After a year of “First-Impressioning” we gladly resume with the new animes who lead in the year 2010. As most might know, this thread is for the people who don’t want to watch every new anime to see if it’s any good. In that case, we take on the role as judges for the first episode and give you our opinion. According to the first impression, you might want to check it out, or not! Every time this thread starts, there are also other who like to convey their feeling regarding the new animes, these can be found under my post. Note that this thread gets updated till every new anime has been reviewed. Well, let’s get started.
Baka to Test to Shokanju 3.5/5
Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life, Games
The translation of the title is: Idiots, Tests and Summoned Creatures. Well that’s this series well put together in 3 words. The playground is a school, which has classes from A to F, the lower you get, the worse the classroom gets (A has their own mini-bar, while F needs to fix their own desks with glue all the time). To make things interesting, everyone can summon a chibi (tiny) version of themselves and fight against each other, the more points you scored on the last test, the more power the chibi gets. The fights occur in turn-based easy drawn and very childish battle stages (see picture in spoiler). This anime is fun, refreshing and surely made me laugh. Some kind of main story presents itself in the end and at least got me hooked up for more.
Genre: Ecchi, Slice of Life
For the girls who don’t know what underwear they have to wear, watch Chu Bra! No I am serious. Chu Bra is basically an ecchi anime for the boys and a (kind of) educational program for girls to dress according to their bust and waist size. Since the audience gets a lot of incredibly good tips from underwear maniac Nayu who is also being suspected to be a prostitute because she has been wearing adult panties since junior high. Well, this is just another ecchi school anime and I have seen enough of those.
Genre: Action, Science Fiction
Cobra is a franchise dating from 1982 in which it debuted with a movie called Space Adventurer Cobra, followed by a 31-episode season. After this there came a remake in 2008 called Cobra The Animation: Psychogun and a sequel was made called Timedrive. I haven’t seen any of these and just started watching Cobra The Animation (which is a sequel to Timedrive, so I heard). It seems Cobra has made a fresh new start in this series so any knowledge is not needed of previous series, however I do expect that one wants to watch the previous OAV’s if this season was satisfying. Cobra The Animation stays true to it’s old-fashioned drawing style and music, emitting a very nostalgic feeling. The first episode was not extraordinary but still worth watching. The most striking points of this episode were the nose of the driver in the first scene, the evil laughter of the villain and the presumably flexible outfits which every girl is wearing.
Genre: Supernatural, Action
Since vampires are hot these days, a lot of animes have been in the light of vampires… hmmm I should say that differently ;D. Dance in the Vampire Bund (that’s a mouth full) starts surprisingly good with an interlude of the main story, using a television program (for people who have never seen a Japanese talk show, it basically looks like this; very good representation if you ask me). As I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ll stick with the basics: the graphics were average, the story seems to be something out of the ordinary (vampires who publicly make an appearance you say?) and vampires can also look like chameleons. The only thing that really bothered me (next to the chameleon) is the voice actor of the vampire queen. But this needs further judging before making a verdict.
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Supernatural, Comedy, Action
Following the story of the very fragile main character who encounters a lot of different (and odd) people in Tokyo. To be quite honest, you get bombarded with so many names that it’s overwhelming. At the same time, you follow an online chat which concerns the main issue of Durarara, this main issue als gets it’s debut in the first episode: the mysterious black bike driver, with its terrifying cat-ear helmet. Overall makes Durarara a very good first impression with exceedingly good graphics which make a solid representation of how Tokyo really is. Recommendation for people who liked Darker Than Black or The Skull Man, although I’m afraid you probably don’t have to try if you are in for the fighting scenes, since those weren’t much of a sensation.
Enjoy this P of Durarara:
Genre: Action, Adventure
After a long wait we finally get a chance to watch one of the most anticipated animes of this season. Katanagatari wins over quite an audience just with it's extraordinary animation style, which looks like a crossing between a computer game and a children's anime. Why did we have to wait so long for this first episode to release? Because this episode is 49 minutes long! This first episode is the introduction to the story which is something around the lines of "take down a lot of strong guys for me please?", which is basically a win/win for the shounen fans among us. However I left my shounen years behind me and did seem to be quite irritated by the slowness of this episode. Even though Katanagatari is in this episode not even close to a real fighting anime, the short fighting scene which I expected to be good, turned into an endless chit-chat and some weak jokes. Anyways, leaving the fighting and the story behind me, I do still quietly hope for some more hardcore "ultimate moves" which the main character (who is a swordsman, but does not use sword :| ) so much talks about.
Ladies vs Butlers 2.5/5
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Ecchi (Warning: Contains Nudity)
After seeing tons of butler animes and live-actions one must be thinking… are there really butler and maid universities out there? Do all the girls always wear those outfits?!?! A transfer student sets for the first time foot on the perimeters of the profound butler/maid university. As this is an ecchi anime, the main guy floors down the main girl in the first scene and he accidentally takes a “gentle” stroke over the chest. Normally an anime would end with this, but….. A chain reaction of molesting girls, fainting girls, undressing girls unleashes and the audience is forced to watch the pathetic acts of the main guy trying to make futile attempts at explaining. Only to end up meeting the sadistic childhood friend he thought he would never see again in his life. So yes, this is going to be a “I-Torture-You” + “bonus uncensored girls” anime which some people love, and some people don’t…
Genre: Music, Romance, Comedy, Drama
Note: This is the last of 3 seasons.
Normally I don’t do sequels but since I reviewed the second season too I found it to be appropriate to also review this. To remind the reader, I wanted to note that the second season (France Chapter) lacked music and was a bit too full of drama. This season starts out with the usual things that make this anime worth watching: music, laughter and some hard-to-figure-out situations. It is surprising how much unexplained things happen in this first episode that makes me want to see the next episode. I don’t have to mention the extreme commitment that the makers of the anime have done to make whole orchestra’s in elegant 3D style, which is always a joy to watch. But, the most important point for me is actually the comedy: I especially like everyone’s reactions to each other, mainly the reactions to Nodame’s weird personality. However, Chiaki is peculiar too, in a way….
Conclusion: If you have not yet watched this series, be sure to take a look. And if you did, I want to remind you that there is also a live-action drama of this and is worth watching too, if you can tolerate Japanese acting though
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Genre: Ecchi, Supernatural, Action, Romance
A boy who just found out that he possesses great powers of the demon hunter, gets hammered with the problem of two girls fighting over him. One of the girls is the childhood friend and the other is an ayakashi (mystical creature of Japanese mythology). The great thing about this ayakashi girl is, that she is a cat, has a huge rack and uses a sword to kill other ayakashi to protect the naïve demon hunter who doesn’t seem to have any powers at the moment. An interesting relation thus arises between the three and the quest to take down all kinds of ayakashi in the progress of winning over the main character do look a bit promising. This somehow reminded me of Rosario + Vampire, only this series lacks more good looking girls (or are they still to come??? :P ).
Genre: Mystery, Supernatural, Thriller
It’s been some time since I have seen an interesting thriller anime. Ookamikushi makes one think: everyone in school is acting a bit weird, there is a dangerous wolf god in the area, people disappear, no one walks outside after 8. Being stuck with these questions it is pretty easy to keep a hold of the audience’s attention. The animation stands out for being slick, straightforward and very smooth, in my opinion one of the best points of this anime. This anime emits a same sort of feeling like the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni series: mysterious and creepy.
Seikon no Qwaser 1.5/5
Genre: Supernatural, Action, Ecchi
A look-a-like of D.Gray-Man’s Allen Walker makes its appearance in the religiously tinted anime Seikon no Qwaser. At first this might seem like an interesting anime with possibly good fighting scenes, but you soon notice its abundance of ‘Japanesness’: big boobs, tiny boy main character (also the surprising point of interest these days: Russia), a lot of girls and redundant fanservice. If it was not for the slight censure of the girls moaning voices, this could pass as a soft hentai without nudity. The action scene was short, dull and boring. I can’t get heated up by this kind of low quality performing.
Note: Resemblances are also to be found in Shakugan no Shana (blue fire etc) and a bit of alchemy like Fullmetal Alchemist.
Genre: Music, Military, Slice of Life, Drama
The world is at war and the only sound the soldiers want to hear are the retreat sounds of the trumpet. The main character has become interested in music and decides to join the military to become a trumpeter. Sora no Woto uses the same character design as K-ON (2009), this probably seemed to be appropriate after K-ON’s musical success… Although I think the success lay more in the main characters being all little cute girls, which is surprising of Sora no Woto, since some of the girls seems to be exact replicas of K-ON. The scenery drawings are very ingenious and are also a point of this anime to just take a look at this drawn masterpiece (see spoiler). This anime looks like it has more potential than cute little girls using music instruments and I am hoping to see some military issues being brought to light, although this might just be my own wishful thinking.
Note: after her good performance as rich, manly girl in Nyan Koi (2009), voice actress Yu Kobayashi has been chosen for both Sora no Woto and Ookamikakushi and is doing a great job, which made her one of my favourite voice actresses. *In SnW she plays the blue haired girl, in Ookamikakushi the main character (as male)*
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