My Pick for April 2007 New Animes

General Category:

Best Drama: Darker Than Black
Best Comedy: Lovely Complex
Best Fantasy: Claymore
Best SciFi: Denno Coil

Drama runner up: Kaze no Stigma
Comedy runner up: Lucky Star
Fantasy runner up: Touka Gettan
SciFi runner up: Darker Than Black

Special Category:

Weirdest: Touka Gettan
Bloodiest: Claymore
Most Talkative: Lucky Star
Most Sexually Explicit: Touka Gettan
Best Original Score: Shinkyouku Soukai Polyphonica
Best Open Theme Song: Darker Than Black ("HOWLING" by abingdon boys school)
Best Ending Theme Song: Claymore ("Danzai no Hana ~Guilty Sky~" by Kosaka Riyu)
Most Disappointing: Shinkyouku Soukai Polyphonica

Comments: It was a difficult decision between Darker Than Black and Kaze no Stigma for best drama for the season. Kaze no Stigma has tendency of inserting comedic element wherever it goes. Sometimes it's great to mix up the atmosphere a little bit, but some other time, it just feels like it's trying to be too many thing at once. Even though Darker Than Black also had a comedic segment in episode 7-8, but the border between straight drama and comedic drama is a very clear cut. There is not mix and blend. For drama anime, I think it's much better way. So I picked Darker Than Black as the best drama for April 2007 new animes.

Everything else is a pretty clean cut.

About the SciFi runner up, I didn't feel Bakurano is SciFi enough to take the place for runner up for this category, and the next one on the list is Darker Than Black.

Horror/suspense would be another category. But since we don't have any in this season, I just skipped this category completely.

Here is the list of candidates I've considered for the pick (some may appear in more than one category):

Drama: Darker Than Black, Kaze no Stigma, Shinkyouku Soukai Polyphonica, Hitohira, Romeo & Juliet, Sola, Sisters of Wellber, Bakurano
Comedy: Lovely Complex, Lucky Star, Touka Gettan, Hitohira
Fantasy: Claymore, Touka Gettan, Shinkyouku Soukai Polyphonica, Sisters of Wellber
SciFi: Denno Coil, Darker Than Black, Bakurano