Thursday

My Teenage Romantic Comedy SNAFU
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/oregairu/
Studio: feel
Genre: Smugness
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 2nd

Premise:
Sequel series. Batman was forced to join a club full of girls for helping people because he was anti-social and thought everybody was a bunch of phonies.

Thoughts:
The good reputation the first season confuses me, because what I remember is the same over-narrated LN schlock as ever, followed by about ten straight minutes of two characters sitting in chairs with their hands in their laps, talking about the cliches they were living in and how stupid they were with the smug self-satisfaction of Bono and the self-awareness of a desk lamp. When I went looking at what people actually said, almost all of it was some theme of two paragraphs saying “It looks exactly like other terrible dreck,” and then a sentence of “but it’s totally not and/or it’s self-aware!” About half then went on to praise the production values. I remain unconvinced. It does have a new director (Outbreak Company, Minami-ke 3) and it’s feel animating now instead of Brains Base, but I don’t see either of those things helping.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Why don’t we cut it open and strew its smug everywhere?

Re-Kan!
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/re-kan/
Studio: Pierrot+
Genre: Following Treaded Ground
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 2nd

Premise:
Batman can see supernatural things. Shenanigans ensue.

Thoughts:
Yes, that is really all the premise has. Could they really not think up any twist on that at all? Oh? It’s not. There’s more? She can talk to cats and is scared of zombies? Well, gee. We’ve got a show then. The source is one of those four panel comic dealies, and while the writer does have some experience and success with comedies (Yuruyuri, Minami-ke 1, Mitsudomoe), the director… less so (JC Staff Hayates, Ikkitousen EE). Pierrot+ is their comedy division (Sabagebu) and has not exactly impressed, although Pierrot’s generally kind of poor anyway. I’m not seeing much reason to be hopeful, and the promos (or lack thereof really) don’t help.

Preseason Swing Rating:

But can she see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Etotama
http://etotama.com/
Studio: Shirogumi/Encourage Films
Genre: Schizophrenia
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 9th

Premise: 
An airheaded catgirl forces Batman to let her live with him while she tries to get accepted into the zodiac.

Thoughts:
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the PVs. One is almost entirely fanservice. The other is almost all CGI chibi characters fighting, but A.) Neither Shirogumi nor Encourage have shown any real leanings towards CGI before, and B.) It kind of looks decent since it stays in quick motion, is deliberately cartoonish and colorful, and doesn’t try (and fail) to mix disparate art styles. The director (Place to Place, Astalotte’s Toy) and writer (Blazblue, Noragami) also don’t seem to fit the kind of show they’re advertising. The actual animation seems a little lacking, but P2P was often cute, so maybe the two things will come together. Or be as schizophrenic as the two PVs are.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Why do they think that rats have neck-wings?

Punch Line
http://www.punchline.jp/
Studio: MAPPA
Genre: Panty Shots
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 9th

Premise: 
Batman is cursed, his soul separated from his body and if he gets an erection, the world will be destroyed. Now he must fight crime while a harem of teenage girls flash their panties at him.

Thoughts:
MAPPA’s been impressing me lately with how strongly they’ve been starting (most) series, but equally depressed me with how badly the writing always falls apart at around the halfway point, even for the ones that didn’t start so well. This is the noitaminA show for the season (they’re down to just one for a while, if not permanently), so it’s already beginning down a few parts as far as I’m concerned. I’m a little unsure about the key staff too. The only thing to the director’s name is Dantalian which was… not good, and the head writer’s a VN guy (Ever 17, Nine Hours etc), which typically translates poorly to another medium and his works have especially not exactly been high octane comedy/action affairs. However, the promo’s pretty damn impressive, especially for this season, so that’s reason enough to be optimistic at least for five or six episodes before the MAPPAness kicks in.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Permanent boner killer.

Ninja Slayer
http://www.ninjaslayer-animation.com/
Studio: Trigger
Genre: Posing
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 16th (streaming only)

Premise: 
After Batman’s family is caught in the crossfire of cyberninjas fighting, he becomes possessed by a ninja ghost who kills other ninjas and becomes the Ninja Slayer.

Thoughts:
I don’t like this director much. He’s been around Gainax/Trigger for a while, directing random episodes of Gurren-Lagann/Kill La Kill, but I’ll always remember him as the guy who directed that one episode of ZKC where the action animation got bizarrely fluid while the other 75% of the episode looked like it was done by a seven year old. Like Kill la Kill, the promos seem more concerned with looking cool (and being screen-cap friendly) than actually being cool; full of posing, posing against speedlines, and posing while the camera pans to wring out every last second out of that pose. There was precious little ninja-ing or slaying going on. This does have an unusual pedigree, being written through Twitter by Japanese people supposedly translating American writers (which is just made up), but I fail to see how “A cyberpunk ninja novel written on Twitter!” is anything other than a particularly weird marketing gimmick.

Preseason Swing Rating:

In my experience, ninjas laying is quite easy.

Friday

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid
http://nanoha-vivid.tv/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Franchise Prolongment
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 3rd

Premise: 
Spinoff series following Nanoha and Fate’s adopted daughter, Batman, as she… goes to school, meets more overdesigned heterochromatic piles of frills, and gets into pissing matches over who is the most magical.

Thoughts:
Seven Arcs has been hitting some tough times lately, but A-1 taking over the animation and putting a newbie in charge of directing doesn’t strike me as a good move. The closest thing to action that the promo comes is stills of characters having thrown punches at nothing too, and even those are far overwhelmed by things like “girls walk to class” or “girls eat lunch” or “girls cross a street,” so I’m already thinking of another certain spinoff magical girl show that packed 95% of its animation into one episode and was otherwise banal as hell. There’s a tournament too. That’s shorthand for “we couldn’t think of anything.” Maybe they’ll write it out and put in something with greater stakes than hurt feelings and a trophy, and maybe rainbow winged cheeseburgers will fly out of my ass.

Preseason Swing Rating:
                
Everything must go! Franchises priced to move!

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon?
http://danmachi.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Light Novel Generica
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 3rd

Premise: 
Batman is recruited by a new goddess in order to enter The Dungeon. He’s attacked by a powerful minotaur and subsequently saved by a woman who he falls in love with. He vows to keep adventuring to find her again, despite all the other women in his life, madly in love with him.

Thoughts:
Oh boy, here’s our obligatory ridiculous-titled, magical girlfriend fantasy teenage harem adventure-that-never-goes-further-than-a-mile-away-from-home. At least they’re not in bloody high school. There are even power levels. Well, it could be worse. It could be an MMO they’re playing, although I highly suspect that’s what it started its life as before somebody decided to just not bother with the MMO thing and kept all the leveling and weird rules about being allowed to enter “THE DUNGEON” that will no doubt need boatloads of exposition nonsense. Promo’s barely animated, director’s awful (Kill Me Baby, Little Busters), writer’s worse (DaL, Milky Holmes 3, Kill Me Baby), JC Staff’s talent all jumped ship to Silver Link years ago. Expectation is minimal at best.

Preseason Swing Rating:

A wild squid appeared!

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki
http://www.yukichan-anime.com/
Studio: Satellite
Genre: Franchise Prolongment
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 3rd

Premise: 
Spinoff series. In an alternate world where Haruhi doesn’t exist (aside from being in the promo images), Nagato Yuki is a boring insecure girl, struggling with her feelings for her fellow club member, Batman.

Thoughts:
I’m pretty sure this originally came into existence just to cash in on people who wanted to ship a different couple. I’ve made no secret of my disdain for the Haruhi series in the past, but I really don’t understand (other than the alternate shipping) why they’d want to strip out the core elements of it and reboot it to be as generic and plain as possible. This isn’t like some alternate universe Star Trek episode where they suddenly find themselves with new jobs and have to solve the mystery either. This is just stripping everything down to “boring people in a club hang out and squirm over being insecure.” You can’t swing a dead cat in an anime con without hitting at least a dozen of those, given a large enough cat. Even the head writer’s resume reads like a list of shows where nothing happens, ever, with characters as interesting as gruel… and Chaika for some reason. I don’t know, maybe she got drunk. Shockingly, it’s Satellite instead of KyoAni, especially since “boring people in a club” seems to be KyoAni’s bread and butter nowadays, although that’s probably for the better.

Preseason Swing Rating:
  
Ship ahoy! Set sail for nothing!

Food Wars
http://www.shokugekinosoma.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Jump Yakitate Clone
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 3rd

Premise: 
Batman dreams of being a greater chef than his father, and joins a culinary academy that pits students against each other in cooking battles and only graduates the elite of the elite.

Thoughts: 
Yay! It’s Jump! And JC Staff! And tournaments! And it’s about people making ass-pull judgements about cooking! And the little guy fighting being discriminated against because he’s not the upper class! And they keep releasing the same commercial over and over again, each time with a different VA? And the genius behind adapting Terraformars and Neptunia is behind it? Stop, please. No, really. Please stop. The only thing that I think could repulse me more is CGI whisking. There is nothing I have seen in browsing over this that does not set my face to twitching in irritation. If they also yell and have food power levels, it’ll be the perfect storm of annoying me. Just the way he’s very very wrongly holding a kitchen knife in the promo pictures is already making me antsy. That’s how you lose a fingertip, kid.

Preseason Swing Rating:

SHUT THE HELL UP I’M COOKING

False Love:
http://www.nisekoi.jp/
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Closeups of Eyes
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 10th

Premise: 
Sequel series. Bruce Wayne is forced to be the boyfriend of a rival gang leader’s daughter, but can the world’s greatest detective solve the mystery of the pendant of his childhood crush he still carries around? 

Thoughts: 
More Jump! Yay! In Japan’s bizarre tradition of adding a random piece of punctuation to denote a sequel, this got a colon. Just like the thing it passed out of. Well played, Japan. I also glanced at things to at least catch myself somewhat on it, and apparently like… every single one of them has a key to his stupid pendant. I only made it through one episode of the first iteration, and that was already so blatantly padded out and full of closeups of eyes or heads turning as per Shaft usual, and the comedy, as per Japan usual, was simply people yelling. I don’t consider adding even more waffling to be something that will suddenly make me interested.

Preseason Swing Rating:

You know what they say about a lock that’s opened by any key…

Saturday

Rinne of the Boundary
http://anime-rinne.com/
Studio: Brains Base
Genre: Nostalgia Bait
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th (early morning)

Premise: 
Sakura was taken by spirits as a girl and has been able to see them ever since, despite not wanting to. She meets Batman, a boy at her school who’s part reaper, who helps lingering spirits pass on.

Thoughts:
The latest, ‘greatest’ work from Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha) and what a creative premise it is! Only the second show about a girl who can see spirits this season. It also says something that there’s more footage from each of Takahashi’s last adaptations in the PV for the show than there is for the show itself. Brains Base is far on the weaker end of production, so can’t expect it to blow anybody away with action or animation. Head writer’s certainly been around, with a lot of good and (more) bad under her belt, but the director’s nobody special (D-Frag, Kurenai). And since it’s a Takahashi work, you know from the start that jack is going to get wrapped up, and even if it does, it won’t be for a half decade. That puts a damper on any excitement I already didn’t have from the crappy promo.

Preseason Swing Rating:

One anime adaptation a decade, huh, Rumiko?

Crazy Teacher
http://www.ytv.co.jp/denpa/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Filling in the Cliche Bingo Card
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th (early morning)

Premise: 
The world famous genius, Batman, would rather stay at home and update his blog on otaku things, but his sister makes him go out and get a job, so he becomes a teacher.

Thoughts:
And wouldn’t you just know it, 90% of his students are females who just happen to be secretly famous manga authors, secret voice actors, secretly work at maid cafes, secretly crossdress, secretly own a video game company, secretly be an idol, secretly play MMOs with him, etc! What a surprising twist that it’s been an entire season since I last saw! And spoiler warning, but yes, they’re pitted again the elite students in an academic tournament. If you’re confused, the proletariat in this class struggle is being played by a bunch of blue ribbon teenagers led by the smartest man in the world. Promo shows little promising, certainly not anything like animation. Just exactly what you expect and the same formula Japan always uses; “An unusual teacher… but students respond to their unusual ways!?” And with all of them leading secret lives where they’re famous and/or already have a successful professional career at age 16, you can’t even pull in the Mr. Kotter sweathogs angle. This director’s only claim to fame was surviving three years working on Detective Conan, while the head writer has mainly worked on childrens merchandise shows. I can only hope they can channel all their experience entertaining twelve year-olds to bear.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Least realistic part? Teenagers having jobs at all in this economy.

Seraph of the End
http://owarino-seraph.jp/
Studio: Wit
Genre: Magic Evil Elves
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise: 
A virus kills every living adult on Earth, allowing the vampires to rise up and enslave the world. Batman escaped and is now part of a group that hunts vampires.

Thoughts:
The promo seems decent enough, but this is Wit and Jump. The former likes to frontload all their effort into the promos (see Attack On Titan and Rolling Girls) while the rest of the show’s production can go screw right off, and the latter is… well, Jump. Lords of going nowhere, very, very, very slowly and with copious amounts of exposition. I don’t understand why you’d show off that they’re going to school either. Sure, vampires and the end of days is important, but you never know when you might need to know about the Boxer Rebellion. And just because most of the world died, I see no reason why complex infrastructure, or society at all, would be affected. You’re losing me before you’ve even begun, Jump ‘action’ show. If vampires can keep the electricity running and plumbing working during a global apocalypse, maybe it’s time for humanity to pack it in.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Republicans for Dracula! Let’s fix the government!

Highschool DxD BorN
http://www.haremking.tv/
Studio: TNK
Genre: Tits and Ass
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise: 
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of Batman in his harem of demons with his clothes-destroying powers, fighting against a tidal wave of tits and asses rubbed against him.

Thoughts:
How does this keep getting sequels? I have a hard time believing the answer is just T&A. This just has the same T&A over and over again. Don’t even the people who lap this up want variety? Isn’t just getting the same thing constantly boring? Is it the first season’s stripper pole ED? Is that still what’s carrying the show? It’s certainly not the animation, action, or characters. Apparently in the last season which I skipped, they even introduced a goddamned long lost childhood friend and a crossdresser, just to hit all the cliche checkboxes they somehow missed. Nothing’s changed in the studio or staff, this just inexplicably continues to exist long after so many of its identical LN ilk have come and gone.  

Preseason Swing Rating:

The other dancing white meat.

Gunslinger Stratos
http://www.guns-project.jp/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Swordguns
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise: 
A hundred years from now, the world exists as two parallel universes, one nearly lawless, the other under totalitarian rule. Both send soldiers into the past to prevent the other world from ever existing, which may include Totalitarian Batman having to fight Lawless Batman.

Thoughts:
This comes from a Virtual-On-esque arcade game with the world’s most bizarre controller. I also appreciate that multiple characters have strapped swords to their heavy weapons, because the swordgun has the strength of both a sword and a gun, even if it still pales before a gunsword. Key staff have basically nothing to their names. Well, nothing anime. The writer’s been doing things like Guilty Gear for a while, but “the writer of Bridget’s backstory” is probably something better left off the resume. The promos do have some actual animation to the action, which is about all I think anybody could hope for when it comes to “club of teenagers have fighties against alternate versions of themselves.” Still, seeing the protagonist already clutching a gun and having angst attacks does not excite me about his internal struggle like they apparently expect it to, and I give it about five minutes before someone starts getting moping about whether they’re doing the right thing. I’m also leery about the two equally sucky worlds angle, but Japanese writing is typically terrible at creating actual balance when they try to pull this stuff anyway.

Preseason Swing Rating:

The saucy fanfiction practically writes itself.

Fate/stay night - Unlimited Blade Works
http://www.fate-sn.com/
Studio: UFOTable
Genre: Navel Gazing
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise: 
Continuation from autumn. Batman is drawn into a magical battle royale among mages and the Servants under them, heroic legends summoned from history. The winner gets to make a wish on the Holy Grail.

Thoughts:
I came out of the first season with a pretty bitter taste in my mouth. When it did bother to animate the fights, they looked good, but they were all flash with no substance, undermined further by the protagonists being completely vestigial to basically everything. If showing up after the fact was an Olympic event, they’d have missed out on their gold medal because they got there after the event already ended. Combine that with the non-action parts being mostly characters announcing how important things everything is while still finding plenty of time to go to class every day and have long, boring walks home to discuss how important it is they they do something, without actually doing anything, and it just comes off as vapid navel gazing from characters about as interesting as the potatoes we just spent 5 minutes watching them cook and eat. Yeah, things will probably start moving in this half, but I (and everybody) know exactly how it’s going to play out, and that still includes at least two more hours of Shirou clutching his fist and looking constipated to show how deadly serious and emotional he is.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Accurate depiction of Shirou’s role in the story most episodes.

Plastic Memories
http://plastic-memories.jp/
Studio: Dogakobo
Genre: Not Chobits
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise: 
Batman fails out his college entrance exams and is forced to use his parents’ connections to join SAI, a company that creates lifelike androids. His job is to collect the ones nearing the end of their designated 9 year lifespan, assisted by one of them.

Thoughts:
Raise your hands if you already know how this is going to end. Is that everybody? Okay, well, someone explain it to Wingus in the back. I do like how everyone seems copied the same incomplete description that doesn’t even get the name of the company… in English… correct though. A+ effort, English world. The promos seem to be aiming for more comedy than the obvious angst angle, but if they’re anything to go by, the kind of comedy that consists entirely of characters making silly faces and yelling. Great, but not surprising for the director (and studio!) of Mikakunin and GJ Club, and both shared the same propensity to run the same ‘joke’ into the ground and a budget that was punted to the curb by the end of episode 3.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
But is the on/off switch still located in the vagina?

Song of the Prince Seriously Love Revolution
http://utapri.tv/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Idol Worship
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise: 
Sequel sequel series. Batman is more ensconced in the male pop idol business than ever, and is practically drowning in the effeminate boy pussy she now manages.

Thoughts:
This is another thing that I do not understand how it continues to get sequels, but then again, I don’t understand how it got a one period. Of all of Japan’s odd cultural things, the fervor with which they worship pop idols is the one that confuses me the most, but then again, I don’t understand why people worship demihumans like the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo either, and I guess this is no worse than if one of them made a show about how great they are, which of course, we know never happens ever.  

Preseason Swing Rating:

Take them and go. Please.

Blood Blockade Battlefront
http://kekkaisensen.com/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Jazz
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 4th

Premise:
The Beyond suddenly opened in New York, unleashing supernatural powers and monsters. To help his sister, Batman, gifted with magic eyes, joins an organization of super-powered fighters trying to keep the peace.

Thoughts:
Another Jump show? When it rains, it pours. Well, it is Bones, and Kyousogiga’s director, so there are people who know how to make an actual action show involved, and the promo thankfully does show that, but again, Jump. And prime time Jump at that. It is the looming spectre that hangs over it like a giant fart; already knowing every character will have ridiculously pigeonholed powers that they will explain at exhaustive length and that the story will never have any resolution, but will have about a 185% chance for characters to start shouting about believing in themselves and/or their friends while harnessing the darkness inside them. Hopefully at least it’ll maintain the flash and eyecandy. *ba-dum*

Preseason Swing Rating:

Look. Look with your special eyes.

Sunday

The Heroic Legend of Arslan
http://www.arslan.jp/
Studio: Liden Films/Sanzigen
Genre: CGI Soldiers
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 5th (early morning)

Premise: 
The kingdom of Lusitania invades Pars, and Arslan, the crown prince, barely escapes with his life. With the help of Batman, his loyal warrior, he must raise an army and liberate his people.

Thoughts:
The name attached to this I’m sure most people care about is that the source is by the same author as Legend of the Galactic Heroes, a 9 year affair that you couldn’t pay me to sit through. This, on the other hand, has been a work in progress since 1986 and is still incomplete and already had one OVA series, 22 years ago. The rest of the key staff consists of the director of such grand epics as Bleach and Black Butler 3, and the writer who most recently brought us Akame and Yuuki Yuuna. If there’s anybody I’d put in charge of a massively CGIed up fantasy epic, it ain’t them. Speaking of which, that’s basically all Sanzigen does, and Liden’s last attempt was Terraformars, so I’m betting that the promo also contains about 90% of the animation for the first three episodes.

Preseason Swing Rating:

But is he an allegory for Jersus?

Baby Steps
http://www9.nhk.or.jp/anime/babysteps/
Studio: Pierrot
Genre: Padding 
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 5th (early morning)

Premise: 
Sequel series. Batman continues to play tennis for exercise, and wins thanks to his uncanny ability to do basic math.

Thoughts:
When I went back and checked my notes on the first episode, I vividly remembered the part of it where someone asked him a question, he repeated the question, had a flashback to someone else asking the same question, and then stared like a deer caught in headlights for a few more seconds. This is on top of all the other cliches, tennis-specific ESP abilities, people having to explain who the most popular girl in school is and how every single person adores her, protagonist narrating every single infinitesimal thing that happens, so on and so forth. Same studio, same key staff, same lack of interest.

Preseason Swing Rating:

“And then I found myself in the Preseason Swing Rating for Baby Steps, thinking up a joke.”

SHOW BY ROCK!!
http://showbyrock-anime.com/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Idol Worship
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 5th

Premise: 
Some plain girl, Batman, who plays Guitar Hero ends up in a music world where she’s a cat, finds a magic guitar, and is recruited into a band. One of the other band member’s guitars is also Batman. I am one hundred percent serious. Her guitar is and is named Batman.

Thoughts:
This is yet another one of those idol multimedia franchise blitzkriegs like Love Live and Cinderella girls, already existing on phones, now coming to anime, manga, light novel, and collectable limited edition tampons. Have I made my overwhelming distaste for Japan’s nonstop neverending adulation of pop rock stars known yet? You know, Japan, there’s an entire world of music outside bubblegum pop, classical, and the exact same jazz you always use every single time you want to set a show in America. Where’s the show about some guy on platform shoes being the kind of disco? I know you know disco exists. You keep putting it in Keroro EDs. Anyway, promo looks about 150% pure idol wankery, esteemed director of Ozma and Slap Up Party, and it’s being made to pitch a cell phone game. I think that about sums it up. 

Preseason Swing Rating:

God help them when they discover actual goth rock.

Hello! Golden Mosaic
http://www.kinmosa.com/
Studio: Gokumi
Genre: Jibbering
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 5th

Premise: 
Sequel series. Batman goes to Japan and because he’s blonde and a foreigner, is apparently hilarious for some reason.

Thoughts:
The first season left only the vaguest impression that it was aggressively lazily directed and spent a while badly trying to speak in English. It’s one of those four panel comic deals where it just throws a bunch of girls together and calls it a day. The jokes were all things like “I tried to wake her up, but she’s a heavy sleeper!” And then one of them makes one of the dozen copy paste faces these things always use so they can make the exact same ‘joke’ a second time, and then telling the person in question “I tried to wake you up but you are a heavy sleeper!” so they can make a face, thereby successfully eating up 10% of the episode while I die a little more inside with each repetition. Staff and studio are the same as before, because they already know where to grab the stock art from.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Hachacha-chacha-chacha.

Various Things of Grisaia
http://www.grisaia-anime.com/
Studio: 8 Bit
Genre: Upskirt Shots
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 12th/April 19th

Premise: 
Sequel series. The continuing adventures of Batman, going to a special school for troubled youths with tragic back-stories who all want to screw him silly.

Thoughts:
This season is based on the second two VNs in the series; the first of which will be covered in a one hour special (since it’s mostly sexcapades which will not be making their appearance) before moving onto the last game for the rest afterward. The first season was already not-especially-adapted-so-much-as-copy-pasted and painfully paced with characters actually waiting patiently until lines completed before showing any reaction to what was being said to them, like the direction process was “Record VN on auto-play, add marginal animation, add panty shots, put in letterbox to call it theatrical.” And from what people have said, that was the part that people seem to think was done well before it faceplanted all over its character arcs. If that was it when it was ‘good,’ I really don’t want to see any more.

Preseason Swing Rating:

And about a billion panties.

Yamada and the Seven Witches
http://www.yamajo-anime.com/
Studio: Liden Films
Genre: Not-Sekirei
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 12th

Premise: 
Batman discovers he has magical lips when he accidentally kisses a girl and switches bodies with her. They make a club to discover other girls with special powers that are activated by a kiss.

Thoughts:
This did have an OVA back in December which I took one glance at, was immediately bombarded by speedlines and some guy screaming his head off, flipped forward slightly to see if it got any better, and hit male sidekick explaining (screaming) how the emotionless not-robot girl that was being yelled at previously was the cutest and most popular girl in the whole school, and they needed to have a maid cafe for the festival because then she’d dress like a maid. At that point, I went off to do something more fun, like stick my hand in a waffle iron. It’s the same staff and studio as the OVA episodes (another one is coming a few weeks from now), the writer being the only one of any note, although she’s kind of the Nicholas Cage of Japanese series composition with a boatload to her name, both good and horrific, most recently Girl Friend BETA and Love Stage, so… ew. It’s yet another magical girlfriend harem club that’s already started screaming at me four months before the series started airing. While I applaud its initiative, perhaps it should have not.

Preseason Swing Rating:

HEY! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN!

Monday

Mikagura School Suite
http://mikagura-gakuen.com/
Studio: Dogakobo
Genre: Weird Vocaloid Shilling
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 6th

Premise:
Batman enrolls at a school where all students must join an extracurricular culture club, and those clubs are then force to compete for which students get the best treatment. There’s also a magic cat.

Thoughts:
I had to laugh when I was reading up on this. The whole thing comes from some Vocaloid guy who wrote a series of songs, and then was inspired, by himself, to write a series of light novels… about his songs, then adapted to a manga, and now here. Taking a long, bizarre, nonsensical journey just to end up in Yet Another School Club Battle schtick. Then I remembered that awful Shaft show that followed the same path and got depressed. Somehow, I find myself missing pachinko-inspired adaptations. Promo shows little in the way of animation or humor, but does have yelling, speedlines, still images teleporting on top of speedlines to show exciting paint battles, and pastel Powerpoint backgrounds. Color me excited.

Preseason Swing Rating:

No love for the drunk vocaloids…

Tuesday

Blare! Euphonium
http://anime-eupho.com/
Studio: Kyoto Animation
Genre: K-On But Not
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 7th

Premise:
Batman, a euphonium player, joins a high school band music club.

Thoughts:
Whoa, Kyoto Animation. Don’t get too wild with your premises. They’re not even in a band. It’s a music club. Again. And the lead is insecure and easily pushed into everything. Again. Also, the word they use is actually just like “Make loud noise,” and as someone who played a euphonium in high school and owns a double bell euphonium because that was 75% of what a grandfather knew about my high school life, blare is the best choice. KyoAni director, KyoAni writer, KyoAni. They’ve got a bit of a reputation for a certain kind of utterly banal show at this point and this looks to be one of the banalest, if for no other reason than KyoAni would never dare do anything with their safe, market-friendly, white bread on toast characters. The spirit of compromise hangs heavy over just about everything they make; attempting to appeal to everyone by never doing anything that might put off anybody, and thereby churning out the same grey porridge time after time. Even one of them emptying a spit valve is probably too risky for them since that might give the impression that one of them has ever spit.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Hello inoffensive blob. I, too, am inoffensive blob.

Wednesday

Gintama°
http://www.sunrise-inc.co.jp/gintama/
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: That Which Cannot Die
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 8th (early morning)

Premise:
Sequel/Continuation now nearly 300 episodes in and getting random new seasons every other year or so. Aliens have conquered the planet. Batman leads a trio who has shenanigans.

Thoughts:
Yay! Even more Jump! You know how I just absolutely adore Jump! I gave this a glance back in 2011 when it had its last return from the dead, and it didn’t even make it 30 seconds before screaming and speedlines. And then some girl magically grew a dick or something and a guy who liked her made a horrified face. That ‘joke’ lasted about as long as it takes you to listen to Dude Looks Like a Lady, twice. But it’s a parody, it’s a joke! someone undoubtedly will yell, assuming any make it this far. Then why do I keep flinching when it yells at me instead of laughing?

Preseason Swing Rating:

*whomp* *whomp* *whomp* *whomp*

Triage X
http://triagex-anime.jp/
Studio: Xebec
Genre: Boobs
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 8th

Premise:
By night, the nurses of Mochizuki Hospital team up with Batman, a high school student, to dispense vigilante justice.

Thoughts:
Brought to you by the same person as High School of the Dead, which explains why all the characters look like three watermelons duct taped to a stop sign. While I’ve long lamented the lack of any decent spiritual successor to the 90s girls with guns shows like Gunsmith Cats or Burn Up, but I can’t see this scratching that itch. For one, this is Xebec, and even though they sometimes do get their production ducks in a row, it’s less their directors who do the mecha-like things, and more the directors who do the To Love-ru, Maken-ki, and Upotte things, so expecting much out of them is foolhardy. I used to kind of like the writer (Ga-Rei Zero, BakaTest), but the last thing she was put in charge of was Aldnoah, so suck on that. It also seems to be drenched in angst, like everything is these days, with every character having various dead people hanging over them or living on inside them and the male lead being the Grand Grumpus of Grumpville, a far cry from the freewheeling, fun loving likes of Rally or Rio. No promotional material of any worth yet, but again, given who’s in charge here, that’s probably for the best.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Still better than US healthcare.

My Love Story!!
http://www.anime-ore.jp/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Bloom
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 8th

Premise:
Batman is a big, scary guy who is kindhearted, but unlike his best friend, has no luck with girls. He helps a girl in trouble and a relationship blossoms between the two.

Thoughts:
From what I gather, the protagonist not being a stereotypical pretty boy is both the only unique point and 85% of the jokes. Also from what I gather, every single named female that exists for more than five minutes is in love with him. So, you know, the more things never change… It’s hard to think of this as much other than the traditional LN “protagonist looks mean but is not” thing, only repackaged in the bloomy, pink, cherry blossom tornado of a girl’s manga, substituting painfully ‘wacky’ gimmicks for sighing and mooning over how nice each other is, especially with the promos already full of bloom and ugly pastel ‘reaction’ backgrounds. Director and writer’s most recent shows are Chihayafull and Brothers Conflict respectively, and Madhouse spits out at least one or two of these girly shows a year, so here’s more of that assembly line production.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Fat, ugly, stupid people are hilarious!

Afterschool Pleiades
http://sbr-gx.jp/
Studio: Gainax
Genre: Car Commercial
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres April 8th

Premise:
Magical car girls collect magical car parts to send Batman back to Pleiades.

Thoughts:
In case you’ve forgotten, this originally took life back in 2011 as a 19 minute car Subaru car commercial, because they apparently felt like setting fire to a pile of money, made by Gainax in their last gasps before all the talent broke off to become Trigger. Not one to let a sunk cost go, it’s now a full fledged series. Granted, the director has been around Gainax long before the talent left, in charge of two of their greatest triumphs, Medaka Box and He Is My Master. Now is that something to be excited about or what? The promo enthuses further by showing… blob vomiting up a magical staff and then magical girls drifting past a sunset. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t goddamned wait!

Preseason Swing Rating:

Vroom vroom! I’m a magic girl!