There seems to be cries every season about how the cropping of shows is worse than the last, and while this may or may not be true depending on your taste in shows, I’ve always found it hard to be lacking in stuff to put up on the screen every night. This is because while there may not be many standout, my-God-I-need-to-watch-this-now shows in every season there are always plentiful bounties of sleeper hits, things worth trying because someone said it was good, or just plain old shows, enough to ensure that I get continually buried deeper and deeper in a pile of anime I need to catch up on.

Perhaps a large part of it is due to the fact that I enjoy being very easily influenced and thanks to that I can pick up random shows if two or three people say it’s actually pretty good - doubly so if they can nail a weak spot of mine - combined with the fact that I really haven’t seen much, having only been in the anime-watching business for just over a year.

To prove that anime Is Out There - cue the X-Files theme - I’m going to spend a little time tonight going over the majority of my watchlist, instead of the huge specialty posts on a single anime which have been written recently. In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s mostly code for “I want to talk about True Tears, Clannad, and Shana II but am too lazy to unify it in an easy way” with some bonus laughing at other shows added in.

Since it’s March and all and I like to pretend to be hip and knowledgable about sports (Protip: Motorsports yes, sportssports no.), it’s a super special sweet sixteen - ow, my manliness - March Madness-type organization with, you guessed it, sixteen shows on the list. There are in reality a few more but the majority of the extra would consist of “I saw this once, and would kind of keep watching it if there were nothing else to watch,” which explains itself well enough.

To be fair it doesn’t have the mass-voting aspect or the actual sports-related references of the other March Madness anime posts, but, hey, 16 anime, that’s a lot.

Incidentally, I’m starting with the last and working back, because, unsurprisingly, I don’t have much to say about the shows I don’t care about as much. Maybe some sarcastic quips, but even writing a lot of that is tough for some of raw ambivalence the lower-tier shows bring. Because you’d drop the bad ones, y’know?

#16 - To Heart 2 (6 episodes complete)
I’m really waiting for mentioning To Heart 2 to become a joke around here, mainly since it was one of my first anime to watch after Kanon last year, and yet, it’s still one of the last I have to finish. It’s kind of like that kid on the playground that nobody picks for the basketball team, except, I don’t really have much pity for To Heart 2.

It’s the Nothing Happens type of show, which works fine except for the fact that the position has already been filled other shows, so what’s really left of TH2 is how it’s basically what appears to be 8-9 character introduction episodes, followed by, I suppose, Konomi winning and fanboys angsting about Tama-nee. The large ‘harem’ size of To Heart 2 works against it multi-fold here; it doesn’t have the time to use all its characters and none of them seem to have long-term relevance. There’s no conflict, nothing that would make it really out of the ordinary.

What’s keeping To Heart 2 on the list is the fact that it still is staring its little puppy dog eyes at me every time I look at it on the hard drive. I heard the first To Heart was good (if not only tangentially related), so maybe that will revitalize my interest in the series if I try it.

#15 - Da Capo II (3 episodes complete)
Oh, sequels, what have you done? The third installment (riddle me that) of the famous Da Capo series personally went flat on its face with the same issues as To Heart 2; what really hurts me is that while the first series (D.C. / D.C.S.S.) were actually interesting and moved at a decent pace, Da Capo II is half the length and twice as short.

It started good, with what I think was the world’s fastest credits-to-confession (or vice versa) time, but it just turned out to be an example of a marathon runner sprinting out of the gate and then running out of breath after the first mile. It didn’t really capitalize on its interesting start, personally, settling back into a typical ‘character introduction’ groove with an awkward taste of ‘fanservice that’s not really fanservice’ (see: Minatsu and the famous Amakaze banana addiction). If fanservice is a teasing of porn, then teasing at fanservice is…what?

Oh yeah, and there’s the whole “first season didn’t conclude anything” deal that the spoilers seemed to have hinted at. I’ll keep the siscon radar handy to see if things get interesting now that the second season is coming up, but I just hope the next 13 episodes will actually start tying up ends. Because it’s not really a Minatsu ending, is it?

(Yeah, I’m just bitter that my bet on Koko to go! All! The! Way! went sour pretty quickly, despite being close to the ‘end’.)

#14 - Gurren Lagann (1 episode complete)
I really don’t have any words to explain why this is still on the list and not in the pile of ‘anime that pierced the heavens’, but my closest excuse is that Stage6 got kicked to the curb and now I’m waiting for the licensed discs to hit before reconsidering going past episode 1.

Well, I will eventually - who the hell do you think I am? - but it’s not high on the priority list simply based on availability. Hell yes I want to see more of this show, just so I have something intelligent to say other than spouting all the catchphrases over and over again.

Oh, if I really want to get lynched I guess I can say this is my first real Giant Robot show. I’ll go ring up the Zetsubou Sensei set.

Final word: Is Yoko jiggling a catchphrase? Suddenly I have an urge for Jell-O.

#13 - Wangan Midnight (6 episodes complete)
Wangan Midnight is another first; my first racing anime, and my first anime to fall victim to stalled subs. Wangan Midnight, despite having a top-notch arcade port, seems to fall into the giant gaping crevice that eats any racing anime not partial to tofu and doriftos, and so a show in which People Actually Crash - with surprising frequency, actually - is finding itself on the side of the road with its hood up.

Unfortunately this show doesn’t have as much of a killer soundtrack as its arcade counterpart but the CG animation isn’t too bad - even if the characters themselves have Shonen Show Syndrome - and there seems to be a plot outside of “win lots of races”. Every character seems to have a motive to be discovered… it’s no mind-thriller but it shows there is plenty to shows like this aside from standing on the gas and turning left.

Actually, wait, there really is no turning on the Wangan Line highway. Or on the pier which the main character’s car is about to get driven off of… by a Mamiko Noto character. There, are you interested now?

#12 - ARIA the Animation (6 episodes complete)
Writing words about ARIA seems counterintuitive. It’s not really a show which invites analysis or raving but rather it’s more of a show to be experienced than dissected. Like, you’re supposed to let its cool waves of mellowness wash over you and soothe you - ironic for a show about a bunch of undines rowing their gondolas through a sort of new age Venice.

For me it suffers from the same problem as Azumanga in that if you consciously try to watch it per se it works horribly. You can’t sit down and say “OK, ARIA time!” because you’ll be bored or asleep within 10 minutes. But if it’s a really slow day, or if you’re doing homework or multitasking, then ARIA’s a fantastic show. Just thinking of the lullaby-like melody of the OP song invokes a sort of tranquility.

The one thing that really gives me a strange feeling about ARIA though is how it likes to set off yuri radars left and right - if only because in neo-Venice and in slice-of-life shows there tend to be a surprising lack of guys. Think about it - Azumanga had Kaorin / Sakaki, Lucky Star had Konata / Kagami or Minami / Yutaka or whatever Hiyori could dream up at the moment, and Minami-ke…well…it’s got something strange going on in the pants with all the traps. Speaking of…

#11 - Minami-ke ~Okawari~ (4 episodes complete)
Minami-ke! I remember that show! It was really cool and had a bunch of funny moments and recurring gags. The three sisters all were amusing and had their appeals, and the side cast was large, varied, and just as ridiculously entertaining. Any slice-of-life that can approach romance on a regular basis gets a thumbs up in my book.

So why did I stop watching Minami-ke?

It’s a mystery. Unlike a lot of people I didn’t really hate the second season. The beginning was a bit clunky and the subs took forever to finally be released but by the time the third episode rolled around it wasn’t too much off form, and while maybe not a top contender, it was still a enjoyable diversion. But then, all of a sudden, one day I had no more episode of Minami-ke downloaded and I just never got around to downloading it.

It’s a strange way to move on and one that bugs me more than actively hating the show and dropping it, but it just seems other shows filled the Minami-ke void. Zetsubou Sensei started up again, the amount of romance shows multiplied, and suddenly there was no spot for the sisters.It’s something that definitely needs returning to but there’s no huge rush to at the moment.

How the mighty have fallen… it really does seem like the blog community has snubbed their collective noses at the once-proud Minami sisters. It seems like the American celebrity world itself…

#10 - H2O ~footprints in the sand~ (2 episode completed)
Well, I watched 2 episodes of H2O and greatly disliked it, and yet, somehow, it’s beating out a good show which I forgot about, a good show which stalled out, a good if not passive show, and one mecha show I really need to get my hands on. The mind really does work in strange ways.

My (relative) enthusiasm to get back into this show is fueled mostly by a sudden recommendation by Moogy and a sudden scarcity in the visual-novel field. Despite the fact that Moogy hated on Myself;Yourself, a show I found quite enjoyable if not a bit School Days Lite, the fact that all the really good visual-novel-type shows are coming to an end within a month is making me search for my fix of implausible escapism - I kid, I kid.

You know that I enjoy these types of shows for the intense emotional conflict and drama they tend to bring, as well as the entertaining aspect of trying to figure out the show and the ‘destined girl’ ahead of time. H2O even tries to bring a few new things to the table (it seems every harem show, even the most cliched ones, have one good gimmick) with a blind protagonist and a seemingly-demonic girl who gets abused all the time at school. Unfortunately the first gimmick was rendered void (although still volatile) after episode one and the second gimmick is outright sickening but there still is lots of intrigue and mystery left in the show which I can’t sarcasm my way through…just yet.

Although, I must ask, what is the point of putting a trap character in an H-game meant for guys? I mean, you’re playing along, going with the story, and then you hit the H-scene and all of a sudden OH DEAR GOD! Or something. I don’t know how they handled it in the game but it’s not logistically making sense to me in the anime. I love being bitter.

#9 - Nodame Cantabile (~13 completed)
We’re really getting into the good stuff here now as Nodame Cantabile is a show I find wildly entertaining as one in a dying vein of shoujo-type romance-of-life shows; that is, a largely slice-of-life comedy, but with some emotional drama and romantic conflict lying in wait.

Unfortunately though about halfway through I decided watching it on a pixellated 4″ by 3″ stream wasn’t good enough for me, so I started downloading Nodame and my BitTorrent client decided to go to hell on me. I’m still getting around to fixing up that whopping 500 byte / sec download speed (note byte) - yes, I have an idea how - but until then Nodame is in ’slow internet purgatory’, which is a shame.

The characters in Nodame really are both wildly exaggerating and appealing, a solid bunch that many shows would struggle to match without lathering on the moe sauce. Chiaki, the male lead, is a bit too bishonen (i.e. wildly squealed about by every girl - and a guy - in the show) for my tastes but his somewhat cynicist, somewhat sarcastic, always determined attitude really clicks with my own, and he is worthy of getting transported into any harem show in lieu of other, more bland protagonists. Since I am a born klutz I also enjoy Nodame’s incredibly strange and Osaka-like antics; it’s easy to see how her energetic personality could rub off on the people around her. Then there’s Milch Whatever His Real Name Is, the famous German conductor who also became a famous pervert around the music school, that one guy with the fro who’s gay for Chiaki, Chiaki’s enthusastic friend who plays rock songs with the violin, etc etc etc.

Oh, and the plot would be good too if I didn’t forget it after two weeks of not watching. What does strike me though is that time does pass reasonably quick in this show - we’re already through a year or two or school, where other shows might drag out time a bit more. Nice to see the characters maturing and evolving quickly.

#8 - Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (4 episodes completed)
If I were smarter and more coherent I would parody SZS’s style in my checkpoint review of it, but it would go something like this:

*lots of fast-scrolling text*

*funny style animation*

*random pseudo-parodical reference*

*Complete gibberish!*

*random cut to something non-related*

*sudden jump to rocking ending song*

Zetsubou Sensei has always been a sort of mind-rending show with it’s off-the-wall insanity and it just gets cranked to eleven in the second season of it, with more budget, more parodies, more random thematic changes (saw a sneak peek at the Magical Zetsubou Girls or whatever of episode 7), and above all more utterly ridiculous humor. Whether the laughing is of the side-splitting or the eye-twitching kind Zetsubou Sensei is a show not to be missed if only because of how different it is.

I also think I’m contractually obligated to say “it’s good because it’s occasionally like a British comedy,” and is. Who needs physical comedy when you can make fun of society?

Again, it’s another show that drops this ‘low’ only because of a.f.k. living too much up to their group name.

#7 - Shugo Chara! (17 episodes completed)
I contemplated on another post what the reason for having shorter shows be the norm rather than the exception, and Shugo Chara seems to be driving the reason home with the famous ‘f’ word of ‘filler’.

Slated for 52-odd episodes, Shugo Chara, I imagine, is in danger of jumping the manga before the close of its run and so we’ve had a lot of tangentially important episodes which range from the really mind-numbing episodes to the more mentally gripping ones. 14, 15, and maybe even 16 were a bit dragging, throwing in random characters for the sake of snapping their poor minds and X-Egg’ing them, but 17 began to set the gears back in motion with the actions of Nikaidou and the temporary “betrayal” of Kukai.

Of course being a show of whose target age and gender I overshoot by miles, Shugo Chara still has some aspects that make me wince, such as the utter left-fieldness of Kukai and Tadase’s “ahaha, we tricked you!” that seemed impossible to guess ahead of time, and Nikaidou’s willingness to sit around and let Amu attack him while he should be running away (or conversely, Amu’s utterly junk ability to actually hit a target when it counts) but what I enjoy about Shugo Chara is how a lot of its elements are strong enough to make up for the times where I get knocked silly by a pink overdose.

It seems almost like Shugo Chara is going in the vein of NanaDrops in devaluing the actual magical girl aspect of the show and putting an emphasis on the character interaction, something that I find far more intriguing here. After all, it’s child’s play for Amu to annihilate any X Chara, no matter the size; apparently all it takes is a quick transformation and a Master Spark (Love Sign Amu Hinamori? You bet.) and the jobs’ done, and I can’t help but think this simplicity is for the sake of the more mature members of the crowd.

Shugo Chara looks to be on the rise as we get back to the somewhat gothic yet somehow interesting character of Ikuto, the typical conflicted, loose cannon bad guy that seems so much more in the hands of this show. I’m still torn as to whether Ikuto or Tadase is the true guy for Amu in this show, both in terms of merit and in terms of the storyline, but having Ikuto take the lead and forcing both Amu - and with any luck, Tadase - to reconsider their feelings would be something very intriguing. Hell yes, we need to kick this love triangle up a notch.

No hurry on the Nadeshiko business, though, let me stress.

#6 - Shakugan no Shana II (20 episodes completed)
It was a tough call to put Shana all the way back here after an absolutely killer pair of episodes, and let me note that positions six through four were incredibly hard fought, but in the end someone’s got to go back here and I gave the spot to the show that took the longest to kick into gear.

Luckily the slow, painful days of Shana II have been forgotten and the real fans of the show have been sorted from the kind that were turned off by the early annoyance of Konoe, as Yuji’s fight in 19 and Wilhelmina’s fight in 20 were outright spectacular. It was good to see Yuji doing something useful and the way he took the Tomogara’s plan to pieces without so much as any assistance from the other Flame Hazes was very impressive.

And episode 20 was a thriller of a fight, something that any action movie could look up to. In fact, it could pass for a horror movie with how much Sabrac managed to survive Wilhelmina’s increasingly powerful attacks, come to think of it. Like Kaiji 20, I’ll probably look back and see that there wasn’t a lot to it other than cool explosions and a lot of swords, but both participants oozed badass in the fight, and Shana, Yoshida, and Margery seem to be setting the stage for more plot to come, so it’s definitely forgivable at the moment.

What really worries me is that Wilhelmina and Margery are both just far enough outside the main character radar to set off the Liable to Actually Die sirens, much like Ishida and Sahara of Kaiji. While they both are essential to the plot living, they could do just as much dead, and the only thing from stopping me from going into full panic is the fact that many of the more knowledgable blogs aren’t snickering about upcoming spoilers, much like they did in the earlier stages about a certain Torch.

(Who, incidentally, is becoming increasingly irrelevant as time passes. Isn’t it sad?

Luckily this makes the show more interesting as I really will watch and hope Wilhelmina will end up pulling through in the end, but at this point I think it’s fair game as the show builds to a climax and prepares to burst the scene wide open. Hecate comes in here somewhere, right?

#5 - true tears (9 episodes completed)
Yes, yes, blasphemous of me to put the ‘year’s best show’ down so low , but in the end while it’s intriguing to speculate on and analyze the characters of this show it’s just not to me as much of a virtual pageturner as other shows have turned out to be. Perhaps this is due to me picking up the show late.

When I do get around to watching it though it’s no doubt that it’s one hell of a show, being one of the most visually impressive things not by a certain “Cute-Oh” Animation, and having a tough decision worthy of KimiKiss itself. Noe vs. Hiromi is still a tough call for me, despite all the signs swinging in Hiromi’s direction; I can’t help but think that a double reverse could be possibly, since Noe means too much to this story to be removed now. What of Shinichiro’s picture book? That and all the Raigomaru referencing virtually guarantees Noe’s relevance to the plot.

Of course, if the anime could pull some way for Noe to be important to the story without falling head over heels for Shinichiro (as meltingly adorable as that is) that would be equally refreshing as well; love often seems like an all or nothing gambit in anime, something that just seems wrong. I doubt many of the heroines that have ‘given up on their feelings’ truly have.

There are plenty of other things to take apart in the show; the cool and collected Jun is a mystery - does he really care for Hiromi, and what are the feelings for his sister?, the motives of Shin’s cold if not a bit stereotypical (it’s almost dripping with I Hate My Parents angst) parents are unclear, and there’s a few other scattered points that I’m sure I’m overlooking.

Ai’s importance to the story, having made quite a few fatal missteps, is another question mark as well; Shinichiro’s friend seemed to be getting the hint that things were falling apart between him and Ai, but will this gap continue to grow or will the two of them pull it shut? For once, I’m rooting for the latter and for the secondary male in a harem show. I think the equivalent is hoping for Sunohara to bag Tomoyo.

Actually, come to think of it…

#4 - KimiNozo / Rumbling Hearts (10 episodes completed)
For all the talk of it being the precursor to School Days, I find that the drama in KimiNozo has a decidedly different tone than School Days. Whereas the latter relies a lot on shock value, the “HER too!?” factor of watching Makoto bed a different girl for the fourth episode in a row, KimiNozo is much more of a slow burn, a match waving over a can of gasoline. It’s not intense all the time, but rather always on the edge, a bit of a melancholy show waiting to burst into conflict.

Finally, in episode 10, the fire may have started with Akane of all people telling her sister Haruka about the whole ‘you’ve been in a coma for three years’ things. No doubt the dominoes of ‘Mitsuki’s with Takayuki now’ and ‘everybody is full of sad’ are next to fall.

I was surprised that Akane of all people, she of the legendary “are you gonna eat my sister?” line (Incidentally, Takayuki did, for those keeping score, and then ate Mitsuki the next episode. Awkward.), was the first to snap, when I would have put money on Mitsuki or Haruka herself. Although, the other two do seem on the brink, with Mitsuki now taking to Shinji in drunken desperation. I only hope Shinji will be one character to take the high road here, like he has so far. Although, playing the Hisui to everyone else’s insanity might be harming to him as well…

Where it goes from here will be the big question; of course we’re going to have some Mitsuki and Haruka conflict, and I’m really torn on which one Takayuki’s going to choose in the end (I pick Mitsuki, because of the whole ‘moving on’ theme), but how much of a factor the other characters will play is a mystery to me. Ayu and Mayu so far have been great comedy in their post-show skits, but Ayu seems like she could be at least partially important - her act is screaming ‘tsundere in love’ personally, but maybe that’s being a bit paranoid. Likewise, Akane has been setting off the air raid sirens for two episodes now; is it possible she has a thing for Takayuki too? That could be very bad, and I can’t decide whether that point makes me want to see it happen or not.

In any case, it’s only a matter of time before this whole thing explodes, and I’m looking forward to being there to see it. Hopefully the emotional damage won’t be too much.

#3 - Clannad (19 episodes completed)
What I really hate is how I can’t hate Nagisa.

I mean, for God’s sake, Kyou and Tomoyo were twice as hot, twice as entertaining, twice as adorable, and just as deserving, but they got hammered down hard in blunt fashion. And so I really should be turning the boom to Nagisa, who, like Ayu, should deserve a good hatred for being a winner and a not-as-appealing character, yet I share Jeff Lawson’s opinion in that I just like Nagisa too much.

Ugh, I tried to rail on her for being overly submissive, but that fell through. I tried to hammer her for being too moe, but hell knows I’m not going to turn on anyone for that. She’s just too good of a character, too supporting of Tomoya, too willing to stand up for herself, too much of a real person to be hated on. And I hate her for being so unhateable.

In other news though we are falling into what I suppose is the final combined arc of Tomoya, Nagisa, and that silly mysterious world in the closing moments of Clannad, and what really confuses me is how the “other world” with the robot and the overly-well-animated little girl has gotten relatively little coverage compared to in-a-dream Ayu or flying-in-the-sky Misuzu. I’m really left clueless on how exactly it ties in at the moment, and at this point it might need a bit of cramming to make work.

It also depends on how much exposition Tomoya’s father gets; I’d like to see more of Tomoya’s dynamic with him explained, if not because 1) we never get anything interesting about a guy, like IKnight said, then because 2) the whole I Hate My Family aspect is just grating. It seems like we’ll have some mysterious mystery secrets of Nagisa’s family, which, in Key fashion, is probably smiling through some great pain or something. Oh, the agony. Hopefully it won’t go full melodrama panic like Key works tend to do - it works in a pinch but I like the mix Clannad’s got going here.

#2 - Kaiji (21 episodes completed)
Fine, fine, Kaiji’s good again.

There was a bit less predictability than I predicted in the 21st episode; Tonegawa seemed to be in a gone enough mental state to fall right for Kaiji’s trap, but instead he caught on… then he double-thought himself, then decided against it, and then kept going, the thought nagging at him and Kaiji grinning at him the whole time.

It was wildly entertaining trying to keep things straight and figure out how Kaiji was thinking that Tonegawa was thinking that he’d think that Kaiji would think that Tonegawa was thinking that Kaiji wasn’t thinking to think that Tonegawa would think to think that Kaiji’s thought was to think that Tonegawa would think that Kaiji’s thought was a thought and not a thought that Kaiji thinks that Tonegawa was thinking Kaiji thinks that Tonegawa isn’t thinking.

Or something, but in any regards it was a lot tougher to figure out where exactly Kaiji put the slave, although it’s a bit obvious now. Can’t have him dying after all. I wonder what that they they brought out in the preview was, though.

One question answered, two more posed, it’s the best way Kaiji works. Also, on a final note, the facial contortions in this episode were nothing short of awesome.

#1 - KimiKiss Pure Rouge (20 episodes completed)
Yeah, it’s still good, and since there’s no new episodes there’s not much to say about it other than that it’s great in multiple ways. It’s down-to-earth, it’s unpredictable, it’s enjoyable, it’s cute, it’s attractive, it’s heartwarming, it’s touching, it’s connectable, and it’s freaking KimiKiss, so watch it. If you didn’t see my ridiculous post on episode 20, you can check that out for more worshipping of this great romance.

-CCY

(Shows that didn’t make the dance, due to availability, apathy, or sloth: Kanon’s drama CD - dear OTL Fansubs, your fans are out there, keep going! - Kodomo no Jikan (yes, I know it’s not 100% pedobait), Hidamari Sketch (slice-of-lives are so hard to pick up on a whim), Potemayo (honi honi honi), School Rumble (contemplating it based off of the manga), Haibane Renmei ($8 / DVD at RightStuf plus massive critical acclaim is so tempting), Honey & Clover (get a release date already!))

If you liked this post, try...

• October 25, 2007 -- Through Three, Fall 2007
• May 17, 2008 -- Harem Personality Quiz: ask your blogger what harem anime is right for you!
• January 19, 2008 -- Looking Both Ways: The Fall Season Carryovers
• February 14, 2008 -- Anime Diaries: In-character humor and romantic recommendations for Valentine’s Day
• February 2, 2008 -- Playing Catch-Up: The Alternate Universe Winter Season

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Season Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.