This upcoming anime season sucks compared to my ridiculously high standards. The only ones I’m looking forward to is this adaptation of a manga I’m reading that isn’t finished yet so I’ll complain about the adaptation having an original ending, and a sequel. Is it my imagination, or has every season been getting worse since I started to become aware of every title coming out instead of the single stand-outs each year?

Copypaste this into every forum whenever you see someone complaining about the latest anime season being rubbish. Once you’ve done that, come back here for a less pessimistic and more in-depth surveillance of the upcoming season.

Chihayafuru

Madhouse have had their reputation dragged through the dirt recently. As if the Madhouse X Marvel fiasco wasn’t bad enough, their failure to create something worthwhile from Chaos;Head has been compounded by the quality White Fox have achieved with Steins;Gate (even though the chief director on Steins;Gate is a Madhouse veteran, but whatever). With that tumultuous period out of the way, here comes their latest anime about children playing card games AARRGHHH OK not quite. Chihayafuru is a josei manga about a classic Japanese card game where you match cards to poems. I read a bit of the manga and it feels less josei and more a girlier version of Hikaru no Go, which isn’t really a bad thing. They’ve brought aboard the director of Nana and Chobits aboard, so I’m quite looking forward to this. It’s nice to see Good Madhouse return.

Tamayura ~Hitotose~

There was an OVA of Tamayura a few months ago and I avoided it like it was the latest issue of Bestiality Monthly. This is director Junichi Sato, guy who did Aria, trying to replicate that feeling of ~healing~ anime, involving a bunch of girls being insufferably nice to each other while doing fuck all. I would probably die if I tried watching this, but good for you guys who like ~healing~ anime. Your only problem is Junichi Sato is directing a few anime this season, so a giant robot/mutant space creature/something fucking interesting might accidentally slip under his radar and into Tamayura.

Last Exile

Fam: The Silver Wing

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

No. This is going to be set in the same world but with different characters and new story

If I am to believe my own Top 30, the original Last Exile is my 12th favourite anime of all time. So obviously this paragraph should be nothing more than incoherent fanboying at the prospect of a new season, right? Well, not quite. You see, one of the best things about Last Exile was how complete it was. It covered every character, every aspect of the world, and explored the adventure from little kid with big dreams to world changing hero. There was nothing that needed to be added. Gonzo returning to Last Exile strikes me more of a studio desperately scrounging through their backlog to find something of theirs that is guaranteed to turn a profit. Now this obviously isn’t entirely true, otherwise they’d just stick to pumping out Strike Witches iterations over and over. They brought back most of the original staff, and I have faith that those guys wouldn’t return to Last Exile without having a good story to tell us. The trailer looks good too, capturing the fantastical adventurous element to the original I liked so much. Well, it did, until that generic J-Pop song started playing. I know people like Maaya Sakamoto and the prospect of her warbling fills you with so much glee that your ears start melting, but the original Last Exile opening song is one of my favourite of all time. To have that replaced with generic upbeat J-Pop is so… *le sigh* I’m just being nitpicky. I’ll remain upbeat about this new iteration for now. Cautious, but hopeful.

Phi Brain: God’s Puzzle

When I checked the Phi Brain ANN page, I was shocked to discover how much the original concept creator, Hajime Yatate, had done. Every from Cowboy Bebop to Code Geass to Mobile Suit Gundam to Votoms to Infinite Ryvius to Mai Hime to Escaflowne to…and then it finally dawned on me that Hajime Yatate is simply the name given to that den of pure evil that is the Sunrise boardroom. Anyways, Phi Brain is an original anime by Sunrise airing in NHK’s Educational TV station. That doesn’t means it will be simply educational fluff, the timeslot has previously held Dennou Coil amongst other things. Sunrise original in timeslot that veers away from otaku pandering sounds like a good combo to me. Then why am I not more excited? Maybe it’s the uninspiring trailer. Maybe because it’s Junichi Sato again, and I can’t help shake the feeling he’ll be concentrating more on his beloved ~healing~ anime Tamayura then he will on Phi Brain.

Un-Go

There’s a misnomer in anime fandom that says ‘because it is in Noitamina, it will be good’ (mainly a line touted by myself, but shut up). Un-Go is an anime by Bones with the key staff from the original Full Metal Alchemist, doing an adaptation of an old classic novel with their own modern take on it. I would be excited for this whether it was in Noitamina or not. If anything, the fact it is in Noitamina is irritating because that means it’s stuck to 11 episodes. On the flip side, no Noitamina would mean that these kinds of anime wouldn’t be produced in the first place. Anywho, after a stumbling start to the year with Fractale, Noitamina have regained their strength somewhat with No.6 and Bunny Drop, so I’m hoping they finish this year off with a bang (especially since 2012 gets instant flop status with Black Rock Shooter). Mind you, it’s the other Noitamina show this season I’m more interested in…

Guilty Crown

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating again: Guilty Crown is like God came down and asked me what anime I want to see made (but only after he rejected my proposal for a 24 episode TV series by Studio Rikka). A story by the two key guys at Code Geass, being directed by the man who directed Death Note, with animation by Production IG who, by the trailer, appear to be channelling the work they did on Eden of the East. Awesome multiplied by Glorious to the power of Fuckwin. Unless you are the kind of individual who prefers more down-to-earth series with simpler aims, you boring sods. The only problem is this is in Noitamina, and therefore restricted to that accursed 11 episodes again. Or maybe they’ll let Guilty Crown run for 2 cours, seeing as they haven’t announced the second of winter’s Noitamina duo yet. “Hey guys, instead of letting Guilty Crown run for 2 cours, let’s go against the entire philosophy of this timeslot and run Black Rock Shooter!” Yeah, I’m totally not bitter or anything.

Mirai Nikki

Mirai Nikki is an insanely popular manga about a diary that you can write the future in and YANDERE YANDERE YANDERE. Yeah, the fact that it has a yandere in it is all I ever seem to hear about it. So, for all you Mirai Nikki manga fans, prepare to weep tears of rage as you discover who is adapting it: asread. An animation studio so shit they don’t even capitalise their own name. Previously producers of Kiddy Girl And, the two Minami-ke sequels and both seasons Shuffle. Oh, and they brought back the director who did all those shows to adapt Mirai Nikki. Yes, the tears of you fanboys are delightful, if it wasn’t for the fact I was actually quite looking forward to this myself.

Bakuman Season 2

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes

[sigh] Bakuman. When making that picture, I thought I would be oh so funny and scribble out that shitty female character. Then I realised I was probably scribbling out the wrong character, and should take my paintbrush and subject it’s digital ink all over Mashiro, the real reason I got sick of Bakuman. But then I might as well scribble out Takagi as well for adhering to Mashiro’s pratty ways. And then keep scribbling over the entire picture until all that’s left is Nizuma. I might as well check out this new season, in case some kind of miracle occurs and the Death Note creator I once knew and loved actually makes his appearance, but I might end up dropping it like an angry hedgehog. That has diarrhoea. And is on fire.

Mashiro-iro Symphony

Once upon a time, an animation studio with grand ambitions formed and tried to recapture the popularity of Cowboy Bebop, by making Samurai Champloo. Champloo was a pile of fun, ingenuity, wit and sheer unbridled coolness, and one of my favourite anime of all time. That was 2004. In the following years they tried to keep up this ambitious high quality, with anime like Ergo Proxy and Michiko to Hatchin. After 2008 though, they discovered this method wasn’t earning them enough money, so they gave up all pretence of quality and pumped out Sacred Blacksmith, a banal and dull fantasy show with the only redeeming factor being how hot the female characters were. Afterwards they adapted The World God Only Knows, an otaku in-joke panderfest manga with aspirations of parody but was really just another bland harem. Afterwards they made House of Five Leaves, a laid-back samurai anime for Noitamina, but it sold fuck all so they made another TWGOK. Next season, they’re doing Mashiro-iro Symphony, an adaptation of a visual novel by the man who also wrote Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka. You are dead to me Manglobe.

Mobile Suit Gundam Age

Do I need to have seen the previous seasons?

No. This is a totally new story, world and characters

This latest Gundam doesn’t have the Gundam fanbase out there too happy. This is largely because…well no, it’s entirely because of the rather childish character designs. Apparently having a 14 year old Gundam pilot actually looking like a 14 year old boy is license to lose your shit. I couldn’t really care what the characters look like, but that’s mainly because I’m not a Gundam fan. Mind you, I can see where both sides are coming from. From the director of Sergent Frog movies, to the story being penned by the creator of Inazuma 11, to help from the animation studio and staff who made Danball Senki, Gundam Age has a younger audience set firmly in its cross hairs. DVD/BD exclusive Unicorn/IGLOO and fujioshi-bait Seed/00 have obviously not done much to bring in the younger generation. I’m certainly interested in seeing what a Gundam with a younger skew while trying to retain the shows largely serious tone looks like, but I can’t say I’m bouncing in my seat in anticipation either. It is 50 episodes long though, and I always like seeing big ambitious mecha anime. I just wish it wasn’t always more bloody Gundam.

I Don’t Have Many Friends

Prediction time! ‘I don’t have many friends‘ will be touted as a a potential hit by certain light novel fans, while large swathes of the more elitist audience will remain sceptical. However, once the first episode airs, the more adventurous of anime fans will check it out and declare that, apart from a few kinks, ‘I don’t have many friends‘ is a quality title about the loneliness of high teenage life and the anxiety and desire to fit in. Soon everyone jumps on the bandwagon, only for little things to start going wrong. As the anime proceeds beyond the first novel material, the original intent of the story starts to get lost. New female characters are introduced, and each one becomes less interested in being friends and more about wanting the male lead’s juicy manpiece. Soon the show starts introducing beach and hot spring episodes, leaning further and further into fanservice harem. The male lead starts accidentally undressing the female characters while falling onto them. Each character falls further away from what makes them unique and delve into cliche and stereotype, until finally the anime ends with some crowbarred attempt at conflict, no resolution and possibly some censored nudity. Call me back at Christmas when I’ve been proven correct.

C³

Wait! Before you go running off at the sight of Yet Another Shana Clone, take a look at the trailer. The animation is from Silver Link, whose previous outings have only been the Baka to Test series. Not exactly world beating material, but the animation style was certainly imaginative. Silver Link are a spin-off from Shaft, with the director of Natsu no Arashi and ef, so they’re a studio willing to actually use what animation is capable of doing. The other interesting fact is the guy in charge of the script also wrote the script for 8 episodes of Cowboy Bebop of all things, as well as plenty of other quality series like Hare Guu and Big Windup under his belt. Obviously you have to remind yourself that, yes, this is another Shana clone, and bears all the annoying fan-pandering near-pedo tropes that such a series often has. I read the first chapter of the manga, and it included an accidental falling onto childhood friends boobs. That all said, keep your eyes on this. Just in case.

Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere

Between Gundam Age, Phi Brain and this, Sunrise sure are busy this season. Mind you, they’re really only Sunrise in name, with none of the usual Sunrise staff apparently working on this. It’s based off a light novel, but with stuff like giant robots and fight scenes and fantasy setting, I started to get my hopes up. Then the trailer included bouncy boobs, absurdly large spiral twin tails, and a curious lack of noses. Worried, I checked the staff list and found the series was being directed by the people behind Dragonaut, Saki and Strike Witches. The cast of prats who produced Gonzo’s dying breaths! Argh nooooo, fuck these guys and their phobia of animating noses!

Invasion?! Squid Girl

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes. It hasn’t got much of a plot, but it will assume you already know the characters

I’ve seen in season previews that people like to have a little whine about sequels to shows they’ve never seen before. Which always struck me as a bit of a silly complaint. Unless the show is ridiculously long to get through, why don’t you just watch the first season before the new version? You only have the right to complain about sequels when you’ve seen the previous season of unambitious trivial anthropomorphised moeblob anime and know how crap it is. Ah shucks, I’m joking. I like Squid Girl. It’s nothing special, but it has a good sense of comedic timing de geso~

Kimi to Boku

JC Staff doing an anime about cute boys doing cute things…wait, what? What is this madness!?! Talk about crazy new ideas. However, from checking out the manga, in reality this is less a genderswapped Azumanga and more a generic shoujo with the bland eternally nice/shy female lead removed. It really was incredibly bland, but then I’ve been well documented to dislike shojo so take that with a pinch of salt. Director isn’t half bad, having previously done Elfen Lied and Sound of the Sky (Sora no Woto for you weeaboos out there), so I guess if bland shojo is your thing then you might as well check this out.

Persona 4 The Animation

And the award to the most stylish anime trailer I have ever seen in my 3 years of season previewing goes to. Wow, does that ever look awesome. Persona 4 is based off a rather popular video game by the same name. No matter how many people try to assure me that the game has a great story, the words ‘video game adaptation’ send warning lights flashing everywhere. Asides from often paper-thin plotlines, trying to adapt the unique story-telling environment in video games to anime is a daunting and difficult task, one that often requires ignoring parts of the source material, much to the annoyance of the fans. So upon whom has this task of adapting this most daunting of games fallen on? Seiji Kishi, previous director of Angel Beats, Sunred, Kamisama Dolls and Seto no Hanayome. Now many people don’t like Kishi for his total ignorance of tone, but to my ADD addled mind, it’s something I’ve never really minded in his works. I personally like him, but I think he’s better suited for comedies, where his leaping between tones is best used for humour. That said, the trailer should show that the man also has a keen sense of style. Give him a game that is already stylish game to adapt and we have one of the most interesting anime of the season.

Ben-To

Ben-to is about…oh look, I’ll just copypaste the synopsis

Satō goes to the supermarket one day and discovers a bento on sale at half price. Just as he reaches to grab it, he ends up on the floor unconscious. Satō has just entered the fierce, no-holds-barred “supermarket survival battle” for half-price bento

Yeah. It’s one of those nonsense school setting anime, like Baka to Test except without the promise of at least some neat animation. The studio doing this are David Production, whose previous works consist of Level E and Book of Bantorra. Neither of which are bad, I’ll grant them that. But in neither case did I feel they were improved significantly by the anime version. Of course, I’m speaking out of my ass here, not having read the source material for Bantorra or Level E, but whatever. I really have no idea what to make of this.

Fate/Zero

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Probably yes. It’s a non-canon prequel, but will probably require knowledge of the characters to understand the importance of their actions.

Now this is a genuinely interesting project. The Fate/Zero novel is essentially a piece of professional fanfiction from the Fate/Stay Night universe. Not that your average fanfiction writer could get their work adapted into an anime with animation by ufotable (Kara no Kyoukai) and music by Yuki Kaijura. It’s written by Gen Urabochi, the Nitro+ VN games writer and recently famous for coming up with Madoka Magica. All this comes together in this one big budget production Fate/Zero The Anime. So in anticipation for this, I started watching Fate/Stay Night and was shocked by how incompetent it was. I lasted a measly 2 episodes. I’ll probably still give Fate/Zero a whirl though. It’s meant to be a prequel of sorts, so you can probably jump in with no knowledge of the canon. Also, Urabochi is a much more succinct and capable writer than nasu, the Fate/Stay Night writer, in my totally biased opinion, so I’d prefer to see his iteration of the story.

Working’!!

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes. Again, not much of a plot here, but it will assume you know the characters

Stop making sequels to anime I don’t like. Why don’t you make a sequel to this anime I like that has nothing to do with the creators of anime that did get a sequel, and didn’t sell very well anyway etc. etc. Yeah, I don’t like Working. Or Wagnaria, if we feel like reverse-weeabooing the name. Funny how the American title sounds more weeaboo than the Japanese title.

Maji de Watashi

The game I play with eroge adaptations is find out how it is connected to Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka so I can justify never having to watch it. Right, eroge company is MinaSoft. Their only previous eroge turned anime was They Are My Noble Masters, which I honestly thought wasn’t half bad. How about the animation company? Err, Maji de Watashi is made by Lerche, whose previous productions include nothing else whatsoever. Well huh, maybe this won’t be so bad after all. How about the director Keitaro Motonaga? Aha! Here we go. Director of Akane Iro Ni Somaru Saka, both TV series and OVA. Oh well, so much for that~

Shakugan no Shana III Final

Do I need to have seen the previous seasons?

Yes

Well, at least JC Staff have stopped pretending. Instead of simply releasing yet another batch of Shakugan no Shana clones, they’ve finally gone back and made the actual Shakugan no Shana. I notice they’re calling this Final. I wonder if that means that this will be the end of JC Staff produced Shana clones and they’ll start innovating and producing new and excitin-BWAHAHA ok I couldn’t keep a straight face typing that.

Maken-ki

So, how many pantyshots did you count? I got 12. Pretty impressive for a trailer that’s less than 2 minutes long. Once you go beyond 3 in a trailer, that says all you need to know about the anime in question.

Hunter X Hunter Brotherhood

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

No. This is a totally new remake

Madhouse took a look at Bones remaking Full Metal Alchemist and though “hey, we can do that too”. Now if you had told me Madhouse were remaking a manga adaptation that never finished, I would have leapt out of my chair and proclaimed “CLAYMORE!?!”. But nope, that would be far too obvious and make them far too much money. Instead they’re giving the Brotherhood treatment to Hunter X Hunter. They didn’t even animate the first season to this. Oh well, at least it’s a remake, which means I can jump straight in. I tried watching the original TV series but I couldn’t get past the first episode.

World’s First Love Season 2

Do I need to have seen the previous season?

Yes

Hey girls, isn’t rape adorable~! Forcing yourself onto a weaker individual is totally OK because they can’t control their emotions, and it’s OK so long as the receiver enjoys it in the end. That’s what true love is all about!

Lupin III Thing

Do I need to have seen the previous seasons?

No. Every Lupin III special is written to be accessible to newcomers

There were some people saying this would be a new Lupin III reboot TV series. It’s not, stop getting your hopes up. It’s just another one of those specials Lupin III has every year. There were some other rumours going around that it would be headed up by a combination of Takashi Koike (the Redline director) and some Gainax folks, but again that’s just more wishful thinking rather than being based off any concrete evidence. I am a Lupin III fan, but the prospect of a new special doesn’t fill me with delight when there’s still 30-odd specials and the TV series I’ve yet to watch. While the good thing about the Lupin III franchise is that every one of these specials are made to be instantly approachable, the bad thing is that which ones are good and which aren’t are total crapshoots. Wait until reviews of this come out before you think about jumping in. For now, just go watch Castle of Cagliostro.

Busou Shinki Moon Angel

Do you have a fetish for 6 inch high young teenage girls with robot joints wearing one-piece swimsuits? Well Japan has the cartoon for you! Oh Strike Witches, look what you’ve wrought.

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Battle Spirits: Heroes, Digimon Xros Wars – Toki wo Kakeru Shounen Hunter-tachi and Cross Fight B-Daman. I’m including them simply for completions sake. Yeah I know some of you folk out there like Digimon and are probably watching/watched Xros Wars. But I know fuck all about the franchise, so you’re better off searching elsewhere for information on it.

Movies

Normally I devote a measly single paragraph to movies, but this year I want to give some of these a bit more lipservice. Remember, while there are anime movies coming out in Japan this season, the rest of the world won’t see these until they come out on DVD/BD. With that in mind, I’m covering the anime movies that are coming out on DVD/BD over the next 3 months.

Towa no Quon

This has been out for a while now, but nobody has subbed the blasted thing yet. Towa no Quon is a movie series in the same vein as Break Blade. 6 episodes, each 50 minutes long and getting a theatrical release before being released on home video. Like Break Blade (and Kara no Kyokai before it) these are beautifully animated big budget productions. It’s animated by Bones and directed by Umanosuke Iida, who passed away before he could see the movie reach the big screen. Shame, he was a really talented guy, working on Cowboy Bebop to The Big O to Hellsing to 08th MS Team. Admittedly a lot of the trailer and from what I’ve been hearing about it sounds awfully generic, but deliver tried and true concepts with enough flair and care and you’ll have a quality productions. Now we just need someone to sub the blasted thing…

Mardock Scramble

First Compression

24th August

Feels like I’ve been writing about this thing’s release for ages now. Mardock Scramble is another one of these movie series projects. 3 movies long, it’s an adaptation of a novel by the same name. I’ve seen the movie already at a film festival and I really wasn’t that taken with it. It was all right, but delved into the unintentionally hilarious and stupid more than once. However the novel it’s been based off has gotten many rave reviews, so maybe I’ll turn out to be in the minority on this one.

There’s also Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha coming out on the 9th December, but that has gotten awful reviews so far, so I’m not particularly looking forward to that. There’s Fafner Heaven and Earth coming out on 21st September. So hurrah for that massive Fafner fanbase that exists out there…somewhere.