Welcome to The Cart Driver’s world renowned anime season preview! In the post-chartfag world, the need for season previews to simply tell you what anime are coming out has been diminished. Instead I’m here to tell you why these upcoming anime are interesting. And there are a lot of…interesting anime coming out this spring. Bar maybe two or three titles, I wouldn’t call this season particularly promising per say, but there’s certainly a lot of anime I’m fascinated in seeing how they’ll turn out.

The Continuation of the Adventures

of Rider and Waver



Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

Yes

This isn’t so much a sequel as an unusually long gap between episodes 13 and 14, but finally we get to see more Rider and Waver interactions. And some other characters too, who seem to hog an awful lot of screentime considering the show isn’t even about them. Look at the title; it clearly says Rider and Waver. Not the adventures of some stoic blonde girl in fancy armour. Not a parade of deep voiced brown haired self-important dullards. Rider and Waver. Hopefully the anime will rectify this minor flaw in the second half.

Eureka Seven Ao





Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

No. Same world but new characters and new plot

People claim that series are never as good when they’re shaken down for more content, which isn’t true. You only need to scroll up one space to see an example. There’s also another currently airing example with Aquarion EVOL, which seems to be getting largely positive reviews despite its previous season apparently being as well received as a dead mouse down the back of your shirt. Then there’s Gundam, Macross, Lupin III, Ghost in the Shell (or at least, I’d argue this case). The trick here is to not mess with the work the original achieved and try to take it in a new direction. Even the currently airing Last Exile Fam I feel is approaching their sequel the right way, the only flaw being the moronic main character they chose to head the new series. Make the new series in such a way that it calls back to what made the original great while also being open to new fans.

What I’m saying is there’s nothing inherently wrong with what Eureka Seven Ao is doing. It’s technically a sequel to the original, except with an entirely new cast of characters, which is a good thing. This means newbies will be able to jump straight in. I was able to watch Eureka Seven without having seen the previous 6 Eureka series oh ho ho. Anyway, I loved the colourful aesthetic the world in Eureka Seven had, and the trailer indicates that thankfully that is staying. Same director of the original too. Reasons to be worried though probably boil down to the lack of Dai Saito on the series composition (script on Bebop/Champloo/GITS:SAC/Eden of the East/Ergo Proxy). Without him but while keeping the same director came forth the Eureka Seven movie, which was as well received as salt on a paper cut. The staff announced are all just mecha design and colour design and animators and so on, which is cool and all. Eureka Seven has always looked great. But without the writing to back it up, it will be wasted talent.

Zetman





Zetman is based off a manga by the same dude who made Video Girl Ai, I’s, DNA² and a load of other cheesy seinen romance stuff. Which makes it even weirder that he also made what can be only described as an American comic book style superhero manga. Thanks to the popularity of Tiger and Bunny, superhero stuff is back in vogue, with spruced up bishified character designs. The obligatory homoeroticism yaoi bait comes from, judging by the trailer, a mean rivalry with lots of shots of them staring angrily at each other. Also, judging by the trailer, there will be ANGST and TRAGIC PASTS and LATIN CHANTING and ATTEMPTED RAPE and MORE ANGST. It is a fairly impressive trailer mind you, and that’s not just because I’m highly susceptible to anything with latin chanting. What rubs me the wrong way is how American superhero comic book-y it is, a genre I’ve just never gotten into. It strikes me as the kind of show you hear old guys saying “well I haven’t enjoyed any anime in years because it has all been moeshit but I liked Zetman”, which may be the hint that you’re looking in the wrong area for your entertainment.

Ozuma

I’m not sure why producers have suddenly decided Leiji Matsumoto stuff is cool again, but here we are. A remake of Space Battleship Yamato is coming together in a massive series of movies. There was the live action Yamato from a year back. Now there’s Ozuma, with no relation to any of his previous series (although I’m sure the female character designs will be as wispy as ever). It’s a 6 episode thing to run every 2 weeks about some kids in some sci fi setting and humanity is dying whatever synopses are overrated. It’s got some real veterans on the staff, most notably Takahashi, the guy who made Votoms and a whole load of other mecha anime. Well, the real veteran would obviously be Leiji Matsumoto.

Yeah, Matsumoto. It’s hard to over-estimate his influence on anime. You could probably count the number of people more influential than him on one hand. There’s Tezuka, Go Nagai…errmmm…that’s kind of it. Yamato, Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 are his 3 big ones. For something newer fans might have actually seen, there’s that Intersteller 5555 movie with Daft Punk. Chances are though most people reading this have seen next to no Matsumoto before, so just treat this as a totally new ambitious sci-fi anime where the girls have very pointy noses. Given the alarming disappearance of noses in modern anime, this is something that can only be celebrated.

Hyoka

Oh hi there KyoAni, animation studio behind K-ON, Lucky Star, Haruhi, Nichijou, Clannad, Kanon and basically a whole load of moeblob anime with shockingly good animation. Can’t say I’m a fan due to their adherence to the bible of cute, although I know plenty of others are. I was quite interested in Hyoka at first because it’s adapted from a mystery novel. Plus they brought in the author of Full Metal Panic to do the series composition, so I took it as a hint that maybe they’re taking a few steps away from cuteness again. Expectations took a massive dip though when I saw the character art and it started to dawn on me what this would probably be like. What was that JC Staff show from a few season’s back…God’s Memo Pad? Yeah, that’s what this reminds me of. I do wonder why they’re half-arsing their cuteness with stuff like this or Nichijou. Either go full out K-ON style or make something totally different. Halfway between garners the interest of neither crowd. I guess it could be good, but…well, it’s KyoAni.

Saint Seiya Omega

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

No. Entirely new story and characters

Saint Seiya was a manga from the 1980’s about a bunch of pretty boys in skin tight body suits getting really angsty and punching each other. As you can guess, it was a massive hit amongst female readers, something that was rather a shock at the time, and fuelled the angsty skintight clothing bishie brigade that dominates fujoshi fanbase ever since. What the actual story is about I have no idea, but that’s fine because Saint Seiya Omega is completely unconnected to any previous iteration of the franchise, which I’m totally cool with. As I said in my Eureka Seven Ao piece, I like it when they make a franchise like this open to newcomers (except when it gets overboard in the case of Gundam. Please stop making new Gundam).

What’s cool about Omega is they brought in the Casshern Sins team, a highly talented tight knit bunch. At least, I usually think of them as the Casshern Sins team, but the promo art for Omega begs the comparison to another series they worked on: Heartcatch Precure. It’s actually a bit disconcerting how similar they look. It’s like one of those joke episodes where a dude in Heartcatch becomes a Precure in a dream. I know Saint Seiya has always swung towards the ladies, but…come on, that main guy’s hair is fucking pink! I guess it serves as a nice contrast to DARK AND GRITTY Zetman. Whatever, I’ll probably get over the look within 5 seconds of the first episode.

Sankarea

I did my usual trick pre-season of checking out a chapter or two of the manga that are being adapted. Impressions upon reading the Sankarea manga are as follows: 1) The childhood friend character is called Wanko. 2) Zombies are apparently a fetish now. 3) It is really bad, I can only imagine how worse it will get with Deen adapting it. 4) Her name is Wanko! I guess anything is on the table after we had a character last year called Anal.

Kuroko no Basket





Kuroko no Basket is an adaptation of a really popular shounen manga, running since 2006. Shounen is…well, I like good shounen, but they seem to be few and far between in recent years, and it’s really difficult to tell which will hit and which won’t since there’s an equal amount of hype from everything from the good (Blue Exorcist) to the bad (Beezlebub) to the offensively awful (Toriko). Plus I’ve been feeling kind of down on sports shounen since Knight in the Area proved itself to be probably the blandest anime from last season. The bit of the manga for Basket I checked though was surprisingly good, in a goofy shounen kind of way. It’s difficult to tell with shounen really. Staff is talented though, with Production IG doing the animation and a Brains Base veteran on the series composition, although the director worked on Prince of Tennis so it balances out. I don’t know, I’ll remain hopeful I guess.

Space Bros

Space Bros! Motherfucking Space Bros! OK, before I go completely crazy over the name, let’s be boring and talk about the staff working on it. Director is this dude called Ayumu Watanabe, who for years and years only worked on Doraemon. Working on stuff like Doraemon or Shin-chan is kind of like the anime director’s equivalent of training in the mountains. They come down for years after nobody hearing of them at churn out amazing work. At least, that’s the plan. Anyway, fucking Space Bros! The very little I read of the manga was fantastic, very reminiscint of Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, which is about as high a praise as you can give something. Speaking of Urasawa, the last time a seinen anime got over 50 episodes was Monster, but Space Bros has already been scheduled to run for 48+, which shocked me. A non-kiddy/shounen anime airing for over a year? I wasn’t aware Japan made these anymore. Also man, it’s Space Bros! It’s about Bros. In Space! What’s not to like?

Hiiro no Kakera





Count the character archetypes in that picture. There’s the angsty angry white haired dude who goes “tch” and turns his head away when talking to anyone. There’s the shota dude who is really over-exuberant. The other effeminate guy who has a dangerous heart disease. Then there’s that long-haired dismissive guy who keeps pushing his glasses back up his face because god forbid he buy a pair of glasses that fit his face. In case you haven’t guessed by now, this is yet another otome game adaptation about a group of samurai ninja bishies the main girl woos by being completely ineffectual. Chances are it will turn a tidy profit for Deen, because these shows always bloody do. Did you know they’re making a third season, an OVA and 2 movies for Hakuouki? Fucking Hakuouki!

Upotte!!

This is one of those anime you make up as a joke. I know anime loves to anthropomorphise everything into cute girls, but guns? I guess Strike Witches was anthropomorphised WWII fighter planes, so guns is probably a significant step down from that and quite reasonable, all things considered. I don’t play enough gun wank modern military shooters so for all I know an AK47 is just a spin-off group from AKB48 when B-chan left, so what interests me most is the staff. This is Xebec and their Z-Quality Team, with the director of Rio Rainbow Gate on board. You could not get trashier than this.

Mysterious Girlfriend X

I have absolutely no fucking idea what to expect from this. The manga is…strange. The plot description is the title. This guy has a mysterious girlfriend. It seemed to me to be a commentary on how formulaic relationships are in culture and how exciting doing something different can be. For example, why do we even take kissing for granted as something couples do? I don’t know if the show can expand this single idea into a full series though. It’s being directed by the same guy who’s doing Space Bros, so he’s also a bit of a dark horse. Then there’s the studio adapting it. Hoods Entertainment, the guys who made their debut with the tit sucking extravaganza Seikon no Quasar and then followed that up with breast mutilation anime (stealing from sankaku headlines now) Manyuu Hikenchou. Their history isn’t what you’d call star studded. I mean, the Mysterious Girlfriend X manga is sorta perverse, but in a really bizarre sort of way that questions the very notion of what is considered perverse. It might be easier to simply think of this as Nisemonogatari episode 8 the anime.

Medaka Box

“Oh boy” I hear you say, “I am so looking forward to Medaka Box”. Nope, you’re not, this show will suck. “What? But it’s a manga written by Nision, guy who wrote the -monogatari series, which means it will be good”. Nope, sorry mate, but Medaka Box has routinely been towards the bottom of the Shounen Jump rankings and frequently gets criticised for going absolutely nowhere for months upon end. The fact that it hasn’t been cancelled is something of a miracle. “Ah but it’s being animated by Gainax, I love those guys”. Wrong, all the guys that made Gainax great have left. The Evangelion/Kare Kano/FLCL crew? They’ve all left or retired by now, most of them moving to Studio Khara to make the Evangelion movies? The team that made Gurren Lagann and Panty and Stocking? Imaishi packed them all up and moved to his new animation studio Trigger. The person directing Medaka Box is the same person who directed He is my Master and This Ugly Yet Beautiful World. There is nobody good left at Gainax.

Accel World

I prefer Sunrise when they make their own stuff, rather than adapting light novel Shana clones. At the very least they tend to have really high quality animation, and the trailer looks very flashy, albeit flashy in a Guilty Crown sort of way. There are also no noses, because noses aren’t considered moe. Seriously, this has been something that has been bugging me increasingly over the years. What happened to noses at the turn of the decade? Anyway, the director is the guy who did Mai HiME so knows his flashy action sequences, but also made Girl Who Leapt Through Space so he also knows how to make crap. I’ll be honest though, the only reason I’m really drawn to this is because the main character is a little chubby kid. I’m not sure why I’m drawn towards that, but with swathes of Yuji Everyleads dominating the world of Shana clones, sometimes all you need is a fat kid in the role of Yuji to stand out from the crowd. You know what else would help you stand out from the crowd though? If you gave the characters some fucking noses!

Tsuritama





Kenji Nakamura is an interesting fellow. He directed a segment in the Noitamina anime Ayakashi that impressed the producers enough to give the character in that arc his own full TV series in Noitamina a year later. This anime was Mononoke, a really weird artsy piece, so it was a pretty big shock when it proved to be a huge success, both critically and commercially. Since then he’s been given a free reign to do pretty much anything he wants, with varying degrees of success. There was the equally bizarre Trapeze, my personal favourite of his, and last year he made [C] which was…well, it had some fascinating ideas and was fairly entertaining, but was also kind of a mess. I’d call him an auter except he doesn’t seem to have any single style cemented, but they’re always imaginitve, creative and worth a shot.

So onto his new anime, Tsuritama. First impressions on the trailer were a bit disappointed. I remember thinking C was fairly normal looking by Nakamura standards, but Tsuritama is yet another step down the path to normality, although compared to what most anime look like it’s still incredibly stylised. Rather reminiscent of that Toei short piece Kyousogiga, a look I rather like. The weirdness is mainly found in the synopsis. A Frenchman, an Indian who marries a duck, and an alien who has come to earth to do some fishing. I probably should have left it with that final point. Arakawa Under the Bridge as directed by Kenji Nakamura. That’s all I needed to know.

Natsuiro Kiseki

It’s because stuff like this is being made that I have such respect for Daily Lives of Highschool Boys. An anime about 4 girls being insufferably nice to each other, created for the sole purpose to promote a bunch of idols. The one point of interest, and also confusion on my part, is that the director is Seiji Mizushima, the director of the original FMA and, more recently, Un-Go. He’s a director I have a lot of respect for. Heck, he even made something like Hanamaru Kindergarten watchable and fairly entertaining. He doesn’t have his usual posse that help him out on projects though, but I’ve seen enough of his stuff by now that I’m willing to give anything with his name on a shot. Maybe this will prove to be some sort of glorious deconstruction or something, complete with more jabs at nationalism and how idols are treated as tools by society hollowing out their personalities leaving empty shells of marketable traits. And hey, speaking of hollow marketable idols…

AKB0048

This. An AKB48 anime. It was going to happen eventually. In fact, it did happen before, with the anime Project Ice, which I still class as one of, if not the worst anime I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a fair amount of bad anime in my time). For those happily ignorant of what AKB48 are, they are kind of a big deal in Japanese otaku fandom. It’s a group of idols (the current number is somewhere around 57) each with their own cutesy appeal. Through some really ingenious marketing strategies, their sales blow everything else aside in the Oricon charts.

So you might think that this would be similar to the Idolm@ster anime, following a group of idols as they go about their idol duties, right? Nope, instead we’re going for a post apocalyptic setting where humanity rebels against the oppressors, inspired by the underground idol group AKB0048. Better yet, it’s been directed by Shoji Kawamori, guy responsible for a lot of the Macross Franchise, including Frontier and Zero. Also Aquarion EVOL, so the guy knows how to make good dumb goofy sci-fi stuff. What I find really weird is how they’ve brought in this high profile director and yet have character designs that look really amateurish. Honestly, I haven’t a bloody clue what to expect from this. Considering they’re based off real life idols, the characterisation will be as shallow as a puddle, but that’s the only thing I could bank on. The rest? Not a fucking clue.

Saki: Side A





Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

No. New characters and new plot

The other side of the spectrum to Eureka Seven Ao. Eureka Seven was finished, plot wrapped up and everyone living happily ever after yada yada yada. Starting with new characters made perfect sense. Saki, on the other hand, didn’t finish its story. I know a lot of Saki fans wanted a proper sequel to the original. But no, instead we get this big cast on new characters. Seems counter-intuitive but they have brought back all the same staff, so maybe fans of the original just have to get over themselves and accept these new imposters. But what do I know, I didn’t like the original either. In fact, this director is one of my least favourite working today. Manabu Ono and his mission to eliminate noses from anime altogether. Look at that picture, what passes for noses could just as easily be mistaken for a speck of dirt on your screen. What do you have against noses you crazy man?

Sakamichi no Appolon





This is one of those dream combinations that you never thought would see the light of day. Shinichiro Watanabe, director of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, directing an anime about two kids setting up a jazz band with Yoko Kanno doing the music. If there is a potential problem, it’s that it’s based off an ongoing manga so it won’t have the opportunity to wrap up in time. Mind you, if your biggest problem is that you’re based off an award winning manga, then chances are you’ll be OK. Winner of the Shojokukan Manga Award no less, probably the biggest manga award there is. Ooh, should probably add that Mutha Fookin Space Bros won that award the year before, so double the hype for that. But back to Appolon. It’s great to see Noitamina back to hosting high quality josei anime again. It’s great to see Mr. Bebop back in the anime world after being absent for so long. If you watch anything this season, watch Appolon.

Jormungand

Someone asked me, back when Steins;Gate was airing, were White Fox the new big name in the animation studio ring. I pointed out that White Fox were simply a journeyman studio, with no cohesive style or staff behind their works. This adaptation of Jormungand proves the point I made in that post. It’s being adapted by White Fox but has none of the main staff that worked on Steins;Gate or Katanagatari or Tears to Tiara, the three anime White Fox have made before. Instead of that Steins;Gate director, who was essentially a Madhouse veteran, they instead brought on board the director of Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka. Yeah. That said, as I’ve learned from Future Diary or Spice and Wolf that if you give a director quality source material they will hitch up their trousers and try to prove to the world that they’re capable of animating more than just shitty harem VN adaptations.

The Jormungand manga is very Black Lagoon/Hellsing -esque in that it has really angry women holding guns along with this general vibe of sexy danger. I couldn’t tell you how good the manga is. I tried reading it but didn’t get far because I can never tell what the fuck is going on in action manga. However for these kinds of stories, a lot often comes down to whether you can nail the tone. Turn too far in the direction of sadism and you end up with Deadman Wonderland. On the plus side, the manga ending is coinciding with this anime adaptation, so it will at least end properly. My point here is that if you’re going to hype yourself up for this, do so because of the source material. Not because you love Steins;Gate and White Fox are making Jormungand too. There is none of the same staff.

Phi Brain continues airing

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

Yes

Does this even count as a new season if there is absolutely no gap between the two? I vote for no, so I’m not going to cover it. Moving on-

Shining Hearts





Shining Hearts is Production IG’s adaptation of an RPG by the same name. The game alternates between fighting monsters and bread baking, depending on your preferred style of play. Kind of how like Pokemon Ruby/Saphire allowed you to either engage in manly real battles or beauty pageants if you felt like being a humongous pussy. A gameplay choice I appreciate but, unlike gameplay, you can’t decide in a TV show that you’d prefer to watch the main character killing slimes instead of the umpteenth episode of hawt girls baking bread and accidentally spilling cream on each other’s faces and watching it drip slowly down their smooth skin as it disappears into their cleavage and speaking of hawt girls, the character designs are by God. However I have learned by now that God is not a good person to trust when it comes to the quality of upcoming anime. Plus this is hardly what I’d call Production IG’s A-team when you’ve brought aboard the King of Average, director of Rental Magica, Chrome Shelled Region and Legend of the Legendary Heroes. So don’t expect much from this. Go and watch Fault instead.

Sengoku Collection

If there’s one thing you’re almost guaranteed of every anime season from now until the end of time is that there will be at least one anime per season that has something to do with the Sengoku Era. Choose a random subtitle, add Sengoku to it and there’s probably an anime with that name. If you want to be super original, why not genderswap all the characters too. A female Oda Nobunaga would be hilarious and totally original! When searching for information for this, I accidentally typed in Sengoku Paradise instead and there’s an anime with that name too. It’s based off a ‘social game’ which for me reads like they’ve adapted the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia Wars facebook game. What’s annoying about this is it’s being animated by Brains Base. Damnit Brains Base, I thought you guys were legit! Sure your stuff can be flawed, but there was always intent to producing quality content. Akikan was the one blemish on your record. If it was going to come to this, I would have preferred if you just stuck to making more bloody Natsume.

Korean Zombie Desk Car

of the Dead

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

Yes

One year ago the first season of Korean Zombie Desk Car aired. It was an incredibly generic harem comedy that occasionally pointed to itself and proclaimed “look at me, I’m being horrible and generic”! This caused people to mistake it for a parody, only to have it later shoved in their face as the show gradually forgot to even point out how generic it was being and the true beast below was revealed. Now we have more, this time with ‘Of The Dead’ tacked on at the end. A mockery of nonsense anime titles that slap English onto their names to sound cool? A parody of Highschool of the Dead? Or are the creators’ idiots who think ‘Of The Dead’ is a catch all term they can put onto something that has zombies in it? Me thinks it may be the last option.

Acchi Kocchi

The latest 4-koma adaptation! Right, let’s unearth from my basement Ye Olde Laws Of 4-Koma Adaptations. Rule 1: Thou must have more than one joke in your repertoire. Judging by the short sample of the manga I read, Acchi Kocchi nimbly evades this by having no jokes whatsoever. In the final panel, where a joke usually resides, the characters simply yell something and that’s the end. Rule 2: Thou must be more than cute girls doing cute things. Instant points right off the bat because there are men in this show. Rule 3: Thou must form some sort of cohesive narrative. Again, signs are positive that this will be passed. The director has previously directed Lotte’s Toy, which did have a story. It was about an 11 year old child’ need to guzzle semen and occasionally pretended to be about parenting. As we can see, I have scientifically proven that Acchi Kocchi will be the greatest anime ever, with the likes of Space Bros and Appolon cowering beneath its mastery of the 4-koma adaptation.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia

As signified by the fact my favourite anime of both 2010 and 2011 were by Shaft, it’s probably clear by now that I’ve become a Shaft fanboy (no, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is not by Shaft, but bear with me I’m going somewhere with this). With the massive success of Madoka and the -monogatari series, it’s become a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ Shaft’s influence will start to be seen across other anime. It might be difficult to judge exactly whether the influence comes from Shaft, as it’s not like Shinbo’s style was born in a vacuum. He’s on the record saying that he was influenced by that old-hand at Madhouse Osamu Dezaki and his work on Rose of Versailles, which crazy auteur Ikuhara also says he was inspired by. That’s why there are a lot of similar stylistic elements between PenguinDrum and the many of Shaft/Shinbo works.

If there’s a clear example of a studio being influenced by Shaft though, it’s Silver Link, for the quite obvious reason that the staff there all used to work at Shaft. Thing is, the anime they’ve produced have been kinda shitty. Tayutama, C Cubed. Their best was probably Baka to Test, which still wasn’t very good, running out of jokes after maybe 2 episodes and repeating itself from there on. Then again, this is largely the same problem all early Shaft/Shinbo stuff had too. It wasn’t until the turn of the decade did they start to produce some proper storytelling capabilities within that crazy style. I think it’s safe to say that Dusk Maiden of Amnesia won’t be their breakout hit. It’s just another Shana clone. Generic male lead who has no discernable personality beyond the fact he’s kinda nice has high school girl with super powers fall into his lap. The website for the anime boldly greets you with a giant cleavage. I guess there are some parts from Shaft I wish they didn’t take quite so much inspiration from…

Koi-ken

Oh boy, ’tis the season for social networking games. First Sengoku Subtitle and now Koiken. I suppose if they’re going to make social networking games, they might as well base them off the most well-worn clichés and genres. First Sengoku era characters turned into hot teenage girls. Secondly a dating sim set in high school in which, in their own words, an “extremely ordinary” male lead gets to talk to a series of girls. Want to date the maid? How about the shrine maiden? What about the girl who is basically Azunyan from K-ON? The options are limitless! It’s going to be a web-release by an animation studio I’ve never heard of before, so look forward to eye-cancerous webrips and possibly terribad levels of banal rubbish.

Kimi to Boku Season 2

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

Sorta. It’s s’life but they’ll assume you know the characters

Funny how this anime’s abject failure is even more stark now that Daily Lives of Highschool Boys graced our screens.

Nyarlko Season 2

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

Sorta. It’s a goofy comedy but they’ll assume you know the characters

Flash shit about moe-fied cthulhu. Also a sequel. The original wasn’t very good. Yeah…that’s all I have to say.

::Edit:: Captain Lolicon Buttfuck Cartoons has informed me that the second season won’t be flash shit and is in fact being animated by Xebec. I guess in the grand scheme of anime studios, Xebec is probably the next level above flash. Looking forward to the third season being animated by Studio Deen.

Queen’s Blade Rebellion

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

I don’t think so. It’s a sequel but it looks like it has new characters

Titties! You know, after getting bored by Bodacious Space Pirates lack of actual pirating or bodacity, that pirate character design in the trailer actually looks rather appealing. Maybe I’ll give this a go. It’s got completely new characters, and I’m sure I’ll pick up on the complex lore behind the Queens Blade mythos as it progresses.

Rock Lee no Seishun

Full-Power Ninden

Do I need to have seen the pre­vi­ous season?

Sort of. It’s a gag story about a side character from Naruto

There used to be a thing for this back in the 90s. Super-deformed spin-offs of existing franchises. This is that for Naruto, focusing in particular on the bizarre character design of Rock Lee. Don’t have much to say about this, it’s mainly just a piece of fanservice for Naruto fans. But what’s important here is that Naruto fans clearly still exist, while apparently everyone has stopped giving a shit about Bleach. Yes, the TV show this silly little chibi Naruto spin-off is kicking off the airwaves is Bleach. That once shounen powerhouse that stood proud alongside Naruto and One Piece has been cancelled, with the manga also entering its final arc. Since those days, One Piece has exploded in popularity, Naruto has declined slightly, and Bleach seems to be regarded as a joke. It’s kind of fascinating to see.

Yurumates

Some 4-koma adaptation about people with weirdly proportioned heads. It had 2 previous OVA releases, which were apparently well-received enough to warrant a TV series. I think it will be one of those 5-minute episode things? I’ve never heard anyone talk about the OVAs, none of the staff or animation studio ring any bells in my head, I can’t be arsed to check out the manga. Nobody is going to sub it anyway. Does anyone seriously care? Would anyone notice if I didn’t even bother including this in the preview?

Polar Bear Café

It’s an anime about a polar bear running a cafe with a panda and a penguin. Clearly the greatest anime of the decade.

Kiddy Shows

Instead of wasting a load of space on each individual children’s shows that air each season, I’m just going to dump them into this one category. Ginga e Kickoff is a kids show about saawwcurrr that looks like it’s trying to capitalise on the popularity of Inazuma 11. I look forward to the massive following of creepy shotacon loving fangirls. Pretty Rythem Dear My Future is a sequel to Pretty Rythem Aurora Dream, except with an entirely new cast of characters. Trying to pull a Precure here I see, except instead of trying to get little girls to buy multi-coloured plastic toys, it tries to get them to jump around on DDR machines and maybe take up ice-skating, so clearly it is better for your children’s health. One Stormy Night is a collaboration between Japanese and Singaporean animation studios about a goat and a wolf travelling across the land. It has some genuinely talented staff working on it, such as the director of Shiki, but there’s no point looking forward to it because nobody ever subs these kinds of shows. There’s a new Jewelpet, a new Beyblade and a new Cardfight Vanguard, new Bakugan and even a new Transformers, just in case there weren’t enough toy advertisements in your children’s’ lives.

Movies and OVAs

Usual reminder here that the movies that are currently being released in Japan are only getting theatrical releases. You won’t get to see them until much later when the BD releases are out. With that in mind, I’m going to be previewing the movies that are coming out on BD within the next 3 months, according to amazon.jp. Also for OVAs, I’m not going to be covering those that are just special additional episodes to TV series, since they’re usually nothing more than pieces of fanservice. Watch them if you liked the TV series.

Recollection of a Certain Airship Pilot

This has been released and subbed already, but it only came out very recently and I didn’t talk about it in the last season preview, so I’m giving it a quick mention here anyway. This is Madhouse’s latest movie, a studio with a looooong list of amazing anime movies to their name. You know, every single Satoshi Kon film, every single Mamoru Hosada movie, Redline, and that’s just in their movies catalogue. This one doesn’t have quite the star studded staff behind it, unless you think the director of Story of Sainkoku is something worth leaping for joy over. Which is far from being a bad thing to have on your résumé, but it’s also the only thing on his résumé, unless you want to list that he was assistant director on Cosprayers. To be fair, Cosprays was trying to be bad, and he at least helped achieve that. As much as I love Madhouse, this looks rather tepid and ordinary by their standards, which admittedly means it looks considerably more interesting than most everything else coming out. As I said though, it is already out and subbed, go give it a shot and make up your own mind.

Alice in the Country of Hearts

Wonderful Wonder World

Speaking of movies that have already been released, this Alice movie thing has already been released in Japan for quite a while now, but no subs exist yet. Heck, I didn’t even see any raws. Not sure why nobody is jumping on this. There’s colourful bishies everywhere, that should be reason enough for a large proportion of the anime viewing population to watch it, right? It’s based off a manga by the same name. From what I can tell, it’s kind of like those Sengoku era stories where all the famous figures turn into large breasted ladies, except in this case you replace ‘Sengoku Era’ with ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and replace ‘large breasted ladies’ with ‘colourful bishies’.

Un-Go episode 0





Un-Go was a really fascinating anime. Yeah about half of the episodes were really badly rushed thanks to Noitamina’s limited episode count, and the mysteries themselves often sucked. But I still loved it because whoever was making it really had an agenda they were trying to push. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime more laden with political statements, even more so than Stand Alone Complex or Eden of the East. This ‘episode 0’ is the story of how Shinjuro met Inga in the first place, back when he was a soldier. If I could have asked for anything more from Un-Go (asides from maybe cutting out a few of the mysteries it didn’t really need so it wouldn’t be so rushed in places) it would have been exactly this. So I’m stoked. Not sure many other people are, but for those with me the DVD/BD release is the 20th of April.

Then there’s a bunch of franchise movies that don’t warrant covering. There’s a new Precure movie, new Naruto movie and a new Prince of Tennis movie, the final one of which I’ll only watch if tennis wipes out the Klingons.

Kimi no Iru Machi





OVAs now, first with Kimi no Iru Machi. Or, as the ‘fans’ like to call it, RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE etc. The manga is by the same guy who wrote Suzuka, and from what I gather it’s largely the same stuff. Lots of characters liking each other but being various degrees of stubborn and not getting together and then finally getting together but then deciding they don’t like this and so on and so forth. Short OVA adaptations of ongoing manga generally suck balls, but the reason I’m interested in this is because the director is the same guy who directed Time of Eve and Pale Cocoon. Yasuhiro Yoshiura is one of my favourite guys working in anime today, although there’s a rather noticeable lack of any of his handheld-camera style of animation from the trailer. But whatever, he’s got that other movie coming out this year. I’m guessing this is just a way balance the books on his end.

Moe Can Change!





And finally, to round it this humongous post, we have the prime terribad material category. It’s based off a game for Android which is, for all intensive purposes, a pretty princess dress up game. You get some moeblob and stick it in various outfits. Apparently this idea so was shocking and mind-blowing that they decided it was worth making an anime out of. Director has done Spice and Wolf, but some kind of crazy magical lighting struck his head when he adapted that novel because everything else he has done has been utter trash. I can’t wait!

::EDIT:: A few days after I posted this, there was that small deal of a new Lupin III TV series announced.