First Impression: Arata Kangatari

I pay no heed to this show until I reread my preview for Spring. How could I forget the important fact that this show might have a boy pretending to be a girl? Lets just hope that this one will go horribly right. After all, isn't this the only show that is featured in noitaminA this season?

(c) pixiv id 1169389

But oh dear.  This is such an average show, I dunno where to begin. Yes, there is a boy who was forced to pretend as a girl to be the princess but that lasted for less than 5 minutes.

There are two Arata. One from the other world, and the other from Japan. The former was chosen to be the succeeding princess but was framed as the princess murderer instead by the Twelve Shinsho who planned to take over the ruling of that place. The latter Arata on the other hand is pathetic as fuck. He's often being bullied and has no friends. Somehow, due to the forest magical shit thingy, they switched place.

I'm more intrigued to see how the former Arata cope with living in Japan than the emo-whining Avatar that travel to that magical world.

The animation was below average for an anime that is featured in noitaminA. The plot was kinda meh too. I dunno how the hell did this show get chosen =\

Having said that, the Twelve Shinsho are actually quite hawt LOL

Episode: 12
Aired: Spring 2013
Producers: Satelight

arts & animation 5/10
story 5/10
characters 5/10
sound 5/10
enjoyment 4/10
overall 4.8/10

Read More

First Impression: Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter

Lets be totally honest here. The only reason I'm checking this out is because this show is produced by A-1 Pictures otherwise I wouldn't be bothered at all. Mecha is just not something that is appealing to me especially since it looks like this show is targeted for children under the age of 12 >_>

This fanart can be so misleading and yet so appealing for pedophile
(c) Ama Mitsuki

My intuition was right though, this show is just ridiculously bad that I feel sorry for being an A-1 Pictures fan. It's about a city of AI cars where even kids can drive a car as long as they have their drivers ID. Then somehow later on in the episode, they have mecha fighting. I just don't get it and like I said, this shit is terribad.

Or maybe it wasn't. They just decided to use the Transformers idea and adapted it to become an anime because this is certainly what this show is all about. They just renamed it to Gyrozetter. Urgh, awful shit.

The pace of the story is all over the place and the use of CGI is too obvious for the car. It was messy from start to finish, from the arts to the story itself. I wonder how the fuck did A-1 Pictures agreed to produce this. Maybe Toyota, Nissan and other Japanese car manufacturers are sposnsoring this show though as they clearly used Prius and GTR cars as part of the show's characters, so they did it for money? If they are, I am terribly disappointed.

I'm dropping this and putting this away in the anishit pile.

Episode: tbc
Aired: Fall 2012
Producers: A-1 Pictures

arts & animation 5/10
story 4/10
characters 4/10
sound 5/10
enjoyment 3/10
overall 4.2/10

Read More

First Impression: Sword Art Online

One of the few anime I look forward to this season for the simple fact that it is produced by A-1 Pictures. Yes, I am officially a studio-fag now.

Sword Art Online is a virtual game that allowed the players get into the game and mentally moves their body like they normally would. It was the first day the game was released officially and thousands of players gathered in that virtual world only to be trolled by the creator: they can't log out unless they clear the game. If they forced it then they are dead. If they didn't survive the game, their dead as well. 

a daughter? already? >_>

Our protagonist, Kirito, was a player for the beta version so obviously he has some advantage. He kinda has  a complex - most possibly an extreme introvert. So it would be interesting to see him overcome all his inner conflict. I can't say much about the other characters because the only one they have introduce is Klein who is a noob and the first friend Kirito made in SOA.


Watching SOA somehow reminds me of Brave Hearts. Go figure. Also, the virtual online thingy, if you are a big fan of D.J. Machale's Pendragon series, then it should occurred to you that Veelox and SOA shared something similar. Kirito even said it himself: He thinks that the virtual world feels more real than the real world. I know some if not most of us can relate to that.


Being a biased jerk that I am, I can't find no fault in the arts, animation, seiyuu, BGM, OP or the ED which means I like it. As I have said in my preview, this show is definitely a must watch show for me.

I'm pretty sure most people disagree with me but meh who cares.

Episodes: tbc
Aired: Summer 2012
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Game, Romance

arts & animation 7/10
story 7/10
characters 8/10
sound  7/10
enjoyment 7/10
overall 7.2/10


p/s: Personally, I thought the title was dumb. 

Read More

First Impression: Mouretsu Pirates

Episodes: 26
Producers: Satelight, Starchild Records, Sentai Filmworks
Genres: Sci-fi

Mouretsu Pirates is one of the animes that I know won't sit well with me, based on the preview. As usual, I am watching this just to see if I am right about it. I've heard bits and pieces of this show on Twitter but since I tuned out most of it because of the spoilers, I have no idea what to expect.

(c) Matsumoto Noriyuki

This show evolves around Marika Katou. She is the daughter of the infamous space pirate who led the Bentenmaru. She has no idea about it though until she was visited by her mom's friends and was told that she inherited the space pirate ship since according to the law, only the direct descendant can take over. As expected Marika was skeptical but she can't run from her fate, can she?

Her school is taken over and looks like they are recruiting her friends to be pirates as well. On top of that, the new transfer student looks like she knows more about what's going on than Marika. I have no idea what her role in this show is yet but she's clearly a tsundere.

The art and animation aren't something that will guarantee you to watch this show. In fact I think they are below average. The set up supposedly to be in different planet in different universe but they used kanji to write any legal documents and they were too lazy to think to depict the setting that they wanted to achieve for this show. It ends up like they are on earth in year 3050. It's not convincing at all. Same goes for the character designs. I found them not attractive at all.

The OP and ED greatly compliment the show as in, it annoys the fuck out of me. It has some pretty colorful cast of seiyuu at it's disposal unfortunately they are just average at best and didn't actually bring anything special to their character to remember them by.

Mouretsu Pirates is a 26 episodes show. I don't know why it needs that many episodes because I can't see how they can develop the story to be interesting. Though the first episode wasn't bad, it didn't bring anything to the table. I just pretty much sat on my chair and watched it from start to finish without any kind of excitement. It's was monotonous and it's the second worse kind of feeling for an anime fan to have. The first one is of course raging.

Mouretsu Pirates is as average as anime can get, not even that to be honest but if you don't mind spending time watching average anime, go ahead since it wasn't bad. It's definitely wasn't good either.

art & animation 5/10
story 5/10
characters 5/10
sound 5/10
enjoyment 5/10
overall 5/10

Read More

First Impression: Rinne no Lagrange

Episodes: 12
Producers: Production I.G, Xebec
Genres: Action, Comedy, Mecha

I wouldn't be bothered by this show if it wasn't for Production I.G. If anything else fails, I was hoping that Production I.G did their part and produced some good quality animation, just like they did with Guilty Crown. Having said that, I did drop that shit after the second episode. Good story > quality animation for me.

I did say that it looks promising in my preview but I do not get my hopes up when I saw the staff who are working on this show. They don't really has that much experience under their belt except maybe for the Series Production Director, Tatsuo Satou. Hmm, maybe this show can be their catalyst for stardom? Let see...

dafuq? O_o

Fansub [commie] leaked the pre-aired episode and the quality was quite bad. Served us leech right but that won't stopped me from checking it out.

Rinne no Lagrange is about a girl who loves to help people out. The show started with her jumping into the ocean (she just happened to wear a swimsuit underneath her school uniform) to save a girl from drowning. She also always bring her jersey around, just in case. Her name is Madoka Kyono. She is helping out in every club that you can think of and is good at each of them which of course makes her a popular student at her school. Sounds normal enough, yes?

But of course her life was about to change forever. She was visited by strange person whose name is even stranger. Lets just called her Fin Lan for short. From that day on, she becomes a mecha pilot fighting the evil aliens, known as Demetria, who just happened to be hot bishies. I mean, I wouldn't mind swapping life with Madoka just so I can seduce and f-

Nevermind.

Did I mention that her family is against her piloting a mecha, as if it was a job that was advertise in the newspaper? Unnecessary drama, in my opinion. Also, how the fuck does a highschool girl suddenly knows how to pilot a mecha? Oh right... their "hearts" were connected. DAFUQ!

But I am an optimistic girl. When I saw the two mechas fighting, and knowing that Array was this hot headed bishie, I immediately wanted to see these two persons fight again - in bed. LMAO

Just like that I have found my OTP.

Sadly though, the way these characters were depicted, there is little room for development. Take Madoka for an example: she is just depicted as a happy airhead who went along at anything that was thrown at her. If this wasn't the case, then this show could have some potential to be more than just a shallow mecha anime.

To make things worse, it has cheesy BGM too. At one scene when the bishies appeared, suddenly the airship turned into some cheap blues bar that you imagined was preoccupied by fugly hosts. They were trying too hard. It was rather annoying to be honest. Same goes for the OP and ED. Definitely not this show's strongest point. Then again, nothing is.

this is a lie

The animation was smooth as expected from Production I.G. The character designs however, are average at best. The hot bishies have this dead expression on their faces and the background could have been improved with more details. Also the choice of color could have been better. It failed to make this show looks more dynamic. Everything is just as flat and as bland as the plot (if indeed there will be one).

I might dropped this but if it manages to constantly pique my interest with the "fights", then who knows. But for me to survive the fanservice... This show is like them bimbos. Pretty to look at but dumb as fuck.

Recommended? Only if you a hardcore mecha fans.

arts & animation 6/10
story 5/10
characters 6/10
sound 5/10
enjoyment 6/10
overall 5.6/10

Read More

First Impression: Kamisama no Memochou

I can't recall what I wrote in my preview for the summer. After checking it up, no wonder I can't remember anything because I was so ready to be disappoint by another one of J.C. Staff's anime though I did surprisingly came up with a list of top 10 anime for this production studio.

The English title for this show is "It's the only NEET Thing to Do" and it falls under the mystery genres. Since I dunno what to expect from such title, except that I've seen anime blogger wants to watch the show simply because it's the only NEET thing to do. Congratulation, J.C. Staff. Your marketing strategy works.

Err... when did kamisama translated to NEET anyway? *shrug*


Good news is, I am totally taken in by the story for the first seven minutes and 15 seconds. The great news is, I continue to feel good about this show for the remaining 17 minutes and thirty one seconds.

All the characters that made it appearance in this first episode manage to get me interested in them for one reason or the other. The male protagonist, Narumi Fujushima is a loner and there is just something in his almost golden eyes that makes me want to see how he develops as a character. There's his classmate Ayaka who might be the only person (at first) to show him any sign of interest. Then there's that NEET group of boys who seem to be working under Alice; Tetsu, Major and Hiro. Who's Alice? Well, suffice to say this show is evolve around her. She's a hikki online detective. There's also Min, the owner of a ramen shop where the NEETs hang out. The meeting of these people though not unique but still sparks something that I don't often see in anime these days.

In term of character designs, everyone else look average (nothing really stands out) but has is quite a striking traits with her long hair and big rounded eyes. Almost reminds me of Enma Ai. Though I said they are average, their personality definitely is over the top except for Naruma. He's your typical hero type of protagonist. Saying that means you have to pay credits to the seiyuu for putting lives into these characters. Even Naruma isn't as boring as his character appeared to be.

He's voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka. He hasn't done that many shows. According to MAL, only two works so far and this is his second one. He's quite good as Naruma maybe that's why he's entrusted with a leading male protagonist. Someone I need to watch out for. I am not familiar of the other seiyuu (except Daisuke Ono but he's yet to make an appearance) so it's not fair for me to judge them though like I've said earlier, they did a good job.

If there's an OP to this show, I must have missed it, so engrossed I was with the whole thing.

I expected a show of tsundere loli but J.C. Staff surprises me with how 'mature' this turn out to be. The story is definitely takes a higher more sophisticated road (though Alice is still a loli). Good job indeed hough I do agree with Scamp that this show could have been on another different level if SHAFT produced it. Or Brain Base since for whatever reason this sorta reminds me of Durarara.

I am definitely going to watch this show for the summer. Who would have thought. I love it when a production studio proved me wrong :)

art 8/10
story 9/10
sound 8/10
characters 9/10
enjoyment 10/10
overall 9/10

Read More