Welcome to The Cart Driver’s World Famous Anime Season Preview, summer 2012 edition. And since it’s a summer edition, cue thousands of people saying the season looks crap while totally forgetting that summer seasons are always low on quality. If you can find more than 3 anime that interest you, than you’ve done well. Besides, your opinion on this season is invalid unless you’ve seen Moyashimon. In fact, stop what you’re doing now and go watch it. Go on, it’s only 11 episodes. I’ll still be here when you’re done.

TV series

Muv Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse

The history of this anime starts with an eroge with the incredibly stupid name Muv Luv. It was a traditional fuck-all-the-heroines dating sim, but had the unusual addition of endgame content with the same characters in an alternate universe. An action mecha futuristic humanity on the brink of extinction from aliens alternate universe, a little bit different from your standard eroge setting. This endgame content, or ‘Muv Luv Unlimited’ as it’s called, was way more popular than the shitty dating sim. So much so that the creators made a sequel game called Muv Muv Alternative set in this same universe. This then also got a spin-off novel, which is what this anime is an adaption of. Muv Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse.

Right, so will it be any good? Muv Luv Alternative is the highest rated visual novel on vndb. It does say a lot about visual novel fans when the highest rated game is one where you first have to get through an entire shitty eroge and then its endgame content before you can finally get to the Good Part. That said, even if Muv Luv Alternative was the greatest story ever told, that’s not much use for Total Eclipse as it’s written by a different author with different characters that just so happens to take place in the same universe. This may have worked for Fate/Zero, but that had an acclaimed author writing the spin-off, while Alternative is written by some nobody. The anime adaptation is being done by Satelight, who I generally like for their devotion to over the top dumb mecha action, but the director has only previously done shite like Rosario to Vampire. As much as I’d like this to be good, I’d say that’s wishful thinking on my part.

Tari Tari

The spiritual successor to Hanasaku Iroha, at least until the real sequel Home Sweet Home comes out. It’s by PA Works, with largely the same crew, making a show where teenage girls with shiny faces and no noses go through some kind of teen angst and come out the other side with more maturity and less clothes. Actually I tell a lie, this doesn’t quite have the same staff. While it’s true all the animation and art team are the same, it doesn’t have the same director. Far more importantly, the person writing the script is not Mari Okada! Raise the flags and down your tankards! Ding dong the witch is dead! No more of her robotic approach to drawing out emotional drama. The new director worked on parts of Hanasaku Iroha, but he hasn’t done an awful lot of his own. The only directorial job to his name is a Professor Layton movie. But who the fuck cares when there’s no Mari Okada. She’s too busy trapped in Shoji Kawamori’s basement as he takes her scripts and milks them for unintentional comedy in Aquarion EVOL and AKB0048.

Moyashimon Returns

I had honestly given up hope. When the Moyashimon live action premiered in Noitamina 2 years ago, I thought that was the last chance we had to see Moyashimon again. It was very popular in Japan when it first ran, but 5 years had passed. The chance for my most-wanted sequel (that isn’t animated by Brains Base) appeared to have been lost. But here we are. Somehow, Moyashimon has gotten a sequel. I’m not sure what brought this on, or which of those virgins I sacrificed at the crossroads got us to this point, but we’ve got more Moyashimon. Same staff and everything. I’m in heaven.

Natsuyuki Rendezvous

The other Noitamina title of the season. It’s about a middle age dude falling in love with girl at flower shop but she’s haunted by her dead husband, and so begins the happy adventures of pensive 20-something ghost bishies. The studio is Dogakobo, who only ever do utter shite like Kohime Musou, Myself;Yourself, Yuru Yuri and so on, but this isn’t unusual for Noitamina. Often these no-name studios hitch up their trousers and try to prove they can do more than animate male otaku-bait moe stuff. Director they’ve brought on board directed Kurenai and Red Garden, so he’s a fairly talented bloke.

So why am I so unenthused by this? Maybe it pales next to more Moyashimon in the other Noitamina slot, but that hasn’t stopped me from being enthusiastic about a few of the other shows this season I’ll get to later. Maybe it’s because, after all these years, I’m finally getting bored of josei? Both the trailer and the part of the manga I read had this awful Kimi to Boku vibe of uninterested dues lazing about being unlikeable people. The original mangaka doesn’t have a string of awards to her name that often authors of Noitamina adapted material often have. It just feels like a stop-gap series. Some random decent josei title they shoved in because they had to fill the slot with something.

Sword Art Online

“Oh man” I hear you say. “This is by the same guy who did Accel World, that’s so cool”. “You mean that dreadful piece of loser teenage male wish fulfilment where you have no worth other than your talent at a random video game and this means the hottest girl in school will start fondling your leg” I retort grumpily. “But no, this one is totally different” you exclaim, gesturing your hands wildly. “It’s set in an online RPG that people get stuck in and if they die, they die in the real world”. “You mean just like .hack” I say, “except without the claim that it predicted the sort of obsessive culture surrounding MMOs before World of Warcraft”.

“This director is good though” you say, getting increasingly frustrated. “He worked on Monster, Death Note and Madoka”. “He also worked AnoHana, Guilty Crown and Fractale” I say dismissively, “and his one head directorial role was on Occult Academy”. “Yes but the music is by everyone’s favourite Yuki Kaijura” you say. “Ah yes” I say, my face brightening up with pure cynicism. “I know how to differentiate our new anime from .hack. Let’s hire the exact same person who did the music for that series”. By this stage you’ve given up, saying “well your taste sucks, the novels it’s adapted from are the 11th highest rated on MAL“. “It’s going to be the same generic noseless loser teenage wish fulfillment shite we’ve all seen a bajillion times before” I say, before deciding to move on from this confusing preview format and onto the next show.

Campione!

I could probably take a wild guess at the eventual quality of this anime from the trailer alone, but for the sake of clarification let’s go through the facts. It’s based off a light novel about a regular highschool boy who has magical powers fall into his lap in the form of a pretty girl. The animation studio is Diomedea, whose greatest claim to fame is they did the Squid Girl series, but also did Nogizaku Haruka and Lotte’s Toy. Director did the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha sequels, which some people seem to like, but has gradually gone downhill since directing Sekirei, Asura Cryin’ and his latest masterpiece Ro Kyu Bu. In short, it’s the same light novel Shana clone trash that we’ve seen a bazillion times before and will be just as engaging as it ever was.

Love, Election, & Chocolate

Hurrah for self-serious visual novel fuck-all-the-heroines adaptations. I can’t wait for the scene where the one of the girls gets complimented as being a potential great wife and her life is made because that’s all girls should aspire to be. Staff are interesting for this one. Well, at least, they’re more interesting than the usual crop of visual novel adaptation folks in that at least they never worked on Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka. It’s largely the same staff and animation studio who worked on OreImo and Haganai. I suppose if it’s by those guys, we’ll have to come up with some shortened Japanese alias, like ShagChoc or something.

One of Them Is My Younger Sister!

From the light novel naming conventions that brought you “Because I Don’t Like My Big Brother At All–!!”, the animation studio that brought you Koi de Oshigoto, and the director of Kiss X Sis comes the latest incest craze that’s sweeping the nation! Could end this preview here, but I’ve got to squeeze something else interesting to say out of this. The script writer has the name Go Zappa, which is awesome, albeit slightly diminished by the fact his lineup of titles he’s worked on consist of Myself;Yourself, Kohime Musou and A Bridge to the Starry Skies.

Estetica of a Rogue Hero

This is one of those anime where you might have been interested by it because of its synopsis if it happened to be made by a different studio. It’s about international organisations fighting demons coming into our world and a wayward hero bringing back the demon princess or something along those lines. Not instantly grabbing but sounds decent enough and doesn’t include the words “ordinary highschool boy” or “is not blood related”, which is sometimes all I need to give an anime a chance these days. Problem is, it’s by studio Arms. The same guys who made Queens Blade, Slave Nurses and Body Transfer. The director is a veteran having directed Love Doll and A Heat For All Seasons and even a few episodes of Naruto. Now it’s true that sometimes a studio can hitch up their trousers and try to produce something a bit more ambitious when given the source material, but unfortunately that already happened with Arms 8 years ago when they adapted Elfen Lied. Then again, Elfen Lied had about as much titties as Body Transfer so maybe they still have this one decent series in them.

Humanity Has Declined

Seiji Kishi has one big problem as a director: He has absolutely no friggen idea how to do tone. See Angel Beats, Persona 4 and Kamisama Dolls. This means that the shows he does that are serious, or at least the serious elements of the anime he works on, tend not to work because they’re jarring and feel false. On the other hand, shows like Seto no Hanayome and Sunred, along with the comedy parts of Angel Beats and Persona 4, prove the guy has a knack for comedy. Or at least, the wild hyperactive and sightly surreal style of comedy, which I happen to like. So we’ve got that clear? Seiji Kishi doing serious drama is bad. Seiji Kishi doing weird comedy is good.

Right, now watch the trailer.

I’m so fucking pumped for this show.

Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai

The title roughly means “So You Mean I Can’t Be a Pervert”. It tells the tale of the guy who spends his entire existence thinking about boobies, but then has a magical girl fall into his lap with a pair of the aforementioned jugs, only to discover that if he thinks pervy thoughts his brain explodes or something along those lines. The show is just an excuse to shove T&A everywhere, so I have no idea why you would watch this while it’s airing and not wait for the uncensored DVD/BD releases. Maybe anime has trained you to be turned on by blinding beams of light and you now get uncomfortable around torches.

Joshiraku

This one is sort of interesting. It’s a manga by the same guy who wrote Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei (the artwork is by the Toradora artist, in case you were wondering why they look similar). The ‘story’ is about a bunch of girls who sit in a room and talk about shit. That’s literally it. They’re just mouthpieces for this nutjob authors’ ramblings about society. From what I could tell from the small section of the manga I read, it really does not have any sort of continuing narrative or sense of place or characters or anything. If anyone watched that Flash short Gakkatsu, it’s very similar to that.

Director is Tsutomu Mizushima, who has finally stopped pretending he can direct horror after Another and Blood-C and has gone back to what he’s actually good at, comedy. JC Staff are animating it though, who have gotten to the stage that their presence on a show marks it down as an automatic skip, but maybe the style of the material they’re adapting will force them to try something different. They have to, animating this as just talking heads would be excruciatingly dull. There is another problem with this in that the manga…err, isn’t that funny. At least, not the parts I read. The Japanese word puns were totally lost on a Johnny Foreigner like myself, and it doesn’t have the claim to social satire that Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei has. I can also see it getting very repetitive very fast, unless they try mix things up a bit, or at the very least cut the episode lengths down to 10 minutes.

Chouyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi

You know the way in Chihayafuru the game Karuta involved people reading out poems? Well, this is an anime based on the stories of those poems. A super liberal interpretation, but I doubt that there will be too many people declaring they’ve ruined the original. Manga fans could learn something from historical haiku fans. The stories are generally historical romance stuff involving women in flowery kimonos, men wearing silly hats and, since this is historical fiction, will probably involve more paedophilia and incest than every single other anime this season combined. But it’s OK because it’s not smut, it’s Literature.

This anime is actually based off a manga that interpreted these poems, and the manga is super popular in Japan. Director is Kasai Kenichi, director of the first seasons of Honey and Clover and Nodame Cantabile. Apparently he’s decided to stop sucking by doing shite like Miracle Train and totally ruining Bakuman and is returning to the josei stuff he’s actually good at. In fact, the staff in general are very talented. It’s the kind of thing you’d normally expect to show up in Noitamina. Admittedly I’m not overly keen on historical Japanese stuff, what with everyone being overly polite and ending their sentences with -dono and everything, but if you like this kind of stuff then this is about as high a quality one as you’re going to get.

Binbou-gami ga!

Telling you an anime is being done by the animation studio Sunrise is a pretty vague term. Unlike studios like Shaft, KyoAni, Arms etc., there’s no solid creative vision behind the name. Sunrise are so big they have various sub-divisions who are working on various anime at any one time. I’ll give you a short and totally factually incorrect briefing behind each sub-division at Sunrise. First there’s the Gundam division, whose job it is to remake the same anime they’ve been making since 1979. Then there’s the Under the Direct Influence of the Sunrise Executive Boardroom of Evil (UDISED) division, who are thrown a collection of marketable traits and told to make them into an anime. Then there’s the Mai Hime team, who do largely the same thing as the UDISED division, except with less bishies and more buxom girls with multicoloured hair. Then there’s the Animate Light Novel Trash division, who operate in the basement so none of them can hurl themselves out of their windows. There’s the Insanely Profitable Kiddy Anime division, who animate stuff like Battle Spirits in between rolling in huge piles of money and cocaine.

Then there’s the Gintama division. After honing their craft having to produce a new episode every week for the past 5 years for that sometimes-satirical-but-normally-played-totally-straight shounen giant, they’re now floundering about a bit, wondering where they can unleash their branch of shouty yet brilliant but also penniless comedic directing next. First there was Daily Lives of Highschool Boys, the merciless lampooning of girls doing cute shit genre, and now we have this. Binbou-gami ga, about a lucky girl having the god of bad luck come down and try suck the luck out of her. It’s not the same director as Nichibros unfortunately. They got the Other Gintama Director, the guy who directed from episode 100 onwards, but that’s still 150 bloody episodes of honing his craft. I read one chapter of the manga and it was great, the only manga I checked out from this season I genuinely enjoyed. Just don’t expect good animation from this. The Insanely Profitable Kiddy Anime division wouldn’t share any of their budget. They spent it all on holographic trading cards AKB48 members.

La storia della Arcana Famiglia

Based off a visual novel dating sim aimed at teenage girls. It’s a bit like Inu X Boku from earlier this year, a rich teenage girl feels all alone and boo hoo first world problems being the one percent is suffering etc. Her dad has ordered the local bishie brigade to fight each other and the winner gets her hand in marriage, something every single one of the boys is dying for. Literally. Anyway, director is Chiaki Kon, person who adapted those awful BL rape = love stories Junjou and Sekai-Ichi. Studio is JC Staff, who suck whether they’re doing light novel Shana Clones or teenage girl wish fulfilment. It’s mildly depressing that the manliest looking TV anime of this season is this. An otome game adaptation. Every show I’m even mildly interested in this season are either bizarro comedies or young adult female targeted romance stuff. I mean, I appreciate that anime isn’t as macho-obsessed as western culture is, but would it hurt to have a few more anime that are at least a bit darker in tone? And before anyone starts saying Muv Luv, darker in tone that doesn’t include tit-tastic body suits.

Kokoro Connect

First reaction upon seeing the promo art for this was “oh god not another one of these pieces of shit the anime industry is dying get me a strong whiskey and a shotgun”. However further investigation led me to believe that this will be different from what my original reaction thought it would be. Not necessarily ‘good’, but at least not about a group of girls being insufferably nice to each other. The premise is a body swap one, where a group of girls get their bodies swapped with a group of guys. OK it’s been done before, but it’s ripe for comedy. Silver Link are animating it, who generally just do comedies like Baka to Test or Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. Not exactly masterpieces, but maybe this will be the time they finally produce something worthwhile.

Well, at least, I thought it would be comedy, until that bizarrely depressing trailer aired. Turns out that, while it’s being animated by Silver Link, their usual director Shin Oonuma is just the ‘head director’, which means he dashes into the room every now and then, tells everyone they need more polka dots in the background, then runs out again. The actual director is a dude who used to work for Bee Train, guys who made Phantom, Noir, Madlax, .hack and so on. So now we know why the trailer has this weirdly melancholic depressing vibe to it. Not sure if that will be a good thing. To be honest, it will probably just result in horrifically forced melodrama. But hey, at least it’s something different.

Aruvu Rezuru: Mechanized Fairies

About a year ago, the publishing giant Kodansha ran a competition in which new authors would submit works and the winner would be ‘considered’ to be adapted into an anime. Apparently they considered long enough to allow Mechanized Fairies be made into an anime. The name makes it sound like it’s an adaptation of Artemis Fowl, but it’s not quite as cool as that. It’s about a Dennou Coil-esque future where cyberspace is over real space but some dudes sister gets sucked into cyberspace and he has to go rescue her. It’s a mildly interesting concept that I’d be more excited by if they didn’t get some total newbie director to handle it with ZEXCS doing the adaptation, the studio whose sole purpose in life is to take interesting concepts and turn them into bland uninspired anime.

Oda Nobuna’s Ambition

The idea for this is genuinely neat. Take the famous blood-thirsty samurai wartime general, possibly the manliest person in the entirety of Japanese history, and turn him into a cutesy moe girl but with the same warmongering traits the original had. And yet Japan have somehow managed to turn this idea into something so dull and repetitive. I’ve lost count of the amount of anime that have decided to genderswap Oda Nobunaga, but it has to be in double figures by this point. I don’t get it! I don’t even see whose success they’re trying to capitalise on. To make matters worse, it’s a joint project between two animation studios. Madhouse, the animators of Death Note, Casshern Sins, Kaiba, Tatami Galaxy, Redline, Summer Wars, Nana, Satoshi Kon films etc. and Studio Gokumi, the creators of A Channel. Madhouse, you have truly sunk to new depths.

Kingdom

More Era of the Warring States stuff. The animation studio is shounen powerhouse Pierrot and the staff are all a bunch of folks who worked on kids shows and nothing else. So expect a kids show. Actually, more accurately, expect it to never get subbed, because Era of the Warring States stuff never gets subbed. It does air a month before everything else, so maybe by the time the new season rolls around, the first episode will have finally been subbed.

Chitose Get You!!

It’s a 4-koma adaptation about a 11 year old girl who is in love with her teacher. I’m sure there’s a way you could make me less interested in this anime, but for the life of me I can’t think of one.

Ebiten

Arrrgggh get it away from meee!!!

Yuru Yuri ♪♪

It’s that time in the season preview where I reach the segment full of sequels to anime I don’t like so have nothing constructive or interesting to say about them and are pointless to preview anyway because if you’ve seen the first season you’ll watch this one.

Hakuouki: Reimei-roku

Out of all the bishie shows to continue getting sequels, this one in particular leaves me flabbergasted. I’ve never heard anyone have anything good to say about this. Well, beyond that the guys looked hot, but is that seriously it? I thought girls cared about whether their husbandos have nice personalities more than men do? They’re not even that attractive compared to the men in something like, say, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Rinne no Lagrange Second Season

This barely even counts as a second season. It’s just the new case of an unusually long gap between episodes 13 and 14.

Dog Days 2

I had never put down Dog Days as the kind of show that would get a second season, but apparently Japanese anime fans want more of possibly the blandest and most inoffensive anime of all time.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere II

I wonder if the first season has gotten through the 1000-page prologue the novels have yet.

Movies

The movies covered here are ones that are getting their BD release over the next 3 months, not movies that are having their theatrical releases. This is because us foreigners won’t get to see movies until they get their BD release, unless you catch it at a film festival or something.

From Up On Poppy Hill

Ghibli’s latest flick. Not by Hayao Miyazaki. Not by Isao Takahata. Not even by that new guy who directed Arrietty. This is by Goro Miyazki, Hayao’s son. The guy has directed a movie before, but it was the near universally disliked Tales of Earthsea. His father reportedly refused to talk to his son as he made the movie because he thought he didn’t have the experience to direct a feature length film. Anyway, they appear to have made up since then because Dad helped his son on From Up On Poppy Hill. It’s based off a shojo manga set in the unspecified past in a seafaring town. Comes out on the 20th of June. I’d normally say it’s worth waiting for Disney to dub it and see it in the cinema, but Disney doesn’t appear to have touched this one yet.

Reviews of the movie have been generally positive while not being raving. It was the third highest grossing movie in 2011 in Japan, behind two Hollywood blockbusters, so Japan still liked it. As much as I liked Ghibli’s last flick Arrietty, I’m struggling to work up too much enthusiasm for this one for some reason. It’s probably because I’ve never been overly keen on non-magical Ghibli stuff. I dozed off several times during the hopelessly dull Only Yesterday. It is still a Ghibli film though, and I’m contractually obligated as an anime fan to watch new Ghibli films.

Berserk: The Golden Age Arc

The Egg of the King

Earlier in this monster post I mentioned that the otome game was the manliest looking TV anime of the season. I had to be very careful and specify that it was manliest TV anime, due to the small matter that the manliest anime ever was getting a movie remake. So manly it can have naked water fights between two muscled men and still be manly about it. I’ve seen the original Berserk TV series and, to be absolutely clear on this, I consider it to be the greatest story ever told, and not just for naked water fights. I know it stopped only part of the way through the manga, but I don’t care. I consider that the greatest possible way they could have closed that story off, giving it this perfect cyclical nature to the narrative. In many ways, I didn’t want any more, especially since all I seemed to hear about the manga after that point was demon rape and more demon rape. Also new volumes of Berserk take forever to come out because Miura gets all the time he wants to make it perfect (which he instead spends his time on playing Idolm@ster, but whatever), so catching up would eventually just be an exercise in frustration.

But then these movies were announced. 15 years after the original TV series, we got movies retelling the story of Berserk. Weird thing is this trilogy retells exactly the same material covered by the original anime rather than any of the new material. Don’t really get the logic behind that. Studio 4°C decided the best way to handle this anime was to make it fully CG. Judging by the trailer, they’ve actually done a damn fine job of making the character models work, which is usually the thing CG struggles with, although early reviews of the movie said the animation in the large battle scenes look dodgy. We’ll find out soon enough anyway, since the BD has been released in Japan already.

Hells

In the very first season preview I did, so long ago that I was on an entirely different blog and collaborated on the preview with two folks who don’t even exist on the internet anymore, I wrote a preview piece for a little movie by the name of Hells Angels. This was before I knew how to do season previews properly. For example, I didn’t know about having to wait for movies to get DVD releases before I get to see them. Hells Angels looked seriously fucking cool though. It was an experimental movie by Madhouse that only got screened at arthouse theatres. Remember this was back in 2008, when Madhouse was at the absolute height of their game. That was the season they made Casshern Sins, One Outs and Mouyou no Hako (also Chaos;Head but shut up they were allowed one flop). Earlier that year they had also animated Maasaki Yuasa’s piece of genius Kaiba, so I was ready to lap up absolutely anything they made, and the weirder it looked, the better.

But it never came out. It became a routine of mine to check torrent sites and various internet hideouts to find any sign of this movie, but no luck. It got screened at a bunch of movie festivals and then was never seen of again. I had sort of given up hope. That is, until April 2012. Three and a half years later, a little announcement of ANN came up. Hells Angels (or Hells as it was now simply known as) was getting a BD release on the 3rd of August. Better yet, it was going to have English subtitles, so I wouldn’t have to wait for some fansubber to work up the enthusiasm to subtitle an obscure artsy and fairly long anime movie. Now I’ve just got to hope someone rips the blasted thing. I should probably import it myself, except for the problems of no BluRay player to watch it on even if I did get it. Also I’m not even sure if it will be any good. The director of this later went on to make Kill Me Baby. But it’s been so long. I really have to see it, just to close this chapter in my anime fandom.

Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker

Oh my god, I cant believe they made it look like a goddamn ANIME. I loved DA for it’s style and ‘realism’ not it’s fucking panty shots. DA was a western game for cryin out loud.

Highest rated comment on the Dragon Age anime trailer. A nice little insight into what your average gamer thinks of anime. I remember seeing similar comments back when they were making Halo Legends. In fact, it’s something I’ve seen an awful lot across the internet. Gamers look down on anime. Anime fans never seem to be bothered fighting back much either, partly because most anime fans are heavy gamer nerds in their own rights, but mostly because gamers control the internet like big bullying jocks. Anyway, the Dragon Age anime. It’s a co-production with Bioware, Funimation and some Japanese animation studio. CG looks pretty terrible, to the point that it makes you appreciate how good the Berserk CG looks. The Funimation guys on the latest ANNCast said pre-airings of it at anime cons were largely positive, but they’d hardly say it was terrible and everyone should ignore it when they’re helping fund it. It’s out 25th May so we can all fap over its numerous panty shots then.

Yamato 2199

The original Space Battleship Yamato is one of the most important anime ever created. Made back in 1974, and specifically the more popular movie retelling in 1977, it’s credited for evolving anime beyond kids shows, creating the very first anime otaku, and inspiring later anime behemoths like Gundam and Macross. Almost 40 years later they’ve decided it was due another remake. Not sure if it will stand the test of time (in fact, I’m almost certain it won’t), but it’s a neat piece of history.

The airing order of this is complicated. The first ‘movie’, that got aired in cinemas in Japan in April and the BD of which is coming out 25th May, is the first two episodes of the Yamato 2199 TV series spliced together. However the TV series that hasn’t aired yet. It’s supposed to air sometime in 2013. Then there’s another ‘movie’ coming out on the 27th July, although I think that’s just episodes 3-6 of this TV series that isn’t airing on TV? I don’t know, it’s all rather confusing.

K-ON Movie

Yup, it’s the K-ON movie, where the girls go to London. Apparently the coffee shop the girls in the poster pictures are outside of has become a tourist destination for crazy Japanese K-ON fans. They must have confused the people running the coffee shop when suddenly a bunch of Asians carrying pillows with anime girls on walked in. The coffee shop included a picture of the K-ON girls in it shop window, which I think is rather neat. I even know some English folk on twitter who went there. Anyway, early reviews of the movie said it was exactly what you’d expect from a K-ON movie. I’m no fan of the franchise, but I’ve made my peace with it long ago. Good for you guys who like it, it comes out 18th July. Just so long as they don’t make anymore…

.Hack//The Movie

Part of the humongous .hack franchise. It appears that you can jump into this movie without having seen any of the previous .hack stuff. However judging by the trailer, I wouldn’t recommend it. If the Dragon Age trailer was a step down from the CG on display in the Berserk trailer, then this is 50 million steps down again from that. It’s awful! Comes out June 28th if you’re a .hack completist. Do .hack completists even exist? Someone has to be propping this franchise up after all these years.

There’s also a few of your regularly scheduled franchise movies. There’s yet another Precure All Stars film right on schedule, as well as another Inazuma Eleven film.

OVAs

I won’t be covering all the anime that are getting DVD specials, since these are normally silly fanservice side stories that add very little to the actual story.

Code Geass

Nunnally in Wonderland

The interesting new Code Geass project is Akito the Exiled, a 4-part OVA each of which is 50 minutes long, directed by the same guy who did Escaflowne, Noein and Birdy Decode. The first episode of that is out this August…in cinemas. Not on BD/DVD, so we stinky gaijin won’t see it anytime soon. Instead we’ve got to do with this thing. Alice in Wonderland with Code Geass characters. I guess, for all the things you could level against Code Geass, you can’t say it ever took itself too seriously. Very confused as to how this is supposed to fit into the continuity though. I mean, Nunnallys’ eyes are open, but Lelouch is there too. Does this mean that Lelouch was the Cart Driver all along!?!?!?!?!

Persona 4: True End

Apparently that ending we got for the Persona 4 TV series was a horrible lie. What we have here is the True End, a final episode to replace the fake final episode we all saw. The only other anime I’ve seen do this was Ore no Imouto, and all that did was tease us with an anime that possibly didn’t have Kirino in it at all but then restored the status quo by the end. The true end that is.

Otoboku: Futari no Elder

A sequel to Otoboku: Maidens Falling For Me, which is one of those yuri anime for men who wish they were in a lesbian relationship. You know the kind. It involves a dude cross dressing to get into an all girl academy and then all the girls fall in love with him because all girls are lesbians except for the time they want to sleep with you.

Nogizaka Haruka’s Secret: Finale

Did you know that I was blogging even further back beyond what this blog says? Not even from my Bokutachi no Blog days, even further back than that. I tried to mix my two interests at the time, anime and footba-sorry, I mean anime and saaawwwcur. It didn’t go particularly well. Anyway, I wrote a season preview back then too. It only covered about 4-5 shows, but I distinctly remember one of them being the original Nogizaku Haruka. I remember because I thought it would be great. It wasn’t. Just goes to show I’ve been ballsing up my predictions in season previews longer than you realise. Oh right, this new Nogizaku Haruka. It’s a 4-part sequel to the last season that closes out the story, covering the final batch of the novels. I was under the impression they got married in the last one, so I guess this OVA will involve, in true moe marriage tradition, the death of all their children due to bad weather.

Corpse Party: Missing Footage

Corpse Party is an adventure video game about a haunted school or something. Corpse Party anthology is a spin off from that made by 5pb, the co-creators of the Steins;Gate game along with Nitroplus. Missing Footage is a bundled anime with that game. There, now you know what this is.

Asa made Jugyō Chu

Closing out the season preview with the token terribad looking OVA. By the creative staff that brought you Princess Lover! Actually Princess Lover was sorta witty at times due to some genius who wrote the dialogue, propelling what should have been a horrid experience into something not quite watchable but at least not painful. Then they made a hentai out of it, which they really should have done in the first place and not bothered with the TV series. I seriously considered doing a hentai section for this season preview, because I felt it was disingenuous to call out pandering softcore porn while not giving people a reasonable alternative if they stopped being pussies and watched some real cartoon porn. But then I looked at the upcoming hentai and realised that posting pictures of them would have my website taken off the internet and the police around to my house barely 30 minutes after I hit the publish button. If you want a nice list of the upcoming hentai though, MAL is surprisingly good in this regard. For the record, it was the one called Suki de Suki de that caused me to rethink my hentai preview options.