天下制覇

Invasion!? Squid Girl
http://www.ika-musume.com/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres September 26th

Summary: 
 The continuing adventures of the Keroro Platoon Squid Girl and its ineffectual attempts to conquer the planet, or chase after whatever shiny thing that caches its eye.

Personal Thoughts:
While I did finish the first season, I’m often not sure why. Some parts were certainly fine, but it doesn’t have a particularly wide variety of jokes, nor the sheer zaniness of Keroro, where it steals a good 98% or so of its jokes from in the first place. Mondays look pretty bleak all around though. Maybe I’ll just get really really drunk before every episode. At 10am in the morning. Mimosa Mondays. I like the sound of that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
  
Splash was ineffective.

Bakuman. 2
http://www9.nhk.or.jp/anime/bakuman/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Insomnia Cure
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st (very early mornings)

Summary: 
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of a writer and artist struggling to create a hit in Shounen Jump so they can fulfill their dream of getting laid..

Personal Thoughts: 
Oh boy! A sequel to a Jump show that I didn’t watch because it… surprise… had godawful pacing and production. Here’s a spoiler for you. It’s not going to end. It’s never going to end. 

Preseason Swing Rating: 
     
This show makes kittens sad.

C³
http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/c3/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Action, Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st

Summary: 
There are cursed items, known as Worse, that are full of the negative feelings of humanity. Some of them even manifest themselves in human forms and can attack humans. Haruaki’s father collects them, and one day sends home a particularly powerful one that turns into a girl and asks him to help lift the curse of all the negative feelings inside her.

Personal Thoughts: 
The promos to this are… odd to say the least. There’s the one that’s just cutesy and looks like it came straight from a Bakatest episode, and then there’s one that looks like Silver Link animated an episode of Dragon Crisis. It is Bakatest’s director and his touch is easy to see, although the head writer is a little more eclectic. Basically, I’m not really sure. Hopefully they do a better job matching the tones of the PVs here than God’s Dolls did with its spasticness last season.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Accept the dark side. Let the hate flow through you.

Working’!!
http://www.wagnaria.com/
Studio: A-1
Genre: Poplar’s Chest
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st (Rebroadcast of episode 1, new episode on October 8th)

Summary: 
Sequel series. The continuing antics of the employees of the Wagnaria restaurant and the Claw that binds them all together.

Personal Thoughts: 
This show ended up being more fun to write about most weeks than actually watch. Plus it was on a slow day, which is as far from the case as you can get for this season. It has a new staff behind it (although not a good one), so maybe they can avoid the main thing that dragged down the first season, Inami, and focus instead of the more amusing members of the cast and the real harem leader, the Claw. I’m not holding my breath though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Featuring this season’s special guest: Qr’shn!

Fate/Zero
http://www.fate-zero.jp/
Studio: UFOTable
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st (One hour broadcast)

Summary: 
The Holy Grail War is a magical ceremony pitting seven mages with seven heroic spirits against each other in a battle royale with the last survivor having a single wish granted. This is a prequel to Fate/Stay Night, telling the story of the fourth Grail War.

Personal Thoughts: 
Considering that I’ve translated a fangame based on the Type-Moon series, I’m pretty sure that I get a pass on having any kind of intelligent opinion here. UFOTable does remain one of my favorite studios regardless, but lest we let our optimism get too far out of control, let’s remember that the Rakkyo and Symphonia adaptations have had a few real dog episodes/movies and UFOTables last two TV series were A.) Half a decade ago and B.) Coyote Ragtime and Manabi Straight. Not exactly the cream of the crop there. I am optimistic though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Contains 5% as much food as its successor.

Fall Seriously in Love With Me!!
http://www.anime-majikoi.com/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st

Summary: 
The city that Yamato lives in is proud of its warrior ancestry and many of the fighting traditions and trainings are passed on even today. He and his close-knit group of friends enjoy their daily lives, screwing around, fighting, and falling in love.

Personal Thoughts: 
It’s not only hilarious because it has a terrible pun in the title, but also because it’s based on porn! I’m not certain what a Lerche is either, but they did a pretty good job with Carnival Phantasm, so maybe they can keep up that same visual creativity and energy with a regular show. This is kind of a weird one in staffing too. Bakatest’s head writer with a director who has only done one comedy before, a certain lanky Zexcs ‘incest’ comedy. The promo does look fairly well-made though, and I’m weak to action-comedies. I just wish it was airing on a less busy day.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
I think this is what a Lerche is.

Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere 
http://genesis-horizon.net/
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st

Summary: 
In the distant future, humans left into the heavens, but eventually, they recreated the Earth of the past and returned to build a new society. However, war is engulfing the new land as it develops and the students in the city of Musashi  are about to be drawn into it.

Personal Thoughts: 
What amuses me the most is that they’ve felt the need to practically release a pamphlet trying to explain this messed up setting the show uses. Hopefully that means that they’re not going to spend much time actually dealing with it in the show itself. Aside from Sunrise themselves, the rest of the core staff comes from… A Channel of all things, so try and puzzle out what the hell that means. Promos look good though, and while the male lead looks like an insufferable ponce, at least that hopefully means that he’ll have an actual personality. Always a bonus. The abundance and focus on heaving bosoms does worry me. Not that they’ve ever turned me away, but I can see this quickly forgetting the action and into an endless explanation of the bizarre world with brief montages of bounces breasts.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Sunrise knows what’s most important.

Hunter x Hunter
http://www.ntv.co.jp/hunterhunter/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Adventure
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 1st (Evening)

Summary: 
Gon’s father is a famous Hunter who he has not seen since he was little. He decides that the only way to find him is to become a Hunter himself. However, being a Hunter brings prestige and status, so there are countless applicants, and Gon has both allies and enemies to deal with as he searches for his father.

Personal Thoughts: 
I’ve actually seen a non-trivial number of episodes of the original Hunter x Hunter series. Not by choice, mind you, but I have seen parts, and most of what I remember is that it takes quite a long time to actually get to anything interesting, not to mention that people have seen it all before, so I’m really not sure what this is supposed to be for besides squeezing some more blood from the stone. It’s a Jump show too with everything that comes with it, plus it airs on Sunday mornings in Japanland which is not exactly generally a time when quality shows air. And now I just reminded myself of ZKC and made myself sad.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Let’s all do the happy dance for yet another Jump show.

Phi Brain – God’s Puzzle
http://www9.nhk.or.jp/anime/phibrain/
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Thriller
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 2nd (Very early morning)

Summary: 
Kaito stumbles into some ruins beneath his school that contain a supposedly unsolvable puzzle. When he manages to solve it, he becomes aware of a secret organization named POG that is forcing other puzzle-solving geniuses all over the world to stake their lives to solve different puzzles and drawn into the battle of wits for his life.

Personal Thoughts: 
POG’s back, in Alf form. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But if the show’s antagonists turn out to be cat-eating aliens living in the attic, that would be… just darn perfect. Aaaanyway, anything involving actual puzzles, particularly supposedly impossible ones, can be tricky to handle, and Japan hasn’t really impressed me with its writing lately. There are a lot of vets behind this, but since the head writer’s the same as the one behind the Homeric epic, Rio, I can already imagine that the puzzles will involve water slides and space sharks.  

Preseason Swing Rating: 

But can he deduce why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Tamayura
http://www.tamayura.info/
Studio: Hal Film Maker
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 2nd (Evening)

Summary: 
Fuu is a shy girl who is often completely focused on taking pictures. She moves back to her childhood home at the start of high school and meets both old friends and new friends in the city that she grew up in.

Personal Thoughts: 
The OVA put me to sleep and was only 10 minutes long. Since this has all the same staff… but is twice as long, I can’t imagine anything but being put to sleep twice over. I’m just hoping that the eyecatch and ED are loud enough to jolt me out of my reverie.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

This swaying was more captivating than the entire OVA.

You and I.
http://www.kimiboku.tv/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 3rd

Summary: 
This is the story of four boys who grew up together, helping each other in school and life, and generally just enjoying themselves.

Personal Thoughts: 
You know… one of the promos here has one boy grooming another one and cherry blossoms everywhere. There really aren’t that many different kinds of shows that feature one guy picking through another guy’s hair. That’s the promising part though. That I can laugh at. The total lack of energy or basically anything at all besides "boys standing in wind" is what tells me that this is most likely going to be a whole lot of… boys standing in wind.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The only way this could be more straight is if they were oiled and muscly.

Chihayaful
http://www.ntv.co.jp/chihayafuru/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 4th

Summary: 
Chihaya never had any ambitions for herself, until a transfer student introduces her to the card game called karuta. She discovers her passion for it and decides to become a world famous master of karuta with his help.

Personal Thoughts: 
I can’t say much… if anything… about the premise excites me in any way, and this is the only show without any real promotional material out. Madhouse tends to completely phone it in on shows like this though (and most shows period for that matter). Surprisingly enough, this has a very good director behind it with a large resume, although the writer’s a complete nobody. I still doubt that much of anything will come of this show. Everything about both the source and adaptation screams unambitious.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Look into the heart of the karutas.

Maken-ki!
http://maken-ki.com/
Studio: AIC
Genre: Action, Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 4th

Summary: 
Takeru accidentally enrolls in a school where magic and combat are commonplace, even though he believes that he has none. However, when he’s drawn into a fight, he discovers a strange power inside of him and he’s quickly surrounded by girls, some wanting to kill him, others madly in love with him. He needs to quickly master his new abilities in order to survive high school.

Personal Thoughts: 
Yes, yes. Action, comedy, breasts. Plus it’s on an otherwise very slow day. My attention is its to lose. Ikkitousen’s director and a very established writer too, so it may turn out to be fairly decent anyway, although from the promos, it looks like AIC is not exactly sending their A-Team to animate this. Ew. With its only Tuesday competition being Chihayaful and Mashiro though… well… Tuesdays!

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
What’s wrong with naked fighting?

Mashiro-iro Symphony
http://www.mashiro.tv/
Studio: Manglobe
Genre: Manglobe
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 4th

Summary: 
An all-girls school is scheduled to be combined with another school, so a male representative is selected to attend the girl’s school prior to consolidation to start smoothing over any issues. Shingo is selected as that representative and has to work hard to make sure all the girls in his new school learn to trust and be comfortable around guys.

Personal Thoughts: 
Oh boy. Here’s the Type-Alpha porn game adaptation featuring Insert Personality Here forcibly surrounded by a bunch of girls that need to be in close-proximity to his penis in order to have whatever ails them healed. And it’s the roving disaster Manglobe doing it with a terrible director? I think the best to hope for is that it’s really really bad. It’s worked for terrible porn games in the past, I don’t see why it can’t work now.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Symphony to be accompanied by convenient gusts of wind.

Persona 4
http://www.p4a.jp/
Studio: AIC ASTA
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 6th

Summary: 
Yuu has just moved to a sleepy, rural village where it’s rumored that if you watch TV on a rainy midnight, you will see the person destined for you. However the people seen begin turning up mysteriously murdered and Yuu discovers that he has the power to enter any TV and bring others with him where they gain special powers. It’s up to him and his friends to stop any more murders from happening.

Personal Thoughts: 
Do I have any confidence that Angel Beats’ director and SoraOto’s head writer will be able to turn out the first overall good console RPG adapation ever? No. Do I have to watch it anyway? Probably. Like Tales of the Abyss, I figure I owe it to Atlus. The promos do look good, but let’s not forget that 99% of the plot in P4 is delivered by people standing in a circle and talking, and when Japan can cut out action to focus on talking heads, you better believe that they will. Or focus on terrible Social Links about band girls whining about how they have heads shaped like apples.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
    
Four magical dogs.

I Don’t Have Many Friends
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/haganai/
Studio: AIC Build
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 6th

Summary: 
Kodaka can’t make any friends because of his looks, and Yozora can’t make friends because she’s always mad and talks to an imaginary friend, so the two of them get together and create a club for people to hang out in, but it soon attracts all manner of people and spirals out of control.

Personal Thoughts: 
The episode 0 OVA for this was awful. Devoid of any kind of humor or fun and just a montage of various forms of T&A. It’s actually kind of surprising how bland it was given that this is SoraOto’s director. Maybe the series itself will show a lot more energy and some actual jokes, but given the wafer thin and completely inane premise that I’m willing to put hard cash down on as being completely forgotten by episode 4, I wouldn’t count on it being anything more than Yet More Shameless Pandering To Lonely Shut-ins^tm.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

W-Why doesn’t it ever stop!?

The World’s Best First Love 2
http://sekai-ichi.jp/
Studio: DEEN
Genre: Animals Close-Up With a Wide-Angle Lens
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 7th

Summary: 
Sequel series. The continuing struggles of a gay editor who has to work with a guy that he had a crush on in high school.

Personal Thoughts: 
Since the first season was an epic masterpiece that revolutionized the very landscape of anime, nay, the core of my own soul, I see no reason why I would not follow this season with the same burning fervor and passion as I did the first one.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
                            
Six and a half free-range guinea pigs.

Shana Final
http://www.shakugan.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 7th

Summary: 
Sequel sequel series. The continuing adventure of the Flame Haze, Shana, and her boy-toy Yuuji as they continue their endless quest to milk as much money out of the franchise as possible.

Personal Thoughts: 
I survived the second season, so I imagine that I can survive this one as well. Hopefully they’ll try a tack this time that isn’t 13 episodes of almost total padding and useless crap followed by 13 much better episodes. JC Staff has been having a hard time getting its ducks in a row for the last year or two when it comes to action shows though and the Shana S OVAs were pretty awful. Hopefully they’ve figured all this crap out.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Three Melon Bread-ＲＸs.

Last Exile Fam, The Silver Wing
http://www.lastexile-fam.com/
Studio: Gonzo
Genre: Adventure
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 7th

Summary: 
The Adess Commonwealth has all but conquered the world. As one of the last kingdoms desperately fights for its freedom, the battle is interrupted by a small light ship trying to hijack on of Adess’s battleships. Fam, that tiny ship’s pilot, becomes the key to the world’s freedom from Adess.

Personal Thoughts: 
Sigh. I don’t know what’s worse, that Gonzo’s back, or that they’re dredging up the corpse of one of their more successful shows to try to claw back to life. I did watch the original, although was not a fan, particularly with the collapse of sense throughout the second half. Plus, Last Exile is the only ‘good’ thing this director’s ever done at all, and the head writer has a portfolio similarly full of less-than-successes, I can’t imagine this is anything other than a shameless attempt to ride the coattails of their previous success and then coast on nostalgia. Of which I have little. 

Preseason Swing Rating: 
   
I don’t think relying on dark magic to revive dead shows is a good idea, Gonzo…

Ben-to
http://ben-to.net/
Studio: David Production
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 8th

Summary: 
Students have to buy their own lunches and dinners, so poor students like Satou have to wait until food goes on sale. The problem is that the moment it does, the store turns into a battle royale where everybody fights to be able to eat. Being weak and poor, Satou needs help getting stronger so that he can finally eat.

Personal Thoughts: 
And since David is made up of mostly ex-Gonzo folks, here we have pseudo-‘Gonzo.’ One of the promos makes it look not so bad though. The writer here does know his comedy too (Kampfer, Milky Holmes, Maid Guy), so there’s a chance that the totally inane premise could end up working well for it. Not a great chance, and Saturdays are packed as hell already, but perhaps. David has been very poor so far though, so that little action in the promo may be all that the show actually has.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Pre-emptive nominee for the Blinding Lights of Censorship award.

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
http://www.gundam-age.net/
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 9th (Very early morning)

Summary: 
An unknown enemy suddenly appears and destroys a space colony, starting humanity’s war for survival. Years later, the enemy appears again and  three generations of a family of pilots will take to their giant mecha in order to fight off the unknown and save humanity.

Personal Thoughts: 
The only giant robots I like are super deformed and in SRPGs. Oh sure, some mecha shows will occasionally tickle my fancy briefly, but they’ll mostly just remind me of how many of them, particularly when it comes to Gundams, seem to be powered by teenage angst and plot convenience. Should you be reading this drunk and be under the impression that I am some kind of impartial writer, let me assure you that I am most certainly not. This one does seem to be a little more transparent about being made just to sell more model kits though. Maybe Sunrise is getting lazy.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The invaders are from the tomato kingdom.

Future Diary
http://www.future-diary.tv/
Studio: asread
Genre: Thriller
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 9th

Summary: 
Yuki doesn’t like interacting with other people, instead choosing to just chat on his phone with his imaginary friend. However, his friend turns out to be real and forces him into a battle of survival against a bunch of other people with each participant having a special diary that can tell the future in different ways. The last one left alive becomes the new god of the world.

Personal Thoughts: 
I wasn’t terribly impressed with the ‘pilot’ OVA for this back when it was released, mainly due to the lead character spending almost the entire thing staring into the air or crying. I can’t imagine that suffering through all of that is worth whatever the minority may be, crazy girl or otherwise. I’d like to think that studios learn and improve, but data thus far would seem to indicate otherwise. There’s not much else to do on Sundays though, so who knows.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow…

Un-Go
http://www.un-go.com/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Thriller
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 13th

Summary: 
Almost every freelance detective has been put out of business by a massive single intelligence agency run by one man. But there are rumors that not everything is as it appears and Shinjirou, one of the few detectives left still working, intends to get to the bottom of the intelligence mogul’s success.

Personal Thoughts: 
And finally, we reach our two noitaminA shows. What’s with Bones and ‘mystery’ shows lately, anyway? Gosick, No.6, and now this. I really can’t say that this sounds promising at all, particularly after how boring the opening episode of No.6 was, and then hearing what a fiasco it ended as (BEES!), along with how inane Gosick was all around. Bones only seems to have a good grasp on action shows aimed at teens. They should probably get back to those instead of just playing mix and match with the genders and ages of the crime solving duo.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Spoiler: The mastermind is cyber-Rasputin or a giant unlucky cricket god.

Guilty Crown
http://www.guilty-crown.jp/
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres October 13th

Summary: 
About twenty years from now, a virus will ravage Japan. Law and order breaks down and the entire city is placed under harsh martial law. Ten years later,people with special powers have begun to emerge from the wreckage. Shuu is one of those people, and he joins the resistance fighting to free Japan. 

Personal Thoughts: 
Production IG’s always a wild card for production. Sometimes you get Blood-C, sometimes you get xxxHOLiC. The director here was in charge of Death Note, and only Death Note, so I’m not terribly confident that he can handle an action show, but it is on noitaminA, whose action shows to date have largely consisted of… [C]. The head writer though… that’s where things get amusing. Direct from Sunrise, it’s the Code Geass/Mai series guy, so it’s already almost guaranteed that every single episode will end on some kind of inane cliffhanger and probably end with them fighting a cyberized version of the moon from an alternate future. Is that a good thing? Perhaps.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
     
Let my people go! …Boing!