天下制覇

 

Maybe someday, I’ll live somewhere it doesn’t rain every single day of October.

First, a quick note. Some time during the next week, my host is moving me to a new server. I don’t anticipate any issues since this is a pretty lean setup and have gone through all the basic checks anyway without needing to do anything. Heck, it may have already happened. The server was throwing 500 errors for about 20 minutes earlier. I’ll try to keep a close eye on things, but there might be a little unexpected downtime at some unknown point. It’s nothing important, just new server hiccups. On to the main event.

There’s a limited amount of time in the day, and since I’m one of the few, the proud, the willing and arguably capable of watching this stuff without waiting for someone to subtitle things, my schedule for watching stuff syncs up more or less with the actual broadcast schedule. Therefore, there’s only so much that I can deal with in a day. Here’s the quick list of all the shows over the past week (plus the ongoing ones I’m already following) along with a short blurb designed to reduce a 24 minute episode to a quarter second bullet point. It’s hardly comprehensive, but each one is linked to my initial post on it should you want more information. Nothing’s left to air but noitaminA’s Jellyfish Princess (this Thursday), and I cannot imagine I’d pick that up.

Anything that I am 100% certain I’m going to cover for at least another week gets a little crown, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stick with it past the next episode or two. Likewise, just because I’m not psyched about something doesn’t mean that I won’t pick it up. If you’ve got any input, flames, or desperate begging, go wild.

MONDAY

Invasion! Squid Girl

 

I want to like this, but it needs to be a lot more than just a Keroro ripoff.

Maiden Demon Zakuro

 

 Surprisingly decent and even a little witty at times, but still almost oppressively generic.

Reminders of Heaven

  

 Managed to out-Xebec Xebec in producing a trashy trainwreck between two shipments of sex dolls.

TUESDAY

More To-Love-Ru

 

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

WEDNESDAY

The World God Only Knows

 

 Cute and decently made, but they need more jokes than shouting about how porn games are silly.

THURSDAY

Blood of the Reprimanded Hound

 

 Too much man for one series to contain. Maybe A-1 should have packed it with production or characterization instead.

Detective Opera Milky Holmes

 

 An interesting twist on the usual magical girl formula, but I’m not sure there’s anything more to it than that.

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes

 

The show can do humor and drama well, it just seems to stubbornly not. It’s been on the uptick recently though.

Shiki

 

The direction is often good, but the writing for this show is truly abysmal and continues to undermine every other part of it.

Yet The Town Keeps Going

 

 Shaft makes the same kind of comedy as they’ve made for the last 4 years. This time with even crappier VAs.

FRIDAY

A Certain Magical Index

 

 Same as the first season. Unduly maligned, but still a decent action show that just gets wrapped up in itself at times.

Fortune Arterial

 

 Generic porn game adaptation #1002 with zero distinguishing characteristics whatsoever.

Heaven’s Lost Property ƒ

 

 Much better and more harmless than what I watched of the first season, and looks just as good.

Iron Man

 

CG action, poor animation, and cardboard cliche characters.

Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt

 

 When it runs with the visual style, it’s fun. When it doesn’t, it’s just Gainax throwing together random crap and calling it a day.

Super Robot Wars OG: The Inspector

 

 Spent all its budget in the first episode and then collapsed into talking heads and nipples poking through plug suits.

MM!

 

Got to hand it to Xebec, they’re doing a pretty good job with the humor and drama sides of this and keeping it fairly clean.

Bakuman.

 

Yet another badly made Jump show^tm. Going nowhere fast and looking awful in the progress.

SATURDAY

Hakuouki

 

THESE ARE MY BEAUTIFUL MEN.

Letter Bee Reverse

 

If I were trapped in a Pierrot Jump show, I’d spend the entire thing crying too.

Star Driver

 

It may be too flamboyant for me. Bones and Utena’s writer too, so the writing’s going to go off into left field pretty fast. 

SUNDAY

Arakawa Under the Bridge *2

 

Same as the first season, and I was sick of that by about the second episode.

My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute

 

"It’s funny because she says that same things people write on internet message boards" apparently. Also, she has a permanent blush.

Samurai Girls

 

 ARMS putting together a stylized action show with a strong male lead? What madness is this?

Psychic Detective Yakumo

 

Bee Train status quo maintained.

Wrapup:

For the time being, my schedule is tentatively looking like:

Monday: Zakuro and/or Squid
Tuesday: Nil
Wednesday: The World God Only Knows
Thursday: Two of Legend, Shiki, and Holmes depending on the next week or two
Friday: Index, Forte, MM!
Saturday: Maybe Star Driver (very late night though)
Sunday: Samurai Girls, maybe OreImo if it improves

A good mix of comey and action this season, mostly the former, so it’s up to Index and Samurai Girls to pull their weight. MM’s been a very pleasant surprise a well. Other than the blank spots on Tuesday and Saturday, nicely spread out too. I’m still not thrilled with anything on Thursdays at the moment and confused as to what exactly Holmes is going to be (and whether it’s going to actually have its titular Opera character/pimp), but we’ll see what exactly they’re even planning to do with the show. I’m just hoping that everything doesn’t collapse like last season because… ew.