天下制覇

Sea Story
http://www.sea-story.tv/
Studio: Zexcs
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers June 24th

Summary: 
Two mermaids find a ring that fell into the ocean. They leave the ocean in search of its owner, and when they encounter a ‘girl of the sky,’ a mysterious power awakens and darkness threatens to envelope the world.

Personal Outlook:
This show has so many things going for and against it. On one hand, I’ve really liked just about everything Zexcs has done for the past year and a half outside of Oinarisama and it has some top talent involved in the writing. However, one of its directors is the same ‘genius’ that was responsible for the second and third seasons of ZnT. It’s not really based on any solid source material, so I’m hoping the writing will trump the directing, and the promo is absolutely gorgeous. And then again, it could just be generic magical girl mermaids. Or it could be lesbian magical mermaids. Who even knows. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
What part of a mermaid weighs the most? The scales! Ackackackackackackack…

Horie Yui Count:

Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!
http://www.comicgum.com/topics_0901jyuden.php
Studio: Studio Hibari
Genre: Comedy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers June 24th (Late night)

Summary: 
Plug is a plain office worker by day, but in reality she’s come from another world with a special power. She can imbue people with good fortune and change their destinies. Her mission is to travel the world and spread good luck wherever she goes.

Personal Outlook: 
Pushed back from a May start to June, letting it get double duty from last season’s preview. Whoopie. Promo is fanservicetastic, and being on ATX, it’s going to be extra-extra-fanservicetastic. Who knows though. Because of Macademy, Pengy, and Queen’s Blade, I no longer trust my ability to portend what will be stomachable fanservice with actual wit and humor behind it, or just trash these days. I’m really pretty strongly leaning towards the latter here though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Still worse for you than most genetically modified fast food.
    

Sweet Blue Flowers
http://www.aoihana.tv/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Romance
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 1st

Summary: 
When Fumi returns to the town where she grew up, she encounters her old protector and first love, the spunky Akira. This is a story about their relationships as they go through school.

Personal Outlook: 
Unabashedly lesbian romance through and through, so if you’re into that kind of thing, go nuts. This is being done by JC Staff’s drama team (Nodame/Honey and Clover), so I don’t think it’ll deviate all that far from the source or be too terrible, but it’s really just not my thing, nor JC Staff’s for that matter. They’re great at light comedy, but tend to have some issues with anything outside of that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Two Billy Idols out of a possible seven and a quarter.

Horie Yui Count:

When the Seagulls Cry
http://umineko.tv/
Studio: Studio Deen
Genre: Thriller
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 1st

Summary: 
The patriarch of of the Ushiromiya family lies dying, and his family arrives on his private island to divide up his estate. Once there, they become trapped on the island by a tornado. People begin mysteriously dying, the cause blamed on a riddle that the Golden Witch, Beatrice, left for the Ushiromiyas. It falls to Battler, a natural born skeptic, to face Beatrice’s riddle and disprove the existence of the supernatural. 

Personal Outlook: 
I’m probably going to be stuck with this whether I want it or not. Hopefully all the money that Deen clearly didn’t spend on Rei, 07 -Ghost, Marimite, etc etc has been funneled here, because they’ve been doing a pretty piss poor job lately which keeps me from feeling anything but dread no matter what show they may be making. It would also let me rename Wednesdays to Seadays if I snatch up this and Sea Story. Or maybe Horiedays.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Magic it is not. Midichlorians they are.

Horie Yui Count:
   

NEEDLESS
http://needless.jp/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Action
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 2nd

Summary: 
In the aftermath of WW3, giant ‘Black Spots’ appeared in Japan. The government sealed them off, but eventually survivors of the disaster started emerging from them with supernatural powers. Feared by the world, but with power that it envied, they were labelled The Needless.

Personal Outlook: 
Wow. Looking over this director’s resume, you notice one thing connecting all of his works… they were all abysmally produced. Since it’s Madhouse, there’s really no way to tell how it’ll actually end up looking without a ouji board. At least the head writer is a longtime veteran of action shows of varying quality, but most recently, and closest to my heart, ZKC. I’m cautiously optimistic, but Madhouse honestly tends to only put the effort in for their tip top series, and I just can’t see this getting that kind of attention. This also is technically from a Jump publication too, and I can’t even remember that last time I enjoyed anything that began its life to that collection of rags. Seriously, you might have to go as far back as Golden Boy.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
I’ve got a black spot for you, pirate!

Taisho Baseball Girls
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/taisho/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Comedy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 2nd

Summary: 
During the Taisho era (1912-1926), a group of schoolgirls decided to form a baseball team. Aside from the problem of even finding girls interested in playing baseball, they also need to figure out the rules themselves before their season can begin.

Personal Outlook: 
 While I find baseball interesting from a sociological research perspective as one of the few sports that allows amateur statistical tracking, I also find it to be the fourth most boring sport in existence, behind only golf, NASCAR, and 43 man squamish. On the other hand, this is Potemayo’s director back at the helm after all too long of an absence and my Thursdays are looking light. I can already feel the self-loathing and baseball complaining settle in. *sigh*

Preseason Swing Rating: 
If Devil Summoner has taught me anything about the Taisho years, it’s that these girls are so screwed.
  

Bakemonogatari
http://www.bakemonogatari.com/index.html
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Fantasy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 3rd

Summary: 
Koyomi was attacked by a vampire, but was helped to regain his humanity by a mysterious man. Soon after, he discovers that other people in his school have also been affected by mysterious monsters and curses. Unable to ignore them, he tries to help each with their problems.

Personal Outlook: 
Very very very similar to xxxHOLiC’s premise in many ways, right down to the mysterious powerful witch witch doctor who demands payment for his help. The main difference is that nobody’s a clone of anybody else each individual case is much more fleshed out and they’re all girls instead of Doumeki and an older dead Doumeki lookalike. Given that it’s a Friday show with next to zero competition, and Shaft’s at the helm, my attention is its to lose.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Three lunar rabbits.
   

Horie Yui Count:
     

Element Hunters
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/ph/
Studio: HeeWon Entertainment
Genre: Selling Toys
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 4th (Very early morning)

Summary: 
Elements started mysteriously disappearing from the world, and humanity came to a grim realization: "Everything consists of elements." 60 years later, it’s discovered that they’re flowing to the Negative Earth in another dimension, but only young teens can penetrate the wall to find out what happened and save the planet.

Personal Outlook: 
Seriously. That’s paraphrased directly from their official site with editing for brevity. It took me about a full minute to stop laughing. What a horrible and grim revelation. And apparently we’re not going to figure that out for another 20 years.
Brought to you by the geniuses that brought us Crash B-Daman, a game about little children playing hardcore marbles with little plastic guns. Veterans of Beyblade, it was easy for them to move from selling tops to selling guns to children. And now, here we are, in the same timeslot, the same production, and selling periodic tables. It’s got to be karmic.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Ha ha! You’ve activated my trap card!

Canaan
http://www.canaan.jp/
Studio: PA Works
Genre: Recycled Type-Moon Designs
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 4th

Summary: 
A woman watches Shanghai from the roof of a building, taking in the noise below, fusing together to form a tapestry of chaos. She clutches her rifle and takes aim, thinking that she doesn’t care about her own life, as long as she can kill ‘him.’

Personal Outlook: 
Kudos to Hashihime for being one of the few bright enough to not confuse 428 for Canaan. Honestly. One is about a kidnapping in Tokyo, the other is about Shanghai assassins. But enough about the failings of others.
Brought to us by the same general staff that put together True Tears, with Type-Moon contributing about as much as Clamp did for Geass… not to mention that True Tears wasn’t actually based on the game that supposedly inspired it either. The biggest question mark is the newbie director. And, of course… any real idea as what this show is actually going to be about.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Eight silly hats.

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/zetsubou3/
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Comedy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 4th

Summary: 
The third season about a teacher’s eternal quest to teach his all-too-willing-to-learn students about how cruel and corrupt the world really is.

Personal Outlook: 
I love how everybody rushes to point out that they understood the pun of combining Bakemono and Monogatari, but nobody’s rushing to explain the æ‡º/三 pun. That’s right. I’m pulling linguistic pun rank on all the fronters stepping on my treads. Dig it, yo. And I’m not even going to explain it. That’s how I roll. At any rate, this is a shoo-in for me given that I’ve already thoroughly enjoyed the first couple seasons. I could use a good comedy after last season’s slim pickings too.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
One entirely oversized and underaged harem.

Kanamemo
http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/kanamemo/
Studio: Feel
Genre: Comedy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 5th

Summary: 
After losing her family, Kana begins working as a live-in for a newspaper printing and delivery company. Her lodgings are so poor that her room has a hole in it, letting all the other workers peek in and cause chaos whenever they want.

Personal Outlook: 
The thing that worries me the most here is that the head writer has approximately zero experience with comedies. At least the director is a veteran from the better seasons of Galaxy Angel, so it might not matter at all, but Feel has yet to produce anything but decidedly mediocre shows. I imagine it’ll be watchable, but I wouldn’t expect anything beyond that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Fun with a little girl through a hole in a wall, eh?
     

Horie Yui Count:

Princess Lover!
http://www.prilover.tv/
Studio: GoHands
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 5th

Summary: 
Arima’s parents died in a tragic accident, and he suddenly became the direct heir to his grandfather, one of the richest and most powerful men in all of Japan. With his change in status, he’s forced to move to a new school, filled with nobility, all with their own quirks, while also trying to adjust to his own new life in the aristocracy.

Personal Outlook: 
I must admit that my initial reaction was to shake my fist and think to myself that Giga’s "A Princess is Under Foot!" would be a far better use of everybody’s time, but upon further perusal, this might actually turn out to be rather enjoyable. At least from the promotional material they’ve put out, GoHands seems to be trying to make a great first impression. As far as I’m concerned, the more swords you add to these kinds of things, along with yakuza chasing carriages across cliffsides, the better they turn out. I think it’s also worth mentioning that Wakamoto’s reprising his father role in a porn game adaptation in a short hop, step, and jump over from Tayutama.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Down with the aristocracy! Let socialism reign supreme!
  

GA Fine Arts Department Art Design Class
http://mv.avex.jp/ga/
Studio: AIC
Genre: Comedy
Information Links: ANN Entry
Premiers July 6th

Summary: 
The eighty seventh adaptation of a short comic series about the daily lives of girls in an art club. This time with a name twice as redundant.

Personal Outlook: 
Haven’t we squeezed all the blood from this rock yet? I tend to not get along with these shows particularly well. Hidamari Sketch has just enough of Shaft’s weirdness for me to barely cobble together enough intelligent to say on most weeks, and other ones, I just rambled aimlessly about Hiro’s hair. It also doesn’t help that AIC/this director stopped producing decent things about 6 years ago, and this sure as hell doesn’t look like another Cromartie.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Cut title in half: win prize.
 

Horie Yui Count:
     

Sora no Manimani
http://www.mmv.co.jp/special/soramani/
Studio: Studio Comet
Genre: Comedy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 6th (Late night)

Summary: 
After being away for seven years, Saku returns to his old hometown and is immediately bullied by his old friend into joining the astronomy club.

Personal Outlook: 
I actually have little clue what the title is supposed to mean. "Entrusted to Space?" Whatever. Given that the last thing that this studio and director made was the godawful bits of School Rumble, I wouldn’t get my hopes up too far. I’m not so sure what’s exciting about space anyway. Anime has taught me that everything that comes from there either wants to eat your brains, or is a race of well endowed women desperate to have sex. Actually… I think I just answered my question.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
OBEY MANI-MANI.

Spice and Wolf 2
http://www.spicy-wolf.com/
Studio: Brains Base
Genre: Sleeping Aid
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 8th

Summary: 
Wolf god eats apples while her boytoy haggles over the price of hay.

Personal Outlook: 
I almost made it through the third episode of the first series. Then I set fire to my dog to make sure I was awake. Oddly, it turns out that I didn’t own a dog back then, so I must have set fire to a neighbor’s child. Sadly, there’s no way to know what really happened. Go bother Omni.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Continuing to set unreasonable body expectations for young Japanese wolf gods.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
http://tokyo-m8.com/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Drama
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 9th

Summary: 
Two girls are caught in a massive earthquake while on a field trip to Tokyo. This will be the story of their struggle to find their way to their mother amid the chaos of the fallout and rescue efforts.

Personal Outlook: 
You know… I actually end up watching most of Bones’ more serious shows, albeit usually a month or two after the fact and they’re really starting to remind me of Gonzo in a lot of ways, only instead of driving their jalopy off a cliff into a shark infested sea, the convertable just quietly runs out of gas somewhere outside of Winona. It’s certainly about 18 steps up, but I can’t remember the last Bones show that I watched that I felt positive about at the end. All this waffling is to dance around the main point: "This is a completely original story, it contains an earthquake, apart from that, your guess is as good as mine."

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Survival Protip: Boil water to kill the bacteria.
         

Manageable Modern Magic
http://www.gendaimahou.com/
Studio: Nomad
Genre: Comedy
Further Information: ANN Entry
Premiers July 11th

Summary: 
The short and rather underdeveloped Koyomi is an average girl in just about every way, but longs to be something more. One day, she finds a flier for a magic school, and through a series of unusual circumstances, ends up apprenticed to one of the strongest mages on the planet. Her new life as somebody special has just begun.

Personal Outlook: 
Man, the promo for this was underwhelming. I hold a little hope since this is the same director/studio that brought us Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, but then again, I wasn’t really a huge fan of that towards the end either, and this looks about four tiers lower on the humor scale and eighteen tiers lower on the Electric Butterfly scale. There’s also some weird promo being streamed starting the 29th online labeled as episode 0, just to be thorough here.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
Many mandragoras make magic mundane, maybe?