July 2007 New Anime: Higurashi no Naku Koroni Kai

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1053.html

Genres: Horror/Suspense

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common

Recommended to: Everybody

Recommendation level: Don't miss a thing

Summary: More than a year ago, we got to witness the mistry of Hinamizawa in the original series of Higurashi no Naku Koroni. (If you haven't seen it, you can no longer call yourself an anime fan.) When the original series ended, there are still many unanswered questions. "Kai", in the title of this new series, means answers. We can finally find out what's going on the the small town called Hinamizawa.

Rating - frist impression: 4.5 out of 5

Personal comments: The first episode is already trying to answer some details from the last arc of the first series, as well as tieing up previous arcs. I'm very interested in seeing how everything is played out. If you haven't seen the original series, you can probably still find downloads from baka-updates. Or you can rent it from netflix (http://www.netflix.com/Movie/When_They_Cry/70068870?trkid=189530&strkid=1484150902_0_0), but they don't have them all out yet.

July 2007 New Anime: Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei

Link: (Official) http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/zetsubou/ (Torrents available through http://www.baka-updates.com/)

Genres: Comedy
I've watched: 1 episode
Art style: Slightly simplified/Cinematic

Recommended to: People like outrages comedies (Some understanding in konji would be a plus)

Recommendation level: Anticipating

Summary: A ultra optimistic girl ran into a ultra pessimistic guy and saved him from suicide. After talking to the girl, he decided to go ahead to proceed to his new job - a high school teacher, who happens to be in charge of the class the optimistic girl is from. While the teacher trying to pass his pessimism around to the class, the ultra optimistic girl always manage to turn it around, well, kind of. All students get to witness the clash of the ultra optimism and the ultra pessimism.

Rating - first impress: 4.2 out of 5

Personal comments: It is really funny to see the pessimism and optimist fighting each other. The comedy is very fresh and original. The special cinematic effects make it even funnier. This comedy so far stood out among all the other of this season.

July 2007 New Anime: Doujin Work

Link: (Official) http://www.doujin.tv/ (Torrents available through http://www.baka-updates.com/)

Genres: Comedy

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Slightly simplified

Recommended to: Anybody like a light comedy

Recomnendation level: Follow along

Summary: One day Najimi was dragged into a Doujin convension by her friend. She then found out that she too wants to become a Doujin manga artist.

Rating - first impression: 3.8 out of 5

Personal comments: ... not much to say about this one.

July 2007 New Anime: Zero no Tsukaima

Link: (Official) http://www.zero-tsukaima.com/ (torrents available through http://www.baka-updates.com/)

Genres: Comedy/Fantasy

I've watched: 1 episode

Art Style: Common

Recommended to: People like comedy in fantasy environment and people liked 1st season of this show

Recommendation level: Follow along

Summary: Zero witch Louise is back for the a second season. It picks up from where it left off in season one: even though they've defeated the attack, there is still an immanent threat. To protect the princess, Louise and her "dog" (at least that's what she calls him) Saito steps onto an new journey.

Rating - first impression: 3.5 out of 5

Personal comments: It's always a bit difficult to rate sequel objectively. You always tend to compare it to the original series. It's very easy to overrate it (where the first season failed to deliver, but second season is merely better), or underrate it (where the first season is too spectacular, even second season is good, but never as good as first season). Having said that, I think if I've rated first season, I've given it a 3.5 rating. In which case it's unlikely to underrate the second (unless it really sucked).

July 2007 New Anime: Kenko Zenrakei Shuieibu Umisho

Link: (official) http://umisho.com/ (torrent available through http://www.baka-updates.com/)
Genres: School Comedy
I've watched: 1 episode
Art Style: Flatface/noseless
Recommended to: People like school comedy and don't mind this type of art style
Recomendation level: On the edge
Summary: It's a story about a transfer girl student who likes to swim. But she swims in a very strange style - like a mermaid. She lives on a house that float on sea, and she like to skinny dipping.
Rating - first impression: 3 out of 5
Personal comments: This kind of art style bothers the heck out of me. Normally, animes with this kind of art style wouldn't even last an episode. But the plot line so far is interesting enough to keep my mind away from the art details. However, I'm not sure how long it'll last me.

July 2007 New Anime: Mushi Uta

Link: (official) http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/sneaker/mushiuta/animation/ 

Download: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1066.html
Genres: Drama/SciFi/Supernatural/Action
I've watched: 1 episode
Art style: Common
Recommended to: People like SciFi action series
Recommendation level: Follow along
Summary: In a world where human could be infested with Bug ("Mushi"), when they were found to be infected, they are taken away by some agency. An agency operative is on a undercover mission at a school as a transfer student.
Rating - first impression: 3.5 out of 5
Personal comments: I've only seen episode 1, everything is still quite confusing. It doesn't have anything immediately grabs me, but I'll give it till the plot line start to clear up.

July 2007 New Anime: Zombie Loan

Link: (official) http://www.zombie-loan.com/ (no English sub available yet)
*update*: torrents available on animesuki now http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1058.html

Genres: Light Comedy/Supernatural

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Skinny with sharp edges (like DearS)

Recommended to: Everybody

Recommendation level: Follow along

Summary: A girl has the ability to see the mark of nearly dead and dead people - a dark or black circle on their neck. She accidentally ran into tow "dead" people, who is working for z-loan to capture dead zombie for bounty so they can have their lives back. Because of her ability to see dead people, they dragged her to help them capture dead zombies.

Rating - first impression: 4.1 out of 5

Personal comments: I always liked this type of art style, not quite the skinny part, but the sharp edges. This anime is based on the manga by Peach-Pit, the author of DearS and Rozen Maiden. The female character has DearS written all over it.

July 2007 New Anime: Code-E

Link: (official) http://avexmovie.jp/lineup/code-e/ (no English sub available yet)

Genres: Light Comedy/SciFi/Supernatural

I've watched: 1 episode

Art style: Common

Recommended to: Not sure yet

Recommendation level: Follow along

Summary: The story occurs in near furture, more precisely, 2019. A girl posesses the ability to disturb electronic devices with her emotion. She's been transfering from school to school because of this. Now she just transfered into a new school, a guy found out about her ability. He is determined to study it.

Rating - first impression: 3.5 out of 5

Personal comments: It has something similar to Read or Die, not quite sure what. I've only seen the first episode, it's both interesting and confusing.

July 2007 New Anime: School Days (!!!!!!!!)

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/657.html

Genres: School Love Story/Light Comedy/Tragedy(?)

I've watched: 1 episode

Art Style: Common

Recommended to: People like this genres, or people liked this game

Recommendation level: Don't miss a thing

Summary: A girl happened to be her secret admirer's secret admirer. The girl sitting next to the guy helped to hook them up. However, she is his secret admirer as well. The trinagle love affair begins to unfold.

Rating - first impression: 4.5 out of 5 (ok, don't rely on this score too much, there are influences other than this anime)

Personal comments: School Days originally was a video game. It was the first fully animated and voiced dating game. The game itself is devided into 6 episodes. I was quite obsessed with this game because it has a very interesting story line. Depending on how you handle the situation, the endings of the game range from both girl being the guy's lover to one of the girl stabs the guy and jumping off the building. I have seen almost every path along the game. I'm very curious to see which path the anime picks. Compare to the game, the anime has much better and smoother art work (of course!). The first episode, so far has been almost complete identical to the first episode. The difference is that the anime has introducted much more comedic elements which would be hard for the game to implement. I think they did very well, at least for the first episode.

July 2007 New Anime: Nanatsuiro Drops

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/1052.html

Genres: Magical Girl/Kid's

I've watched: 1 episode

Art Style: Magical Girl

Recommended to: Only hardcore magical girl fans

Recommendation level: Don't

Summary: A guy drank the wrong drink and turned into a doll. Now he has to help a girl to gather nanatsuiro drops to return to normal.

Rating - first impression: ... I just can't rate a magical girl anime

Personal Comments: It's a magical girl anime. The only additional comment I want to make is that the plot seems to be plagiarized from Card Captor Sakura.

Verdict: Gone.

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

New OVA: ICE

ICE

Link: http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/972.html
Genres: Sci-fi - Apocalyptic
I watched: 1 episode
Art style: Common
Recommended to: Anybody like sci-fi and don't mind some bloody violence
Summary: This is a 3 part OVA. It occurs in a future world where all men had died and women rule the world. Project ICE from long time ago maybe the only thing that could save humanity. So conflicts arise over capturing the specimens from ICE.
Rating - first impression: 4 out of 5
Comments: This is definately a weired one. The art work is normal, but there are some bizare creatures. Also, although most of the anime is easy to understand, parts of it are just plain trippy. Well, actually, now think back about it, the whole thing is quite trippy. At least it's a good trip.