[caraniel]

Moyashimon Returns

Ah the long-awaited, and much hyped second season of Moyashimon has arrived. While this was a pretty solid start to the series, it did lack the shock value & hilarity that the opening episode of the original series had. Still this served perfectly well as a refresher on the characters and the whole premise of the series. It also managed to be pretty educational about the alcohol proofing and brewing of sake – bonus!

The human character designs have changed slightly between seasons, and I think I preferred the original anime’s version as Sawaki & Kei both look a touch too girly in this version…….it’s something about the eyes, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. The microbes are as adorable as ever thankfully. I’m not overly enthralled by the Claris OP, but I did enjoy the educational microbe ED!

Great to have Moyashimon back, I’m looking forward to more alcohol fuelled hilarity and strangely educational segments about the microbes!

Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru! (My Little Sister is Among Them!)

Normally I make some quip about the production team having a roulette wheel of plot point that they pick from to create these shows, but with this I think they just went “oh **** it, stick them all in!”. In all honesty this has to be one of the most by the numbers LN adaptations I’ve ever seen - I was nearly impressed by how utterly generic it was! I can’t even get too annoyed by how rubbish this episode was because it’s so completely dedicated to being the most run of the mill show ever. I did enjoy the way the show makes the little sister out to be some über stalker though & how the male lead is probably more moe than any of the girls!

Production is as dull as you would expect - can’t say I’m a big fan of the character designs either. In terms of voice acting its a competent cast and they do their best to live up to the stereotypes their characters embody. OP & ED were both terrible and basically sum up my overall thoughts about the show.

So not watching any more of this – it really was utter tripe, even if it was pretty inoffensive tripe.

Hagure Yuusha no Estetica (Estetica of a Rogue Hero)

In the hands of any other studio this may have been a good show – it’s got a lot of interesting things going for it, and I like the idea of people freely travelling between dimensions picking up skills. However in the hands of ARMS and their morbid fascination with boobs & panties this becomes mindless pandering drivel and an utter chore to sit through. Our main character’s special skill seems to be ninja-ing women out of their bras & knickers without them noticing, and our female’s lead special skill seems to be her massive gainaxing boobs & being utterly clueless & meek despite being the daughter of a demon king. We also have a platoon of archer maids – just because.

The production is fairly average, while the character designs are nice enough there is a lot of budget saving shots where the characters have a full conversation with their backs to the camera or in total darkness. Voice acting is pretty decent though, and the music is actually reasonably good too.

This just has ‘waste of potential’ written all over it – I don’t know why ARMS doesn’t just start turning out proper hentai rather than pretending to make shows with actual plot.

[AngryJellyfish]

Picked up Moyashimon (surprise surprise); dropped Hagure Yuusha no Estetica (which was still better than Campione!).

[EDIT] Am also picking up Natsuyuki Rendezvous, and dropping Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru. Half way to the full 14 I wanted to pick up~

[caraniel]

Campione!

You know if you stick Campione and NakaImo together I believe that you will have every light novel cliché in existence covered. Where NakaImo has all the high school s’life tropes, Campione is an unholy amalgamation of all the magical girlfriend series ever created. Again I find myself somewhat impressed by how utterly lacking in originality this series is – it really is somewhat amazing! There’s nothing overly wrong with the show really, I suppose if you had never seen the previous 1000 iterations of this exact premise, you’d find Campione pretty cool – however I’ve seen this exact same show with very few changes a hundred times before, and am in no hurry to watch another one.

Production values are okay I suppose, I don’t know why the show decided to start off in Sardinia, because it completely fails to capitalise on its exotic location. The lead female makes a stab at some Italian, but quickly switches to Japanese making me wonder just what the point of that exchange was. The acting isn’t great – the girl sounds like every other bossy tsundere ever, and the fella is basically yet another bland everylead who suddenly switches from useless to cool for no apparent reason at the end. We also have the narrator from Kaiji suddenly pop in at the end – which made me laugh for a good few minutes!

So yeah, this is not a good show – it’s very, very dumb, but pretty harmless overall. Dropped.

Kokoro Connect

Kokoro Connect’s premise has potential, but this first episode had me struggling to care about anything it was saying or doing. The problem is that it’s very boring and dull looking – not at all what I was expecting from Silver Link whose whole shtick is their wacky SHAFT-lite style. Instead they seem to be doing a very poor job of copying KyoAni’s usual aesthetic since we’ve got K-ON! character designs but very little of the technical excellence KyoAni excel at.

The characters aren’t really all that interesting either, and they way they chatter on mindlessly while not saying a whole lot was pretty tiring – high school students aren’t interesting at the best of times, but when you have really normal & boring high school students as your entire central cast, things get really dull. Things got better when the body switching came into play as the voice actors did a really good job of impersonating each other, so hopefully the series will improve as the body switching really kicks into gear.

So not the most exciting start, but there is plenty of scope in this series so I’ll give it another few episodes to redeem itself.

Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai!? (So I Can’t Play H!?)

Well this was just bad, but at least it didn’t even attempt to be anything other than an excuse for fanservice & explosions. The lead this time is that relatively recent lead character archetype of the unrepentant pervert – a fella who is utterly unashamed of his love of ecchi hijinks, which is kind of a change from the standard closet pervert lead I suppose. The female lead on the other hand is a generic tsundere magical girlfriend with no other distinguishing characteristics. Stuff happens, there is a bath scene with tits, male lead shoves his face in girls crotch, there’s a fight scene with a tentacle monster, male lead gropes girls boobs, house gets blown up, blah blah blah – so fecking generic.

Production is reasonable, they certainly loved their magical fire and drawing wet t-shirts though. This is another show with Hiro Shimono on full screech mode which instantly turned me off – I really don’t like him when he’s doing this kind of character. Girl is just bog standard tsundere so there’s nothing much to say about her acting.

So I’m definitely not keeping this on, it really was completely crap.

[AngryJellyfish]

(Original post by caraniel)
There’s nothing overly wrong with the show (Campione!) really...

LIES!

Watched Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai!?... meh, dropped.

Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate was interesting until the OP started, then everything after that was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Again, dropped.

Will be picking up Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita after all, because at least it's original. Sanity is overrated anyway.

[caraniel]

(Original post by AngryJellyfish)
LIES!

Ah now it was pretty inoffensive overall!

Love, Elections & Chocolate (Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate)

I think I’m getting a bit broken now, because I kind of enjoyed KoiChoco – even if it is utter crap. It has all the hallmarks of the bog-standard eroge including, but not limited to, the childhood friend wake-up scene, the instant harem, the horrendous hair & uniform designs and snarky male lead. It also has pretty hilarious attempts to be ‘unique’ such as the laughably over-designed school, the beer-tap in the club room, the male lead’s strange way of seeing the world (adding masks & propellers to characters??), the random statement that students on income support work in a factory after school and the whole OTT student politics thing complete with homicide! Yeah, there is absolutely no way you can say KoiChoco is a good show.

Still I did find myself entertained, and I think a major part of that was the acting – there is a great cast here and they sound like they’re having fun with the show. The little over acting scene at the traffic lights was amusing, and I did laugh at the token effeminate gay friend’s teasing of the male lead while eating phallic sweets……I am so shallow. I absolutely hated the character designs – they’re really over designed and creepy looking, but the background work is pretty.

In general it’s fairly obvious from the writing and production that this is the same team as Haganai & OreImo – I enjoyed both of their initial episodes too, before I started to hate myself for picking them up. I’ll be giving the show another few episodes to see if I’m still entertained, but I’m not optimistic!

Sword Art Online

Yeah this was a pretty solid opening episode – much, much better than Accel World’s anyway. As suspected SAO is very pretty and well presented, but at the moment I can’t say I’m completely captured by it – the characters are just too shallow right now. The high stakes in SAO make it a lot more exciting than Accel World (where death in the game just means you can’t play it any more – whoop-dee-do) as is SAO death means death – but at the same time it does raise problems. What happens to the gamers real body? Is it up to their friends & family to hook them up to life support? What if no one knows you’re trapped in the game? Do you just die of starvation & neglect even if you’re charging through floors like a pro? SAO actually raises the issue of needing to eat, but then doesn’t really give us any answers which is kind of irritating. Still these are minor quibbles, and the fact I bothered to give the show any thought at all is a good sign.

As I said the production is very solid and the visuals are extremely pretty – I really liked the design of the world. Voice acting is very competent, although we’re only introduced to two characters & the pantomime villain in this first episode. I expected more from the music though, this isn’t Yuki Kaijura’s finest work, and the ED is pretty generic.

Still this was a very well-rounded opening episode & I’m definitely interested in watching more of SAO.

[AngryJellyfish]

Picked up Joshiraku (didn't quite beat Binbougami, but close!) and Rinne no Lagrange S2 (straight into the drama! Those themes... ).

[EDIT] And Kokoro Connect, though more because of its potential than because of its first episode, which was a bit weak.

[AngryJellyfish]

Only two new series this season have caused my computer to lag so far. One was Rinne no Lagrange... the other, Tanken Driland. For some reason, despite playing many shinier and more action-packed series just fine, the sparkling, zooming logo in the Driland OP and eye-catches proved too much to handle.

As for the episode itself... cute, but I don't think I'll be keeping the series on.

[EDIT] Sword Art Online is a definite keeper, and looks to be one of the best (non-comedy) series of the season... not that it has much competition there.

I needed two other series to reach my goal of 14, and have decided to go with Oda Nobuna no Yabou and Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon II over the pretty looking but incredibly boring Dog Days'. All the latter had to do was give Norio Wakamoto a single line and the scales would likely have tipped in its favour, but aside from a brief appearance of his character in the ED sequence, I've seen no evidence that he's even going to be in it this time!

[24craigour]

(Original post by caraniel)
Ah now it was pretty inoffensive overall!

Love, Elections & Chocolate (Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate)

I think I’m getting a bit broken now, because I kind of enjoyed KoiChoco – even if it is utter crap. It has all the hallmarks of the bog-standard eroge including, but not limited to, the childhood friend wake-up scene, the instant harem, the horrendous hair & uniform designs and snarky male lead. It also has pretty hilarious attempts to be ‘unique’ such as the laughably over-designed school, the beer-tap in the club room, the male lead’s strange way of seeing the world (adding masks & propellers to characters??), the random statement that students on income support work in a factory after school and the whole OTT student politics thing complete with homicide! Yeah, there is absolutely no way you can say KoiChoco is a good show.

Still I did find myself entertained, and I think a major part of that was the acting – there is a great cast here and they sound like they’re having fun with the show. The little over acting scene at the traffic lights was amusing, and I did laugh at the token effeminate gay friend’s teasing of the male lead while eating phallic sweets……I am so shallow. I absolutely hated the character designs – they’re really over designed and creepy looking, but the background work is pretty.

In general it’s fairly obvious from the writing and production that this is the same team as Haganai & OreImo – I enjoyed both of their initial episodes too, before I started to hate myself for picking them up. I’ll be giving the show another few episodes to see if I’m still entertained, but I’m not optimistic!

Sword Art Online

Yeah this was a pretty solid opening episode – much, much better than Accel World’s anyway. As suspected SAO is very pretty and well presented, but at the moment I can’t say I’m completely captured by it – the characters are just too shallow right now. The high stakes in SAO make it a lot more exciting than Accel World (where death in the game just means you can’t play it any more – whoop-dee-do) as is SAO death means death – but at the same time it does raise problems. What happens to the gamers real body? Is it up to their friends & family to hook them up to life support? What if no one knows you’re trapped in the game? Do you just die of starvation & neglect even if you’re charging through floors like a pro? SAO actually raises the issue of needing to eat, but then doesn’t really give us any answers which is kind of irritating. Still these are minor quibbles, and the fact I bothered to give the show any thought at all is a good sign.

As I said the production is very solid and the visuals are extremely pretty – I really liked the design of the world. Voice acting is very competent, although we’re only introduced to two characters & the pantomime villain in this first episode. I expected more from the music though, this isn’t Yuki Kaijura’s finest work, and the ED is pretty generic.

Still this was a very well-rounded opening episode & I’m definitely interested in watching more of SAO.

To be fair to the author, in the light novels he actually mentions these issues. The bodies are transported to Hospitals all around Japan and kept on life support. Its just that the production has done a pretty bad job explaining all these little details..