Saturday

Milky Holmes TD
http://milky-holmes-anime.com/td/
Studio: JC Staff/Nomad
Genre: Franchise Murder
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 3rd (Pre-air two hour/two episode special on 12/31)

Premise:
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of the magical girl detectives, now involving goddamned idols.

Thoughts:
The first two episodes are being broadcast on the 31st as part of a two hour special. This is still not the comedy version’s staff. Granted, they had one very good season and one feh one, but the JC Staff/Nomad ‘reboot’ after that into dull slice of life with zero anything of value unless you’re looking for a sleep aid. No crazy nipples, no wacky antics, nothing. Just another in the endless slough of copy/pasted “four girls in a ‘club’ for helping people” formula, each with their own little pigeonhole and yet little difference between any of them. The promo does make it seem a little sillier than the godawful previous season, but I wouldn’t bet on that being anything other than a lie. Fie on you for crapping up something I once had fond feelings for, JC Staff. Fie.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Quit hiding from your true nature, you bastards.

Hollywood Boys
http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/shonen-hollywood-anime/
Studio: ZEXCS
Genre: Idols
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 10th

Premise:
Sequel series. The life and times of a studio that trains boys to be pop stars.

Thoughts:
For this odd sequel renaming, we move from “For 49” to “For 50.” 49 or 50 what, I have no idea. I don’t want to know. It’s probably something to do with how their bodies are all unnaturally hairless and glistening all the time. The little I remember of this, besides Zexcs’s now signature awful production (what happened to you, Zexcs?), was that it was slightly more self-aware than most idol stuff, but not enough to actually be funny or a comedy. It was the exact same as another awful idol show that season (and most seasons), just gender swapped. At least sucking knows no discrimination for gender.

Preseason Swing Rating:

As undead as the king of pop, but nowhere near the fab.

DRRRRRRRRR
http://www.durarara.com/
Studio: Shuka
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 10th

Premise:
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of a dullahan on a motorcycle, and the seedy underbelly of a busy city.

Thoughts:
Continuing this season’s trend of sequels with bizarre title markers comes a three part sequel series wherein it fancies itself to be classical literature. While already arrogant for a light novel series to begin with, the 承 portion which this is claiming to be is the part wherein you give further exposition and clarification on the previous segment, but most crucially, nothing important is supposed to happen. Christ. Don’t you think that’s shooting yourself in the foot from the get go? Same staff, so more of the same if I guess you liked it. Different studio, but Brain’s Base has been pretty woeful in recent years. I was too bored by the focus on teenagers putzing around instead of on dullahans to finish the first season, but I hear the start was when it was ‘good’ and then it got worse, so that doesn’t bode well either.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Poor baby has no head. Why don’t you cry about it?

Aldnoah.Zero
http://www.aldnoahzero.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures/TROYCA
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 10th

Premise:
Continuation from summer. Mars conquered Earth, and then Earth dug a magic ship out of their ass and wrecked the enemy flagship thanks to teen power.

Thoughts:
Spoiler warning, I guess. Maybe. After the third time a character supposedly dies, it’s hard to take them supposedly dying another time particularly seriously, even as the cliffhanger for the end of a season. Especially when they’re pulling magic out of their asses constantly. Anyway, the big failing with the show was simply godawful writing centered around a moronic lead with the personality of a dish towel. Other characters didn’t serve any better. One literally did nothing the entire series but have post traumatic flashbacks. That was his entire character. The princess was Jesus, the bad guys were discarded as soon as they were introduced and all had weird ridiculous powers (and most were defeated by dropping them in the water), and there were literally power point presentations detailing evil plots. The prospect of a couple main characters having their heads blown out is about the only even vaguely promising thing it did with the characters or plot the entire run. And I fully expect the bullets to have simply glanced off their skulls, if not simply just magic.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Rats with brain damage.

Dog Days
http://www.dogdays.tv/
Studio: Seven Arcs
Genre: Adventure
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 10th

Premise:
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of a bunch of friends transported into a world of animal people who fight mock wars for funsies.

Thoughts:
While the first season had some potential at times, particularly when it promised that a couple characters would definitely absolutely no-backsies be facedown in ketchup for the climax, that turned out to just be a bald faced lie. Not even the standard “Oh, they get back up from their ketchup wounds” or anything. After assuring us it would absolutely happen, it didn’t happen at all. Then the second season ditched all attempts at any kind of seriousness and tried to dial up ‘wacky’ to 11, which since this is Japan levels of wacky, is actually more like 7.5 at most, minus a point or two for driving certain jokes into the ground. It wasn’t particularly funny or clear exactly what it was trying to be. This is the same staff as the second season, not the first, so hip hip huzzzzz…

Preseason Swing Rating:

95% chance to have another godawful CGI concert.

The Rolling ☆ Girls
http://rollinggirls.com/
Studio: Wit
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 10th

Premise:
After the Great Tokyo War, Japan lies fractured. Each state is ruled by a prophet and has their own standing forces called a “mob.” Four girls from Saitama’s mob are sent out to keep an eye on the conflicts starting to erupt between each state.

Thoughts:
Everything about the promos is very reminiscent of last year’s World Conquest, right down to one of the protagonists wearing a gas mask. Fairly inexperienced director (Silver Spoon’s second season), but the promos do look much better than most, but then again, so did Attack on Titan’s (also Wit on production), and that one’s first few episodes were made up of mostly stills and awful CGI. However, what looks nice about them are the things like a woman with a giant safety pin fighting a Power Rangers reject. The actual protagonists look like about as generic and boring a club of girls as comes. It also seems to be trying to play up how ordinary the main characters are, which as I’ve said (oh so very, very many times), I do not understand in the slightest. “There’s all this interesting stuff going on with interesting characters, but wouldn’t you rather see the most boring people imaginable? Don’t you want to see how boring they are!? And they’re plain and just going to sit there and watch too! Excited yet!?” Let’s say I was. Why are you trying to kill it?

Preseason Swing Rating:

Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen.

Kuroko’s Balls
http://www.kurobas.com/
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Balls
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 10th

Premise:
Sequel series. The continuing story of Kuroko, the basketball player who is super special awesome at passing basketball, and him playing basketball with other people who play basketball, each with their own basketball special basketball powers.

Thoughts:
Somehow the only sane sequel naming of the entire lot. We’re just going with “season 3.” Hell, they’re even continuing the numbering in a logical fashion like sane people. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. Apparently in the last season, one game, from start to finish, took six weeks. Another one took five. That’s nearly enough time to watch all five Air Bud movies. What’s great about your Major Leagues, Rockys, White Men Can’t Jump, Space Jams, etc, is not their exhaustive attention to the minutia of basketball (and exposition thereof!), let alone simultaneously giving people ridiculously specific super powers to play it. The sport is the framing device, not a vehicle to pad the ever living hell out of everything. I’ve translated entire games from start to finish in less time than it takes this show to finish one evening of high school basketball.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Put up the wock, you woser.

Go! Princess Precure
http://www.toei-anim.co.jp/tv/princess_precure/
Studio: Toei Animation
Genre: Franchise Prolongment
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 31st (Evening)

Premise:
Annual version of the magical girl franchise. This time, a witch is sealing people’s dreams away to create despair cyborgs and they have to find all the Dress Up Keys.

Thoughts:
The themes of the last five PreCures were flowers, idols, fairy tales, cards, fashion. And now, “being princesses.” Going way, way back to the first version, it was kind of like girly Dragonball. Their powers were “move fast, hit hard, sometimes emit lightning.” Nowadays, apparently their signature moves are to dance around while everyone patiently waits for them to finish, and their ultimate attack is to gather around a mirror and put on makeup. I feel like Pretty Cure has lost its way juuuuust a little bit, and I say that not even liking it when it was trying to be Dragonball.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Next season, housework!

Sunday

Absolute Duo
http://www.absoluteduo.com/
Studio: 8bit
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 4th

Premise:
After a tragedy, Tooru is determined to become stronger and master his Blaze, a weapon produced from the soul. He enrolls in a school that pairs everyone up into inseparable duos for training and his happens to be a beautiful girl. However, when he manifests his Blaze, it uniquely ends up being a shield.

Thoughts:
The first of the very, very many LN adaptations this season, squatting right into the magical girlfriend magical fighting school toad hole. The promo has some animation, but not a ton, and the action’s already lacking/mostly brandishing weapons. You can also tell that this was created with zero awareness of Captain America, because the concept of “Oh no, a shield! Now I have to rely on a bunch of girls who want to ride my escutcheon to fight for me,” is a tad… Anyway, director’s first outing, head writer’s done a few things, but the only one I’d say was of any note was OreTsuba, and I’d pin the appeal there much more on the direction and source material than it being put together into a coherent story. Very little of what it’s shown seems promising and there’s no shortage of this kind of show this season.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Shield-Haver still not superior to Gun-Haver.

Dark Yatterman
http://yatterman.jp/
Studio: Tatsunoko Production
Genre: Adventure
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 11th

Premise:
The Yatterman (Yattermen?) overcame all their foes and created a great kingdom, but when a girl asked for its help to save her dying mother, they heartlessly turned her away. It’s up to a new generation of the Dorombo Gang to fight back against the now unjust Yatterman Kingdom.

Thoughts:
Tatsunoko continues its one-studio mission to bring the 70s back. This time it’s an apparently dark version of Yatterman. Promos look decent, and bizarrely, this is the staff that made Muromi, although the director really hasn’t done much else. I think I’d trust them more on a full-fledged comedy than an angsty retelling of Japan’s Rocky and Bullwinkle, but maybe they’ll surprise me. At least it’s something trying to take a franchise and do something new with it, a sentiment I’ll always support in a medium traditionally filled with regurgitating the source exactly as is with as little thought or ambition as possible.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Can’t stop digging now!

Maria the Virgin
http://junketsu-maria.tv/
Studio: Production IG
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 11th

Premise:
Maria is a powerful witch that lives hidden away during the Hundred Years War. She hates the fighting, and even though it angers heaven, uses her magic to interfere in the war in order to stop it.

Thoughts:
Or you can call it Sorcière de gré, pucelle de force if you’re nasty. My French begins and ends with omelette du fromage, so don’t look at me. Staff’s a mixed bag. Geass’s director, so has the potential to be… interesting, but OreImo/TWGotK/Grisaia’s head writer adapting, and ye lords, does he know how to do boring as hell with an extra side of tedium. Promos don’t look too bad, but not great either. It’s got a very retro sensibility about it. I’m hoping there’s more dragon summoning and less blushing over the local village hick stopping by to make her hymen tingle.

Preseason Swing Rating:

One neglected pussy.

World Break
http://warubure-anime.com/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 11th

Premise:
The only people who can defeat the monsters referred to as Heretics are the Saviors, reincarnations of warriors with magical powers. Moroha enrolls at a training academy and starts meeting girls who are themselves the reincarnations from his past lives.

Thoughts:
Also known as Cursed Aria of a Holy Swordsman, because multiple titles are the thing this season, and yes, it’s yet another Diomedea magical girlfriend with magical weapons at magical school light novel adaptation. And of course, one of them is secretly his reincarnated incestuous sister. Another is a maid. The more things stay the same… The promo’s about evenly split between them being naked and/or rubbing themselves on him and underwhelming action characters glowing, so it’s not exactly ambitious there either. It’s the staff that did Rosario + Vampire, although more recent things aren’t much better (NouCome for director, Nobunagun for writer). Oh, and they’re doing a practically identical LN adaptation together next season too. I bet this is the trial run.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Duel Savior? Never heard of it.

Samurai Warriors
http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/sengokumusou/
Studio: TYO Animation/Tezuka Production
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 11th

Premise:
Based on the game series. Warriors of the Sengoku era have punchies. Probably will a focus on the Sanada brothers.

Thoughts: 
Koei’s finally decided to get it on that Basara pie. As much as I like the games for being a great zone-out-and-treadmill-to thing, especially the most recent one with a dedicated “screw you, crowds” button and minimal mandatory watch-a-horse’s-ass-bob-as-you-slowly-trod-across-half-the-empty-map time, but I’m not really sure why. I guess they think the Japanese characters will be that much more successful than the Chinese ones, but there’s not really anything special about the characters or story, and they’ve further shot themselves in the feet by making basically every single character except Nobunaga and Kotarou a giant pussy good guy. They’re certainly not bombastic like Basara’s, although it does share Basara’s desperate and unfortunate need to suck Yukimura’s schlong. Promo looked awful(ly full of speedlines and stills) and the staff is similarly terrible. I took a brief glance at the OVA that was released with the game (same staff), and it was atrocious as well.

Preseason Swing Rating:

How about the Muromachi Era instead?

Monday

Yuri Bear Storm
http://www.yurikuma.jp/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Lesbian Bears
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 5th

Premise:
After an asteroid explodes and fragments of it start a war between humans and bears, a great wall is put up to divide the world between the two, but at a school where romance is blooming between two girls, the bear invasion is about to begin again.

Thoughts:
This is another brainchild of Ikuhara (Utena, Penguindrum), and you might remember that I had little patience for it constantly resetting everything that seemed to happen (which was always in only the last 30 seconds of the episode), repellent characters acting with no regard to sense, and an endless torrent of flashbacks constantly rewriting the past, all with a pool full of absurdly smug pretension. I’d say that this looks to lack quite that, but let’s remember that the promos of Penguindrum were all wacky penguins and transforming penguin people too. At least the promos actually look like real promos with some effort put in. That’s something Japan always struggles with. Maybe the 12 episode count will force it to actually move the content, but I somehow doubt it and fully expect the protagonist to be Jesus yet again.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Is someone make call for Russian bear?

Welcome to Godhood
http://mikagesha.com/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 5th

Premise:
Sequel series. After falling on hard times, Nanami helps an old man who ends up making her the local god in his place. One of the spirits there isn’t happy about it at first, but friendship and more grows between them.

Thoughts:
As is tradition now for sequels, this too has odd punctuation attached. It’s â—Ž. I swear, Japan’s just trying to see what it can get away with. I honestly feel like I’ve watched two or three other shows with the exact same premise of “innocent girl forced to live with combative spirit and the two really want to screw” between the single episode of this I watched back in 2012 and now, to say nothing of the dozens of “innocent guy forced to live with combative spirit and the two really want to screw.” I had to go back to look at my notes. Apparently there were two small spirits that screamed a lot. Ignorance is bliss. Obviously, nothing will happen, because nothing ever does. It’s the same staff and studio, so more of the same! Which apparently means screaming if my notes are to be trusted.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Another show that’d be quickly resolved with an enthusiastic tonguing.

Tuesday

Handsome Guy High School Earth Defense Club LOVE!
http://boueibu.com/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 6th

Premise:
The Earth Defense Club is just a club for doing nothing, but when two of the guys in it are taking a bath together, a wombat appears out of thin air and tells them that he wants to save the planet through love making.

Thoughts:
No, unfortunately, it is not about saving the world through (because all the characters are male) anal sex. That’s very sadly just Engrish. And the boys taking a bath together is just a cultural thing. Some fruit are just far too low hanging. Like balls. Staff’s very experienced, but their glory days are from years ago with the most recent things from the director being Gyrozetter and Ixion, and the writer being Girlfriend BETA and Shirobako. The promos are really lackluster as well, and don’t show much in the way of comedy or parody above and beyond “Magical… Boys!?” I don’t see how doubling down on a single sight gag KoreZom (among others) already beat to death is going to work out well for it.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Great big pulsating throbbing dicks.

Wednesday

Fleet Collection
http://kancolle-anime.jp/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Merchandising
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 7th

Premise:
Invaders known only as the Deep Fleet have taken over the world’s oceans and the only ones who can fight them are magical girls with the spirits of old battleships inside them.

Thoughts:
The director here is the old Seven Arcs guy (Nanoha, Inukami, Dog Days 1) and tends to do an astonishingly consistent and solid job with action shows, which makes it all the sadder that he’s been stuck with garbage like little girl basketball and Riddle recently. Basically, when he went from Seven Arcs to Diomedea, everything went to pot with a brief half-uptick of Campione showing a glimmer of what he did best. Granted, the head writer is the same guy he worked with for that, but this writer’s glory days (Rozen Maiden, Seizon’s good season) are also long past and has more recently put out drek like Love Live and almost all of KyoAni’s ‘action’ LN adaptations. And now this, based on that horrid online card game. Then again, so was Rage of Bahamut, and it started out strongly enough before pissing its potential away. The staff certainly has shown the talent to put a solid action show together, but there’s not much of it showing in any of their recent work or any of the boring promos of girls blushing or eating. You can go practically anywhere for that. Let’s be a little ambitious, eh?

Preseason Swing Rating:

Oh yeah, so sexy.

The Testament of My New Overlord Sister
http://anime-shinmaimaou.com/
Studio: Production IMS
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 7th

Premise:
Basara was born into a family of heroes, but he and his father were forced out of his village when he lost control of his power to erase magic. His father also adopts the daughter of the former overlord and her servant. Basara is forced to protect his new sister from the demons after her power and position.

Thoughts:
Officially “The Testament of Sister New Devil,” but good god, man. Japan is having more issues than usual with translating titles, and titles in general this season. Of course they go to school together, and due to their contract, have to grope each other, because we don’t have enough light novel magical girlfriend at magical school shows this season. It’s in modern times, the main character has a transforming arm and nullifies magic, with a busty red headed overlord female lead who has a sassy, flatchested (relatively speaking) short white haired sidekick. I’m shocked it’s not paying DxD royalties. Speaking of which, they’re using DxD’s head writer because apparently go with what you know, and SoraOto’s director (take that as you will), but IMS has never been anything but woeful at production (Twin Tail, Date a Live 2), the promos do absolutely nothing to impress, even on the T&A front, and this season is absolutely lousy with this kind of nonsense.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Let me hear you say HOOOOOOOOOOO!

Thursday

Tokyo Ghoul
http://www.maql.co.jp/special/tokyoghoul/
Studio: Pierrot
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 8th

Premise:
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of a half-ghoul who hems and haws his way over eating human flesh while succeeding in doing absolutely nothing.

Thoughts:
Remember what I said about punctuation and sequels above? This one’s √A. The square root of A. If you square this title, you get Tokyo Ghoul² * A. Japan, we need to have an intervention. The first season was kind of a mess. Production was surprisingly decent, especially for Pierrot, but everything revolved around the protagonist being super special simply because he was. He never did anything whatsoever. He was just a sponge to soak up abuse and feel sorry for himself. Add to that a cast that similarly bemoaned their fates or acted without any regard to sense… and this is with a French clown embarking on an elaborate murder-plot simply because the protagonist smelled special being one of the things that came closer to sense, and a final arc that was almost half in flashbacks and ended abruptly mid arc, and… yuck. But now his hair has turned white, so he’s probably extra angsty. Oh boy.

Preseason Swing Rating:

But at least they don’t eat dog.

How to Train a Regular Girl to be a Heroine
http://www.saenai.tv/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 8th

Premise:
Tomoya meets a beautiful, but unassuming girl, and decides he wants to turn her into the base for a heroine in a dating game with the help of his classmates.

Thoughts:
The official translation title is “How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend,” which is, uh… wrong, and even worse than the original title, so… whatever. This director’s been around, but his most recent shows are Oreshura and Nanana’s Treasure, so they’re more than a little lacking. This somehow ended up on noitaminA too. The promo begins with Blando Everyguy staring through a veritable torrent of cherry petals and bloom. Also, nearly every character besides “regular girl” is some kind of secret megapopular 15 year old author, so right off the bat, it’s cribbing Hannah Montana it’s cribbing OreImo it has its head shoved so far up the wish-fulfillment ass that it’s smelling its tonsils.

Preseason Swing Rating:

How to create a bitter drunk.

Happy Cooking Graffiti
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/koufuku_g/
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 8th

Premise:
Ryou makes friends by cooking delicious food for them.

Thoughts:
And? That’s it? Apparently so. The title’s a pun meaning both happiness and appetite, so if not for the official title, it should probably be something like Happitite Graffiti. Anyway, Shinbo and Okada doing a four panel comedy adaptation. What fun. I’d say “at least she probably can’t angst it up,” but I think we both know that’s not true. The big draw of the source appears to be “draws food extra detailed,” and one of Shinbo’s things is to take pictures of actual food (and other random objects) and drop into his shows, so I think they’ve already screwed themselves out of their only selling factor.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

It’s goddamned baking, Japan. Not rocket science.

Unlimited Fafnir
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/fafnir/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 8th

Premise:
Dragon-like monsters appear and the only ones who can fight against them are girls with D (dragon) power. However, there is one male is D power. He’s forced into an all-girl’s school for training D power.

Thoughts:
*sigh* Japan. You’ll also be happy to know that part of the premise is “he sees a girl naked” and “runs into his long estranged sister,” because apparently this is the attempt to break the cliche-o-meter. This is again, the old Seven Arcs action director (busy this season), so there is talent for magical battle yada yada involved, but I’d bet on magical ship girls being the one that gets the focus of the two. No promotional stuff to speak of yet, so all I’ve got to look at are the world’s most excessively cliches and generic images. Exciting.

Preseason Swing Rating:

D Power!

Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor – EXODUS
http://fafner-exodus.jp/
Studio: Xebec
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 8th

Premise:
The alien life known as the Festum and humanity have long been at war, and the key to everything are magical giant robots.

Thoughts:
Because a title can never have enough subtitles… or spelling “Fafnir” wrong. And let me get this straight. There are two shows named Fafnir, airing at literally the same time? Oh, you spell one with an ‘e.’ Well, that removes all confusion. Instead, I’ll refer to this one as The Adventures of Herr Inspector Führer and Boy Backpfeifengesicht. TAoHIFaBB is the followup to the 2010 movie, which was the sequel to the 2004 series. I have watched none of these. It’s largely the same staff as the first series, but neither have really done much of anything for years… aside from this being the guy who took over writing for Psycho Pass’s second season. I don’t think many people will consider that a plus.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
   
And the case of the too many büstenhalter.

Friday

Cinderella Girls
http://imas-cinderella.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Faff(nir)ing
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 9th

Premise:
A bunch of pop stars want to make it big in a world where screwing someone to get ahead doesn’t exist.

Thoughts:
If you didn’t know, Cinderella Girls is the Idolm@ster cellphone CCG spinoff… And this is largely the same staff and studio, so I see no reason not to expect more of the exact same braindead thing as before; too afraid of alienating someone to do anything with the characters, too unambitious to have any kind of plot, and too little talent to make it a comedy. Just a holding pattern to keep the franchise alive and an excuse to shill a few more CDs.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Envious idols.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures
http://jojo-animation.com/
Studio: David Production
Genre: ‘Action’
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 9th

Premise: 
Continuation from sequel series from last spring. The continuing adventures of people with magical alter egos hunting a vampire hiding in the middle of a desert.

Thoughts:
Imagining this as a Spanish thing with the J’s being silent amuses me. I hear that Hoho’s Extraña Aventura didn’t even get to Iggy, and as my main in the Dreamcast days, that’s unacceptable. Of course, it’s too late to catch up now. Shouting, exposition to the point of spurious rigor, shouting exposition to the point of spurious rigor, and then repeating themselves all contribute to utterly laborious pacing that just puts me to sleep. Or would if I wasn’t being shouted at constantly.

Preseason Swing Rating:

My stand is Powdered Toast Man.

Assassination Classroom
http://www.ansatsu-anime.com/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Action, Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 9th

Premise:
An alien creature destroys most of the moon and then declares it will destroy the world next year. For reasons nobody can comprehend, it installs itself as the teacher of a class of dropouts. They have to figure out how to kill it to save the world, and earn the fame and fortune of being a hero.

Thoughts:
This is coming from Jump, so as usual, I imagine the jokes will all be shouted and repeated to death. Kishi is much better at comedy than action adapting Atlus RPGs into non-action shows, and the last (only) time Lerche and Kishi got together to create/direct a comedy, it was Carnival Phantasm. Same head writer joining them too. That’s reason for a little hope, but then again, almost the first thing written about characters is how they have and can detect ‘killing auras’ and completely defeat people by glaring. It’ll probably boil down to how much of the abhorrent Jumpness they punt. I would bet very, very little. Creativity is not their strong suit. Or Jump’s.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Ass class sass.

Death Parade
http://www.deathparade.jp/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 9th

Premise:
After dying, people end up at a bar where they can wager for a last chance at life.

Thoughts:
This is descended from the Death Billiards animator training thing from about two years ago with the same staff, so they’re obviously new. I honestly don’t remember it very well except that it had a pretty crazy fight at the end. I want to say that it was mostly boring, but I barely remember things from last season, let alone a one-episode short from two years ago. I really just hope they keep things episodic and do interesting things with the premise week to week, but keeping things fresh instead of over-hammering melodrama into the ground isn’t exactly something Japan is known for. What made a somewhat interesting one-off (maybe?) I have a hard time seeing remaining so for three straight months.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Obligatory mature show for mature people.

Isuca
http://isuca.net/
Studio: ARMS
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres January 23rd

Premise:
Asano starts work as the servant for Isuca, a spoiled rich girl, but she actually fights monsters that threaten people. When she discovers he has special powers too, she forces him to help her fight.

Thoughts:
I made kind of an “eeeegh” noise looking over the director (Letter Bee) and head writer (Kanokon, Shuffle, Rail Wars, the emo season of Minami-ke). It’s not people usually associated with ARMS, but it’s not exactly a step up either. Shockingly, despite the magical girlfriend schtick, it’s not an LN adaptation, although from just a casual perusal of the source, it’s firmly in ARMS’s T&A wheelhouse, but there’s really no shortage of magical (non)action fanservice this season, and with most of it coming from Diomedea and ARMS, I somehow doubt it’ll be even a good season for that.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
I hope they go to school together too! Please let them go to school together too!