Spring Anime Preview Part 1 (of 2)
Okay so I finally got off my ass and did half of the shows I've seen this season. Expect the rest sometime in the next 2-3 days. Enjoy! :D
Seirei no Moribito
This new entry from Production IG is based on a series of Japanese fantasy novels, and produced by the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex team. Production values are excellent as expected, and the story does seem interesting. Unfortunately the first episode seems to really take it's time and results in a pacing whch feels rather draggy. Definitely a series I'll be watching, and hopefully the pacing picks up.
Gurren Lagann
Good hot-blooded mecha action from Gainax. It's pretty much by the books, but still really enjoyable. Totally wacky mecha designs mixed with super robot macho characterizations really set this apart from other mecha series. The animation is pretty good when it needs to be and the directing and plotting in the first episode is pretty solid.
Heroic Age
This new mecha series from Xebec was billed as "Space Tarzan from the Fafner team" when announced and sounded like a recipe for something really horrible. Shockingly the series actually seems pretty good. The art design and backgrounds are fantastic and the animation is really well done. The plotting is tight and the worldview is well expressed, which should be no surprise as Tow Ubukata is handling the script . The music from Naoki Sato is also an outstanding point of the show so far.
El Cazador
The third in Bee Train's girls'n'guns "trilogy" is pretty much exactly what most people would expect. Every other scene in the show seems spliced from either Noir or Madlax with pretty much zero originality. Kajiura's score starts off rather different from her other works but before the episode is over it slips right back to the generic vocals and fast tempo tracks she's known infamously for. There's pretty much nothing worth seeing here, and the show hints at some really potentially stupid sci-fi plot twists coming up. If Madlax was any indication, that's something that no one deserves to suffer through.
Idolmaster Xenoglossia
This Sunrise series is mostly from the MaiHiME/Otome animation team and it really shows. The directing is above average for a moe/mecha/fanservice/comedy show of this sort, but unfortunately the script really suffers from serious weaknesses. The humor just isn't quite there and the characters do seem extremely generic and cliched. The lead kept reminding me of Arika from MaiOtome in all the worst ways. I probably won't be watching much more of this anytime soon.
Kissdum
I had some pretty high expectations for this show even though there were rumors that the production was very troubled. This new Satelight series is the brainchild of Nagaoka, the director of the Crest/Banner of the Stars series as well as Godannar. The mecha designs are pretty much another Kawamori attempt to ape his own Macross designs. Unfortunately all the rumors were true. The pacing for the first episode was horrible and it gave no sense of characterization or plotting. The music from Two-Mix Delta was disappointing as well and totally did not fit with the scenes in the show. The 3DCG action animation was pretty impressive, but everything else was a mess. The 2D parts felt outsourced and everything pretty much felt like they were thrown together with poor editing. If the series doesn't pick up within 2-3 episodes I don't think I'll waste anymore time on it.
Claymore
I don't read the manga so I only knew to expect a fantasy action show. It turns out the show is pretty similar to Berserk in several ways, including the worldview setting. The show is pretty much about female knights with big swords fighting demons in some pseudo-European setting, and the knights themselves have powers that might or might not turn them into monsters eventually. There's decent animation and quite a bit of violence but the colors feel rather saturated and the music really turned me off. The story isn't really all that interesting anyway. Not a fan of this at all.
Oh Edo Rocket
This is the surprise of the season for me so far. Madhouse and director Seiji Mizushima (Full Metal Alchemist) take a Japanese comedy stage play that most people probably never heard of and turned it into a pretty random and insane action comedy anime set in period Japan. The anime has it all - weird SD characters, ninjas, samurais, monsters, fireworks, rockets, a princess, an ambitious but poor young boy, random comedy, awesome action, etc. It's not really a show that can be described well on paper, but in motion it's impressive and really entertaining.