C3

Cube x cursed x curious is one of the new series of the Fall 2011 season.  Does it ever disappoint.  The show's plot can be summed up with a list of genre tropes: a mysterious girl with mysterious powers, a young man living by himself, a doting childhood friend, uninspired character designs, an annoying catch phrase ("Noroizo!"  [I'll curse you]), and so on and so forth.

Said mysterious girl (named Fear) is left all alone to her own devices and manages to destroy a good portion of the house before the boy returns from school.  But somehow the boy ends up apologizing to her for all of the destruction SHE wrought. 

All in all the show is nonsensical when it isn't boring, and it is boring about 95% of the time since everything in it is derived from other equally trite series.

The only redeeming quality is has is Fear's hair.  It is a beautiful opalescent blue that seems to have its own inner luminescence.  It is sad to see such gorgeous hair on a character in a show that I will never watch again.  The production values were wasted on C3.

Blood-C

I just finished watching the latter 6 episodes of Blood-C all in a row.  The first part of the series was standard monster-of-the-week fare, and I almost gave up on watching the rest because of that.  But after reading somewhere that the series had a complete shift in tone with episode 5, I decided to give it one last shot.  I really can't say much about the series without giving things away, but it had so many "OH!" moments throughout that I am in an emotional turmoil.  I swear I spent most of the last two episodes with my mouth hanging open.  Whether that was from awe or sheer terror I cannot really say.  If only the movie were coming out this month instead of in June.


Let me warn my extremely small audience (if I even have one) that it is an extremely gory series.  Nico Nico Douga censored out the worst of it (which I found distracting) but thanks to Gestalt, my brain was able to fill in the blanks with ease.  While I abhor censorship, I am hesitant to watch the uncensored version, as Blood-C has to be one of the most brutal anime series I have ever seen, and I have seen plenty of 1980s OAVs so I am no stranger to anime gore.

I hesitate to say more as I do not wish to ruin the experience for anyone.  Literally every detail is significant.

Fall Anime Season 2011

So tomorrow the new anime season starts!  I am most looking forward to the revamp of Hunter X Hunter (which airs tomorrow and is streaming on Crunchyroll) but there are some other interesting series in the works.  Fate/Zero also starts tomorrow, as does Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!.  I am eagerly anticipating a new Fate Series, not so sure about MWKS though.  I try to watch at least one episode of every new series, but sometimes that means I force myself to watch shows I know will be awful such as Manyuu Hikenchou.  But in the spirit of not judging a book by its cover, I felt I had to watch it before I formed an opinion on it.  This has led me to be pleasantly surprised by some series, such as Asobi ni Ikyo (renamed Cat Planet Cuties), which I had written off as another harem series when I took a look at the official website.  But I was wrong and it ended up being a favorite of mine.

Gundam Wing

I first saw this anime on the Cartoon Network many, many years ago.  I only caught an episode here and there so it didn't make much sense to me the first time, but now that I'm watching the series on DVD in order it's plain what a great series it is.  Even though I'm not much of a Gundam fan (I've only ever watched Gundam Seed and the first half of Gundam 00) it's quite clear that Sunrise went all out with this title.  Even though he is an antagonist, I have a lot of respect for Zechs.  He seems like a good person all things considered.  Granted, I haven't seen the entire anime yet so things could easily change, but so far I really like him.  The fact that he's voiced by Takehito Koyasu probably helps to sway my opinion.

No. 6

After watching Manyu Hikenchou anything would seem like a masterpiece, however No. 6 truly has the potential to be one of the best series starting this season.  The first episode introduces us to one of six seemingly utopian cities, where one of our heroes attends a very prestigious school and the other hero is an escaped convict trying to flee his pursuers.  The first hero is most definitely going to have his life turned upside-down on him, because in the opening and closing sequences his hair is white, whereas in the show itself it is a tawny brown. 

There are many mysteries so far, as we have only gotten a glimpse of the current status of the world and its hidden, dark underbelly.  Yet the suspense isn't distracting or confusing.  All in all, I am eager to see the next episode.

Manyuu Hikenchou

Don't watch this show.  That's really all I can say about it.  If I tried to say more this would quickly become a rant.

YuruYuri

I've been busy sampling the new shows of the Japanese summer anime season.  The first series I took in was one called YuruYuri.  It's about four girls in middle school who form a club that exists mainly as an excuse to goof off while fulfilling their school's requirement that they join a club.  It is based on a 4 panel manga by the same name.  It isn't a bad little show, it's just sort of lackluster.  If I had never seen K-ON, A Channel or Softenni (which aren't exactly amazing shows by themselves) maybe YuruYuri wouldn't have seemed as unoriginal.  The aforementioned shows all have four girls in a club or group of some sort who do cute or silly things that are supposed to amuse the viewer.  This formula is successful in that it's lighthearted with little to no plot, and the viewer does not have to invest themselves emotionally in the characters since they tend to echo common genre tropes.  As a result, this would probably be a show to watch when unwinding from a stressful day at work, but not one to watch if you are more inclined to like thought provoking series.

I didn't hate YuruYuri, nor did I think it was bad.  It's just not exceptional.  And since there are quite a few potential exceptional anime series airing this season, I feel my time is better served watching those.