C3: Cube x Cursed x Curious Episodes 1, 2, and 3 – Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

For reasons I might explain in a later post, I made a pledge to myself to cover every series debuting this season, with the exception of obvious kid stuff and Hunter x Hunter. (I’ll let other people have a flame war over whether I just repeated myself.) That did not get me out of reviewing C3, even though it was a show I didn’t even want to waste my time watching. The basic outline sounded suspiciously similar to last season’s The Dark Rabbit has Seven Lives: a contemporary fantasy harem show whose pretensions to horror would be promptly deflated by harem antics and absurd amounts of panty flashing.

I was not wrong about the harem problem, or about the fanservice. Where I was wrong was in thinking that these elements would overwhelm the show, keeping it from succeeding at the darker content inherent in the show’s premise. Because, when C3 decides it does want to be serious, it pulls that off far better than it has any right to.

Future Diary Episodes 1 and 2 – My Own Worst Enemy

Two seasons ago, Deadman Wonderland gave an example of a traditional shounen action show being taken in an extremely dark direction, while still maintaining the core concepts of its inspiration. Last season, Kamisama Dolls took that same type of story and modified it for the seinen demographic: not just aging up the cast, but also subtly subverting and challenging the basic themes of an overused plotline.

Future Diary predates both of those works, but almost feels like a combination of the two. Like Deadman Wonderland, it’s far darker and more lurid than your standard shounen fare. Like Kamisama Dolls, it takes a story type traditionally used for one demographic and targets it at a a different one. But Future Diary ages down rather than up, taking traditionally seinen plot tropes from series like Battle Royale and Death Note while changing the age of the lead to something shockingly low.

The end result is a series that is high on concept and perhaps a little low in its execution. Taken purely as a shounen show, however, it’s looking to be far more interesting than Deadman Wonderland was.

Usagi Drop Episodes 8 and 9 – How Can I Make You Remember Me?

Last time I wrote about Usagi Drop, I wrote about Daikichi’s cousin, and my discomfort with the show’s insistence that she remain in what seemed to be a demeaning and unfulfilling existence. The show’s emphasis on traditional Japanese family values has been something of a reoccurring theme so far, and it comes back again strongly here, with its most untraditional female character.

Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing Episode 1 – Stalled Flight

Last Exile is a famous and iconic anime series from the once venerable Gonzo Studios, which has struggled over the past half-decade to produce anything decent. But once upon a time, Gonzo was the map for cutting edge use of CG animation combined with traditional hand-drawn work, and Last Exile was the shining star of that portfolio. So when Gonzo announced they were finally doing a sequel series, set two years after the end of Last Exile, longtime anime fans immediately started salivating at the prospect.

Those fans would include yours truly: Last Exile was the first anime series I ever bought. While it probably doesn’t make my top ten list now, I still recognize it as a quality series which has stood the test of time. The only question was whether the new series could possibly live up to the standards set by the previous series. The answer, of course, is that it does not.

Ben-To Episodes 1 and 2 – You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Discounts

At antiotaku we’ve spent a great deal of time complaining about the encroachment of harem tropes into action, comedy, and even drama series, making every loser protagonist the anime world can come up with a chick magnet despite all the odds against it. We’ve warned about the constant temptation to use female characters as sex bait. And we’ve noted in despair how often plot lines or characters lack even the appearance of common sense, much less internal consistency.

Ben-To, objectively, should qualify for condemnation under each of those categories. It’s clearly taken a page from the harem genre, as its protagonist is surrounded by lovely women, and the only main male character aside from him looks to be an antagonist (at least if the opening is any indication). It’s willing to be sexually suggestive with its cast, from their basic character designs to the choice of camera angles in documenting them. And the basic concept is so ridiculous that, even without the science-fiction or fantasy elements of many of the other series airing this fall, the series is still in the running for being most unrealistic.

Ben-To is, on paper, a show I should hate. So why I am enjoying it so much?

Chihayafuru Episodes 1 and 2 – The Cards Don’t Lie

Manga and anime based on collectable card games are traditionally one of the bottom feeders of the industry, used to boost some commercial product. Slightly above CCGs that are games based on non-athletic sports, from shogi to go to puzzle solving to, now, karuta, a traditional Japanese card game with several variants. These sorts of themes are tricky for animators to properly utilize. Done wrong, as was the case with shogi in Shion no Ou, and viewers can’t grasp even the basic mechanics of the game, much less understand the strategy or depth of play involved. Unlike athletic sports, cerebral games are remarkably difficult to capture in a visual medium.

However, when a series gets one right, as Hikaru no Go did with go, an entire generation of Japanese can relearn the virtues of a traditional game. A quick glance at Chihayafuru’s wikipedia page confirms that the manga did that with karuta, providing some hope that this show would be one of the better examples of the genre. Add in the fact that the original manga was published for a josei audience, and that hope of quality became an expectation. I’m happy to say I was not disappointed.

Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls Episodes 1 and 2 – Random Acts of Violence

I made a pledge to myself this season that I would review every single new series starting up this October. I have no doubt I will regret that by the time the month is out, and this show is as good of a place as any to explain why. Ordinarily, I can take a look at a show’s promo material and maybe a trailer or two, and immediately get a feel for which shows I’m just not going to like. Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls (marketed in Japan as Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!! or “Love me seriously!!”) is yet another harem game turned into a anime, with a ridiculous cast and equally ridiculous concept—and in this case, a cliched ridiculous concept.

One problem with visual novels, particular harem visual novels with adult content (that is, most of them), is that they never bother investing any energy into side characters, a background setting, or anything other the idealized portrayal of a set of 2D girls to be romanced. Majikoi avoids that problem by going in the opposite direction: It’s so filled with random crap that it’s hard to remember what the show is ostensibly about.

Persona 4 Episodes 1 and 2 – To Thine Own Self Be True

Given the close relations between the Japanese anime and video game industry, it’s sort of curious that so few games (that aren’t visual novels) get an anime port. This goes double for games like the popular Persona series, which seem tailor made from a tv adaption. With the games sporting cut scenes that basically are anime clips, and the voice cast for Atlus games often staffed with A-level voice talent, porting the games over entirely seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

Until this season, however, the only Persona anime made was a spin-off of Persona 3, which had only a tangential connection to the original game. That is clearly not the game with Persona 4: The Animation, whose very title tells you this will be a direct adaption of the most recent entry in the franchise. Given the Persona series, and software producer Atlus more generally, has always been respected on the story front, this shouldn’t be a bad thing.

At the same time, watching the first couple episodes makes me wonder if the creators of Persona: Trinity Soul didn’t have the right idea. That series, as I said, was a loosely related spin-off, but that gave the story a freedom to be better aligned with the needs of a tv format. Persona 4 isn’t ditching any of its heritage. And that could wind up being the albatross around the show’s neck.

Guilty Crown Episode 1 – The Future Starts with You

Funimation spent 2010 simulcasting every noitaminA show it could get its hands on, which gave us gems like Tatami Galaxy, Shiki, and Princess Jellyfish. This year, the company has been much more selective about its simulcast choices in general, including with the noitaminA block. It selected the high-concept sci-fi dystopia series with thinly veiled social commentary over the carefully crafted character drama in winter and spring, and didn’t even pick up the dystopia show in the summer. That last decision was wise, as No. 6 was the worst noitaminA show we’ve had in years, but Fractale and [C] were also far weaker than their less political counterparts.

Guilty Crown is the latest show set in a dystopian future; here Japan has been taken over by a shadowy multinational organization and a band of resistance fighters seeks to liberate the country. One would think that Funimation would still be a bit shy of this sort of series, given how their last picks turned out, but instead the company is doubling down on their pick, running ads on anime related websites about how Guilty Crown is “the most anticipated new series” of the season.

Given the show is vying with the swan song of one of the most iconic series of the past decade, and the lavishly produced prequel of the popular Fate/Stay Night, that was and is a rather grandiose claim, but it may well be true. The more amazing fact is that all that anticipation looks to be justified.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere Episodes 1 and 2 – Dumbstruck

Thus far it’s been a very promising fall season. We’ve had great shows, good shows, decent shows, and shows that are perhaps on the way to faceplanting but are alright for now. What we haven’t had is anything that’s just plain awful. This is actually sort of disappointing to me as a reviewer, because writing fiercely negative reviews is one of the more fun parts of the job.

Well, I am disappointed no longer. I said yesterday that Sunrise was giving us three new shows this season, and this one, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, is the only one which isn’t an original series. Still, Sunrise thought so highly of the original light novel series that not only did they adapt it to the small screen, but they greenlit a thirteen episode sequel season before the first episode of this season even aired. They clearly have a lot of confidence in this property, and after seeing it, I have not the slightest idea as to why. The show is a complete trainwreck from beginning to end.