Autumn Season Premiere Wrapup and Math Club Reunion

October 16th, 2012

 

Let the 60 straight days of rain begin.

There’s a limited amount of time in the day, and since I tend to watch things within an hour or two of airing instead of waiting half the day for such pleasantries as subtitles or things in resolutions larger than my laptop’s screen, I vastly prefer to watch things more or less with the broadcast schedule. Here’s the quick list of all the shows that premiered along with a short blurb designed to reduce a 24 minute episode to a quarter second bullet point. Extensive or indicative of the entire show? Hell no. The main goal is to finish it in less time than it took to find a header image.

Each one is linked to what could possibly be more comprehensive thoughts on it, or possibly not. In a rarity, everything’s done airing, some multiple times over. And a friendly reminder, most shows are going to be bad, make no mistake about that. Even bad shows can be worth watching… or more fun to write about than boringly average to decent shows. The biggest sin any show can have is to be boring, and this season is not lacking at all for uneventful shows about melodramatic teenagers/young adults standing in the wind and/or expounding at length.

Anything that I am 100% certain I’m going to cover for at least another week gets herring, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stick with it past the next episode or two. Likewise, just because I’m looking forward to something just yet doesn’t mean that I won’t pick it up. I tend to watch at least part of the second or third episodes, although whether or not I fully cover them depends often on whether or not it engages me enough to keep me from wandering off mid-episode. If you’ve got any input, flames, or desperate begging, go wild.

MONDAY

Girls Und Panzer

 

Even if they put 20% of the effort into the rest of the show as they did in abusing bad CG, it’d still be totally bland.

Yada Yada God

 

Not honestly that bad, but volume is not a substitute for wit and most of the characters aren’t particularly likeable.

 Sakurasou’s Pet Girl 

 

Decently comedic first episode that massively fell off in the second in nearly every way.

Scarlet Fragments

   

*squeak* *squeak* *squeak* *squeak* *squeak* *squeak*

 The Monster Next to Me 

 

A little cheap, but well directed with some of the better humor of the season. Just needs to keep things actually moving.

TUESDAY

Jormungand

  

This is cocoa. It is loco. Oh no.

Gyrozetter

 

Sexy dancing cars.

WEDNESDAY

Hayate the Combat Butler

 

Buy our character singles CDs! Otherwise, utterly forgettable already.

Medaka Box

 

Why are you so cheap? Just put a little goddamned effort in.

 Fourteen Sick 

 

Excellently made, occasionally funny, but needs to be less cloying or to take the premise and run with it as a full comedy.

THURSDAY

 Armed Warmaidens 

 

Also needs to take the premise and run with the laser rifles instead of terrible housework montages.

BTOOOM!

 

The characters and writing are simply too moronic to take this seriously, despite how SUPER SERIOUS it’s trying to be.

The Civilization Blaster

 

For an apocalypse with only a handful of people around, you’d think there’d be less jabbering.

 Hidamari Sketch 

 

I don’t know why I still watch this. Or why it keeps getting new seasons either. Or why everyone’s naked every episode…

 K 

 

Inconsistent and nonsensical, but at least it’s stylish. More than I can say for a lot of the other angsty super teenager shows.

Psycho-Pass

   

Characters. Come. Before. Setting. Especially when your setting endless infodump doesn’t make an iota of sense anyway.

Robotics;Notes

 

Terrible protagonist plus absolutely nothing happened in the first episode whatsoever means yawn.

FRIDAY

From the New World

 

If it tried any harder in the first episode to be MYSTERIOUS, it’d hurt itself. And then it stopped trying altogether after that.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

 

The Cut and Paste tool is not how you adapt from a comic format to animated.

To Love-ru Darkness

 

As uncreative as ever, but now with excessive censoring over the only draw the show even had!

Yada Yada Brother

 

Occasionally okay, but little notable about it besides the bad premise and doesn’t overplay it enough to make it funny.

SATURDAY

Bakuman.

   

I can’t wait until the Harlem Globetrotters guest star on the Kwanzaa special.

CØDE:BREAKER

 

Moving glacially slowly along with far too many pretty, sparkly boys standing in the glimmering sunshine…

Little Busters!

 

Poorly made with absolutey abysmal direction and a few annoying characters already torpedoing the few decent parts.

Say I Love You

 

Super ultra generic girly wallflower romance, only with far less wit, budget, and charisma than the other one.

 Sei☆zon 

 

I am giving this the benefit of the doubt, but AIC showed absolutely none of the orginal’s direction or creativity.

SUNDAY

Magi

 

Extremely generic adventure show with only middling production despite being prime time… but in Arabia!

 Ixion Saga DT 

 

Often nails the slapstick, but has to focus better on the comedy and less on the… nothing… that fills most of the episodes.

 Total Eclipse 

 

At least I know Yuuya and/or the writers will always do something utterly moronic for me to laugh at.

Wrapup:

I can’t say it’s looking like a particularly strong season. Almost none of the premiere episodes seemed to grasp the concept of a hook. You don’t need to start out with explosions and cataclysm, but good lord, kill a giant pig with a rain of swords or something. Not a twenty damn minute infodump or fat lot of absolutely nothing. You’d think for all these shows about young adults with magic/science powers, there’d be a little more action and a lot less talking. There’s more violence in most Super Friends episodes.

Anywho. Such is life. Feel free to wheedle, cajole, insult, whatever. I’m going out to get me a tasty, tasty sammich.

Posted in Premiere Wrapup | 14 Comments »

14 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Eric says:

    That guinea pig video made my day. Thanks.

  • Skew says:

    Would you rather have more Hidamari or Koihime Musou?

  • firecow says:

    I never thought the day has come when Aroduc is blogging a Kyoto animation show before. This is a first on this website and for Aroduc for giving in the moe show of the season. Ha ha ha!

  • algorithm says:

    Watching so many shows, your power level is too high.
    Suffering so many shits, your resilience is admirable.

  • redpanther says:

    “The Cut and Paste tool is not how you adapt from a comic format to animated.”

    Now that’s fuking desperate.

  • NightShadow2239 says:

    YES! Bring forth more servants of the dark god… and guinea pigs.

  • Gorilla13 says:

    Wtf is this?! Go back to the kitchen and make me a sammich! Why are you eating it?!!!

  • Benigmatica says:

    So I guess Aroduc can’t stand watching Medaka Box anymore, eh?

  • Anonymous says:

    I’ve always wondered where do you watch your anime? Judging from the speed you cover new episodes it seems to me you have access to some Japanese TV stream? If it’s even borderline legal service I’d be willing to pay money for such…

    And I’m not talking about Crunchyshit.

    • Aroduc says:

      There are a few free livestreams for many channels that I’ll often watch early so I just need to cap later, which is quick. Since my main computer is a laptop and I tend to chat or write as I watch anyway, lower resolution stuffdoesn’t bother me much so I usually just use the 512x/640x raws from Japanese streaming sites that are frequently available much earlier than higher quality stuff which can sometimes take hours to pop.

  • anise_punter says:

    One does not simply stop watching the wideface.

  • icymirage says:

    Those are not herrings. They are happy hoop jumping dolphins that have been kidnapped from Sea World.

    Monday:
    Monster was surprisingly enjoyable. Works better as a comedy then a romance, so hopefully they focus more on that. I’m never watching Girls Panzer ever again. You’d have to try to make something this bad – it must have gone something like this:
    Director: Let’s make the lamest tank battle ever. Ideas?
    Writer: How about we spent most of the scene just driving the tank in a straight line?
    Director: And then?
    Writer: In the main scene, the tanks run away.
    Director: That might actually be interesting. Make it one tank.
    Writer: Fine, one tank. Lamest dodging attempts ever. Chasing tanks can’t hit it even at point blank.
    Animator: And make the audience motion sick.

    Tuesday:
    She’s Koko, not cocoa, and she’s loco, oh no. Making fun of arms dealers carries grave consequences. Nobody got killed the first episode – what’s with that?

    Wednesday:
    Fourteen Sick I guess? At least the characters are interesting.

    Thursday:
    Btoooooom (is that enough o’s?) has 20 minutes of depressing backstory that made me want the main characters to die like in Gai-Rei Zero (biker chick how we miss you!), and 5 minutes of someone getting blown up because they’re dumb. I hope they actually have battles on this show. Civilization Blaster remembered that action shows are supposed to have some action, so it wins. I don’t know wth is going on in K, but it’s animated nicely. Robotic Notes seems like it might be interesting, but first episode was just a slow character intro.

    Friday:
    New World makes me feel like I’m reading a novel, but it’s interesting enough to keep me engaged.

    Saturday:
    Bakuman is progressing quickly as usual, already in the hand-holding stage at season 3.

    Sunday:
    Ixion Saga can’t continue because they ran out of balls.