Mashiro-Iro Symphony : The Color of Lovers

Catchy opening theme, gaggle of girls with the same half-dozen designs seen in every other contemporary shounen romance anime, bland male protagonist? Check, check, and check. Welcome to Mashiro-Iro Symphony, an adaptation of a slice-of-life romance visual novel that is more or less like every other such adaptation you've ever seen.

The show opens with our protagonist, Shingo Uryuu, running out into the night to help his little sister find her way home. She, meanwhile, appears to be wearing a bra and a dress on top of a turtleneck and skirt, or something...it's odd looking. Anyway, the sister, Sakuno, chases after an adorable fluffy creature while her brother searches for her and gets even more lost. While Sakuno waits in the rain, a girl named Airi Sena spots her and shares her umbrella. She's also lost, so together they call the brother and arrange to meet up in a nearby park. They succeed, and Shingo gets all wide-eyed upon meeting Airi in person.

So! Shingo, Sakuno, and guy-pal Hayata, as it turns out, are also serving as representatives from their school, which is merging with another (formerly all-girls) school. The trio will attend the new school, which is naturally chock-full of female characters: a teacher who's nervous around boys, a be-ponytailed , and of course, Airi Sena, who turns out to be opposed to the merger. OBSTACLE!

The main thing to enjoy in Mashiro-Iro Symphony thus far is its soundtrack, which is full of enjoyable orchestral arrangements (although the charming, heartwarming music that went with the opening scene felt kind of out of place for a rainy night). Other points: Sakuno, while largely the standard little-sister-with-a-brother-complex, offers a wry response about girls feeling clumped together when she and her brother are confronted with a mass cluster of their new classmates. There's also a thus far unintroduced character randomly playing with the generically adorable mascot character outside of the school building who suddenly stops to stare at the camera again. These are pretty much the only surprises in the episode.

While the art itself is detailed and crisp, the character designs are a bit overdone, and the characters themselves generic (though points should be awarded to Sakuno for her wry response about how girls feel in clusters upon witnessing their new school). As for pacing: kudos to the show for not being excessively blatant in its introductions to Shingo's new classmates, but the overall pacing is still a bit off. In particular, the opening scene feels oddly leisurely, with bits where more snap to the dialogue and action might have given the protagonist's intro a little more energy.

Thanks to ANN

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

A month ago, transfer student Kodaka made a really, really bad first impression on his first day and is now widely regarded as a delinquent because of it. One day he overhears the normally standoffish Yozora uncharacteristically carrying on a conversation with someone who turns out to be an imaginary friend. Both soon admit that they have no friends and have trouble finding them, and both also admit that joining an existing club at this point would be an ineffective way to get them, so Yozora does the only logical thing: she starts a new club, one which will essentially be a place where friendless students can connect and make real friends. Surprisingly, the first person to respond to their advertisements for the Neighbors Club is Sena Kashawizaka, the seemingly perfect daughter of the school's Chancellor, who always has a gaggle of boys in tow but claims that she has had difficulty actually making friends because of that. Yozora and Sena instantly get on each other's nerves despite Kodaka's efforts to mediate.

This light novel-based series really, really wants to be the next Oreimo, and is even made by the same branch of AIC as Oreimo. While this one's concept has nothing to do with otaku, its more conventional concept is an interesting one which has even more potential: the notion of creating a club for the specific purpose of allowing friendless people to make friends, something which could easily be inserted into just about any high school anywhere in the world. The discussions that Kodaka and Yozora have about forming friendships are also remarkably insightful.

The first episode shows two fundamental problems that limit this one's potential, however. The first is the presence of Sena as the club's third member. She was doubtless deemed necessary from a marketing point of view, as stories about the kind of true social rejects who would genuinely want/benefit from this kind of club simply wouldn't sell as anime (those type of stories seem to work much better in live action anyway), and she does seem to have a legitimate reason for wanting to join, but her perfection harms the integrity of the concept and the credibility of the story. That and opener scenes which suggest that Kodaka may end up being the only guy certainly raise the specter that the series will hedge in a harem direction.

The other and bigger problem is that the caliber of writing simply is not there, especially not compared to Oreimo. Insight is a plus but isn't enough. The writing makes the mistake of letting Kodoka become more a hanger-on than an active participant, does not make Yozora an interesting enough character, and does not even come close to getting the same kind of combative chemistry out of Sena and Yozora as Oreimo did out of Kirino and Kuroneko. This could improve over time, and the artistic merits are reasonable and the series does have a pretty cool closer, but already it is starting out a couple of steps behind.

Thanks to ANN

Guilty Crown

If there's anything Tetsuro Araki, director of Production I.G's newest sci-fi spectacular, is good at, it's action. Even if you were so tired of zombies that watching it made you feel like one yourself, the one thing you couldn't deny about Highschool of the Dead is that it kicked monstrous ass. Ditto the confused Kurozuka and even Death Note, whose fights were mental but dynamic and exciting nonetheless. Guilty Crown allows Araki to unleash that action beast, without giving him a chance to indulge in the self-conscious edginess that so often accompanies it. In so doing, it becomes one of his more enjoyable works to date.

The story takes place in the future, after a plague has ripped through Japan and forced it to live under the control of a multinational "relief" force known as the GHQ. Shu Ouma is a high school student in this future. He's pretty normal, if reserved and maybe harder on himself than he should be. That is set to change, beginning with the theft of a top-secret...something from GHQ. Injured, the girl who stole it takes refuge in a run-down room that Shu uses to edit videos. When GHQ thugs come for her, Shu knuckles under like a good sheep. Disgusted with himself, he takes the...something to its intended destination.

Whereupon he hooks up with some anti-GHQ guerillas and all hell breaks loose. Swords are pulled suggestively from nubile youngsters and bloody fragments of repressed memory come into it, as do genocidal mecha and one badass, flowing-haired prince. It's pretty conventional (wake up and smell the wish fulfillment!), more than a tad predictable, and pretty much awesome from start to finish. That has something to do with screenwriter Hiroyuki Yoshino, who has long experience with turning tired premises awesome (My-HiME anyone?), and everything to do with Araki. The episode's final minutes are a lesson in cinematic excess, filled with odd angles, dizzying camerawork, and slicker-than-greased-lawyers animation of glowing energies, slashing swords, burning cities, flying fists and exploding mecha. Before you watch, get a stick; you'll need it to prop your jaw back up.

Thanks to ANN

Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!!

Kawakami Academy is an unusual school, one which resolves internal disputes through large-scale, medieval-style pitched battles between students. For unspecified reasons, Class C and Class F are having just such a conflict out on a mountainside. Though the higher-ability Class C has the advantage of numbers and a tougher commander, Class F has the advantage in strategy and can equal or outdo Class C's elites with their own. Even when Class C calls in a ringer, Class F can still counter and hold her off long enough to successfully go after the enemy commander directly.

The entire first episode is just a big strategic battle scenario punctuated by intense individual fights, so what this series will actually be about is unclear at this point. A broad cast of characters also gets introduced, so who the series will even focus on is also unclear. What is clear is that super-powered martial arts battles involving sexy girls will definitely be a major component, as numerous characters (many but not all female) toss around all sorts of named power attacks. That is enough to carry the series for now, as the battles offer plenty of flash and pop, the girls look good, and relative newcomer Lerche turns in some appealing artistry and technical merits. Figuring out what the series is about can wait for later, because what's here is fun enough.

Mirai Niki

Okay, so let's say you're hankering for some thrills and action, but don't feel like getting into Fate/Zero due to intolerable levels of pompousness and back-story. In that case, Mirai Nikki might be the answer, with its violent collision of ordinary life and some extraordinary twists.

The story centers on apathetic high-schooler Yukiteru, who spends all day blogging pointless observations on his cell phone while having a godlike imaginary friend called Deus Ex Machina (is this name trying to be cheesy or trying to be clever? Who knows). Yukiteru's life takes an bizarre turn when one day he wakes up and finds that the diary entries in his phone are predicting the events that will happen that day. Even weirder is that Deus himself claims to have created the "future diary," despite being an imaginary entity. As expected, the episode involves a little fun at first—Yukiteru uses the future diary for cheating on tests and avoiding bullies—but the real excitement begins when the phone predicts Yukiteru's death at the hands of a serial killer. Using the phone to stay one step ahead, and with the assistance of classmate Yuno (who has a mysterious phone of her own), Yukiteru outwits the killer ... all before the episode ends. Premise, conflict, resolution. It tells a sharp, suspenseful story to get viewers hooked, while also opening the door for future plot developments. Why can't more first episodes be as effective as this one?

The stylish visuals also help this series to stand out, with a rich color palette (check out the moody sunset lighting when Yukiteru and the killer meet) and striking character designs (being faithful to the style of the manga helps). The ominous appearance of Deus and his imaginary realm, as well as the tense, eclectic soundtrack, also add to the series' distinctive, edgy vibe. The only gripe? The animation is a bit on the choppy side, with the characters stuttering from one dramatic pose to the next. However, the production as a whole is a winner.

thanks to ANN

Shakugan no Shana III (Final)

If you're not already an established and fully-caught-up fan of the franchise then this series is not for you. Full familiarity with the entirety of the first two series is assumed; newcomers will likely be thoroughly lost.

One of anime's defining and most enduring tsundere characters is back for yet another go-around in what is supposed to be the franchise's concluding installment. The regular episode content picks up exactly where the last shot of the second TV season left off, this time clarifying the mysterious scene with the footprints that trail off: Yuji suddenly disappeared on Christmas Eve night as he went to meet Shana, as if he had flickered out of existence like all normal Torches do. Those involved in Flame Haze affairs remember him but no one else does, and the only hint to his continued existence is that the love letters that Shana and Kazumi simultaneously sent him still exist and have specifically been returned to them. Unsurprisingly, Bel Masque seems to be directly involved, as a very different-looking version of Yuji appears amongst them as their new leader.

The new version of Yuji is, by far, the most startling and exciting element in an episode that otherwise doesn't do much beyond laying the groundwork for where this new season will go, though seeing various supporting characters continue to move on down the paths that they chose during the course of the first two TV series is a welcome sight. Other fresh elements include Shana developing an entirely new application for her flame power (which will doubtless play a big role later on) and indications in the opener that a few new faces will eventually pop up, while the Next Episode preview suggests that at least one prominent old face will return. The absence of Shuji in the normal world also (thankfully!) suggests that this series will not get bogged down in the run-of-the-mill school life antics which dominated the second series. The various Shana series have usually been at their best when immersing themselves fully in their supernatural elements, and this continuation has little choice but to concentrate on that.

The minor disappointment is that J.C. Staff's artistic and technical efforts have not improved in the 3½ years since the last TV installment; in fact, the first episode looks rougher in some places than what fans are used to seeing. Still, that shouldn't be enough to discourage franchise fans, who finally get their long-awaited continuation.

Fate / Zero

This prequel to the Fate/stay night anime series is based on the light novel written as a prequel to the original series’ source visual novel. Like most prequels, its main purpose is to show what happened to set up the original story and one of its main draws is seeing characters who were referenced and/or appear in the original story in earlier forms; fans of the franchise will doubtlessly delight in seeing youthful versions of Rin, Sakura, and Illyasviel and seeing Kiritsugu Emiya and Kirei Kotomine at the heights of their powers. Being familiar with the franchise is not necessary for understanding the proceedings here, however, for this double-length premier entirely eschews action in favor of spending its full time carefully setting up its main players and explaining the franchise's premise. Few beginnings to follow-up series in anime franchises are as accessible to newcomers as this one is.

The first episode covers a time frame from eighteen to ten years prior to the events of F/SN, beginning with the birth of Illyasviel, child of a descendant of one of the most prominent bloodlines of mages and Kiristugu Emiya, a former mage-killer who married into the family. It concludes with the prelims for the fourth Grail War, a battle between seven mages held every sixty years for the right to make a wish upon the Holy Grail. Kiritsugu and Kirei are not only two participants but the ones who worry each other the most due to thier unknown motives. Another mage bloodline scion, Kiriya, struggles to fulfill his family's part in the Grail War in an effort to protect young Sakura from getting drawn into the mess, while a fledgling mage absconds with his teacher's relic in order to participate himself. Each mage chosen to participate gets to summon a Servant, a representation of heroic spirits from across history who hail from one of seven types, and those Servants - including, yes, Saber - finally appear in dramatic fashion as the episode ends.

Even from a newcomer's viewpoint, this beginning shows a lot of promise. The technical merits and artistry, courtesy of ufotable, are superb and, for a change, the basic premise is quite clear. Despite the lack of action, it finds just the right amount of drama and pathos to keep viewers involved and has enough hooks to keep the attention of established fans who might find the lengthy set-up boring. It provides plenty of plotlines for story development, too. Overall, it marks a great start for the new season.

Sacred Seven

For sheer ridiculousness this summer, go no further than Sacred Seven, which appears to have been written as part of a Mad Libs challenge. Not content to just be a cookie-cutter show about Some Guy who discovers his Amazing Hidden Powers, this one takes all the cookie-cutter shapes available and melts them into a head-spinning mess. Our hero is Alma Tandoji, an orphaned high schooler who looks angry and supposedly beat up 18 kids a few years back, but is actually a sensitive soul who only fights out of a sense of justice. (Come on, girls! He's a tortured bad boy with a kind heart!) After Alma witnesses a ship exploding on the bay, he forgets the shocking incident until a young girl named Ruri—equipped with a magical amulet and a talking ancient artifact, naturally—comes to his door and asks him to utilize his Amazing Hidden Powers.

Of course, Alma refuses to believe in such supernatural nonsense, until he learns that a re-animated statue from the capsized ship is terrorizing the town and shooting lasers at everything. Yes, that is correct: this show has a Laser-Shooting Zombie Statue. Alma, noble soul that he is, heads out to protect a vulnerable classmate of his, and in doing so transforms into a character from Tiger and Bunny. No, actually, his powers awaken, resulting in animated pyrotechnics that make absolutely no sense to the untrained eye.

Although packed to the gills with striking visual designs (Mobile suit mechs! Bionic exo-armor! Explosions! Magic!), as well as constantly dramatic music, the overwhelming impression of Sacred Seven is how incoherent it is. It's as if a whole class of delusional eighth-grade geeks teamed up and said, "I like maids!" "Well, I like robots!" "I like superhero suits!" "I like ancient historical magic!" and for lack of creative direction, just chucked it all together. The high-octane set pieces may provide a quick thrill, but if this series continues to thrash about aimlessly, it'll soon land in the pile of action anime that no one cares about after a few months.

Baka to Test to Shōkanjū Ni!

In the first season of this goofy high school comedy, we met the members of class F— the lowest-rated class in their high school —who were trying to fight their way to the top rank, which would afford their class a better room and other resources. Literally; the twist that sets Baka and Test apart from other high school comedies (kinda) is that the school in which it's set features, for undisclosed reasons, a videogame-esque challenging system to allow an underdog class to compete with the spoiiled intelligencia.

Steins;Gate

Still confused by the opening stanzas ofSteins;Gate? Well then, try wrapping your head around this next sequence of events: pseudo-scientist Rintarou Okabe continues to be freaked out by what happened (or didn't happen?) to him recently. The girl whose bloody corpse he discovered is, in fact, alive and well, and adding to the confusion is that she's now giving a lecture on time travel, rather than the professor who claimed to have mastered it last episode. Hopelessly mind-boggled by all this, Okabe hops online to look up time-traveling urban legend John Titor ... only to find that Titor's sensational visit to the year 2000 has been scrubbed off the internet. Has Okabe entered a reality where the Titor thing never happened? And what to make of his experiment at the Future Gadget Lab, where an attempt to microwave a banana seemingly sends it back in time?

By clarifying which events have happened and which didn't, this episode provides a more coherent follow-up to the first, while still spinning the wheel of mystery as to whether Okabe dreamed it, or time-slipped, or something else entirely. Certainly, it's more balanced than the maddening quick-cuts and non-sequiturs of Episode 1—although some running time is still wasted on pointless events like Okabe stopping by a shrine to chat with friends, and a run-in with a passer-by looking for an antique PC. Who knows, maybe that stuff does become important later, but it lacks the suspense needed to hold one's attention.

Regardless of the plot's hits and misses, however, the overall atmosphere of the series keeps everything afloat, with visuals and audio conspiring to form a unified artistic whole. Muted colors and hazy lighting establish a strange, intriguing vision of Akihabara in midsummer, and even ambient sounds (cicadas chirping, cars whizzing by) seem to echo the detached paranoia of Okabe's world. If Episode 1 was the act of throwing all the jigsaw pieces on the floor in mad confusion, then here begins the riveting process of putting them together.

Originally posted by Carlos Santos of animenewsnetwork.com

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The World God Only Knows S2

There may have been some doubts about the hackneyed premise that began the second season of The World God Only Knows—tough martial arts girl secretly likes cute things!—but with Episode 2, all those doubts are swept away. The excellent conclusion to the Kusunoki Kasuga arc sees our hard-nosed heroine going on the World's Most Awkward Date with smug, game-obsessed protagonist Keima Katsuragi. Granted, this charade is simply an attempt to make Kusunoki confront her "weak" side and force out the "loose soul" that's bothering her, but the laughs just keep coming: Keima's unabashed selfishness at the game store, an overly physical round of whack-a-mole (or rather, lobster), even a hilariously uncomfortable moment in the purikura booth. The genius is in seeing all these dating-sim clichés subverted by two completely unwilling participants.

And that's just the halfway point. The real payoff comes when our uneasy couple engages in the ultimate display of sentimental romantic goop—a shared ice cream cone—and the loose soul pops out to battle Kusunoki, switching from comedy spoof to pure action in seconds. Then comes the emotional punch: Keima, Elsie and Kusunoki launch into a passionate, thoughtful discussion about how to accept different sides of one's personality—and finally resolve it in a heartfelt way only this series can pull off so well.

Between the great genre send-up, the slickly animated hand-to-hand combat, and a heartwarming turnabout in the final act, this episode shows incredible storytelling range. And that's not including all the little things it does right: Elsie's background sight gags, color schemes that shift to match the mood, rich background music that walks a careful line between spoof and seriousness. It doesn't even have to throw around otaku in-jokes at this point—instead it relies charming characters, pitch-perfect comedy, and a lot of heart to tell its story. A story that'll be well worth watching, all the way to the end.

Originally posted by Carlos Santos of animenewsnetwork.com

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Hidan no Aria

High school comedy has a new name, and it's Aria the Scarlet Ammo! No series this season is zanier or more action-packed than this spiritual successor to Toradora!, where high-schooler Kinji Toyama finds himself subject to the temperamental whims of sub-5-foot-tall Aria H. Kanzaki (played by—who else?—Rie Kugimiya). But hot girls aren't Kinji's only problem. He's also attending Tokyo Butei High School, a Tea Party wet dream where everyone is safer because (by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction) every student has a gun and a knife. Of course, they're also packing heat because the school is a training ground for future law enforcement agents, but hey, who needs poorly-reasoned plot devices when EVERYONE HAS GUNS?

Kinji's wacky adventures begin when his commute to school is rudely interrupted by remote-controlled Segways equipped with Uzis—plus a mysterious phone call telling him there's a bomb strapped to his bike. In his madcap quest to avoid being blown up, Kinji is rescued by dual-wielding gunslinger Aria, who pulls him to safety just in time. However, another wave of armed Segways attacks them, and this time Kinji's rising blood pressure transforms him into Bruce Willis and he eliminates the threat with a single flashy move. Bravo, young man! As a reward for your actions, you get to sit next to Aria in class since she's transferring into the school!

In all seriousness, Aria the Scarlet Ammo obviously isn't meant to be pure comedy. But this surgical grafting of boy-meets-girl onto girls-with-guns (boy-meets-girls-with-guns?) is unintentionally hilarious—and stupid. Apparently, at no time did anyone stop to think about the illogic of a fully armed student body, or Segways with submachine guns strapped to them. Meanwhile, on the visual side, even shiny animation technique can't redeem the predictable character designs, generic suburban scenery, and dumb sight gags about Aria's chest size. If it were simply about high-intensity gunplay, with daring camerawork and a pulsating action-thriller soundtrack, it wouldn't be such a bad thing. But the high-school sitcom flavor makes it taste as bizarre as ketchup on chocolate.

Originally Posted by Carlos Santos at animenewsnetwork.com

Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai

I've seen my share of head-scratching avant-garde anime. I've seen Cat Soup and Mind Game and Lain and things that leave lesser mortals wondering what the plot was about, or if there was a plot at all. But who'd have thought that my undoing would be a visual novel adaptation?

We, Without Wings tries to dress up the old boy-meets-harem formula with a meta-story involving "TV channels" linked in some kind of "hypothetical fairy tale." But what it really means is that, instead of following the exploits of one young lad and the ladies who love him, the first episode skips inexplicably between a whole gaggle of male characters having varied encounters with the opposite sex. In one scenario, a high-schooler finds his walk to school disrupted by all manner of bishoujo clichés; after the opening credits, ten pointless minutes are spent at a casual restaurant where a freeloader is trying to invite young waitresses to a get-together; then comes the nighttime story of a part-timer wandering the international part of town and taking on a thankless construction job because he needs the money.

Does this make sense to anyone? No? Didn't think so. This is more nonsense than Steins;Gate and Chaos;HEAd combined, minus the psycho-thriller atmosphere—or a slice-of-life gone horribly wrong. Because the male characters are so blandly designed, it's almost too easy to miss the fact that they are acting out different scenarios. And the girls they meet, being mindless panty-flashing ciphers, are equally forgettable. Perhaps they become more interesting as the storyline progresses, but who's going to want to stick around for a storyline as baffling as a calculus textbook mistranslated from Russian?

With lazy animation leading the way (seriously, count all the slow pans across static scenery), and boring city backgrounds providing the setting, there's absolutely nothing to look at here—even the fanservice is boring, with its predictable array of pantyshots and boob jiggles. Surely even first-time fans have better standards than this; how bad must a show be that it even fails at being mediocre?

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?

Any show that prominently features a Dyson Air Multiplier bladeless fan in the background immediately deserves a second look. Not because it's necessarily good, nor interesting, but because it inherently has a love of the weird and eclectic. In the case of Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?, that penchant for the nutty might be a case of Trying Too Damned Hard, but at times it does succeed.

Stop me if you've heard this premise. There's a high school boy who lives in a house with two cute gir—oh, wait. Okay, try this one. There's a zombie who lives in a house with a “necromancer of the underworld” and a snaggle-toothed magical girl who slays giant animal monsters with a chainsaw. It's a riff off a zillion other shows, and it borders on desperate fan pandering, but eventually the absurdity wins over. By the time our hero ends up donning a frilly dress to battle a giant blubbering crayfish, it's over the top enough to be funny. It's not clever and it's not wholly original, but it's quirky, and sometimes that's all you need.

For anyone who's asking, the zombie in question isn't your typical brain-eating, foot-shuffling Hollywood zombie. He's a high schooler like any other, only he was brought back to life by a necromancer so that he can track down who murdered him. Conveniently, because she lives with him, he doesn't have to worry about trivialities like getting his bones shattered or being torn in half or being impaled by a giant bear. All in the first episode. However, there should be a boo and a hiss to the necromancer's name, Eucliwood Hellscythe—apparently it's now the anime norm to name all gothic lolita characters a jumble of English Halloween words.

Watching Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? is somewhat like watching a bad comedian with no comic timing deliver a poorly written joke with no punchline. At first, the only response is silence. Then there's some uncomfortable fidgeting, and maybe some coughing. Then, because the awkward silence has nowhere else to go, the tension erupts into laughter. The audience sits back and realizes, “Man, this is really terrible. I can't stop laughing.” And for some reason, there's a Dyson Air Multiplier.

Originally posted by Bamboo Dong of animenewsnetwork.com

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Dragon Crisis!

Whether fleshing out familiar tales (Toradora!, Asobi ni Iku yo!), inventing something new (Spice and Wolf), or simply going batsh*t insane (Kyōran Kazoku Nikki), in recent times light novels have given us some of our finest romantic comedies. They've also given us plenty of mediocrity. One day at school, regular guy Ryuji Kisaragi is abducted by his long-absent cousin Eriko. He isn't terribly flustered; Eriko, a hunter of supernatural artifacts, is basically a D-cup Indiana Jones, so an abduction or two is nothing unusual. She drags him to a dock where a black market exchange of supernatural goods is planned, and quite naturally proceeds to rob the robbers. In the ensuing shootout the artifact's case is opened and, also quite naturally, a girl pops out. All she can say is "Ryuji," and she can incinerate a fleet of cars with the flick of wrist, so Eriko and Ryuji figure she isn't normal, but they don't figure on her being a real-live dragon. Or being pathologically over-attached to Ryuji.

Between its tried-and-true premise and dispiriting dearth of male characters, Dragon Crisis! doesn't exactly bleed promise. Ryuji is nice, but bland; the girls are pretty, but prefabricated; the plot is fast, fun, and refreshingly action-minded, but clichéd as all hell. The series is pleasant, but also completely undistinguished. It's a good-looking show, with nice rounded character designs and some surprisingly slick animation, particularly during the car-incinerating and magical-butterfly-swarming parts of the action scenes. There's plenty of harmless fan-service and even a bit of cute puppy-love thrown in for good measure. But you'll be hard put to remember any of it when the episode has run its course, except possibly for the irresistible way that Rie Kugiyama, as the dragon girl, says "Ryuji." And all that does is make you want to watch Toradora! again. Give it another episode to separate itself from the crowd, then dump it.

There might be a story here worth watching, and this is certainly a different take on the classic image of dragons, but the preposterous business about the treasure-hunting organization and the seeming compulsion to force fan service in wherever possible stand against a first episode that was already pretty weak on the writing front. It does have an unusually catchy soundtrack, but its technical merits are mediocre and these characters and situations are just tiny variations (if that) on content that we have seen innumerable times before. In other words, the biggest blow against the series so far is that it's as stale a two-week-old bread. Even Rose's cutesiness - arguably the series’ biggest draw at this point - cannot compensate for that.

Originally posted by Carl Kimlinger & Theron Martin at animenewsnetwork.com

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Freezing

If the idea of plentiful fan service freely intermixed with plentiful graphic violence, all perpetrated by gorgeous gals, appeals you then Freezing is probably the series for you this season. It makes its intent to focus on the former absolutely clear from its very first scene, which features the central full-figured blond stripping in preparation for activating her battle uniform. Later scenes provide all manner of panty flashes, jiggling breasts, shredded clothing, and even outright defined nudity - only in this case we also see the girls getting torn up as much as their clothing. Throats get slashed, limbs get severed (or just plain fall off) on a couple of occasions, and loads of blood gets splattered. As combat-schools-training-to-fend-off-hostile-aliens series go, this is one of the most brutal.

The premise is that, at some point late in the 21st century, mankind starts having problems with invading giant aliens called Novas, so they set up training for cybernetically-enhanced girls called Pandoras (why they have to be girls hasn't been explained yet), who can manifest Volt Textures and Volt Weapons to fight the Novas. After a certain point the girls are paired up with Limiters, who must always be boys younger than the girls, who can use their own “Freezing” powers to help protect their paired girls and allow them to move freely in the Nova's aura. One boy destined to be a Limiter is Kazuya Kazuha (who is incorrectly listed as “Aoi Kazuha” in multiple sources, but that's his sister's name), whose older sister was a Pandora who sacrificed herself to fend off a Nova assault four years earlier. And he seems destined to hook up with the absurdly-named Satellizer L. Bridgette, the training academy's top student and a seemingly coldly brutal killer who keeps everyone at a distance until, of course, Kazuya comes on the scene.

The look and set-up of the story are a mishmash of elements borrowed from numerous other anime, including RahXephon and My-Otome, the concept is pretty standard otaku-focused fare, and the play-out of events so far is fairly predictable. Some have complained about Satellizer reacting inconsistently at the end, but other yet-to-be-revealed factors could be in play there. The artwork and animation is very good at times but inconsistent, although the series hits big-time on the female character designs. Any of the series’ other potential weaknesses aren't going to matter if you have a sweet spot for the fan service/violence combo, though, as on that front it scores big-time.

some word from IS :

Nova:Big evil robots trying to kill humanity.
Pandora: Schoolgirls (when is it ever not schoolgirls?) with special powers capable of destroying Nova.
Freezing: A pompous word for releasing some fancy-looking forcefield ... I guess?
Ereinbar: Another ridiculous made-up word used to describe when a young boy (when is it ever not a young boy?) is enlisted by a Pandora to further boost her powers.
Kazuya: The young boy at the heart of this story.
Satellizer L. Bridget: The hilariously-named, top-ranked Pandora whose reputation as the "Untouchable Queen" is about to take a dramatic turn when Kazuya enters her life.

Originally posted by Theron Martin of animenewsnetwork.com

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IS : Infinite Stratos

So it's the future, you see. There's these powerful robotic suits, you see. And only girls can wear them, you see. Except for one guy, you see. And he wants to go to a school for robotic-suit pilots, you see. Yes, we see. We see a cheap attempt to justify yet another story about a lone schmuck surrounded by an infinite bounty of female flesh. The guy is Ichika Orimura, and as you'd expect at a school essentially reserved for the fairer sex, he stands out like a sore thumb. Not only is he the only guy, and thus the center of undue amorous attention, but he's also the only person in his class who hasn't read the robotic-suit (called Infinite Stratos, or IS for short) manual and is the kid brother of famous IS pilot and school instructor Chifuyu. Within days he's gotten the student body's hormones a-roiling, pissed off his roommate (and childhood friend) Houki, and gotten roped into a duel with a spoiled English princess. So much for blending in.


The surprise here is that it isn't Infinite Stratos's transparent premise that sinks it. Rather it's the thinly-veiled world-building info-dumps and reams of unnatural explanatory dialogue. For all its promises of juicy school drama (or comedy), the episode feels dry, and more than a bit clunky. That doesn't bode well for the future quality of the script. As for the potentially prurient premise, it's actually pretty decently handled. While the girls are definitely interested in Ichika, they don't throw themselves on him, preferring to gawk and stalk. Fan-service is surprisingly light—limited to a bit of cleavage here and an "eek! I just got out of the shower!" moment there—and, so far at least, the moe stereotypes aren't oozing out of the woodwork. That Ichika has a personality and a spine certainly helps, as does his obvious displeasure with being the center of feminine attention. As such things go you could do worse, and certainly uglier; 8-Bit's animation is quite nice.

And to think, this was adapted from a light novel? This is barely good enough to qualify for a shovelware dating sim.

Originally posted by Carl Kimlinger of animenewsnetwork.com

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Rio : Rainbow Gate

Is it possible to have an anime riddled with clichés and stereotypes, yet have a premise that's so ridiculous that it results in a viewing experience so unique that it can't even be categorized? Perhaps that was the question posed to a Xebec during a brainstorming session. There is no other possible explanation for the inception of Rio – Rainbow Gate!, a show that bewilders with its inane premise, and its unabashed love of light-reflecting breasts. The latter is a puzzle—with the exception of saunas and female bodybuilding competitions, I've never seen breasts that actually shine in real life, but in anime, they are a dime a dozen. This series, especially, loves this concept, and for every pair of heaving bosoms, there are two glints of radiant sunshine.

Rio, the titular character, is the most popular dealer at Howard Resor
t, a gorgeous beachside community with towering architectural styles borrowed from all over the world. Known as the Goddess of Victory, she exudes luck, and anyone who touches her hand or merely basks in her presence cleans up at the card tables and slot machines. How the casino manages to stay in business is anyone's guess. Aside from dealing, though, she also does various odd jobs for the owner, like dress up and entertain wealthy clients. Although, it does beg one very big question. It's obvious that Rio hates dressing in skimpy outfits and doing whatever perverted thing the owner asks of her, but—why stay at that job? Why not just use her talent for gambling, use that to earn a living, and stop working for some pervert? But maybe at Howard Resort, logic is a rare commodity only sold in the High Rollers room.

See, Rio doesn't just have a knack for luck. She can actually become “one” with whatever game she's playing and pick the cards she wants. In the first episode, she goes head to head with some bad guy who's after a little girl's teddy bear in a hand of five card draw. After the cards are dealt, both players suddenly enter some sort of fantasy dream state, where they actually start walking around a world of life-size cards and reach out to the ones they want. What? Can they actually manipulate the order of the already shuffled cards? Or is it a simple matter of ESP in terms of predicting what card is next? And even though the fantasy sequence is some five minutes long, how long does it appear to the bystanders watching this game?

Once again, logic is not one of the chips at stake here.

To the show's credit, there are two things that I was unprepared for. One, the show looks really nice. The animators put a lot of time and effort into making sure every person in a crowd looks different, and all of the architectural effects in Howard Resort are stunning. All of the cards are drawn with great detail, and every groove in the roulette wheel is carefully brushed in. I even had to admire the effort that the animators expended making sure every single set of breasts in the entire casino had a nice, freshly waxed sheen to it.

Secondly, I was completely unprepared for the motive of the bad guy. When he was trying to steal the little girl's bear, I naturally assumed her wealthy grandfather had hidden corporate secrets inside, or perhaps some kind of key to a safe. No. The actual motive was so ridiculous I audibly cried out in disbelief. As if the Gambling Goddess premise of the show wasn't enough. As if the money shot of the token ermine mascot pulling at a half-naked girl's bed sheets weren't enough. This show is simply too much, and not really in a good way.

Originally posted by bamboo dong animenewsnetwork.com

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