Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Overview of the past Half Year

Inspiration can both be a blessing, and a curse. It's awesome to have, but often likes to strike at the most inconvenient moments. So hereby I present a list of my impressions of the series of the past half year. I've been feeling guilty for a while knowing that I can't write a full review for all of them, so hereby an overview, in order of how much I like them. With the ones that I finished I included their final rating. Also enjoy the big pictures.



And yes this is about the past half year. As in, the most recent six month, otherwise known as the series that aired in the spring and summer season. Not the winter season. Just the past six months.




WATAMOTE, BLOOD LAD



These series started out as moderately fun comedies, but I did not expect them to become more than that so I did not watch more than two episodes. I've said this before: when I watch a comedy, I really want something with really good jokes and I want to laugh out loud, instead of just having to snicker occasionally.



FANTASISTA DOLL



This one won the award of the OP song with the most chance of annoyingly getting stuck in your head. It had potential, but in he end it was just too childish. Those thingies that the lead character summoned were complete idiots, and I don't mean in a good way. Anime writers pay attention: there's a different being simple minded and stupid!



FREE



Free was a prime: finally there was a fanservice series for females that didn't have horrible production values or incredibly cheesy acting and it actually resembled something like an actual drama. It wasn't interesting enough for me to keep watching though.



STELLA JOGAKUIN KOUTOUKA C3-BU



The first episode was really fun to watch, I dropped this after episode 2 though. Why? Because I did not think that the creators could match episode 1. I feared that it would be too much of the same thing over and over again with a few coming of age themes here and there. Was I right?



SERVANT X SERVICE



This series actually did make me laugh out loudin the first episode. I continued for five more episodes, but the wit of the first episode was just gone, and the characters descended into stereotypes. That otaku girl in particular. Dear god what happened to her? She used to be normal but devolved into this deranged fangirl.



DAGAN RONPA



Excellent premise, but Seiji Kishi. In the first two episodes I already saw hints that this would be a really lackluster adaptation and some stories I heard afterwards seemed to confirm this. Because of this I didn't watch past episode two.



AIURA



Beautifully made, but in the end it's just a random show about high school girls. Come on, someone put Ryouske Nakamura on a project that will actually put his talents to good use. I only watched four episodes of this one.



DANSAI BUNRI NO CRIME EDGE



Crime Edge turned out to be a series that celebrated weird fetishes. Nice for a while, but after a few episodes it just got boring and formulaic, with every arc doing a different genre. It had its charming moments, but not enough and I dropped it after about 5 episodes.



TAMAYURA - MORE AGGRESSIVE - 75/100



I like series to be concise and to the point. A bit of lingering is okay of course, especially if it has interesting stuff to do, but Tamayura mostly just repeated itself in its second season and gave hardly any attention to the side cast. That's basically the reason for the low grade here: it was fine with just one season. Don't go and make it longer and harder to watch.



HATARAKU MAOU-SAMA - 80/100



Oh, the promise that this series gave. For a while, it really was a lot of fun to watch, but alas: it couldn't keep up. It lost the spark that originally made it really funny, and the episodes, while still well written, started to become a bit of a chore to watch



MAJESTIC PRINCE



Surprisingly, I didn't finish this show. I'm only something like five episodes away, but I can't think of a reason to finish it. I thought that it was good, but in the end none of the cast really made an impression on me, strangely enough. Even though the battles got good, and the characters were slightly fleshed out and developed, not to mention episode 19. I'm not sure what happened herebut I totally have no motivation to continue it.



GARGANTIA ON THE VERDUROUS PLANET - 81/100



Gargantia had a pretty interesting setting, but its plot had a few humps and bumps along the road, with characters that had strange motivations, or didn't really become engaging. Still, overall it was Enjoyable, and especially that AI was a great character in how it played off the rest of the cast.



TEEKYU - 82,5/100



This show is just heaps of fun to watch with all of its energy and the creativity that the animators throw at the screen.



YAHARI ORE NO SEISHUN LOVE COMEDY WA MACHIGATTEIRU - 82,5/100



Yahari Blahblah (yeah I'm still calling it that) started off rather mellow, and then something happened. Completely against my expectations, it turned into a very well written high school drama with relatable characters. The cast consists out of characters who look like stereotypes, yet aren't and the show actually made quite a few good points along its run.



YONDEMASUYO, AZAZEL-SAN - 82,5/100



For me, this was the best comedy of the past half year. Utterly hilarious but also completely shameless. It often had me wondering what the heck the creators were thinking and smoking. Sometimes in bad ways, but when it was funny, it really was funny.



KAMISAMA NO INAI NICHIYOUBI - 84/100



This show really had a great premise, and I loved how it showed all of the characters coping with it. It had a strange sense of plot twists when it suddenly pulled random twists out of nowhere at the most random moments, but that did give it a unique spin. It's a melancholic but very engaging and thought-provoking series.



GATCHAMAN CROWDS - 84/100



Gatchaman Crowds got a lot of flack for not making any sense, but in the end, I loved this series as a quirky action series with an imaginative premise. In fact, the summer season stood out in how its series had some really great ideas for their premises. At its core, this is a series that celebrates social media, and all of the chaos that comes along with it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the original Gatchaman, but if it used this title in order to get funded, then it is a sacrifice that had to be made. It was a bit weird sometimes, but it built up into a very satisfying climax.



UCHUU KYOUDAI



I've mentioned this before: Uchuu Kyoudai has fallen. It used to be the best, incredibly well written and really engaging characters. It's still there, putting a lot of detail to its characters, but its sense of pacing is totally gone, and it feels like they're just randomly adapting the manga now without any soul left. It's a bloody shame because this show deserves some good treatment here.



HUNTER X HUNTER



Hunter X Hunter is really difficult to rate because my opinion of it just jumps all over the place. The Chimera Ant arc for a long while just took waaay too much time building up and too much time was spent on training arcs. Now that those are over though, this series has suddenly become amazing lately, with the main storyline and objectives having completely changed. These are the characters at their best for the entire remake's airtime.



SILVER SPOON - 86/100



Silver Spoon, an anime about a farming school. It's got a lot of similarities to Moyashimon, but the big difference is that it's meticulously planned: everything is there for a reason, either for a good joke, or some sort of character-development, and that character-development is really good and well thought out. I really was surprised how this series did not shy away from the darker side of farming and it tackled that issue with a lot of respect.



UCHOTEN KAZOKU - 86/100



Uchoten Kazoku for me stood out as the best non-sequel of the past summer season. It was chock full of cultural references, and with most of its characters being either Tanuki or Tengu, they actually acted like that. It's a fun and whimsical series, that still can be really intelligent when it wants to, and the dialogue in particular switches from really simple-minded to intelligent and well thought-out.



ROZEN MAIDEN 2013 - 86/100



My only gripe with this show is the cliff-hanger at the end. Apart from that, this show gave a terrific new spin to the Rozen Maiden anime, and turned a to of characters completely upside down. I really have to praise the plot for taking risks, and trying out something different, and the themes of the series rock as well: every character here is trapped in some way. The creators also managed to make this a very varying series by cleverly putting characters on a bus in order to focus on others.



SHINGEKI NO KYOJIN - 87,5/100



This really was the epic of the past half year. No other series came close to its production values, or its sense of action. The pacing was slow, but it always gave us the impression that humanity is completely screwed, and that the titans are just inches away from wiping out humanity altogether. The creators put so much detail into this series, and it looks gorgeous, and the great thing is that it's also really quite smart: the battles are full of tactics and people trying their best to think straight. This really is just one of those series that deserves the praise that it gets.



AKU NO HANA - 89/100



I spent a long time thinking about my favorite series of the past half year. I mean it was obvious for me that it would be one of these two. Both shows were just fantastic, though unfortunately unfinished. However in the end I gave Aku no Hana the edge. Yes, it's completely unlike any other series that we've seen before, but what really won me over was the sheer atmosphere of this thing. This is filled to the brim with emotions, The rotoscoping will push a lot of people away, but that's not the only thing about this series that's controversial. The incredibly slow pacing also was an incredibly risky move, but it works oh so well. The series is so chockfull of details that it allows us to get to know the characters on a deeply personal level.
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