Summer, the worst season of the year, is officially underway. The enormous ball of gas known as the sun is shining down on us in all its glory, melting the skin off of those brave enough to endure its scorching heat and harsh ultraviolet rays. The cicadas are doing their cicada thing outside and generally being annoying. All signs point to summer. You could hit up the pool if you’re crazy, but it’s much smarter to stay comfortable indoors and watch the new season of anime. Going outdoors is overrated anyway.

This season I’ll cover first impressions for Bakemonogatari, CANAAN, Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!, Princess Lover, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. In addition, this impressions post will follow… A different format than usual to mix things up a bit.

Bakemonogatari (2 episode impression)

This is the show that intrigued me the most heading into the summer season, and so far it has not disappointed. Based on the first two episodes, the title (Ghostory in English) seems to be a bit of a misnomer as its focus is more on general supernatural phenomena rather than what we traditionally define as “ghosts”. That’s just nitpicking though, and it’s only an impression based on the first two episodes.

The animation is downright gorgeous and sucks you into the supernatural world surrounding the protagonist, Koyomi Araragi. The animation nails the supernatural setting down perfect. The only thing that hampers Bakemonogatari is that the animators still feel they need to give it the “SHAFT experience” chock full of crazy camera angles and frequent shifts to screens full of text to remind the viewer that this is a SHAFT anime. You know, because we wouldn’t remember otherwise. SHAFT art direction is a heavily acquired taste, and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when they have to artsy up their dramas like this. Despite that setback, Bakemonogatari was a mostly positive experience.

Base Score: 5
+1 for unique OP
+2 for interesting premise and story
+1 for gorgeous animation
-1 for pretentious SHAFT art direction

Score: 8

Recommendation: A very unique ghost story of sorts that vaguely reminds me of Natsume Yuujinchou with much darker overtones. Bakemonogatari is a serious contender for best show of the season. If you haven’t already seen it, I implore you to at least try the first episode.

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CANAAN (2 episode impression)

Canaan sort of slid under my radar until Meu mentioned “Type-Moon” to me. Being more than a casual fan and less than a hardcore fan of all things T-M, I had to hop onto to Canaan train to see what it was about at the very least. I was a bit skeptical about this because T-M has a shaky track record with the mediocre Tsukihime and F/SN adaptations, though on the flip side the Kara no Kyoukai movies were brilliant.

Canaan as a whole hasn’t blow me away or anything, but it’s been an above average experience so far. The animation is smooth, the characters are defined, the action plentiful, and the music while not outstanding fits the setting. The story in the first episode was… how should I say… Schizophrenic. It was all over the place without really explaining anything, and then frentic gunfights were tossed at us without time to catch our breath and piece the story together. The second episode remedied this dilemma somewhat with some insight into the backstory, but it’s still a lot of information overload for this early in the show.

Maybe I missed the point though, and the show intends to toss all the information at the beginning to gradually piece together as the show chugs along each week. Another point is that Canaan is only 13 episodes, which isn’t exactly a lot of time to worth with, and my complaints about the story are probably overblown. It was fun to watch at the least, which is about all you can ask for from a summer show.

Base Score: 5
+1 for Type-Moon influence
+2 for assassin girls
-1 for information overload in first episode

Score: 7

Recommendation: Recommended for adrenaline junkies and fans of all things Type-Moon. It remains to be seen if the titular character will be anything more than a silver-haired Shiki Ryogi, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing since I do like Shiki. Canaan’s big saving grace is the fact that it has the T-M logo backing it, otherwise it would be just another girls with guns show.

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Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!! (2 episode impression)

Going into this I knew Juuden-chan would be heavily fanservice oriented since it’s from the mind of Bow Ditama, the manga-ka behind KissxSis and Mahoromatic. I’ll admit being partial to his cute girl art style too. Ditama has a penchance for ecchi but his stories also have some depth to them too, and Juuden-chan is no different. Upon getting past the initial thick layer of fanservice, this show actually delves into issues of depression as the main character, Plug, struggles to help people overcome the problems in their lives — By plugging a giant socket into their bodies to “recharge” them.

The stark contrasts in seriousness make the show kind of weird. As an example, Plug will learn about about the problem that’s afflicting someone in one scene, then in the next scenes there are gratuitous camel toe shots, Plug will be hit with a baseball bat and wet herself, an ecchi stock footage magical girl transformation, and then Plug will finally help her client overcome their depression — By plugging them with a giant socket.

All things considered, nothing about the show’s individual parts is really worth talking about. Animation is borderline average. Music is forgettable. You know what I’m getting at. Juuden-chan fits the definition of bad, but it’s something of a guilty pleasure.

Base Score: 5
+1 for Ditama’s cute girls
+1 for decent fanservice
-3 for weird peeing fetish

Score: 4

Recommendation: Not recommended unless you’re on the same wavelength as me. If you liked any of Ditama’s previous works, namely KissxSis and Mahoromatic, you’ll probably like Juuden-chan despite how mediocre it is. You’re better off watching something else otherwise.

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Princess Lover (1 episode impression)

What can I say about a show called Princess Lover? It’s an eroge adaptation about loving princesses, right? The title is unoriginal, but I’ll give it credit for not beating the meat around the bush and getting straight to the point. Let’s be frank. If you’ve seen one eroge adaptation, you’ve seen them all, and Princess Lover is probably no exception. To its credit, Princess Lover does seem to have a dark subplot involving the protagonist, Teppei, trying to avenge the untimely death of his parents. All that is thrown out the window since it’s hard to take any show that reeks this much of harem seriously unless a nice boat is thrown into the mix. The generic protagonist first meets the equally generic heroine when he… Ahem… Rescues her from her horse drawn carriage that’s being chased by hoodlums with guns. Ugh…

The girls are pretty generic from the cast introduced so far. Spunky ojou-sama, check. Maid, check. Sword girl that looks suspiciously like Saber, check. Nothing about the show as a whole stands out. The animation wasn’t bad, but nothing else was remotely noteworthy. Hell, it’s even selectively censored too. The bouncing boobs are free, but you have to buy the DVDs for panty shots. Add everything up and it looks like your run of the mill ero adaptation… That is until Norio Wakamoto speaks his first line. At that point all of Princess Lover’s shortcomings are instantly forgiven. Wakamoto, much like yuri, makes everything better.

Base Score: 5
-2 for cliche and generic harem cast
-1 for censoring shots of a panticular nature
+1 for ass kicking butler
+9000 for Wakamoto

Inflated Score: > 9000

Real Score: 4

Recommendation: Fully mediocre ero anime adaptation, but Wakamoto saves the show. The man’s voice has a quality that always brings a smile to my face. I don’t recommend Princess Lover except for the Wakamoto factor.

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Umineko no Naku Koro ni (2 episode impression)

The much anticipated Umineko didn’t disappoint and is every bit the successor to its predecessor, Higurashi. The show initially draws you in nice and slowly with the false pretense of a relaxed setting, the calm before the storm. Then as was customary with Higurashi, bad stuff happens and everyone goes batshit crazy. Sucks to be in this world.

Umineko as a whole impressed me with its gripping murder mystery plot revolving around the mysterious witch, Beatrice, and above average animation… Though like its predecessor, Umineko creeps me the hell out, and the gore is a major turn off. I’ll try to stomach the gore and stick with it this time. There’s a 50/50 chance I’ll continue to watch it past the first arc.

Base Score: 5
+3 for intriguing murder mystery story
+1 for crazy Higurashi eyes
-1 for gore
-1 for “Uu Uu Uuuuu!”

Score: 7

Recommendation: Murder, mystery, boob jokes and annoying catchphrases! Just what you always wanted, because gruesome murders and annoying catchphrases go together like peanut butter and mustard. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

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Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (1 episode impression)

The third season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has left me in despair! Itoshiki and his class of deranged students are back to deliver more despair to us. ZSZS doesn’t skip a beat and is more or less the same as the first two seasons. If you know what to expect, you’ll get it. As a formality the first episode reintroduced us to the cast and started with a simple plot to get us attuned with Itoshiki’s world of despair once again. If you liked Zetsubou Sensei before, you know what to expect. More crazy art, more crazy scenarios, more despair.

Base Score: 5
+1 for Itoshiki-sensei’s utter despair towards life
+1 for pretentious SHAFT art direction
+1 because I can

Score: 8

Recommendation: It’s already the third season, so you know the drill. This is for the existing fanbase that craves more of SZS’s crazy antics and rapid fire referential humor.

PS: You may find contradiction in the “Pretentious SHAFT art direction” points. That’s because SHAFT’s crazy arthouse stylings complement comedy much better than drama. The crazy SZS action-reaction scene changes are almost a punchline in themselves.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 1:53 am and is filed under Anime, First Impressions.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.