Egg

Some say the current state of anime leans too far towards the same-old same-old, the moeshit, the fluff, or whatever you like to call it. Perhaps I don’t have rich tastes, but my selection from this season’s pile has so far been pretty good to me, more or less. One new first look, Gin no Saji, which started last week and I’m a week late on, and a handful of currently airing mentions on some of the cream-of-the-crop entries this week.

 

 

Gin no Saji
“CHICKEN ANUS”
Hachiken Yugo is a high school kid from the city, but he enrolls in an agriculture school out in the country. So each day, he is now subjected to learning about farming and livestock and tending to the school’s many animals and byproducts. Along the way he makes friends with other kids who also attend the school to learn the skills they need to help start new farms, or run existing family farms. Hachiken’s only weakness is he had no idea what he was getting into.

Before I moved to the northeast, I went to school with kids who lived in family farms or helped tend local farms in the midwest. Not very many, since most of the kids in my middle and high school were suburban or city kids, but you could pick them out of the crowd, and they definitely knew a thing or two about animals. When I moved to the northeast, kids in my sophomore high school class picked on me from being from “farm country”. I thought that was hilarious, because I lived in a normal sub-division, but I guess the farm was down the road. Gin no Saji seems like it will be a lot of insight in what I remember from back then, along with all the stories my wife tells me of her agi-science classes in high school, when she wanted to do this sort of thing once.

Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-bu
“You fucked up. Now you fucked up. Now you fucked up. Now you fucked up.”
I’ve never been an airsoft or paintball player, so I can’t be an expert commentator on these sorts of things, but I can say I don’t mind watching cute girls shoot each other. I can’t really say I was terribly impressed with Yuna cutting her hair to somewhat match Sono at the end, I was hoping for either twintails or ponytail look. Throwing the match at the end though, well that’s a technical foul.

Rozen Maiden
“Defend yourself.”
I took the opportunity this past week to catch up on all of the second Rozen Maiden series this TV season is based on, and I have to say, I am very much looking forward to seeing this all animated. The story revolves around the seventh doll, but the true doll seventh roll, Kirakishou, and at the start of the series, we’re seeing the world through an adult Jun, in a world known as “The Not-Winded World”, where Jun did not choose to interact with Shinku and the Rozen Maidens as a kid, and instead went through a mundane childhood and becoming a part-time worker living alone going to a university. Unlucky for him, Kira connects the worlds and is looking to take him as she has taken the other masters, thus connecting the Jun we’ve seen before to his otherworld counterpart, in a race to “revive” Shinku and fix everything back to normal. It’s going to be some good fun, especially when Desu comes back into play soon.

Genshiken Nidaime
“Trigger Warning: Deadlines”
I am really, really trying to like this new season of Genshiken, but it’s making it awfully difficult for me to like it. It has nothing to do with the cross-dresser, the fat girl, or the crazy-glasses girl, it’s just the overall vibe of the group, it’s crumbling. Genshiken was originally a bunch of guys who hung out, played games, built models, and talked about anime. As time progressed, they started dealing with cosplay, Comikets, doujin circles, and finally everyone graduating and moving on. I know that is the natural progression of things, but this “next generation” has turned the informal gathering of weeaboos into the formal gathering of too many girls obsessed with yaoi. I’m not sure if this is a pull for more female viewers or just to prove that Genshiken can still operate with an all-girl cast, but rather than re-cast Kasukabe as a new male member, they gave that male member the “female” touch. Not quite the same. I guess I need to catch up on the manga and see if what I am watching will make sense.

Shingeki no Kyojin
“Crazy mad scientist? Female? Double-check!”
I just recently finished blowing through all of the manga I could find online, and I totally want more of it, the next main arc of this show is going to be pretty fun animated, but the part in-between is going to be iffy depending on how they handle it. I’m hoping they don’t spend too much time on this, because even the same pacing in the manga got a little trite. Still, for every weeaboo’s favorite show right now, it’s still hitting the high notes.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear G
“Guilty as charged, but dammit it ain’t right, someone else is controlling me~”
Just so we’re clear, I seriously don’t care what all’y’all say about Symphogear, I think it’s pretty fucking good, and three episodes in, Chris needs to stop being so goddamn cute this season. Meanwhile, Tachibana “Nanoha” Hibiki is trying to figure out her feelings about liberating bad guys from being bad like she did Chris, but it just ain’t gonna work the first time with our trio of Gear users. Meanwhile meanwhile, Fine starts moving along with some monster in a cage, and the scientist from the first episode WHO WE KNEW WAS EVIL and has a cane that summons Noise. So there is that. The episode closes out with Maria reappearing to challenge Tsubasa again. Fun stuff. Still amused at how Chris’ attacks are all heavy-metal band references. Again.

Highschool DxD NEW
“TITS.”
DxD is my fanservice show of the season, mayhaps of the last few seasons, because besides the fanservice, it still has an interesting backstory. I was sad to check the manga and only find a couple new chapters since I last read probably six months ago, and they just got up to what I just saw on TV. So that probably means I need to go out and find more current sources. Anyway, what is there not to love about the fastest-speed-to-tits each episode? Well, maybe not this episode.

Watamote
“It’s Not My Fault My Eyes Look Dead Inside!”
In my manga spree, I also read up on everything I could find for Watamote. Ugh, so good. In fact, this is so much better than SNAFU could have ever been in the high school reject department. If Hachiman was an A-rank social reject, Tomoko is an SS-rank social reject of the highest order. But you can’t help but cheer her on from the sidelines sometimes, or hope that she breaks through and becomes the girl of her dreams, but that would be too easy, and would rob us of all the fun. As for the conversion from the manga, it’s nailing all the points it should. Looking forward to more of this.

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I’m going to be spending this weekend putting together some of the starting framework for Saimoe 2013, which is likely to be starting very soon. I don’t generally do my avatars until after the preliminaries start, but I figure I can get everything else going hopefully in time. I’ll announce more as that comes together.

Back to Steam Summer Sale shenanigans.