Caraniel’s Awesome Autumn Anime Preview 2009 ~Sequel-tastic Edition~

Shall be One Piece and Umineko tonight.....plus reading some Pandora Hearts :h:

Reply 81

Queen's Blade first :smile:

Reply 82

I doubt this will be enough to keep vin happy, but at least it gives Cara more of an excuse not to have to write it. :p:

Queen's Blade: Gyokuza wo Tsugumono

Spoiler

Interesting choice of words in the first impression, considering 'as ever' = 1 episode. :hmmmm2:

But I digress. Take Cara's first impressions of Asura Cryin' 2, replace the title with Queen's Blade 2, and you've more or less got my thoughts on this series. So I guess she did write most of this afterall. :p:

With most of the first season being ecchi comedy with ecchi battles in between, it seems the sequel is actually going get to the plot and feature the Queen's Blade tournament at long last. The characters are now well established, aside from a couple of new ones introduced in this ep. :yes:

And there seemed to be far less ecchi than the start of the first season, though that will always be a tough episode to beat. :giggle:

There was no OP this time, and the ED was just a short instrumental piece accompanied by a sequence of pictures of all the main characters. I'm guessing they'll have a proper OP and ED next week. :yes:

Animation and BGM seemed as good as before.

If you hadn't already guessed, I'll definitely be continuing with this. It would be silly to follow all these great characters on their journey to the capital, only to not watch them actually fight in the tournament. :p:

Obviously not a series for everyone though.

Reply 83

you were right it didnt keep me happy :huff:

Reply 84

First episode of Kämpfer is out by gg; according to their release comments it's easily the worst show they've ever subbed. :p:

I guess I'll find out for myself what it's like once I've downloaded it...

[edit] Wow. They weren't lying. There is no way I'm picking this up. Believe me vin, this should make for a much more interesting 'First Episode' post from Cara than Queen's Blade: Gyokuza wo Tsugumono ever would. :p:

Reply 85

I'm actually looking forward to watching Kampfer, mainly for the lulz - it does look awful :mmm:

Reply 86

Aiko

I saw this yesterday on TBS and it was pretty bad, but in the 'so bad, it's good' kinda way. I did like Inoue Marina's performance, given how she's adaptable to both male and female roles, which is convenient here. I'll watch a few more episodes before passing judgement, but yeah, don't expect anything great from this. If anything, this might be my Princess Lover! for this season. :tongue:

Reply 87

I was thinking more 'so bad, it's awful' myself. :p:

I liked the seiyu jokes, and the entrail-plushies were pretty fun, but everything else (e.g plot and characters) was enough to put me off. :sadnod:

Reply 88

AngryJellyfish

First episode of Kämpfer is out by gg; according to their release comments it's easily the worst show they've ever subbed. :p:

does anyone wet themself?

Reply 89

vin

does anyone wet themself?

Almost, actually. :p:

Tatakau Shisho – The Book of Bantorra is out on Crunchyroll (+ already ripped by HorribleSubs). Again I'll give this a go despite the fact that it isn't on my list, doesn't sound like my kind of series though.

Yeah no loli :s:

Kämpfer

Spoiler

I'm going to agree with Aiko here and say that Kampfer is so bad its gone all the round to good again - kind of like Akikan in that respect! :laugh:

It doesnt really take itself seriously and the fanservice is quite restrained in the grand scheme of things (they really could have gone to town with this gender-bender concept) - at least the boobs are much more normal looking than the balloons in Princess Lover! :p:

Kampfer basically has everything I was expecting; the comedy, mahou-shoujo transformation sequence and the action scenes although bland, were decent enough.

This 1st episode really fires a lot of information at out quite quickly, no messing about when setting up the premise here. We are told all about the Kampfer and their abilities immediately (by oddly hilarious Seppuku Plushies :awesome:

) - of course its completely generic, but I wasnt expecting anything else. The comedy was surprisingly tongue in cheek - quite alot of seiyuu injokes which I didnt expect. Its nice that there isnt a total reliance on ecchi (although admittedly its the majority).

The cast is excellent. Maria Inoue is pretty convincing as both Natsuru's male and female personas and Yui Horie is brilliant as Akane - her two personalities are highly amusing. This series has quite a lot of talented seiyuu working on it, so I'm expecting good things from the rest of the cast when they are properly introduced.

The music is fairly bland and forgetful.......although the ED has some pretty demented dancing animation - tis like a really violent carmelldansen sans hand movements! :lolwut:

Nomad have done quite well with the animation - although they clearly hate drawing men.......Natsuru's male character design is pretty awful in comparison to his bishoujo counterpart! The transformation sequence just made me laugh with the way his clothes burn themselves off and on :teehee:

So yeah, Kampfer is terrible and generic, but somehow I found it really entertaining :redface:

Definately a contender to replace Princess Lover on the list - I'll be sticking it out for another few episodes :h:

Reply 92

Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra

Spoiler

Slightly underwhelmed by this 1st episode but there is some interesting ideas being fired about so think this could be a grower. At first glance everything seems kind of ridiculous (the costumes of the Tatakau Shisho don't help matters - they're so OTT compared to the background characters), but this show does have a nice dark edge. The standard 'evil organisation' are shown to be using human bombs (they call these people Meats :s-smilie:

), which is quite a daring move; also the reactions of the mooks when they get dismembered is quite graphic with lots of screaming rather than just immediately keeling over dead. Having the dead turn into books raises some ethical questions about reading peoples memories etc - not sure how much they're going to go into that though, the series seems more concerned with witches and magic :laugh:

The animation is a bit on the dodgy side - the CGI is horrendous and the characters dont seem to quite work with the backgrounds :s-smilie:

The character designs themselves are good, although certain costumes just seem really out of place and fanservicey when seen alongside the 'normal people' of the world!

The OP is yet another ALI Project tune - although its not just as dischordant as the ones they did for Phantom~Requeim for Phantom~, tis more in line with their Code Geass EDs which I found bad, but not headache inducing. Shall probably skip over it in future as the accompanying animation is dull as it comes. The ED is fairly generic and the animation for it is also pretty boring. Voice acting is good - full of familiar names too.

So fairly meh beginning - there is promise, but quite worried about the animation quality if this was what we're being offered as a 1st episode. Shall be keeping it on for a while anyway to see how things go.

Crunchyroll have announced the next two series they are offering simulcast this season - Miracle Train ~Ouedo-sen e Youkoso~ and Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Purezza♪ :biggrin:

Reply 93

your tempting me to watch Kämpfer but I said I was only gonna pick up a few series and Im gonna try to do that so I can finally make some headway on completed things :pinch:

Reply 94

Leave it for a few episodes Vin - it could go round to be being just terrible again, I'll let you know in a few weeks :laugh:

This is unexpected... I imagined you'd all dislike Kämpfer. Or to be more precise, I couldn't imagine that anyone would like it. :p:

I found it one of the worst things I've watched all year. :sadnod:

I completely agree with Cara on Book of Bantora though, except that I'm happy to drop it and leave room for better upcoming series. May go back to it if any of the things on my list disappoint. :yes:

Ayu have just released the Kiddy Grade 2 Pilot OVA - this series was announced way back in 2006, but nothing more was heard until this season with the release of Kiddy Girl-and, which is apparently the same series under a new name (and what a weird name it is :p:

). I'll watch this OVA to see whether I like the new characters, if not then I'll give the series a miss as the original was pretty bad. :s:

[edit] This 'Pilot OVA' was pretty much just a very long trailer. Music, loads of shots of various characters (mostly old, plus the two new lead characters) and a few fight scenes, all without saying anything about the plot. One thing this trailer has told me is that stalling the project for a few years was probably a good idea, if only so that it can now be animated by Satelight instead of asread. :p:

I'll probably give it a miss though.

Reply 97

Nyan Koi! episode 1 is out... by a group called Kämpfersubs. :lolwut:

In glorious 1080p as well, apparently. There's a RAW out with that resolution, and the group has a website (even if it is a really basic blogspot page), so it might not be a troll. Either way, I'll wait for a release that isn't approaching half a GB in file size, assuming I watch this at all since it isn't on my list.

[edit] And Ayako prove they can be fast when they want to be by releasing episode 1 of To Aru Kagaku no Railgun... ~4 hours after it aired. :hmmmm2:

Reply 98

..did they get bored of GA :lolwut:

Reply 99