real life person I know. It’s like the creators worked at making these characters as unappealing as possible for some enigmatical reason. Whatever this reason is, when I watch this show, I have trouble caring about if these two characters actually live through this ordeal.

If nothing was done to make these characters more palatable then I could easily see myself dropping this show and this was how I felt after watching episode 2, 3, and 4. I decided that if episode 5 didn’t show some improvements with these characters then I would probably put this show on hiatus and see how it would end before giving it any more of my time.

To make a long story short, I got through episode 5 without having to suppress the urge to slap either character. In fact, I finally felt a small bit of empathy towards them. If this can continue, I might start looking forward to watching this show.

In regards to the rest of the show, I have nothing but good things to say about it. The production values are sky high; as you might expect from a Bones production. The voice work is top-notch, as evidenced by how well I find those characters annoying – without the voice work, I’d probably not find them so annoying. I also like when a disaster show focuses on the people experiencing the disaster and being reminded (every now and again) to be thankful for not experiencing a similar calamity. And don’t forget that Bones took the time to do the research and to create the show themselves; always a praiseworthy move by an anime company.

Stepping out of the anime itself, what’s really surprised me is how long it’s taking for the two kids to discover if their parents are living or not. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been to a super large city like Tokyo and this lack of communications is a standard thing in a catastrophe but I’d personally be very angry that some system isn’t in place so people can find out if their loved ones are alive or not.

So, in conclusion, the only thing that mars this wonderful show (at least at the beginning) is a pair of unsympathetic characters. That’s no enough to derail me from continuing to watch it, once it appears that these characters will eventually become at least watchable. If I end up liking the series, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 will end up occupying a similar spot as the movie Titanic to me – a disaster show that succeeds in spite of it’s lead actors trying their best to drag the series down. Judging from the anime blogosphere, there’s no shortage of people watching this but if for some reason you haven’t heard of this (or will read this post in the coming months), let me close by saying this show is almost assuredly worth you’re time – especially if you’re on the hunt for something a bit different.