天下制覇

Food Wars!
http://shokugekinosoma.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Tits and Ass
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Show Premise:
Sequel series. Souma makes weird food that causes girls to hallucinate orgasming from being sexually debased.

Random Thoughts:
What a way to kick off the new season, with a sequel to sub-lowest common denominator where every punchline is someone's crotch exploding in a golden torrent. But of course, it's parody because it's self-aware or something? Strip away the erupting vaginas, groping phantom tentacles, and flailing breasts that are more jelly than flesh, and all you have left is the standing shounen mincing around about doing your best and following your dreams, dragged out thirty nine times longer than it ever needs to be, replete with tournament after tournament, quiz after quiz, all while the plot progression remains a flat line… aside from when it crashes over the speed-boobs in its way.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Sexy pepper.

Love Live! Sunshine!!
http://www.lovelive-anime.jp/uranohoshi/
Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Selling Singles
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Show Premise: 
Reboot/Sequel series. A bunch of girls start an idol club to be idols because idols. Now with 200% more exclamation points.

Random Thoughts:
This season is already rocking. Unfortunately, this is merely the first of half a dozen sloppy blowjobs to Japan's godawful idol industry. This is to the original Love Live as Cinderella Girls is to Idolmaster; just a refresh of the same tired nonsense to pitch out new merchandise and rotate in a new set of wannabe pop stars because the old ones had already worn too much of an ass groove into the casting couch. This does have a new (uninteresting) director, but it's still the same godawful writer behind most of KyoAni's godawful recent LN drek and a number of other pure pandering garbage (eg KanColle). I will never understand how they also were responsible for SeiZon. I would say it's random at this point what turns out well, but looking over the vast array of idol crap, past and future, it's hard to believe that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Dead Hate.

First Love Monster
http://hatsukoimonster.jp/
Studio: Studio Deen
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Show Premise: 
Kaho, a 15 year old, falls in love with a boy she meets, but then learns that he's ten years old. Because that is a thing that makes sense. Hijinks ensue.

Random Thoughts:
Oh good, something that's not a sequel. Weird, creepy statuatory rape. I would say that this would be even more creepy if the genders were reversed, but I'm at least 95% certain there is already a vast cornucopia of Japanese porn specifically dedicated to "I drew a teenager but she's totes a little kid." God knows the reverse is true. Anywho, terrible staff. Director's recently been doing awful LN adaptations you likely already forgot existed (World Break, Sky Wizards), and writing's being done by committee, apparently. A glance through the source manga shows that it's the standard girly 'romance' thing, where the jokes are that she makes a face, and the romance is flowers exploding over close-ups of a sparkling pretty boy's face while the wind blows. Oh, and she's socially awkward, and there's another guy with glasses whose shirt is permanently unbuttoned to show off his shaved chest. That's not a joke. That's just how it is.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
   
Trouble brewing.

Rewrite
http://www.rewrite-anime.tv/
Studio: 8Bit
Genre: Moon Dinosaurs
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Show Premise: 
A club of super powered teenagers investigates supernatural incidents, leading to the conspiracy that moon dinosaurs have usurped the non-renewable resource of evolution or something. Material Brave with more angst and less boning.

Random Thoughts:
I've long since gotten over whatever vague emotions I may have felt for Key's brand of melodramatic nonsense in my nascent years of prodding at visual novels, and I'm not entirely certain that didn't in large part come from my inappropriate feelings towards Eternal Fighter Zero. This was originally written by completely haphazard committee, and is a lengthy VN being distilled down to 12 episodes, which rarely turn out passably unless the director is willing to just go off-script, tell a cohesive story, and make the show their own instead of trying to half-ass the whole thing together in a half-hearted attempt not to ruffle any feathers by breathing a trace of life into it. So of course, it's the same staff and studio as Grisaia's dull half-assed attempt to adapt the whole thing without a single trace of life. And this time, with something already written by a committee that was barely talking to each other in the first place. Seems promising!

Preseason Swing Rating: 

If evolution was real, then why are there bipedal robot sharks?

B-Project
http://bpro-anime.com/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Idol Schlock
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Show Premise: 
Tsubaki is put in charge of managing B-Project, a conglomeration of three different boy bands.

Random Thoughts:
Wasn't this the B plot of an American Dad episode? Also, one of the idol groups has the same name as a nearby food truck, so… I think that I've already just about exhausted as much amusement from this show and franchise as I can. But boy, is its promo full of close-ups of pretty boy faces against random splash backgrounds. And no animation. That's how you can tell it's going to be a fantastic show. And yet, our idol journey for this season has still only just begun.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Bread Six.

DAYS
http://days-project.jp/
Studio: MAPPA
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 2nd

Show Premise: 
Tsukushi is a completely plain kid who gets dragged into playing soccer… and NOT by his PTA-obsessed mom.

Random Thoughts:
There was a disturbing amount of effort put into the promo for this, but what confuses me more is that this is the director's second soccer show, and he still seems to have only learned about it in the stories and legends told from on far. My favorite moment of the promo is when everyone freezes, and then the defender just randomly dives away from the ball. At least the promo does focus on soccer itself, but if I wanted to watch a boring sport being overdramatized, I'd turn to Cool Runnings. That has foreigners speaking funny, which is already more than this will probably have going for it. Also, their hair terrifies me.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Glorious Locks for men, because your hair is worth it.

Time Travel Girl
http://mariwaka.com/
Studio: WAO World
Genre: Edutainment
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 9th (evening)

Show Premise: 
Girls travel through time and meet 'wacky' scientists like Volta and Gilbert.

Random Thoughts:
I wasn't entirely sure what to make of this, or even what it was, but then I saw that the female voice cast is the obnoxious idol group Sphere, so there's that. The promo shows nothing really either. Some girls make silly faces? It has a bunch of VAs? I don't know what part of "Hey look, it's Heinrich Hertz" is supposed to be drawing in the audience. It's the enthralling director behind Hakuoki too, so don't expect anything interesting going on visually or in the direction. It's a children's show aired in the morning anyway.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Oh sure, leave out the severed head of Otto Hahn.

The Outcast
http://hitorinoshita.com/
Studio: Emon Animation
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 9th (Episode 0 on July 2nd)

Show Premise: 
Dude gets attacked by zombies and is saved by his swordsgirl stalker. Also, he's magic.

Random Thoughts:
This is made in China by Chinese people in a company run by a Japanese company based off a Chinese comic to be broadcast (I think) simultaneously in both countries. Alas, since I can't read Mandarin, I can't really look too deep on this. The promo does show some action, but also has about equal part shaky cam of random scenery… or some trees… or some closeups of people's faces. They could've done a lot more to make it interesting than flip the camera upside down and add a watery effect to half-ass the animation. Sure, we could show it, but how about this puddle? We can fudge the animation that way. And if they're already fudging and trying to pass it off as style…

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Three laden swallows.

Qualidea Code
http://qualidea.jp/
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 9th

Show Premise: 
Three sets of magic teenagers go to three different magic schools and form three magic clubs to fight magic monsters.

Random Thoughts:
Oh good, here's our first magical teenager light novel fighting show. But wait, it's an original! Or is it? The writing team behind it is a hodgepodge of three godawful LN writers (Date a Live, Henneko, and Snafu), directed by the ambitious fellow who brought us SoniAni. Each writer is taking one of the three groups and writing their own story for it, so you know that it's definitely going to be cohesive. The closest thing to action that the promos show are random explosions while they grin at the camera. I'm pretty sure that the effort started and ended with "Let's get some names people recognize." On the other hand, it can't possibly be worse than Chaos Dragon, the last time they tossed a bunch of LN writers in a room and said "We'll animate whatever you collectively fart out."

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Two distressed robots.

Ange Vierge
http://ange-vierge-anime.com/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Baths
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 9th

Show Premise: 
Teenage girls with magic fighting powers from magic worlds, go to magic fighting school for magic fighting teenagers. They supposedly magic fight, but probably not.

Random Thoughts:
Okay, so here's the first light novel adap… Oh, it's not an LN. It's shilling some trading card game. No wonder there are no males. And the main promo begins with thirty seconds of scenery before cutting to girls taking a bath. And stays on them taking a bath for most of the promo. We already had that awful show about a world where sexualization is verboten as a 'hilarious' bit of ridicule. We're on the precipice of the same thing for baths. Okay, so it does show some hugely unimpressive animated action too, but mostly, shots of naked girls from the shoulders up in the bath. I guess it does have one of Silver Link/Shaft's more eclectic writers behind it, but he's about 20% tolerable to decent and 80% Aldnoah. I have my doubts that this will be the former.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

One sack of dead penguins.

The Heroic Legend of Arslan
http://arslan.jp/2/
Studio: LIDEN FILMS
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd (Very early US time)

Show Premise: 
Sequel series. Prince Arslan's kingdom is taken over. He raises a rebel army to take it back. Continuously.

Random Thoughts:
I didn't make it past the second episode of the first season. It took multiple episodes just to start inching towards its own premise, and it did so with creepy creepy CGI soldiers and a protagonist who was either permanently stoned or rides the short giraffe to school. I remember him dimly grinning while being told that his entire race was going to be cleansed by an escaped slave boy, and then I think his only reaction was spouting some weird platitude about "Well, what if we just try to get along?" I think I may have also summarized the entire first episode there. It wasn't so much a heroic epic as it was neverending tinnitus. I'm not eager to climb back on board this very, very slowly moving train.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

They all look like they just failed to hold in a fart.

Tales of Zestiria
http://toz-thex-anime.tales-ch.jp/
Studio: Ufotable
Genre: Adventure
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd

Show Premise: 
Sorey and a harem of Seraphim he can literally hook up with get dragged into fantasy war.

Random Thoughts:
Man, I used to like you, Tales and Ufotable. Back when there was claymation in coming of age stories about unhealthy relationships with twis and/or giant squid, and you weren't trying to pretend like you were an open world MMO for reasons I still don't understand. At least there's a 99% chance the camera will suck less in animated form. This is the same director that handles the Tales of Symphonia OVA that went from solid to blegh over its very very long run (in years, not in episodes), and for all their sins, when Ufotable does try, they can make some of the most gorgeous action out there. The trick is getting them to do that instead of hours upon hours of talking heads, scenery, and contextualizing the action, and wouldn't you know it, but the promos are almost nothing but shots of scenery. Yeah, that's some great light bloom you've got there, guys. I'm enthralled. I skipped the game itself because… you know… the being awful and trying to be an MMO things. I've long since lost faith in Japan's ability to coax out the good in adaptations and abandon the crap though.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
I'll merge with ya, boy.

orange
http://orange-anime.com/
Studio: Telecom Animation
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 3rd

Show Premise: 
Naho gets letters supposedly from her future self telling her to make nice with some new kid or there will be angst to pay.

Random Thoughts:
Socially awkward wallflower has to save the troubled pretty boy? And there's a love triangle? Never have I ever seen this before in Japanese media. Apparently everybody starts sending letters to themselves in the past, all basically saying "sacrifice your happiness and what to make someone else happy." To no surprise, the promos are mainly concerned with showing off how the artists can draw scenery and that the musicians have an upcoming career in on-hold music and singing soulful ballads next to the subway to annoy commuters. So yeah, it's a great big ball of teenage melodrama and mincing, and you know how I love every single part of that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

A completely squandered sports almanac.

Active Raid
http://activeraid.net/
Studio: Production IMS
Genre: Making Faces
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 10th

Show Premise: 
Sequel series. Woman with stick up her ass assigned to slapdash exosuit police squad and makes faces because they do not act like professionals.

Random Thoughts:
Another sequel to a show I barely made it through the second episode. It's a show about robocops fighting robocrime, and yet, they treat that subject like it's stinky dog poop, only reluctantly dragging it out at the very end before going right back to a bitchy woman fussing over procedures and red tape. It wasn't even good robocop fighting either, the way it kept cutting away to show… girls announcing things at consoles. Why in God's name when you have robodudes fighting, would you think that what we really want to see and hear are people sitting in office chairs going over logistics? Oh right, the animation budget. Of which this had none. 

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Toaster cop to the rescue.

Puzzle and Dragons X
http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/pad-x/
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Genre: Advertisement
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th (Very early US time)

Show Premise: 
Kids play Puzzle and Dragons spinoff, but it's REAL.

Random Thoughts:
That's pronounced "Cross," not "Ecks." Anyway, this is a shameless advertisment for the spinoff game of the same name to get the kids hooked and from there, max out their parent's credit cards refreshing timed stamina or pulling on the lottery or whatever it is that Japan's using to bilk people out of their money through cellphone games these days. And I think that's enough brain cells spent on this.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Whales ho!

NEW GAME!
http://newgame-anime.com/
Studio: Dogakobo
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Show Premise: 
Aoba looks like a little girl but is not. She joins a video game making company staffed entirely by other 'wacky' girls. Something something Gamergate.

Random Thoughts:
This would be one of those four panel comic deals where the jokes aren't actually jokes, just overreactions from the straight man protagonist, typically in the form of yelling what was in the third panel. Alternatively, announcing the obvious. I browsed through around twenty pages and I swear that I saw the "I am not a child!" joke at least five times. And they're all so wacky too. Like the one who only communicates through IM. Or the one that sleeps in the office. Truly, this is the next Office or 30 Rock and not just another all-girls club show. Plus, the promo's full of girls smiling and doing their best; the very apex of Japanese comedy.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
We can do it!

D.Gray-man HALLOW
http://dgrayman-anime.com/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Show Premise: 
Sequel series. Allen has a cursed evil eye and cursed evil arm that he uses to fight demons.

Random Thoughts:
Oh boy! A Jump show! I love the way that they fight for their friends, the plot never goes anywhere while taking fifty times longer than it should, and are always doing their best for their friends! The original series kicked off before this blog's time, but rest assured that I will not be watching the hundred episodes of that run to catch myself up on the non-story to date. This isn't a reboot or a reimagining either, like has been done a bazillion times for your Spider, Super, or Bat men, allowing someone else to put their own twist on an established universe and characters to create a new story. No, we're just picking right up where the last episode left off eight years ago apparently. Same studio, Cross Ange's director. May it be as much of a trainwreck as that was. 

Preseason Swing Rating: 

*bloop* *bloop* *bloop*

Sweetness and Lightning
http://www.amaama.jp/
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Show Premise: 
Kouhei has a dead wife, live daughter, and is a bad cook. He hangs around one of his students whose family has a restaurant in an extremely unprofessional manner. They make food. Constantly.

Random Thoughts:
It looks like every chapter has some saccharine sweet message from the kid admidst some flimsy excuse to get a 15 second lesson (ie 5+ pages) about basic cooking. The promo bears it out that the entire thing is going to be centralized around the world's most perfect pixie girl whose mere presence and innocent perfectness heals the hearts and souls of everybody within a fifty yard radius. Apparently they've even got some kid doing her voice, but I'm not sure if that's an improvement over some forty year old VA trying to just sound like she's eleven. Children are universally bad at everything, you see, although I suppose it probably doesn't make much of a difference when it's just nasally yelling.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Roll with a roll.

Taboo Tattoo
http://tabootattoo-anime.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 4th

Show Premise: 
Magic old man gives Seigi a magic tattoo that gives him magic powers. Magic fighting girl named Bluesy Fluesy wants his tatoo. Naming irony is absent.

Random Thoughts:
Another character is named R.R. Lurker. Where the hell do you even get this crap, Japan? Anywho, despite the LN setup, this comes from a manga. There's something janky about the animation in the promo. It absolutely doesn't look like JC Staff. There's a hell of a lot more effort in it than they've put into anything recently for one. Outside of the muggle girl's giant flopping boobs, I mean. That's absolutely recent JC Staff faire. Long time JC Staff action director (Shana, Ikkitousen, Slayers, etc) so he certainly can do action, but more recently, it's been more… Heavy Object and Dai Shogun… and like that, I think I know what the jerky animation reminded me of. I'd feel a little more confident if there was more focus in the promo on the martial arts, but at least it is showing that there will actually be martial arts. That's… kind of something, I guess?

Preseason Swing Rating: 
  
Bluesy's cluesies.

Trigger Happy Havoc 3 – Side: Future
http://www.nbcuni.co.jp/anime/danganronpa3/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Advertisement
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 11th

Show Premise: 
Sequel to the second game, has nothing to do with the actual third game, following characters from the first game, in an original story with original characters rehashing the first two games. Kids kill each other, and then, after figuring out who killed someone, kill the killer.

Random Thoughts:
You'll notice if you scroll down that this appears twice, with the exact same staff and studio in both (same as the first game's adaptation). It's part of an especially bizarre marketing thing for the game itself, which is called V3, and supposedly not meant to be a part of these characters/overarching story… so there will be three different "3"s in this series, two fo which will conclude the story from the first two games, and one will be off doing its own thing. Oh, and there's also some random manga spinoff as part of this weird media blitz. Christ, guys. Well, at least it's an original story, so maybe they can inject some life instead of being slaves to a format that doesn't work in this medium unlike the original game's adaptation. Pfft.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Mob Psycho 100
http://mobpsycho100.com/
Studio: Bones
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 11th

Show Premise: 
Shigeo, aka Mob, is totally plain looking and wants a boring life, but will 'explode' if his 'emotions' reach '100%', whatever the hell that means. Luckily, in his world, everyone interacts by narrating the obvious.

Random Thoughts:
This comes to us from the same author as One Punch Man, a show that had a similar anti-climax and announcement of anti-climax approach to comedy. But this time, it's a psychic guy who looks super plain but is actually the strongest and stares impassively while futzing over trivialities. The promos are basically an assault on the senses, strobing lights, white noise, distorted guitars, and terrible art to be true to the source material. Apparently that's where it eventually goes, but a brief perusal of the source showed none of that; just bad non-jokes with far too much setup. Can't imagine where I've seen and been fatigued by that before.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Don't ALL Japanese men explode at 100% emotion?

The Morose Mononokean
http://mononokean.tv/
Studio: Pierrot Plus
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 28th

Show Premise: 
Ashiya gets cursed by a demon. He turns to a morose guy to help him, who makes him his indentured servant.

Random Thoughts:
From the promo and a glance at the source manga, this would appear to follow the Japanese comedic fomula of "straight man screams narration about what is going on." This director handled Isuca and Letter Bee, comedic powerhouses if ever there were ones, and Pierrot Plus is apparently where Pierrot sends its ne'er-do-wells by the lack of animation on just about everything they've touched. But at least there's yelling. …There's always yelling. So much yelling… Of course, now I have to come back and make a note here since AT-X caught me with my pants down. But hey, at least there was slightly less yelling than expected.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Bargain brand generic xxxHolic.

Servamp
http://www.servamp.jp/
Studio: Brains Base
Genre: Pretty Boys
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Mahiru is a damp towel, but gets dragged into secret servant vampire affairs/man harems by a lazy vampire roommate/cat.

Random Thoughts:
You'll never guess that our protagonist is only good at puttering around the house, doing chores and waiting on his newfound boyfriend, but he wants to do his best for his friends regardless. What little animation the promos showed was mostly speedlines, which is par for the course for Brains Base. Supposedly, the vampires occasionally fight, but all I saw was half-naked boys posing while sparkles cover every surface and then some, so I imagine it's the kind of fighting usually done with a vat of K-Y while girls squeal.

Preseason Swing Rating:
 
I AM HERE TO ROCK

Cheer Boys!!
http://www.cheer-boys.com/
Studio: Brains Base
Genre: Idol Schlock
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Haruki and Kazuma join an all-male cheerleading squad cum boy band.

Random Thoughts:
Two unanimated shows about pretty boys, Brains Base? Don't you think you're overextending yourself? The promo features a naked guy standing in the shower, water cascading down his rippling muscles. It also has a 'cheer routine' that would be indistinguishable from a boy band dance routine if they changed the outfits to have more sequins. So… yeah. There's no mistaking who this is for or what it's about. No monocles, hard no.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Terracotta boys.

Hybrid x Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia
http://www.masou-hh.com/
Studio: Production IMS
Genre: Tits and Ass
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Kizuna's sister sends him to a magic school for magic fighting teenagers and then tells him to grope one of them because his magic power is magic powering them up through sexual harrassment.

Random Thoughts:
Finally. Our first true light novel magic harem teenager etc etc of the season, complete with special isolated academy city and everything. The first bit of actual animation in the promo is the heroine adjusting her tits. It would then go on to show a girl with most of her clothes off, supernovas erupting from her nipples, writhing in orgasm while being fondled in the honeymoon suite before returning the heroine, now pantsless and stripping off her shirt before breasts explode out. Fighting anything? Nah. Tits, stripping, sex, and more tits. 

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Wet your tree with this.

Scared Rider Xechs
http://scared-rider-xechs.jp/pr/
Studio: Satelight
Genre: Idol Schlock
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 5th

Show Premise: 
Nightfly O'Note attacks the world through Scared. A team of boys forms a boy band named LAG to stop it by merging with their magical pets and sell CDs. The protagonist is their female manager.

Random Thoughts:
That's supposed to be pronounced "ska-red", and yet, with "Nightfly O'Note," which is some kind of anomolous thing, not, say, an evil overlord, I think that's the least of the naming issues here. Another one of those shows that's supposedly about fighting something, but can only bother to dedicate about 5% of the promotional material to that, and does a terrible job of even that. Three of them stand around some thingy and all shoot a beam at it. Oh, and there's a long transformation sequence. Well, that's all you need to convince me that this will be an action packed adventure!

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Guest starring Eyeball McFisty.

Fate/kaleid liner
http://anime.prisma-illya.jp/
Studio: Silver Link
Genre: Lesbians
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 6th

Show Premise: 
Sequel series. Ilya occasionally collects magic cards in between going to school, having tea, munching rug, and faffing about.

Random Thoughts:
Why, Silver Link? Let this die, already. I was bored out of my mind trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the first iteration of this, and it only doubled down on the fanservice and pissing around after that. The market for girls taking baths and groping each other springs eternal, so much so that even Clamp is dredging up CCS's maggot-filled corpse to give that another go. As far as magical girl shows go, this is basically rohypnol, and I'd sooner watch something cocaine and LSD fueled like Star vs the Forces of Evil. That also has the benefit of being half the episode length while covering four times as much each episode.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

*fweeeeeep*

Month Songs
http://tsukiani.com/
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Genre: Idol Schlock
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 6th

Show Premise: 
We've had train boy band, country boy band, god only knows what else boy band… now, month boy band. Except without the band. Just month boys. Period boys, if you will.

Random Thoughts:
Yet more pop idol nonsense. I lost count of how many this season has. Let's round it down to forty seven. That sounds about right. I'm not sure what's supposed to set this one apart from all the others. That it has even less of a premise hook? That it has twelve boys and then next highest has a mere ten? That it's two different boy band groups of six boys mashed together? There might also be a moon rabbit, maybe? I honestly don't want to dig deep enough to find out.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

The red tide cometh.

Regalia
http://regalia-anime.com/
Studio: Actas
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
Mechs attack fantasy kingdom and sisters who may or may not be the reincarnations of goddesses or something.

Random Thoughts:
The promos for this feature girls standing on bridges, girls standing in the wind, girls having tea, and I guess there's one explosion and a couple mechs posing. This season has a real issue with promotional videos that seem to belong to a completely different show than described by their premises. This is an original and nobody involved, studio included, is of any real note, and since most of what the promo contains is girls hanging about and/or talking, I wouldn't expect a whole lot.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Why is nobody ever the reincarnation of Khepri, god of reincarnation?

Handa-kun
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/handaanime/
Studio: Diomedea
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
Handa is famous and universally beloved for his calligraphy… somehow… but he's socially inept.

Random Thoughts:
If you remember Barakamon (and why would you?), it's a spinoff/prequel of that, following blando's highschool days being lazy and bland, but being frustrated when life isn't bland enough for him. Apparently it's supposed to be wackier, but I hope you like overnarration, because from a glance at the manga this comes from, that's the joke. Something happens, somebody spends a while thinking some contrived scenario where we assume it's the opposite of the obvious, but it was the original all along and they are shocked by the results! What humorous irony that has been machinated by another misunderstanding! And then again, and again, and again, and again.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

In need of a solid fisting.

This Art Club has a Problem!
http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/konobi/
Studio: Feel
Genre: Comedy
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
An art club has a problem.

Random Thoughts:
The problem is that everyone has a gimmicky quirk. One sleeps a lot. One only wants to draw girls. And one's a foreigner. And one is an idiot. These things upset the straight man protagonist, who just wants everything to be normal, so she makes faces, incredulous at their behavior. Do these things just crawl of of the primordial ooze in Japan? Is there some kind of radioactive pit where they go to harvest a bountiful crop of a school clubs full of 'wacky' characters of a set of about ten different pick and mix archetypes? Anyway, silly faces because we hate fun. And that is what will no doubt set it apart from, say, GA Art Design Class. I mean, besides also the edutainment, energy, and ensemble cast.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

You're not my art class!

Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! LOVE!
http://boueibu.com/
Studio: Studio Comet
Genre: Boys in Baths
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 7th

Show Premise: 
Sequel series. Boys in a club for doing nothing meet a magic wombat that tells them to make love.

Random Thoughts:
Magical girls… but they're boys!? Yeah, that was the only real joke of the little I watched, and even that took sitting through boys in the bath, blathering on about the banalities of their lives until a pink wombat appeared. Not so much a parody as it is just doing magical girl schlock, except that there are penises. You got your culture festivals, your baths, your mountain field trips, your baths, your idol bits, your baths, etc etc etc. It has been handed off to a new studio instead of Diomedea, but the only thing Comet's done in the last six years is Jewelpet, which, as we all know, is an animation production masterpiece that constantly blows everybody away.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Love is a bullet to the brain.

Trigger Happy Havoc 3 – Side: Despair
http://www.nbcuni.co.jp/anime/danganronpa3/
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Advertisement
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 14th

Show Premise: 
Prequel to the second game, has nothing to do with the actual third game, following the characters from the second game in an original story probably rehashing the second game. Kids kill each other, and then, after figuring out who killed someone, kill the killer.

Random Thoughts:
And here's the other half of this weird experiment. This one doesn't explicitly say in its premise that it's going to be going through the same song and dance again, but it's also a prequel to the second game, so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to have a who-dun-it when you already know everyone survived. But on the other hand, and spoilers for the second game here, we already know that all of them end up corrupted and evil despite the friendship power that some or all of them have. Nothing I love more than a 12 episode-long flashback!

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Is that an egg in stockings?

Battery
http://battery-anime.com/
Studio: Zero-G
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 14th

Show Premise: 
Takumi is a pitcher. Kou is a catcher. These are not meant to be euphemisms, although they probably are.

Random Thoughts:
Oh good. Here's our noitaminA show for the season. We've had enough excitement and not-zombies, so it's right back to teenage existential angst. The whole staff and studio is a blast from the way WAY past, and yes, given that the promo features not one but two soulful ballads along with shots of the protagonists crying, I'm confident in slapping the angst label on it. Mostly though, it shows shots of heads and random bits of scenery. See this bucket of carp? And these trees? What emotion and depth. But we'll have wait and see whether or not it can top Major League 3: Back to the Minors.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

French toast and a scorpion.

Amanchu!
http://amanchu-anime.com/
Studio: JC Staff
Genre: 404 Not Found
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
Girls are in a school scuba club. They have a poorly drawn mascot pet.

Random Thoughts:
Girls smiling, holding hands, and opening doors to the shining glow of the springtime of friendship, youth, etc etc, gag me with a spoon. I guess one of the promos has one girl hitting another while both make stupid faces. That's the closest to actual content that the promos get. The thing that really stood out is the bit where the protagonist gazed in total awe at seeing a wave. Just a wave. Some water. Totally entranced by the magic and glory that is H2O. God help her if she ever went to a water park because she'd probably have a stroke.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.

Alderamin on the Sky
http://alderamin.net/
Studio: Madhouse
Genre: Action
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
Ikuta is put in charge of a squad of magic teenager fighting girls at magic teenage fighting school because he got good test scores.

Random Thoughts:
Aaand here's our last "action show where the promos contain no action and instead are full of girls wrapped around each other and a snot-nosed jackass bellyaching." What fun. And if that's not promising enough for you, they all have magical pets which is where they get their magical powers from. But wait, there's more! The protagonist has a preternatural ability to just know how battles are going to play out, but is super lazy and just wants a regular boring life. All we're missing is a fiery, red-headed heroi… Oh, right. We have that too. And of course, princesses throwing themselves at him, etc etc. It's different staff from Asterisk, Madhouse's last harem LN thing, but they actually put out impressive promos for that to pretend like it wouldn't be drek. This doesn't even seem to have that.

Preseason Swing Rating: 
 
Terra, no. Please stop.

91 Days
http://91days.family/
Studio: Shuka
Genre: Drama
Staff/Cast Information
Premieres July 8th

Show Premise: 
In Lawless, there is no law. Because the Vanetti mafia rules. They kill some dude's family. He wants revenge.

Random Thoughts:
Well, at least this premise has something. Alas, the promos dash any hope for this being interesting, as does knowing that it's Shuka (DRRRRR) behind it. A dour-faced guy staring. Another dour-faced guy staring. A third dour-faced guy staring. One of the previous dour-faced guys talking. Animation is really, really hard. The director's most recent show was Hozuki, and the writer's most recent was Joker Game. It's like a match made in boredom heaven.

Preseason Swing Rating: 

Youse guys shouldn't 'uv messed with the Pesce Mafia.