I don’t want to hide the fact that I don’t really have a clue why I have ended up enjoying this show quite a lot. Nothing really stands out (except Yuuma’s crazy mother) when I try to analyse Happiness! but I guess this is just another comfirmation that some things are more than the sum of their parts. When you look at the show you can easily classify it as yet another romantic comedy that takes place in a high school, a concept that is one of the main pretenders for the most beaten to death idea. Yet, this show does make me laugh out loud and no character has yet made it to my list of characters who should be put out of their misery, actually none has even managed to get on my nerves at all. And let’s face it – bright colours, light-hearted atmoshpere, beautiful girls and some comedy is a winning formula when done right. Alas, things seem to go wrong very often when the formula is tried, so I need to enjoy the successful attempts as much as I can.

The plot revolves about a high school student named Haruhi. Seems like this is quite a trendy name for the female lead characters these days. Anyway, Haruhi is most talented student in her school, which is not an ordinary one but one that teaches magic skills. We learn very early on that she has had a fateful childhood encounter with a boy who has saved her from some bullies using magic when she was a little girl. Did anyone say that this is such an annoying cliche? Well, yes it is, no doubt about it but I do hope for a miracle – i.e. her not ending up with that boy.

Anyway, Haruhi is almost a texbook example of moe-girl – often blushing and embarrassed, soft voice, nice to everyone almost to the point of stupidity, general cuteness, etc. That said, thus far she hasn’t managed to get on my nerves. I suspect this is because despite all the moe-ness she still behaves more as a high school girl than as an elementary school brat, unlike your average moe character. But maybe I am just deceiving myself and refrain from bashing Haruhi because her character design is much better than that of the Kanon girls? I accept such a possibility but I think her seiyuu is also an important factor. Haruhi’s voice somehow manages to emphasise the “cute and innocent” part of moe that I can tolerate, rather than the childish and silly part which I loathe.

Since I already started describing the characters let me continue with Haruhi’s sidekick – Anri. She is a really genki (lively) girl who always seems to bite more than she can chew and ends up making a fool of herself. Apparently her goal in life is to take the position of number one mage in the school away from Haruhi which funnily enough does not stop her from hanging out with the latter all the time and being her best friend. Although this character achetype is very far from original and is not exactly one of my favourites, thus far I like Anri the most. Her over the top antics often make me laugh. The moment when she arranged all the chairs with magic was an instant classic. Why? Because she arranged them very well…but on the ceiling, not on the floor, so they ended up falling down in one big heap in seconds.

Yuuma is the romantic interest of Haruhi. No, let me just say that he will be the romantic interest, for now she is trying to deceive herself that he is not but we have all seen such plots and know all too well that this means only one thing – they are so going to end together sooner or later. So far he has beeen thoroughly unremarkable which is more than common for anime guys who have girls falling in love for them for some inexplicable reason. But we know that Yuuma does not like magic which is an obvious hint for magic related traumatic experience. Haruhi is a mage so we will follow one of the oldest cliches in the book, I guess, the one notably made famous by Romeo and Juliet among so many other books, plays, moves, etc .

At first glance Jun seems like Haruhi’s rival for Yuuma’s heart which makes Yuuma something of chick magnet. There is a catch though – Jun is actually a boy who likes to dress in feminine clothes and pretend to be a woman. Of course, if we weren’t told we wouldn’t have noticed this since Jun looks and behaves exactly like a girl. This I can accept – unlike in Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru his classmates know very well that Jun is not a girl, so the suspension of disbelief is much easier. It’s interesting that although Yuuma is not too happy that Jun claims to be his girlfriend, he does allow the latter to cling onto his arm possessively for a time in episode one, something most boys would not do, even if they happen to be very tolerant of crossdressers or gays. Jun is a funny character who unlike some others traps from this season actually can use his brain and his presence makes the story a bit more unpredictable. Of course, right now it seems inconceivable that he would beat Haruhi and end up as Yuuma’s sweetheart, mainly because the producers would not dare to offer the audience yaoi relationships (and also because childhood fateful encounters have a mystical power in love affairs) but I am curious what his role in the story will be.

I can’t be bothered to write about the rest of the characters but I simply have to mention Yuuma’s mother. She gave her son chocolate for Valentine’s and generally behaves as if her son is actually her lover or something. She also decided to redeem herself for her mistake in episode three by getting naked in front of everybody. She is just crazy in a very funny way.

The animation is memorable mostly due to its more than liberal usage of bright colours. The girls are good looking and unlike recent abominations like Lovedol, it’s very easy to distinguish the characters and remember who is who, even if you don’t rely only on remembering their hair colours. The voice acting is one of the most appealing features of Happiness!, at least for me. The voices suits the characters almost perfectly – the voice of Haruhi is full of shyness and the moe levels reach heights usually reserved for seiyuu godesses like Noto Mamiko, but it also shows determination if need be, Anri’s one is literally dripping with enthusiasm and Jun’s so girlish you start suspecting it’s trying to hide something with that which is exactly the case. If we trust ANN, the seiyuus for Jun and Haruhi are new to the world of anime which is given bonus of their voices not reminding me of their previous roles.

So I get to the end of this entry and I still can’t explain why I praise rather than bash Happiness!. Feel free to accuse me of hypocricy next time I criticise some anime for its large number of cliches. I think the problem is that a series needs almost perfect execution and great attention to be paid to the details, in order for me to get over the lack of originality. Plus, Jun is something of an original element. The bottom line is that this show makes me laugh, the characters are more than bearable and there is not an annoying amount of stupid fanservice. If this remains the case I think I will watch it to the end with pleasure and I will complain that it’s only 12 episodes long.

As they say in South Park – “I learned something today” . Namely that I shoudn’t get obsessed with delayed fansub releases, even if I have really enjoyed the series in question thus far. Checking so many times every day for episode 4 created monstrously big expectations which were more or less impossible to fullfil. Don’t get me wrong, the episode is not bad at all and my only major complaint would be the rather inconsistent animation quality. Kate and Claire continue to be notably easier to like than Rachel and Rose but regardless of the viewers personal preferences the character interaction remains heavily grounded in reality with all the pros and cons that are to be expected from such an approach. The girls got rid of yet another lunatic but the way things are presented makes me thing that the series will not go for the monster of the week approach and even if it does it might still maintain the quality, as long as the characte development does not suddenly cease.

This episode makes a point of showing clearly the displeasure of Jessica (one of the of the Grace members), caused by the leader Paula’s symphatetic, rather than stern treatment of Kate. The latter is late for class, yet receives no penalty in the form of a ticket. Seems to me that Jessica’s resentment, maybe jealousy of Kate will obviously lead to something bad for that latter, though I guess she is already in too bad situation to care that much about. But she and Rose do care enough to go to school, even after the chilling flashback that convinced them they are dead in the previous episode. Clearly they continued on autopilot and even though the setting is New York, we all know that in anime, as in Japan in reality, schools are vastly important.

Rachel, though, is a moody girl with not much patience and she has put two and two together and gotten to the conclusion that right now school is not important since she is dead. I for one totally understand her sentiments, even though the way she treated Kate and Rose who had come to visit her was anything but admirable. The important thing is that they all stayed in character – in most cases the easiest way for the scriptwriters to create some teamwork between the four would be to just force it. In other words to force the characters to behave more or less oddly for the sake of smoother plot development. For instance in Mai-HiME Nao and Natsuki agreed to Midori’s idea for HiME Rangers somewhat too easily and their resistance was mostly intended to make viewers laugh a bit and was bit something serious as one would expect from them. If this approach was used, Rachel would have fumed a bit because of the sudden visit but then would have probably broken down, cried and said something along the lines of “Thank you! I really needed someone to be there for me right now! We need to unite against the common enemy!”. OK, maybe not so cheesy as my version but I hope you got the idea. In fact Rachel announces that she has never been their friend and just kicks them out of her house.

Claire tries playing the detective in this series. Relying on her vague memories of the night when she died she manages to find the mansion of the evil blond huy. However, he is aware of this but for some reason is content to leave her be. Also, he can’t see the strange butterflies that are guided the girls to their fateful meeting in episode one and now seem to serve as messengers for Lulu or at least as an ominous reminder of the girls plight. I love the contrast between the outer appearace of the beautiful butterflies and the shock they cause in the hearts of Rose and Kate or the Claire’s angry reaction and attempts to catch some butterflies. And of course, these insects help to maintain the surrela atmoshpere. Anyway, it’s interesting that Claire lives in a rough and poor neighbourhood, yet she has clear priorities and instead of making every effort to graduate from that obviously prestigious school, she decided that her investigation was more important, so she skipped school that day.

In the end of the episode, our heroines swiftwy take care of the task given them by Lulu, which is of course, getting rid of yet another crazy bestial looking man. Rose panics yet again which begs the question how long will the others put up with her cowardness. Rachel though hesitates at first but then has something of an Oyashiro-sama moment – gripped by berserk rage she turns the head of the man into a pulp using a baseball bat. This murderous fit of anger by caused by her remembering her friend that was killed by such a man in the previous episode. The flashbacks and the short fight were executed pretty well, if that’s the show’s version of monster of the week I can live with it, provided the spotlight remains more on the characters and their reasons for continuing the desperate struggle, rather than on the fights themselves.

The most annoying thing in the scene was the clumsy animation work – from one angle the blood on Rachel’s face seems to have strangely disappeared, only to reappear seconds later when the camera angle changes, all this happening well after she had throw the bat away and no blood was flying around. The characters faces also looked even weirder than in the previous episodes. I am usually not observant enough to notice such changes in the animation quality but this time it was kind of hard to ignore them, though I am mostly nitpicking – as I said already the episode is very good, and my ability to enjoy it was harmed mostly by the burden of my expectations.

Kate is again the one who tries hard to unite the group. I think her taking time to be with Rose is one of the last surviving links with sanity that keeps the latter from simply running away from it all or going mad, though I may be underestimating her. But Kate too must have a breaking point, I wonder when she will lose patience with some of her “teammates. Rachel, as befitting her impulsive character, switches from desperation to determination. The sudden loss of her ability to enjoy parties with her similarly outgoing friends, the endless questions from her boyfriend also don’t help her regain her composure. Claire needs to rely more on the rest but it seems her rough life leads her to try and do much on her own. All in all, the characters get developed little by little which makes me want to know more and more about them. About Lulu too but she will probably remain a mystery until at least the second half of the show.

Since the events seem to have an obviously supernatural cause I don’t think we can trust the cops to arrest some of the villains or do much to hamper their efforts to achieve whatever their goal happens to be. So my guess would be than one or more of the main characters will get in trouble with the police but that’s mostly a hunch. Talking of hunches, instead of noticing the obvious reaction of Kate when a possible Lis boyfriend was mentioned, the only thing the cops got after the talk with her was the feeling of the older cop that she was involved in the case somehow. Bunch of amateurs. I just picture inspector Runge from Monster talking to himself “I am Kate Ashley. I wear this stupid uniform. I get pissed at Lis for not having to wear it. I kill her and make it look like a suicide”.

The news Rachel was watching mentioned “no signs of physical injury” when referring to the new “suicide cases” but I don’t think many people bother to go and die in the woods after they have drunk poison or done something else in order to end their lives. If I were a policeman, I would never believe this was just a series of suicides. If after the autopsy the reason for the death is still unknown or looks like a death from sickness, why would the cops talk about suicides even when alone? Maybe I have read one too many mystery novels but I can’t say I understand their reasoning. But that’s a very minor issue. As long as the characters remain interesting and the plot more than adequate, I will keep watching and probably waiting impatiently for every new episode. However – when will have singing again?

You know what comes to my mind when I see Kyoto Animation mentioned? Two things – the first one is Full Metal Panic:Fumoffu which is one of the best anime comedies ever. But the second one is more relevant – the phrase that comes into my mind is “what a waste of great animation”. First, it was The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi and now Kanon. And while I found Suzumiya Haruhi to be merely a mediocre series that I might one day actually watch to the end, Kanon is mystifyingly bad. I say mystifyingly because apparently everyone but me loves it and all I see in it is a stupid harem show that needs this great animation quality as much as car stuck in a traffic jam needs a 500 horse power engine. It’s not fun at all, it is so moe-ish that I think I got a nearly deadly dose of moe after just two episodes. Most importantly – will I live to see the day when high school girls behaving like little kids all the time will be considered stupid and annoying by the majority of anime fandom rather than cute and endearing as it seems to be the case now?

I have watched only the first two episodes of Kanon (2006), so feel free to yell “It gets so much better, you blasphemer” but I can’t help but write my impressions which are anything but positive. So far the only thing that seems to happen is that Yuuichi, the main character who is an absolute clone of the already boring Kyon of Suzumiya Haruhi, bumps into random girls, most of whom he has known from before. But the poor soul suffers from amnesia. Oh, god, amnesia is so beaten to death but that’s hardly the main problem. The main problem is that the series bores me to tears – nothing interesting happens, if we don’t count the girls from Yuuichi’s future harem trying to look ever cuter dumber and more childish – but that’s hardly interesting, is it? All kinds of annoying antics, expressions and noises (I still can’t believe people are crazy about “uguu!”) are used to achieve this goal. Oh, well it was achieved too well in my case, I have rarely been wishing for the painful death of all the main characters after watching only two episodes. In the case of Nayuki, I demand not only slow death but also eternal damnation in the depths of Hell. If I can hear one more time her ubiqutious “Uhm!”( or however this sound expressing agreement is spelled, you know what I am talking about) I might just go mad. And the way she says “Yuuichi” is probably a joy for all the lolicons out there but I can’t stand it. Moral of the story – Haruhi from Happiness!, who is totally moe high school student as well, is a mature adult when compared to the Kanon girls we have seen thus far.

The million and one cliches (transfer student, amnesia, childhood promise, etc) and non-existent plot aside, there is another drawback – the character designs! What’s the fucking point of having such awesome backgrounds series when the girls (let’s face it, they are supposed to be the thing that sells such series to the fans) are not attractive at all? In fact, the beautful scenery just makes them look even more plain. Even if we assume that Kanon is a highly intellectual show with a moving story (who knows, it might well be but I don’t intend to watch it to find out) and not a silly harem comedy, the character designs still stick like a sore thumb among all the beatifully drawn buildings and lanscapes.

I am aware that this short rant will hardly convince anyone and that the KyoAni worship seems to be a dangerous infectious disease these days (just kidding, of course) but I just felt like writing this. But I can honestly say that I find Happiness! to be many, many times better than Kanon and the former is not even that special. It’s just a romantic comedy that is actually funny and enjoyable, despite being full of cliches. Anyway, I hope next time Kyoto Animation pick a watchable show which to remake. But who knows, maybe I just don’t like the way they do their job so even if they make a remake of Noir and change only the art, I might be disappointed once again.

This is certainly one of the overlooked gems of this season. Which in a sense is good because it makes my decision to blog it seem less futile, so I might just do it on some sort of regular basis. It’s a GONZO anime and it stands out for a number of reasons. The art is odd and especially the character designs are bound to turn off a lot of people but in general the art is at least memorable and does not scream in your face “just another anime ” or “we didn’t have a big budget so we decided that zero originality in the art was the formula for success”. It has a very gripping and somewhat heavy, gloomy atmoshpere and amazing sound – the effects, ambient sounds, seiyuu work and music are all essential parts of what makes Red Garden special, at least for me. Last but not least, the series seems to be a mystery with supernatural elements but with a heavy emphasis on the character’s development, something that was sorely lacking in some of the crucial chapters of Higurashi, for instance.

After last season’s fiasco (not even getting to episode 10 of Simoun with my reviews for instance), I have decided not to write detailed summaries often, I will leave that to the more enthusiastic bloggers out there and mostly to those who know Japanese since I myself read such summaries only when I watch raws and want to know what the characters have talked about.

So what’s Red Garden all about? Well, it tells the story of four girls from New York. They go to an elite private school but one day their lives turn upside down. No, they does not even turn upside down – it’s worse – they find out they are actually dead and live on “borrowed life”. At least that’s what some strange woman says. She charges them with fighting for their lives against some lunatic who tries to bite people, just minutes after shocking them with the revelation they are dead. And that’s just the start of their troubles…

So far the plot has provided quite a lot of answers to the different mysteries for such an early stage of the series, so I am not sure how much of a mystery this will turn out to be. But it seems the focal point is not the characters’ search of what isgonig on but the characters’ emotional struggle to cope with the desperate situation they were suddenly thrown into. This displayal of raw emotions will probably lead a lot of people to denounce the show as “emo-crap” or “tearjerker” but you can’t please everyone.

The portrayal of emotional struggles is simply brilliant and totally works as far stirring my own emotions is concerned. One of the main reason is that even though the situation might be supernatural, the girls behaviour comes out as very real – instead of being confused at first and then calmly dispose of the monster in their first battle, some of the girls get hysterical, they begin to quarrel among themselves and indeed are saved by their hunger for life and luck, rather than by someone exhibiting awesome fighting skills out of the blue as the cliche would have it. The atmosphere is so engrossing that it just seems one can actually smell the fear of the girls, the tension is very much palpable, the feeling that your life has just gone down the drain and you can’t do nothing but accept it is very much obvious on the faces of the characters after the first episode. I can’t help but feel compassion to them and cheer them in their uphill struggle to regain some semblance of normality in their life.

Talking of characters, three episodes have been enough to show us quite a lot of the personality traits of the main ones. Claire is the rebellious type who hardly seems to fit in such a school. I can’t help but thinking ofShinku from Rozen Maiden when I am listening to her, not only because of the same voice but because just like Shinku she has loads of determination and willpower. Kate is the typical “good girl” from a rich family, she takes part in the organization called Grace which is something of the school police. I guess the Japanese scriptwriters just could not help but include a few girls who wear uniforms, even though the majority of the student do not. Kate seems the most rational of the four and though more emotional than Claire, she is not as prone to rash decisions. These two have been my favourites thus far.

The other two girls so far have not been as interesting – Rachel is a party loving girl and Rose is clumsy and shy but the combination of their characters ensures thrilling group dynamics. This is not youravearage hero or heroine and his or her trusty sidekicks. These are just ordinary people trying to make sense of the terrible plight they are in. I really hope they stay like that and not suddenly pick up some random heroic traits like nerves of steel, blind luck which to save them every other episode or a brain that does not function well because there is no need for that due to all the “cool” superpowers.

I was a bit surprised how quickly some of the mysteries were revealed but if the emphasis continues to be on the characters coping with the new reality rather on random monster of the week that they get rid the world of, I won’t mind much the loss of the mystery element.

The art is something of a love it or hate it affair. It is a far cry from the cute moe faces anime girls usually have – with big eyes and almost no nose, the type that often gets so bland that the main way to distinguish between the characters’ is their hair colour. The approach is similar to the one used in Monster – the facial features are a lot more distinguishable and prominent, some characters are rather ugly, something that’s almost impossible to see in mainstream anime. In Red Garden we have some very thick lips, weird haircuts, sharp noses, etc. But this just adds to the gothic and dark feeling of the series, just like I cannot imagine Monster with ordinarily looking characters, I shudder to think of a hyphotetical Red Garden with its characters looking like those in Lovely Idol for instance. Not much to say about the backgrounds, they are neither horrible, nor jaw-droppingly great but I like the contrast between the brightly coloured characters and the dark, gloomy New York. Well, the city does not look foreboding and dark all the time, it seems to correspond to the mood of the characters in a way which is a bit of cheap trick but it works.

The sound however is sublime. So far the cast has done an absolutely brilliant job of putting feeling into the lines they pronounce and making their characters look more real. Even the screaming feels like something caused by horror and not just another scream of a dumb damsel in distress which. Among the seiyuus there are stars like Tanaka Rie and Kaoyasu Takehito but the lesser known voice actors that voice the main characters don’t let themselves to be outshined by them which is no small feat. I have seen people complaining about the singing but it really managed to move me – Kate crying and singing at the same time in episode made me somewhat sad. Bear in mind that I had no real reason to be saddened by the death of Liz, it’s not as if we had seen much of her. The singing was off-key – so what? That’s not a musical, ordinary people sing like that, the important thing is that the singing really painted a poignant picture of Kate’s mental state at the time.

The sound effects are also top notch. All the characters talking at the same time really managed to come across as a real heated argument, instead of something artificial and scripted. The sound of bodies being hit, stabbed and so on seem to have been recorded with pedantic attention to detail and while the camera tends to stay away from the more gruesome scenes, the sounds don’t leave much to the imagination and if anything make me picture things as even more gory than they probably are. The music is doing its job to enhance the atmosphere nicely but apart from the song the girls sing, no melody has stayed in my head for long or had made me wait impatiently for theOST.

Up to now I haven’t really included many spoilers, now it’s time for a bit of speculation and spoiler-full musings so if you haven’t watched the first episodes, I’d suggest to stop reading. Liz seems to be the key to it all. The four main characters were looking for her when they met their demise (the flashback of their deaths was absolutely brilliant, I loved the red and blue filters that were used to make it look like some horrible dream-like memory). After that her body was not recovered by Lula. Seems kind of obvious that Liz will have some role to play in the future, despite being considered to be dead. And I really want to know what’s this borrowed life Lula talks about, who are these beast-like people the girls are fighting for, why were they killed so ruthlessly and so on. But most of all I hope Red Garden does not turn into a monster of the week action type of show, with the heroines learning how to wield their new found powers. This would be a real waste of nice character development. I hope the emphasis stays on the changes in the characters’ life caused by their “deaths” and new duties. If it does and the emotional intensity remains as strong as in the first episode, this could even turn out to be a real masterpiece, although of course, it’s too early to make predictions for the direction in which the series will go.

I see I haven’t bashed anything in a really long time. I have just grumbled a bit about Strawberry Panic. True, it got so bad that I doubt I will actually finish it but compared to Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru it’s almost a masterpiece (at least if we compare only the first episodes of the two series). Imagine Strawberry Panic (Maria-sama ga Miteru, dumbed down for drooling fanboys, will do if you haven’t bothered with SP), only with a boy called Mizuho who pretends to be a girl as the main character, with more fanservice and even more annoying characters. It took about ten episodes for the SP cast to make me want to cut their collective tongue to make them shut up but just two in the case of Otome…something. It is such drivel that it makes me a bit ashamed to be anime fan. It’s not funny. There is no plot to speak of. It’s just as realistic as me having a harem full of supermodels and also being to create a new universe all by myself. It does not seem to be real yuri. It includes every cliche in the book and I mean it.

Here are some of the things one can see (and hopefully not enjoy) in this trainwreck:

– The transfer student cliche

– Crossdresser boy who is suddenly found to be very beautiful by the students of an all-girl school. I wish some of the stupid scriptwriters (whom I assume are men because the show is so full of fanservice) try this trick someday and see it’s not actually something likely to happen in real life, especially if you happen to be a total moron who makes all kinds of mistakes and is pratically begging to be recognized as a boy.

– All girl catholic school with possible yuri undertones (come on, I am not that fond of Catholicism but how about something new, let’s say a normal all-girl school?)

– Kouhai (underclassmen) serving the senpai and also obviously smitten by them romantically.

– The transfer student becomes a celebrity and is considered to be a good candidate for the position of Elder (a Rose or an Etoile, in other words). All that in just a few days, mind you. The previous Elder has a sad past (did anyone say Shizuma or Rosa Gigantea?). I wonder if that means that Shion (the previous elder) is also a dominant lesbian? Oh, well, I guess I will never know because I don’t think I will watch more of this crappy series.

– Lolis with terribly high pitched voices screeching “Onee-sama” all the time, talking in a cute (read childish and stupid) way and generally having the intelligence of a brick. A dumb brick. The cuteness is running wild in this series, so wild that even Kagome’s stuffed bear from SP suddenly seem somewhat bearable.

– Tons of fanservice. It includes two girls groping the breasts of the crossdresser. What’s wrong with that? Well, by virtue of him not being a girl, the breasts are, you know, not part of his body, yet they seem to enjoy it a lot and he was behaving as if the breasts were real and he was being molested. That’s just beyond stupid.

– Annoying chibis, tons of static frames and less than mediocre art, bland character design, not that great voiceacting. Ok, I admit it, I don’t like ultra high pitched voices, so I guess I am biased here.

- Humour that is simply not funny. You can call it a toilet humour, not because it’s that rough but because a lot of it revolves about Mizuho’s reluctance to use the girl restroom. Ha-ha, oh so very funny.

- The main character seems to be an orphan (his mother is dead for sure). It’s not as if this cliche is not common even in great series but I just have to mention it back my words about using every cliche in the book.

- The reason for Mizuho’s enrolling in an all-girl school is the will of a relative of his. Some people it seems will everything for money. Of course, he seems way too feminine to begin with (few girls have such well kept long hair ) and of course, his mother has also studied in that school so I smell a secret which will show us the reason for that strange will. Will show some people, not me, I mean.

OK, I am pretty much done here. Let’s summarise – so far this series seems like a bad rip-off of Kashimashi and Strawberry Panic, both of which aren’t good enough to deserve to be ripped off in the first place. Now if you excuse me I will make a few copies of these two episodes of Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru so I can delete them slowly and painfully.

Yes, I am still alive and yes, unlike me this blog is pretty much dead but I will try to revive it. The autumn anime season is upon us so I feel compelled to do what everyone does and post some first impression from the several shows I have seen thus. Since the fansubbers need time to start releasing episodes I have not watched much from the new season thus far (and let’s face it, I am too lazy write a long entry).

Let’s start with a series with the unbelievably dumb sounding name – Pumpkin Scissors. It’s produced by GONZO and the art resembles Last Exile quite a lot. Since I love Last Exile’s art this fact immediately put Pumpkin Scissors in my list of animes to follow this season, unless it happened to be mind-numbingly dull. Thankfully, so far it’s far from it. The setting seems similar to Europe between the two world wars, the Empire is ravaged by war and gangs of former soldiers harass their compatriots. The Pumpkin Scissors Platoon has the special mission of trying to alleviate the situation of the civilian population after the war. In the first episode some members of the platoon get rid of some special forces men turned highwaymen with the help of a mysterious ex-soldier with special powers. Nice start, the characters are not bad, the music is good, the action scenes promise good things for the future episodes. The cons include the humour that is very much not funny (I’d love it if this series becomes as dark and gritty as Speedgrapher but that doesn’t seem likely for now) and the main character, Alice seems to be of the suicidal do-gooder type of character which I am not that fond of. I hope she becomes cooler or funnier. Don’t get me wrong, she is not annoying or anything, it’s just that few people in real life would there to attack tank with a sword or whatever her close combat weapon was.

Next comes Kanon. It’s apparently a remake of an older series with the same name which I haven’t watched. It’s produced by Kyoto Animation, a studio regarded by everyone but me as the lair of the anime gods (if you have lived in a cave in the last year go find a random blog/review site and read about Suzumiya Haruhi). I admit the animation of Kanon is stunning but it seems such a wasted effort to me. I haven’t seen so much moe-feeling in one episode since…I don’t know, never? We have a main male character who seems destined to be surrounded by a harem of girls who cannot seem to decide whether they are kids or women. He also suffers from amnesia – I wonder if this will bring some thrillers elements into the equation or is just a cheap plot device to make him forget his childhood love which will be of course remembered soemhow in the end. Since the character designs are nothing special and fanboys enjoying the view of the many moe girls seem to be the point of the series I ask – what’s the big idea of spending so much money and effort on the animation? Make sci-fi or fantasy, or good old action – anything that really will use this awesome backgrounds and all the other visual goodies. But I will persevere, I watched five episodes of Haruhi, I will probably watch about the same number of Kanon before deciding whether it’s trash or beautiful looking trash, I mean gem. And no, I don’t hate KyoAni, I actually love FMP:Fumoffu to death. Some of my best friends work in Kyo…ah, forget it, I went too far. But Fumoffu rules.

We get to Asatte no Houkou. Now this is very promising. It’s atmospheric, it’s melancholic, the art while not spectacular is beautiful, the soft piano music creates a real feeling of summer and enhances the emotions the anime tries to convey and convey it does indeed. It seems to be character driven and the characters are intriguing, they don’t talk that much or spoon feed everything to the viewer but like in Simoun their facial expressions and the body language in general speak volumes. It’s about a girl, called Karada, who is about 12 years old I think and she likes to be treated like an adult, not a kid. Notice the difference with your average moe or loli or even anime schoolgirl. Most of them strive to be cute and tend to behave rather childishly because for some reason this is considered cute rather than annoying. The other main character – Shouko is bitter that Karada’s big brother has broken up with her years ago to take care of his sister. In the end of the epsiode a wishstone turns Shouko into a girl and Karada into a young woman. Be careful, what you are wishing for, huh?

So far from what I have watched and read on various blogs and forums, the only yuri series of the season seems to be Otome wa Boku ni Koi Shiteru. It does suffer from the massive problem of the main character being actually a boy who pretends he is a girl and enrolls in an al lgirl school. I really wonder why this idea seems to get ever more popular. It hardly appeals to many fans of yuri (unless something changes the boy into a girl as in Kashimashi) and I doubt it appeals much to the fans of normal romance series – I know that most harem leads are often classified as sissies or wimps but wearing female clothes is really stretching the limit of the audience patience with such archetypes, one would suspect. So this anime looks a lot like Strawberry Panic, the uniforms are similar and from what I gathered from the raw the setting is a catholic school. I managed to survive seventeen episodes of StoPani stupidity so if there are some real hints of girl-girl romance in this I will probably follow this one (and curse myself for being a dumb fanboy who has to die, if we are to follow the slogan of this blog. Oh, the hypocricy…). It’s just 12 episodes long, IIRC, so maybe I will survive this trial. Maybe.

Lovely Idol is about idols. Much of the first episode (whose raw I mostly skimmed rather than watched) consists of many pretty girls singing rather bland J-Pop. It does feature a lot of cute girls (I know I said but that’s the main ponit so I needed to emphasise it), the character designs while very much unoriginal are nice eye candy, so if the music improves and the plot is not too dumb it might have some chancee to be a guilty pleasure reserved for depressing times. It also has a lot of female suiyuu talent, so I guess the senses might be satisfied from watching this while the mind might rebel.