Ministry of Silly Walks

Five more premieres to throw at you tonight, Freezing Vibration, Outbreak Company, Yuushibu, Golden Time, and Little Busters Refrain. A couple of these were not on my original chart, but were on my shortlist of follows for the season. I have to say, of the nine first episodes I’ve watched, this season is shaping up to be a pretty tight season. Cream-of-the-crop material? That remains to be forseen. Let’s see what we got.

 

 

Outbreak Company
“Well, one way to insult a regime is to call its ruler short.”
Feel has made a few good shows in recently years I’ve enjoyed, like Kanamemo, Jinki:Extend, and the last season of Minami-ke. Outbreak Company stands as another “alternate dimension” series similar to the many that have come before it, but were probably made most popular by Zero no Tsukaima and Dog Days. Rather than our unsuspecting MC being wisked away however, he winds up being hired for, and kidnapped to, an alternate dimension that connects to Japan. His role? General Manager of an anime company looking to market anime to a magical fantasy world. Interesting.

Actually, the first episode was better than expected. The over-the-top enthusiasm Shinichi exhibits towards everything drives the comedy of the show, while the reactions of everyone around him only further the comedy, or just plain sidestep it. Minori plays the straight woman to the routine just sort of making it that much more fun. Myuseru is just goddamn cute. As far as expectations go, if it can match Dog Days in terms of experiences in another world while maintaining the pace it began, I’m okay with this.

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Anime-Koi

Little Busters: Refrain
“Friendship. Serious Business.”
Again with the flashbacks…

There were a couple interesting character plots, namely Haruka and Kanata, but they spent an ungodly amount of time drawing out this otherwise useless story of playing baseball through twenty-six episodes, and twenty-six hasn’t aired yet. If something interesting happens, I’ll retcon this and re-write it, but as it stands, it’s twenty-six episodes of
AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR~
–https://tldranimu.net/2013/04/02/when-life-is-just-a-game/

Little Busters wasn’t terrible, but it just droned on, and on, and on in that slow-paced world where they would tease you with something interesting, and then just fold everything out in routes. There are moments when what is happening is interesting, and the characters themselves are pretty good, but I suppose I am expecting something less KEY-like and more.. well.. anything else. But if this season actually tries to sample the source material, it might be worth watching. Or we get twenty-six more episodes of AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR~

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible

Freezing Vibration
“E-Pandora just sounds like a hardcore Pandora station on ecstasy.”
The first season of Freezing aired in 2011 and covered volumes one through six, excluding the dinner party at the end of volume six. The second season starts with volume nine and jumps into the E-Pandora project in Alaska, introducing the girls from the other Genetics labs, and the E-Pandoras. Note they skipped volumes seven and eight, which largely have to do with Satella’s adoptive family and her half-brother’s blatant sexual abuse of her that ends when Kazuya mans up and straightens his shit. It really is some of the best chapters of the manga until much later in the series, but I can understand why they’d skip straight to the E-Pandora arc.

The first episode of Vibration wasted no effort spoofing a little original scene not from the manga dropping them into the freezing (META AMIRITE?) cold to battle one of the artificial Nova on the ground. Chiffon showing off her power is always more fun than it should be. Afterwards, things shift back into canon and we’re introduced to our new character set for the arc, including Roxxane and Charles, two of my favorite foreigners from the manga. My main concern for this season was that they were just going to sort of half-ass it like the first, but the opening episode impressed me quite a bit, I think they can keep the pace on this and make it pretty badass to watch. It certainly has the potential, and dare I say, I will take Freezing over Shingeki any day. Even if there were no tits (there are very much tits here) I’d still watch it.

First Rating: 9
Sub Group: Hiryuu

Golden Time
“Finally, an anime for college students doing college things!”
The joke might sound ironic, but when you consider there are few anime that spend much time in the college setting, most recently Genshiken, it’s often refreshing to have a show that doesn’t deal with “The Everyday Lives of Floating Heads of 3-A”. Because sometimes, it’s like having to sit through another Fast and Furious movie, knowing full well it’s just doing it to keep milking the ricers of their money.

The premise of Golden time seems to be the story of Tada Banri, a college student who came to Tokyo to go to law school, and his unlikely meeting with Yanagisawa Mitsuo from his old school, only to then come face-to-face with Mitsuo’s “ex” Kaga Kouko who has followed him into his college to continue her quest of a marriage and family with him.

If KyoAni is branching away from normal love school comedy to try their hand at supernatural, JC STAFF, no stranger to supernatural, crosses their path to the territory of a love school comedy, only they chose college instead of high school. I have not read the manga, but my guess is going to be that Banri falls hard for Kouko, but forms a harem on the side? I’m interested to see where this goes.

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible

Yuushibu
“Service with a smile, and oppai.”
I’m guessing after Mirai Nikki, Asread decided they needed a show that was one part Hataraku Maou-sama! and another part Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo, deciding to take on adapting this light novel into something that can only be described as pure fanservice from every conceivable angle. I did like both of the aforementioned shows, especially Maou-sama, so for another show to kind of spiritually succeed it and offer up even more fanservice and less scrunchy-face Emi makes for an okay substitute for the lack of DxD in my life. Phino will certainly be a plentiful source of greatness in this show, as all cute busty naive girls are in anime.

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Horrible

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Several more premieres are on deck for next week, but so far the season is shaping up well. Valvrave of course will step in soon and make shit go everywhere, so stay tuned for that.

Also, I am tossing around the idea of some kind of podcast kind of thing. Sort of a weekly recording of anime reactions, or something. I dunno. I’m not much for visual or audio things on my blog, preferring to keep it simple, but many ideas are flowing, so for now, just, I dunno, do nothing really. As you were.