Wednesday

GANGSTA.
http://gangsta-project.com/
Studio: Manglobe
Genre: Throwing Everything at the Wall
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 1st

Premise:
Nic is a deaf metahuman swordsman. Worick is a one-eyed muggle. Alex is a prostitute. Together, they fight crime.

Thoughts:
To give a rough idea how much effort Manglobe’s putting into the animation, the PV begins with a ringing phone, but instead of animating someone picking up the phone to answer it, they cut away to a shot of a window. Then, after two minutes of talking heads, there’s a fight where someone slams into a wall, sending out a cloud of debris and detritus, while the wall remains completely unaffected. It’s not a good first impression, even for Manglobe. Manglobe director, Manglobe head writer, Manglobe animation, or lack thereof. But it’s adult and mature for adult and mature audiences. Which is why, of course, everyone’s swinging swords, there are metahumans with built-in power levels, and every disreputable establishment is named something like Pussy and Bastard.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Swords and power levels are neither gangsta nor gangster.

Dogfight Mage Cadets Instructor
http://ku-sen.jp/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Wanting to be Infinite Stratos
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 8th

Premise:
Age is a disgraced instructor. Misora is dumb. Lecty is dumb. Rico is lazy. Together, they fight insects.

Thoughts:
The unabashed magical school harem thing of the season, so of course the promos include them dressed up like bunny girls, maids, and some awful animation of one of them trying to run in bloomers. Luckily, there’s also a picture of gigantic graveyard at sunset, so you know it’ll be serious too. Sure, they could’ve played up the sky surfing shown in approximately 1.5 seconds of one promo or the giant alien bug fighting aspect, but that would be dishonest and we can’t have that. And wouldn’t you know it, but it’s the same director/writer/studio team that brought us that unforgettable LN harem magical school adaptation from the winter, World Break. But I’m sure this time, they’ll get it right! After all, the cities are on sky continents instead of land continents, and they’re fighting insects instead of monsters. Totally different.

Preseason Swing Rating:

At least it’s not plane KanColle.

Pure-hearted Romantica
http://suzukisan.info/
Studio: Deen
Genre: Japan’s Backward Views on Homosexuality
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 8th

Premise:
Misaki is a putz. Usami is a predator. Together, they futz around.

Thoughts:
Another in the parade of horrid ‘romantic comedies’ where the lead is nothing but a trophy piece of meat that’s repeatedly pinned down and necked on while they quiver helplessly, unable to resist the predatory men around them who pass them around like a sack of corn. Now entering the eight thousandth iteration, including the spinoff or two is spawned, with the same staff and studio because why change a winning formula? Oh, wait. The feminine character is male and they all have penises? Well that makes it hilarious then. I mean, gay guys, am I right?

Preseason Swing Rating:
  
Butt stuff.

Umaru
http://umaru-ani.me/
Studio: Dogakobo
Genre: Repetition
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 8th

Premise:
Taihei is a schmuck. Umaru is perfect outside, but immature at home. Together, they try to see how many times they have to repeat that before it becomes a joke.

Thoughts:
The full title is a pun I neither want to explain nor think up anything for. I glanced through the source, and what’s in the title really seems to be the only joke, which it feels the need to point out almost every page. She’s 100% perfect and the best at absolutely everything outside, and immature at home. That’s it. Them’s the jokes. Them’s all the jokes. The cliche traditionally reserved for some side character thrust into the spotlight and placed on a pedestal. This is the Survival Club/Love Lab/Yuru Yuri/Mitsudomoe director/writer team again, so do sometimes understand comedy sometimes, but their strength is certainly not in their staying power and their last few attempts have been getting increasingly stale, especially as Dogakobo tends to phone these things in. I wouldn’t hold out much hope.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Fish pun.

Thursday

Chaos Dragon
http://chaosdragon.red/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Trying to be Lodoss or Dragonlance
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Premise:
Ibuki is royalty in exile. Eiha is a servant animal girl. Together, they fight legless hover people.

Thoughts:
This spawned out of role playing sessions between a number of notable writers (Urobuchi, Nasu, etc), but since it has immediately gone to full out multimedia blitz, I have my doubts. The whole thing reeks of putting all the effort into namedropping as many people as possible in lieu of making something decent. I get to cheat a little bit here since the first 25% of the show already aired in a pre-broadcast special. To sum up, characters are weak, the adventure is non-existent, and the only time it comes to life is during the action, which is unfortunately not frequent, at complete odds with the rest of the episode(s), and always ends in a magical girl fire whirlwind.

Preseason Swing Rating:
            
And then there’s this guy.

Aquarion Logos
http://aqlogos.com/
Studio: Satelight
Genre: Probably Not Donuts
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Premise:
Akira has a penis and pilots a robot. Maia has a vagina and pilots a robot. Kokone has a vagina too and probably also pilots a robot. Together, they fight literacy.

Thoughts:
Yes, really. The PV prattles on about people living under the yoke of the alphabet while kanji erases people and trees or something. I’m trying my best not to think about it either. While the last Aquarion sputtered out, badly, towards the end, at least through the first half, it was well carried by its cast, particularly Andy and Mix, good actual use of the episodic structure, and always provided at least something to say about an episode, which after the previous season is something I feel myself appreciating all the more. Then again, this is a completely new staff, and while I applaud any step away from Okada, it’s not like the writer that handled Hamatora and P4:G, or the director of Nobunaga the Fool and the season of Slayers that had magic tennis are steps in a positive direction. The lead already looks like enough of a douchebag. And of course, the heroine is orgasming during the mech transformation in the PV, although that’s more par for the course. Also, FYI, the first episode’s broadcast is tied to an OVA for EVOL (and going to be half an hour earlier than usual).

Preseason Swing Rating:
       
Spoiler: The antagonists are the troggles.

Rampo Mysteries – Game of Laplace
http://www.rampokitan.com/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Crossdressing
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Premise:
Kobayashi is a schoolboy who occasionally crossdresses. Akechi is a genius detective. Together, they fight crime.

Thoughts:
Ah, Seiji Kishi, my old friend and esteemed director of so very many terrible action shows and the occasional weirdly decent comedy. Stick to your strengths. It is not ‘stylish’ action always in the same “I really want this to look like Persona” style, let alone mystery. It’s a noitaminA show too, and I’m not sure that there’s a single one of those that I didn’t regret watching. The promos don’t give much to work with, although I don’t expect this to be exactly heart pounding action anyway. It’s based loosely on a specific series by the ‘father’ of Japanese detective stories, Edogawa Rampo, specifically the series that was trying to emulate Sherlock Holmes, so it ditches Watson, promotes the Baker Street Irregulars to the “Boy Detective Club,” Higgins develops a predilection for dressing up as women, literally everybody is a master of disguise, and half are transvestites. One story with this character, one that was adapted into a movie no less, features him matching wits with a drag queen who keeps cartwheeling oompa loompas as pets. I am not joking. Cocaine was a little too hardcore for Japan. I’ll be honest though. A few cartwheeling oompa loompas would probably be more of an appeal than this apparent slash and burn down to yet another bland ‘school detective club.’ A repackage for the new era is great, but you generally want to add life to the franchise you’re trying to bring back, not suck it out.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Oompa loompas are beary fun!

Aoharu x Machine Gun
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/aoharu/
Studio: Brains Base
Genre: Not Samurai Warriors
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Premise:
Tachibana is a transvestite. Masamune is an escort. Yukimura draws porn. Together, they play paintless paintball.

Thoughts:
The title’s written as “youth” but romanized as “Aoharu” (lit. blue spring) for reasons only known to the great space goat. The recent rash of not-paintball things, like any anime set inside an MMO, is a thing that I simply don’t get. Either go all the way and give them real guns so there can be actual tension and actual consequences, or cut out all the angsting around and killer instinct and that jazz without a single trace of irony so the whole thing doesn’t inevitably come off as wanky. I guess it’s meant to appeal to kids with airsoft guns styling themselves remorseless killing machines? I see no unintended consequences of that. Director is a nobody, writer is the celebrated genius behind Ace of Diamond and Library Wars. There aren’t any promos out (at least at time of writing), but Brains Base is generally tolerable at best and significantly worse than that most of the time. And no, I don’t know why they’re named after Sengoku era people. I barely managed to skim through the joyless first chapter. That was more than enough.

Preseason Swing Rating:
   
Sometimes it’s better not to know.

Castle Town – Dandelion
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/dande/
Studio: Production IMS
Genre: Japan Discovering Reality Shows
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Premise:
Akane is a princess who can manipulate gravity. The audience at home is watching a reality show about her and her siblings to elect the new ruler. Together, this makes no sense.

Thoughts:
Another one of those things where Japan is seeming to just throw as much as they can at the wall and hope that something sticks while not being so ambitious as to actually tell any kind of story with it. Royalty, reality show, super powers, and with it, they… go to school and complain about how awful it is to be royalty, to be on a reality show, and to have super powers. Fortunately, we have the all-star director/writer team that brought us Bakuman, and the writer’s resume reads like a list of “How to make a boring show about girls in a club who do nothing.” Plus Mushi-Uta. Where’s my second season, damn it? I was promised a second season. This is as far as Japan’s willing to stretch it. Instead of a club, they’re a family. Dare to be great, Japan. Dare to be great.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Silence, peasants. Your king is talking.

School-Live!
http://gakkougurashi.com/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Trying to be Higurashi
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 9th

Premise:
Yuki is a girl. Kurumi is a girl. Yuuri is a girl. Together, they go through a mental breakdown.

Thoughts:
The gimmick here is that it’s a zombie apocalypse largely framed through a girl coping with it by being delusional and acting like everything’s all right, so it’s split between her getting into hijinks in a kind of make-believe world where it’s silly school hijinks time, and everyone else having their own PTSD attacks as they enable her behavior. It is an interesting idea, but it requires good execution, and from the little I glanced through of the source, seems to mostly come out as making a bog standard dull generic school club thing that’s interrupted every five minutes or so by someone going “OH GOD ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.” This kind of thing seems like it’d be right up Silver Link or Shaft’s alley, but Lerche is uneven at best and the staff here’s not great. Director of the non-bloody parts of Total Eclipse (ie episodes 3+) and the writer who handled Gunslinger Stratos. No promotional material to look at either to give any idea how the psychological stuff is going to come out.

Preseason Swing Rating:
  
Almost as horrifying as being trapped in an actual Japanese school club show.

Friday

Ushio & Tora
http://ushitora.tv/
Studio: MAPPA/Studio VOLN
Genre: Giant Hair
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd

Premise:
Ushio is some yutz with a magic stick. Tora is a magic tiger. Together, they fight crime.

Thoughts:
This is based on an old (well, the 90s) manga from a not-Jump-but-still-basically-Jump rag that already had an OVA once upon a time. You’d really think that this kind of thing would be Japan’s answer to the eight thousand reboots and reimaginings of various superhero things that the west is constantly spitting out. Recent enough for some people to have fond memories, but far enough back for a total reboot using the original as only a vague framework to make something new instead of simply being nostalgia bait and to prove to your parents that that degree in writing wasn’t a waste. Of course, that never happens because the source is the word of God, right down to the frankly horrifyingly aged art style. Anyway, Trigun/Ippo’s director… and little else… so that’s right up the nostalgia bait alley, and a head writer who’s mostly okay at comedy, and mostly awful at everything else, although the mess that was Tenjo Tenge’s thirty nine year long flashback arc is what I’ll always remember him for. MAPPA can do action, but they’re co-producing this with VOLN (whoever the hell they are), and they also quite frequently just don’t give half an ass at all. I’m not much of a fan of these kinds of never ending, gotta get stronger for my friends schmuckfests to begin with, even less so after this last season, so it’ll take some severe eye candy and rejection of the source to pull my interest.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Two fat Swedish trolls.

GATE – This is How The Self Defense Forces Fight In Another Land
http://www.gate-anime.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Power Fantasies
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd

Premise:
Itami is an ex-special forces otaku. Rory is a horny immortal demi-goddess. Tuka is an immortal elf. Together, they satisfy teenage nationalistic power fantasies.

Thoughts: 
When America gets jingoistic, we end up with Jack Bauer kicking in the teeth of Afghanistani because the Chinese are trying to frame Iranians for a bioterrorism plot set in motion by Russia. When Japan gets jingoistic, Mack Tauer goes to fantasy land where he’s immediately swarmed by women desperate to ride his dick while the Americans seethe with envy. Culture. The reason this has a young adult protagonist instead of a teenager is because the author was apparently an ex-army guy who set out to write a cliched LN fantasy, but published online. And then as an LN. And make no mistake, aside from the gunwank, which seems to mainly take the form of CG tanks rolling around, this is Yet Another Harem LN, right down to the ‘supposedly a dropout but actually super awesome at literally everything’ eunuch protagonist and annoying male sidekick prattling about how ‘moe’ things are. The wanking over the greatness of the Japanese army is so bad that reading up on it, even the Japanese were making fun of it for that. The PV was enamored of speedlines and the only action or adventuring shown was the horny one throwing an axe and then catching it to more speedlines. The director’s only been allowed to do Love Live, for good reason, and this writer’s incredibly hit or miss at adapting (Horizon, Escha, Black Bullet, etc). And, of course, when forced to choose between adventuring and wordy convoluted non-plots that go nowhere that they try to pass off as royal intrigue, you know that “doing anything” is not going to win.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Meanwhile, in Australia.

Classroom ☆ Crisis
http://www.classroom-crisis.com/
Studio: Lay-duce
Genre: Being as Boring as Possible
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd

Premise: 
Kaito is a teacher and an engineer. Mizuki is his sister and one of his students. Iris is also one of his students. Together, they work on engines.

Thoughts: 
Another multimedia blitzkrieg with everything but a cellphone trading card game already announced. The draw appears to be the writer, the same guy behind Saekano and WA2, two franchises that if you’ll remember, I found full of boredom and repellant characters. Lord knows that the big twist that instead of a school club or a workplace (club), going with a school workplace (club) isn’t going to win any rewards, and yet, from the promotional material, what little exists, it seems really proud that it’s bringing nothing to the table but that. Not even some vapid cliches to roll your eyes at. What is the hook even supposed to be here? Yeah, you can make your little not-a-sitcom thing, but at least flash something like the snappy witticisms of Gilmore Girls instead of just name dropping and calling it a day, you lazy schmucks.

Preseason Swing Rating:

People do like the way she says ham.

Symphogear GX – Believe in Justice and Hold a Determination to Fist
http://www.symphogear-gx.com/
Studio: Satelight
Genre: Ridiculous Hats
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd

Premise: 
Hibiki sings and punches things. Tsubasa sings and stabs things. Chris sings and shoots things. Together, they hold a determination to fist.

Thoughts: 
The first season had a fantastic middle. The second season had a fantastic start. Both seasons collapsed at the end due to problems with the antagonist and the obligatory muggle, culminating with the entire cast flying into space and exploding. Then they got better. One thing it was good at through both seasons was keeping the action well-animated (even if other parts often looked ridiculously awful), the music solid, and had a decent grasp on being over the top without feeling the need to spend hours explaining how over the top it was. Same staff as the second season, so at least on a production front, it should stay strong in the action department, and the new magical girls being a witch and her gaggle of sadistic kill-bots is certainly a big step up from Dr. Evil’s cackling and pissing himself or Fine’s love-hate relationship with the moon. I do worry that the cast has become a bit too big, and it was already having problems last season before it doubled it up again. Maybe they’ve learned a little restraint and will be able to focus down more. Or at the very least, not pussy out of some of the better moments and turn them into awful ones this time around. There is literally nobody who wouldn’t have been a fan of cyborg Hibiki. Instead, she grunted a new arm out of her ass. Fantastic.

Preseason Swing Rating:
   
Hold an excitement to fist.

Prison School
http://prison-anime.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Exploitation
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 10th

Premise:
Kiyoshi has a penis. Takehito has a penis. So on and so forth have penises. Together, they’re thrown in an all-girls school’s jail.

Thoughts:
Nobody can say the staff here’s not experienced, although having done everything under the sun, there’s a whole lot more bad than good. Their most recent joint project was that masturbatory affair about girls making anime, although JC Staff is no PA Works. Then again, it’s just a different kind of unabashed shamelessness. The PV is done is in a deliberately retro style, but since almost the entire thing is against speedlines or sparklies, I’m pretty sure that it’s just an attempt to hide how cheap it is. Any attempt to call it parody of the awful cliche it’s embracing pales when they’re advertising an I-cup woman exploding out of her clothes, dressed in a thong, grinding her crotch into some guy’s face while spanking another. I think the joke’s supposed to that it’s fanservicey, but then overdramatized, but yet yet again, I really don’t see how that’s different from usual. Because the tits are bigger?

Preseason Swing Rating:

Cruel and unusual.

Cinderella Girls
http://imas-cinderella.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Girls in a Club
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 17th

Premise:
Rin is a wannabe idol. Uzuki is a wannabe idol. Mio is a wannabe idol. Together, they faff.

Thoughts:
Iteration seven hundred and fifty three of the Im@s crapola, now more idolly than ever. I suppose this is a direct continuation from winter, but honestly, who can even tell? There’s no plot. The characters are all cloying wafer thin stereotypes with no development or any thought in their heads besides friendship and gotta try really hard for the glory of the idol industry, and the whole thing exists merely to shill a cell phone game and fuel Japan’s mass produced corporate pop star factory industry. I repeat what I said in the past. They need some kind of mass drug-fueled orgy/rape/murder coverup scandal to get rid of this disturbing cult of personality the whole thing has developed. Imagine a world where the Disney pop star machine just never ended, where Beliebers were not to be ridiculed but were the norm, where there were goddamned 140 Backstreet Boys. That is a world that terrifies me, and I would thank you kindly to stop trying to glorify it, Japan.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Oh please god no.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma
http://anime.prisma-illya.jp/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Somehow Not Dying
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 24th

Premise:
Ilya is a magical girl. Magical Ruby is a stick. Together, they do jack.

Thoughts:
Eighty ninth iteration of this series, putting to the test how long they can drag out a magical girl show that features as little magic as possible. I gave it about four episodes combined across the previous seasons and it abused my trust by being hardly animated and boring as hell. Yeah, every once in a blue moon the planets align and someone on the staff decides to give half a crap about a sequence, but mostly, it’s spent walking to school, baking, walking from school, being lectured, sleeping, and making lesbian under and overtones because someone got tired of animating them walking to and from the same place. Still rocking the same staff, so full speed ahead for another season of full stop.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Presto change-o!

Saturday

A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
http://www.shimoseka.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Pants on Head
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Premise:
Tanukichi is a schmuck. Ayame is a pervert. Together, they fight a law banning suggestive material.

Thoughts: 
Where to even begin? Light novel adaptation about a boy being forced into a club with a ‘wacky’ sex-crazed girl, JC Staff, terrible JC Staff director (Henneko), terrible head writer (Mikagura, Free), and a terrible promo that doesn’t even understand the concept of a joke. Orgasmic out of place moans and panties on people’s heads are not the unusual over the top ocurrance that would sell the joke here. It’s just doing the same thing as usual and going “Wow! This is so wacky and different from usual!” Even that show with the short chick knew to bring in bondage and dildos, even if it then shied away from anything more than noting that they existed. By all appearances, this seems content to toss up some panties, yell “vagina!” and then scamper off, giggling about how risqué it’s being. So basically, it’s about 5% as ‘dirty’ as playing Cards Against Humanity with ten year olds.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Two balls. *giggle* *titter*

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
http://www.durarara.com/
Studio: Shuka
Genre: Watching TV
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Premise:
Celty is a dullahan. Mikado is a schmuck. Masaomi is a schlemiel. Together, they sit around.

Thoughts: 
As I mentioned in the winter preview, this is the third part of a four part Eastern novel structure, coming after the second, which is supposed to be the part where nothing important happens, an ambition that I heard it succeeded at marvelously. This third part is supposed to be the crux of the story which has the big twist. Of course, as a light novel adaptation with this structure arbitrarily dumped on it after the fact, we already know that the ‘twist’ won’t change anything or upset audience by rocking the status quo in any way. Same staff as the previous edition, which I did look at, but literally the entire episode was the cast sitting around on their butts, watching TV with the occasional CGI car vroom vroom sequence. Not exactly a strong argument, and I cannot imagine picking it up now. 

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Я не говорю по-русски.

Charlotte
http://charlotte-anime.jp/
Studio: PA Works
Genre: Close-ups of Faces
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Premise:
Yuu has magic powers. Nao has a camera. Together, they appear to be constipated.

Thoughts:
You know, if you’re going to lead off your premise with “People have super powers,” maybe somewhere in the rambling two minutes of teenagers being emotional from two feet away from their faces that you’re calling a promo, you might want to include them. Your followup to “gonna write a story about super powers” should not be “but nobody wants to see that!” New director, but our head writer and originator of this original story about not showing the thing you’re trying to sell yourself on is Maeda, who if you’ll remember last time he tried his hand at an anime, we got Angel Beats, which was about 9 episodes of faffing and weird teenage melodrama (rife with unrelated flashbacks, obviously) before an abrupt and inane end having nothing to do with any of the previous episodes and introducing all manner of plot holes. This one is doing its absolute best to promise nothing but teenage melodrama in its promos, but I’m willing to bet it’ll have another abrupt ending with all kinds of plot holes anyway!

Preseason Swing Rating:

Simmer on no heat for three months.

WORKING!!!
http://www.wagnaria.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Not Working
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Premise:
Poplar is short. Katanashi is a schmuck. Inami is obnoxious. Yamada lives in the ceiling. Together, they work in a restaurant.

Thoughts: 
The first couple seasons were passable if unremarkable comedies. It has its occasional moments, but the first leaned too heavily on Inami, and the second too heavily on Yachiyo. Yamada and Poplar were often able to carry the jokes, but there were also long portions, or entire episodes, spent with characters simply staring at each other and/or walls, and the writing kept dragging out that maybe this time, there would be some kind of progression in all the relationships it loved to tease about or something would change in even the slightest way, but nah, never did. To afraid to rock the boat to even make the slightest change in fear that might alienate somebody. New staff this season though. Director’s fairly new, but the writer’s been around forever, working mostly on fanservice action shows, most recently DxD. Maybe that’ll mean more fetish outfits this season and less angsting about. Maybe not.

Preseason Swing Rating:

An amorous alpaca.

Gatchaman Crowds insight
http://www.ntv.co.jp/GC_insight/
Studio: Tatsunoko Productions
Genre: Misunderstanding Social Media
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Premise: 
Hajime has an evil clown living inside her boobs, and a Twitter account. Tsubasa meets an alien and probably uses Twitter too. Together, they fight rubix cubes.

Thoughts: 
The first season was so much of a mess and then they went back and pretty much retconned a large part of the ending. About halfway through, they started trying to get preachy about the inherent greatness of social media and how tying Facebook Likes to super powers is all that’s needed to turn the world into a utopia. The larger problem, though, was that the protagonist was never once challenged in any way. She spent the entire run blithely mincing on about how everyone is unicorns and sunshine on the inside, and everybody marveled at her for being so perfect. She wasn’t even part of the finale, pre-retcon. Supposedly, the main conflict this time stems from the fallout from “Super powers for Likes”, so maybe they’ve figured out their hopelessly naive view of social media is just that, but then again, the site also posted a weird Engrish blurb about modern society being too ‘fast’ and people ‘worrying’ instead of ‘thinking,’ so I doubt it’s going to be any less full of itself, despite having an absurdly simplistic view of its material. It’s the exact same staff as before, so I’m thinking that the true evil will probably be the vilest thing they can think of, someone lying online for internet points. This had a 12 minute (well, 7 minute) preview episode a week or so back confirming a lot of these things already.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Outsight and outmind.

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers
http://rokka-anime.jp/
Studio: Passione
Genre: Wanting to be Danganronpa
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Premise: 
Adlet is one of seven destined heroes who showed up to a six hero prophecy. Together, they fight the evil overlord, if they ever get around to it.

Thoughts: 
The promo’s a little all over the place, being about equal parts action and equal parts scenery porn in that Japanese sense where porn means everything is covered in forty seven hydrogen bombs’ worth of bloom, even the insides of caves. Still, its promo does promise fighting, action, and catching bullets in teeth, so that already puts it a few steps above most. It is an LN adaptation though, with all the usual “we had an idea for the first arc, then put everything into a holding pattern until the money runs out,” schtick, although maybe even moreso for this one. A quick glance shows that after the gimmick of “one hero’s actually evil, but who!?” is resolved and they escape some magic forest, they immediately run into another extra hero to do the exact same thing again, so that… already exhausts me. Same head writer handling the adaptation as Gate above, and our old friend, the director for M.O.E., but more recently those dreadfully boring shows where demihuman females give an incredibly naive view of economics. Passione’s only previous full series was Rail Wars, which the promos here have already surpassed on the production front, which is at least a step up.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Unlike your mom’s butt, hero parties have a strict maximum capacity.

Dragon Ball Super
http://www.toei-anim.co.jp/tv/dragon_s/
Studio: Toei Animation
Genre: Grunting
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th (evening)

Premise:
Goku is named after a vegetable. Vegeta is also a vegetable. Together, they fight rabbits, apparently.

Thoughts:
Well, at least Toei’s trying to make new content this time around instead of the fiasco that has been (maybe still is for all I know!) Sailor Moon Crystal, although I might at least respect it if it was at least a full-fledged reboot. Japan needs to treat its ancient IP creators the same way the west treats Stan Lee. Humor them. Give them a cameo. Recognize it’s been literally a generation since his heyday. And then put your own spin or take on it instead of firmly attaching your mouth to whatever phallic appendage it has left and sucking with all the gusto you can manage. I am not one who has any fond memories of Dragon Ball to begin with, and I have not made my hatred of the talky, power level, grunty legacy it’s left secret. I don’t keep truck with nostalgia to begin with, let alone things I detest.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Do they even bother burying people when they die anymore?

Sunday

God Eater
http://anime.godeater.jp/
Studio: ufotable
Genre: Monster Hunter Clone
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 5th

Premise:
Renka has a magic sword gun. Alisa has a magic sword gun. Kouta has a magic gun. Together, they eat gods.

Thoughts:
Adaptation of a PSP game that really badly wanted to be a sci fi Monster Hunter, so instead of swords and sorcery, they have sword guns and sorcery. Despite this being a video game adaptation, which pretty much always turn out badly, and from ufotable, who has recently been the lord king of soulless adaptation, this may have a spark of creativity tossed into it since it’s being directed by the same guy who, last time he worked with ufotable, oversaw Futakoi Alternative and then apparently retired to the shadows after realizing that he had taken some godawful harem fetish crap about twins and a goat and turned it into a coming of age story about a detective polygamously shacking up with underaged twin sisters by way of surfing missiles to defeat a giant squid created by the squid illuminati. The PVs are fairly neutral, neither trying to show off speedlines nor panning and calling that good, but don’t do anything wowing with action scenes either. The art style is a little weird though. For a destroyed world, everyone is shiny as hell, like they’re covered in olive oil. I suspect it’s probably an attempt to split the difference and make 2D art look CG to make the actual CG stand out less. I guess we’ll see how it looks in motion. There’s also the fact that it is somehow literally the only full show airing on Sundays this season, so…

Preseason Swing Rating:
  
Eats gods and leaves.

Monday

To LOVE-ru Darkness
http://www.j-toloveru.com/
Studio: Xebec
Genre: T&A
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 6th

Premise:
Rito is a schmuck. Everyone wants to do him. Together, nobody gets laid.

Thoughts:
I’ve lost count, but between the original series, the sequel to that, a few OVAs, rebranding to a new series, and a few more OVAs, I think this is around the thirty ninth iteration of this damn Jump franchise. One would think that there’s only so many times you can give a popsicle a blowjob or squirt viscous ‘soap’ into a girl’s face before people get tired of it and start looking for things involving complicated swings and midgets, but Xebec’s doing their best to keep the franchise going! Actually, that’s a lie. From the little I saw of the last outing and the PVs for this one, Xebec’s doing the bare minimum and just tossing up the same staff, art, scenarios, etc as before. Maybe a rocket pop this time instead of a popsicle, and viscous white simple syrup across the chest. At the very least, after approximately ninety centuries of having naked women walk in on him in the bath with a wide-on for his dick, you’d think he’d stop being shocked and traumatized by it. Then again, they’re supposed to be aliens. Maybe they have pincers.

Preseason Swing Rating:
  
Or the boxes are full of teeth.

Snow White with the Red Hair
http://clarines-kingdom.com/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Looking at Grass
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 6th

Premise:
Snow White has red hair. Zen is a prince. Together, they blush.

Thoughts:
This is one of those girly romance deals that move slower than a glacier and is mostly about teaching a pretty boy the wonder that is leading the most mundane life possible and aside from the obligatory rapist, everyone is the sweetest, purest, innocentest, bestest, friendliest, get along gangest, overly saccharine piles of impossibility imaginable. And will be spending their time learning about grass. And would you look who’s directing it, but none other than the guy behind the mile a minute shows, Blast of Tempest and Hanasaku Iroha. Supported by the head writer from Etotama, BlazBlue, and Glasses Club. Good god. At least from the promos, it doesn’t look like Bones is putting any effort into the production. Maybe they lost a bet and had to choose between making this or shaving their head.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
The power of rainbows bleeding from my eyes.

Actually, I’m…
http://jitsuwata.tv/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Comedy Through Repetition
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 6th

Premise:
Asahi is bad at lying. Youko is a vampire. Together, they have shenanigans.

Thoughts:
Supposedly, despite the cast being 99% female and to an ovary wanting to bang him, this is more of a gag series than a harem. I’ll believe that when pigs fly. As usual, by all appearances, Japan seems to be doing the same thing as always, but being really proud of embracing cliches then building a damn shrine around them. Nearly every single female is an alien, demon, time traveler, dwarf in a robot suit, so on and so forth, but it’s wacky, apparently. The kind of wacky you can only simulate by going to TGI Fridays, because a slippery road sign… on a wall in a restaurant!? But there’s no road there! Waaaacky! Director has dabbled in comedy before, but nothing I’d say was notable (Servant x Service, Squid Girl 2), and the writer’s mainly worked in 2 minute gag shows, which is actually kind of promising since those things seem to be Japan’s cocaine-fueled answer to, say, the pot-fueled shows of Adult Swim. Art’s kind of janky, but it does look a little better and more expressive in motion. Speaking of which, the promo didn’t really interest me, but it didn’t look godawful either. Bold stance, Aroduc.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Senpai… *blush* I’m the Juggernaut. *sound of cow tipping*

Non Non Biyori Repeat
http://www.nonnontv.com/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Scenery Porn
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 6th

Premise:
Hotaru is a girl. Renge is a girl. Natsumi is a girl. Together, they go to school.

Thoughts:
I had to actually go back and look up in my old posts why I didn’t have any memory of the first episode of the first season except “painfully boring,” and immediately, it all became clear again. This was a show that spent its very first two and a half minutes on padding. Not a single character was introduced, and it was already in full-on “screw this, let’s look at trees” mode. Not even just to frame the pastoral setting, but 150 seconds of empty space to look at the pretty pictures of landscapes the artists drew, and more to come. And wouldn’t you know it, but that’s what both the promos for this season are full of too. It’s a comedy in the same way that cardboard is a food. Same staff in charge, including the aforementioned master writer of nothing happening ever. I’m pretty sure that even tree fetishists could do better.

Preseason Swing Rating:

This is precisely what the Luftwaffe feared.

Tuesday

That’s Voice Acting!
http://soregaseiyu.com/
Studio: Gonzo
Genre: Agitprop
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Premise:
Rin is a voice actress. Futaba is a voice actress. Ichigo is a voice actress. Together, they voice act.

Thoughts:
I really detest this self-glorifying things, whether they be idols, voice acting, animation, etc. Not because they’re terrible almost to a T (although that is a large part of it), nor because they’re always full of emotionally and stunted stereotypes of complete perfection babbling about trying hard and being friends (although that is a large part of it), but because they’re insincere, hyper-idealized lies about the very entertainment industry that they’re a part of. Just like how the flawless characters make them, their non-struggles, and their interactions uninteresting, if you don’t have the balls to take some honest to God jabs at your industry, you’re just making another insipid “girls in a club and are friiiiends” show to throw into the ever-growing bog of them. It’s nothing more than self-aggrandizing propaganda, not to mention the vault of jokes you lock yourself out of when the industry and everything in it that you’re supposedly making a show about are off-limits for jokes. Anyway, 4 panel comic adaptation, Gonzo sucks, promo looks generic as hell and doesn’t contain anything even approaching a joke, head writer’s coming straight from that last horrid show about how awesome and amazing working in the animation industry is filled with vapid imbeciles working hard for friendship. Moving on.

Preseason Swing Rating:

Hbrglbrlgplblch

Overlord
http://overlord-anime.com/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: It’s an MMO But It’s Not
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Premise:
Momonga got trapped in an MMO as a skeleton. Albedo is a former NPC and horny. Together, they want to conquer fantasyland.

Thoughts:
Another rather transparent power fantasy web novel cum light novel cum manga cum anime. The way they’ve chosen to promote this is a PV where half a dozen characters announce what floor they’re from for sixty seconds, followed by about ten seconds of bad CGI. Madhouse, you understand that you’re advertising that at least five percent of one of your first episodes is going to be a roll call, right? Was there really nothing else you could think of that might make people want to watch this? Again, I have no idea why MMOs are even part of this except as a transparent appeal to the shut-ins craving this kind of power fantasy and a harem of half-naked women who hang on their every word being dumped in their laps one day and to pad out the exposition by spending every other line explaining trivialities that are maybe sort of like actual MMOs but are probably just something they heard from a friend once. And we’ve put the director of the chinny season of Kanon in charge? Oh, well I guess he also worked on one of the eight billion Digimons and a couple One Piece OVAs. With that kind of talent, I’m not thinking that this is going to be one of the shows that Madhouse decides put effort into.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
Two thirds of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.

Everyday Life with Monster Girls
http://monmusu.tv/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Terrifying T&A
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Premise:
Kurusu is a schmuck. Miia is a lamia. Together, they don’t have sex.

Thoughts:
All you really need to know about this one is that the promos feature the centaur thing that has beach balls strapped to her chest running around in a skintight suit, beach balls bouncing like… beach balls, with nipples thrusting out like tiny spears. The rest of the promo stuff is mostly about them rubbing themselves on the schmuck. It’s promoting itself as being sleazy and trashy as hell, which is actually kind of a surprise since this is the same staff (albeit different studio) as Muromi (and Yatterman Night), so you’d think madcap comedy with monster girls doing weird things would be right up their alley. Alas, the source is god, and the source is insipidly blandness where the closest thing to a joke is “I had sex with a spider, and then she wrapped me in a web. *blush*” So all we’re getting is violently bouncing breasts and masturbating.

Preseason Swing Rating:

This seems wrong.