My thoughts on recent shows. Is it just me, or is there way more harem/fan servicey stuff this time around?
New:
Absolute Duo: High school boys and girls with special abilities, that manifest in the form of weapons, enter a special school that trains them. The main character is an "irregular" because he calls up a shield instead of a weapon. He also gets paired up with Scandinavian girl who says "Ja" all the time. Likely to end up being a harem show with fan service all over the place. Nothing particularly special.
Kantai Collection: Based on the online card game of the same name. Basically old WW2 era battleships are anthropomorphized into various types of anime girl stereotypes and fight each other. I like the way that aircraft carriers are turned into archers, whose arrows turn into little planes piloted by little people.
If you've ever seen anything for Kantai Collection online, you'd expect it to have Queen's Blade levels of fan service, but it had very little. Kind of surprising.
The first episode was basically "moe girl who has never been in a battle before wants to do better and fight with sempai, uguu, etc."
Yuri Kuma Arashi: WHAT THE FUCK DID I WATCH?
Shinmai Maou No Testament: More fighting and harem? More fighting and harem. I liked this more than Absolute Duo, at least, and liked how the show had several fun twists. It looks like it's just going to be harem-comedy crap at first but is something totally different. Something tells me it will probably still have a lot of that though. If you want to know what the twists are:
spoiler (click to show/hide)
The story starts out with the main character's father telling him he's getting remarried. His bride-to-be had to go overseas, so her two daughters will be living with them. There's lots of "KYAA! PERVERT!!" stuff going on with the older of the two sisters and the main character. The father has to leave to go overseas, too, then we get twist #1- The two girls are not related and there is no mother-- they used mind control to make the father think this. The older "sister" is actually the daughter of a demon king and heir to the demon empire. The younger one is a loli-succubus or something. They use magic to command the main character to leave the house to them and go live with other relatives.
This leads to twist #2- The main character is unaffected by their magic, much to their surprise. Turns out he's actually a demon-hunter, as his is father, who wasn't brainwashed and was going along with the ruse, and he summons a badass sword and tells the girls he's not going anywhere and that they need to get the fuck out.
Twist #3 is that the girls are actually good. The demon princess' father was a good guy and wanted to stop demons from fighting humans and each other, but died, and the princess was hidden away on earth. So the main character runs out to find them and saves them from an attack by other demons.
Assassination Classroom: Bizarre comedy about this weird-looking yellow guy, who appears to be always smiling, and has lots of tentacles. He's super-fast, super-strong, and his bodyparts regenerate. He destroyed 70% of the moon, then threatened to destroy earth, with one request being that he be made homeroom teacher of a class in Japan. The class has one year to try to kill him before he blows up the planet. LOLWUT
Somehow, this premise works and was fun to watch. Absolutely bizarre. Oh, and the main school character looks like a girl. I thought he
was a girl for most of the episode.
Death Parade: See that opening that Junpei posted above? The show is
nothing like it.
Weird that they went that route. This is episode one, technically can be thought of as episode 2-- in 2013, the OVA Death Billiards came out and was the predecessor of this show. Same characters, same premise. Anyway, this show is about the afterlife. The main characters are otherworldly types who make two souls, who died at the same time, play games (like darts and billiards) in other to judge whether or not they should go to heaven or hell. The story was pretty serious and was more about the characters getting judged than the bar tender setting up the game and telling them where they were. The games make the people getting judged feel pain and their real intentions/character comes out by the end. Really liked this.
Koufuku Graffiti: Moe show about cooking and eating. When the main character eats, there's this oddly erotic close-up on her mouth/lips, which another points out, so I guess it's supposed to be a joke or something. Was cute/harmless.
Maria the Virgin Witch: Takes place during the middle ages. All the regular characters are depicted in a more realistic manner (proportions, clothes, etc.), although you do get "anime" faces.
Then you have the witches and succubi. Most of them are very moe/anime looking, totally out of place, and the succubus is well...as succubus, who blatantly talks about what she does to men, in an effort to tease the titular main character. The story goes back and forth between the humans, getting ready to and battling, again in a realistic manner, and then Maria coming and suddenly it's ANIMUUU~. Odd.
Continuing from the last or previous seasons:
Cross Ange: Continues to be such a fun, fucked-up show and is nothing like images might have you expect it to be. It's a like a totally fucked-up Gundam (and is made by Sunrise, too!).
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Stardust Crusaders: Yay, Jojo's is back! But this latest episode felt like more flavor of the week enemy Jojo's again. Guess it's still going to be a bit longer before the bigger battles start happening.
Aldnoah Zero: This picks up 19 months after the previous episode ended. I can't say much without spoiling everything. Remember how the first season ended on a cliffhanger?
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Surprise, none of that shit matters! Our main character Inaho is back -he got shot in the eye by Slain- and now as a cybernetic eye implant, and the princess has been taken by Slain, who has joined the Martians and is now a knight, and is in some sort of regeneration tank. Meanwhile, another princess is using holographic illusion tech/magic/whatever to make herself look and sound like the princess, and broadcast messages calling the Martians to fight against Earth. Good stuff! Also Inaho has somehow gained the Aldnoah power from the princess.
Have yet to watch Durarara! since I still need to finish the first season, Rolling Girls, and Sengoku Musou.
