Sacred Heart

The new season is under way, and it was good enough to throw me off of my usual streaming game Saturdays for once, so that is something. First round of first-looks are Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, Owari no Seraph, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru no Darou ka, Re-Kan, Plastic Memories, and adding to the list, Shokugeki no Soma. The second season of Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken is also in there, but it’s pretty much the same as the first, so I won’t elaborate too much there. Hold on to your butts for Shokugeki though, it’s taking last season’s Koufuku Graffiti and turning it up a notch.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid
“The power of friendship… by beating the snot out of them.”
I was a bit surprised to find that no one is currently subbing Nanoha this season as of yet. I imagine that anything not picked up by the big boys toys trips up others who often give up on subbing things they pick up, but for fucks sake guys, this is the first animated Nanoha series we’ve gotten since StrikerS. I’ll give you that this isn’t Force, and if it’s being adapted from the Vivid comic, it’s going to be battle games, but I believe it goes further into the old kingdom stuff from the end of StrikerS. Still, it’s new animated Nanoha. But I am fanboying deep here.

But are you going to turn down moe as fuck Fate?

As for the first episode, it’s about as evenly paced as the manga starts. Seems the early chapters got nuked from Batoto so I can’t reference, but it sets up Vivio’s current status, her friends, and where most of The Numbers are from StrikerS. Familiar faces appear, but they won’t do much more than that at this point, since it focuses mostly on Vivio and Co. Hopefully we’ll get to see some Vita at some point, and Suburu probably next episode. Not sure if this is going to be a one-cour or two-cour series, hopefully two, because I can’t imagine it’d be a short affair, but I am interested to see how it will be paced if it is two. We know how StrikerS turned out. Still a good show, but it suffered from mid-show drought. Much like Log Horizon S2, if we’ve seen anyone before now, spend your energy on those we haven’t and fold them around.

Also, some Anon took Ohys-Raw to make this week’s, but someone needs to get their asses in gear. Believe you me, if I could, I would, but I have zero time during the week. I don’t want to sound unappreciative of those who translate anime, because y’all are lifesavers for those of us who don’t know the moon language.

But…

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/584375127015567360

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Anon

Shokugeki no Soma
“Juicy.”
It’s sort of a shame that my old Livejournal archives from 2005 don’t have anything interesting for Yakitate Japan! I believe SEED or SEED Destiny was airing at the time though, and that was kind of a big deal for me in retrospect, but I didn’t really have serious chops for writing about anime until I started watching season-by-season in 2008-2009.

Made by Sunrise (I know, right?) it was sixty-nine episodes of baking competition after baking competition featuring an airheaded boy who would wreck everyone with his superior bread-making talents, dragging along a cast of characters ranging from plain and simple Tsukino to “Male Harleyquinn” Pierrot. It also produced the best Anime Magic card ever.

But it was also known for the most outlandish reaction sequences to tasting done by Kuroyanagi Ryo (Koyasu Takehito), who played the judge for most of the early competitions.

So up-to-bat here, by JCSTAFF, is Shokugeki no Soma, a show about a fifteen-year-old kid, Souma, working in his father’s restaurant aiming to take it over as his own and produce top-rated food. The first episode opens with the two facing off on Chinese fried rice, judged by Souma’s friend, and barely two or three minutes into this, it’s already gone Kuroyan-mode.

It only continues to get better, as later on, he serves a bacon-wrapped potato dish to beat back investors looking to raze the building for a new high-rise hotel.

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/584409112483627009
httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/584409515073863681
httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/584410849252614145

The most difficult part of this to accept, is the fact that this is JCSTAFF.

httpss://twitter.com/CirNobar/status/584411478196879361

It goes to show, never underestimate the man who brought us Yuusha-Ou GaoGaiGar, because fuck all he just SYSTEM CHANGE’d me.

First Rating: 9
Sub Group: Horrible

Plastic Memories
“Plastic Dreams”
Dogakobo always knows how to hit me with a good show that balances reals and feels. But the pseudo-software developer QA in me couldn’t help but think “What kind of lazy programmer would write a new android OS and let the old one’s memories degrade?” I mean, the irony is we see this in modern software development now, any time a new OS is released they tell you to wipe and install. So the sad aspect of their lifespan being nine years hits you pretty hard in the first episode, and puts the thought in your head that Isla is going to go out by the end of the series.

But the show has promise in its characters, and it did not occur to me at first, but Tsukasa sure looks familiar…

httpss://twitter.com/TheAoiTori/status/584517344308899840

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Horrible

Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru no Darou ka
“Remember that one game you played? It’s like that.”
We’ve had a lot of MMO-inspired titles lately, but this one sort of takes on the “randomized dungeon” genre in the respect that everyone ventures into this multi-floor dungeon to kill shit and sell the stones for cash. Added upon that, is “familias” which seem to be guilds-a-la-Spanish I suppose. Then there are boob-strings.

httpss://twitter.com/CirNobar/status/584235163057577984

Yes indeed. I had to concur, between that, elf-girls, minimal clothing, and a host of other things, this is definitely one to keep tabs on this season, hoping that it maintains the same quality and pace as the first episode. It’s no Log Horizon, but I kinda want to drag Torchlight out again and play.

First Rating: 8
Sub Group: Horrible

Re-Kan
“These are the things that terrify me the most.”
Jimmy Buffet lyrics aside, I sort of see this show from two angles. One is the sort of Sakura Trick angle where I feel like it’s going to be a girlXgirl albeit toned down compared to the former, and the second is that this is going to essentially be a spirit medium show. I’m actually down for a female romcom centered around supernatural elements, but I’ll need a couple more episodes to see how this fleshes out.

httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/584399122309980160
httpss://twitter.com/tldranimu/status/584399924059512833

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible

Owari no Seraph
“Sparkly vampires and shit.”
Vampires aren’t really my thing. My wife loves the original books that were adapted into True Blood, but she always quipped that the new-age of vampires, inspired by Twilight, were garbage. I continue to maintain that even if she isn’t a sad obsessed weeaboo like myself, I’ve married the correct woman when it comes to taste. Being old, I grew up on vampires being cold, calculating, and sinister. None of this empty-shell cuckolding shit they write now.

But for Seraph, that opening episode, it wasn’t bad, but I have to consider two things, one being director Tokudo Daisuke and his involvement with Guilty Crown, Blood+, and Shingeki no Kyojin, and two being the last revenge show in this caliber I watched was Black Bullet. The fear of the latter is really more overruled by the vibes I get from the former, it very much feels like a GC or SnK sort of show, especially since Wit Studio is involved. I guess we’ll see how it plays out.

First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible

Seems like we’re off to a flying start.

httpss://twitter.com/Yuyucow/status/584475194489708544

Heh.