[New October 2010] Shinrei Tantei Yakumo

Japanese title: 心霊探偵 八雲
Info: http://www9.nhk.or.jp/anime/yakumo/
Download: http://www.nyaatorrents.org/
Genres: Drama / Horror / Thriller
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: A girl came to find Saitou Yakumo, who can see spirits, to seek help for her friend who's posessed by spirits.

First impression score: 84 ~ Slightly Overdramatized

Personal comments: It's generally good, except the I think they overplayed a bit to make everything "dramatic". Also, there's a cliffhanger at the end of episode one that confuses me a bit. I guess they're trying to use that to lead into the plot? I think they could have done better than that.

[New October 2010] MM!

Japanese title: えむえむっ!
Info/download: http://animesuki.com/series.php/1690.html
Genres: Comedy / Perversion
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: An extremely masochistic guy wants to fix his problem with masochism, so he came to Voluntary Club to seek for help, from there, many things start to go wrong.

Voice talents: Ayana Taketatsu (竹達彩奈) as Mio Isurugi. Her voice is better known as "Azu-Nyan" from K-ON!. Also, Jun Fukuyama (福山潤) as Taro Sado. He's voiced too many roles, most famous ones include Lelouch from Code Geass, Kraft Lawrence from Spice and Wolf, and most recently, Shinra Kishitani from Durarara!!!

First impression score: 81 ~ Perverted

Personal comments: Although it doesn't get to the level of perversion as Inukami, but it actually gets pretty close. Perverted, but not disgusting, if made well, I can potentially see it being something similar to Working!

[New October 2010] Letter Bee Reverse

Japanese title: テガミバチ REVERSE
Info: http://www.ani.tv/tegamibachi/
Watch online: http://www.crunchyroll.com/tegami-bachi
Genres: Drama / Fantasy
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: Continues where season one left off when Lag meets Gauche.

First impression score: 79 ~ Slow Paced

Personal comments: Grant it this has never been a fast paced series, it just seems that there are so few things happened in this episode. The concept as a whole was pretty interesting to begin with, but season one just wasted way too much time on unimportant stuff, and they didn't start to develop the real plot until the last couple of episodes. At least the beginning of this second series put the plot right into the action--hopefully they will continue to develop the main plot instead of sidetrack all over the place.

[New October 2010] Sora no Otoshimono: Forte

Japanese title: そらのおとしものf（フォルテ）
Info: http://newtype.kadocomic.jp/soraoto/
Watch online: http://www.crunchyroll.com/heavens-lost-property
Genres: Comedy / Fan Service / Sequel
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: Sakurai Tomoki continues to live with the two angeloids, Icarus and Nymph.

First impression score: 77 ~ ...

Personal comments: I wasn't impressed by the first series, and the opening episode of this second series is not much of an improvement as far as I can tell. But it seems at least they're going to start up the really plot a bit sooner than previous series did.

[New October 2010] Bakuman

Japanese title: バクマン。
Info/download: http://animesuki.com/series.php/1695.html
Genres: Light Comedy / Light Drama / Slice of life
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: A story about two guys who want to become mangakas.

First impression score: 86 ~ Fun

Personal comments: It's a mixture of very light drama plus very light comedy. On top of that, a little light romance is thrown in just to spice things up. Judging from the setup of this opening episode, it seems that we are probably not going to see any thing close to the conclusion of the story by the time this anime series ends. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see the end of episode one.

[New October 2010] Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto

Japanese title: STAR DRIVER 輝きのタクト
Info: http://www.star-driver.net/index.html
Download (sub by ggsub): http://www.ggkthx.org/
Genres: Fantasy? / Scifi? / School? / Mecha? / Ridiculousness?
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: A boy came to a school on an island, then...um...WTF?

First impression score: WTF?

Personal comments: At first, it's like a typical start of an alternative world school drama. Then, it just turn into a..."WTF?". I mean, there's a semi-mecha thing everybody recognize it officially as "Galactic Pretty Boy". Yes, when it showed up, everybody who knows what it is has a dead serious face pointing at it and screamed "Galactic Pretty Boy!!!" as if it was some super duper type of mecha right off the mecha encyclopedia.

[Ended] Occult Academy: Paradox

It's hard to rant about this without spoiling anything. So I'm going to just touch it slightly. For the most part, the beginning of the final episode creates a paradox that nobody seems to bother to address. On top of that, the final fight...let me just say it didn't make much of sense. As a whole, however, the end result is the creation of yet another but a bit more interesting paradox.

In short, this series is a wild goose chase ended in unexplainable paradoxes. But is it interesting? You bet!

Sometime there really isn't a good way to get around certain paradox that a good story concept would inevitably cause--not everything could be perfect, sometimes you just need to learn to appreciate as it is.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 90 (Drama centric)

Comedy: 83 (Humor in unexpected places)

Action: 90 (Lots of actions)

Art/Animation: 88 (Realistic style)

Sound/Music: 82 (Good, but not much impression)

Character: 86 (Interesting)

Plot: 83 (some fillers, and paradox, but mostly good)

Ending: 88 (Unexplainable paradox, but you should be able to look over that)

Re-watch value: 50 (Loses re-watch value without the surprise factor)

Overall: 87 - Pretty good for what it is

Recommendation: Aside from a couple of paradoxes, the series is quite enjoyable. It's definitely among the top ten of the year.

[Ended] Asobi ni Iku yo: Too much filler, not enough plot

It started off really interesting with all the character build up. Then it just went to s*#t. With about 2 episodes left to go, suddenly, they decide "oh, let's put some plot back into this series with whatever the time we have left".

The story definitely had potential, with interesting characters and somewhat an interesting concept. But instead of trying to build a complex plot around it, they decide to make a series comprised of 80% fillers. Since it's adapted from a book, I wonder whether it's how the author wrote it, or it's just the director of the series decide to turn it into a fan service cash cow instead a bit more meaningful story. Highly disappointing.


Final scoreboard:

Drama: 80 (More girl drama than anything else)

Comedy: 80 (Really not that funny)

Action: 74 (Some are quite lame, others are just mediocre)

Art/Animation: 80 (Cute, only because it's designed by Houden Eizou)

Sound/Music: 80 (Nothing special)

Character: 72 (Very shallow)

Plot: 70 (Less than 20% of the series...)

Ending: 80 (It wraps up alright)

Re-watch value: 30 (Once is more than enough)

Overall: 75 - Highly Disappointing

Recommendation: My opinion is, don't waste your time on it. Even if you have too much time to spend, they could be better used else where.

[Ended] Sekirei ~ Pure Engagement ~: Third Stage

Like I said in the previous post, there are many things this anime do that would earn a dings to its score, yet, there is something strangely attractive despite the original series didn't leave much of a good impression at all.

Yes there are lots of boobs in this anime, but in this case, not only it didn't help in giving me a good impression about this anime, it probably hindered it. But even so, I have to admit, at this point, the story is getting more and more interesting. For the most part, I'm really just curious what's behind all these nonsenses. And on top of that, since it's been going on long enough, I have developed somewhat of an attachment towards the characters. Unfortunately, we have to take yet another break because the end of this second series is the launching of what they call "the third stage". So there'll be at least another season to this.


Final scoreboard:

Drama: 83 (Not too bad)

Comedy: 81 (Weird)

Action: 81 (Boob bouncing actions)

Art/Animation: 80 (Huge and almost naked boobs)

Sound/Music: 83 (I like it)

Character: 82 (Further developed)

Plot: 81 (Moves a little bit forward)

Ending: 77 (Wait for season three)

Re-watch value: 50 (Not really, unless you're interested see those bouncing boobs again)

Overall: 81 - Better than first season

Recommendation: If you could tolerate season one, I think you'd find this season much more enjoyable because it furthered quite a bit more plot and character development.

[Ended] Seitokai Yakuindomo: Um...

In a short, Seitokai Yakuindomo is Seitokai no Ichizon filled with sexual jokes instead of pop culture references. It's really nothing more than something "just for fun" to watch. In fact, I think the only redeeming value of this anime is how creative the author managed to get sexual jokes/references into every day-to-day activities. But I think that by itself, may just be amusing enough that it would worth the 5 hours you put in to watch it.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 80 (...)

Comedy: 84 (Sexual)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: 80 (Typical...)

Sound/Music: 80 (Nothing special)

Character: 80 (Perverted)

Plot: N/A

Ending: N/A (There is none)

Re-watch value: 60 (It may just be as amusing to see it again)

Overall: 81 - Amusing

Recommendation: If you have some spare to watch something completely meaningless and want to be somewhat amused, then this may just be the right cup of tea for you as long as sex jokes don't bother you.

[Ended] Sengoku Basara 2: History on Steroid

Funny thing about Sengoku Basara is the fact as ridiculous as they're making this anime to be, they try their best to stick to the actual history. Just like previous season, the anime itself is not meant to be taken seriously. It's meant to be explosive, flashy without deviating too much from the actual history event. This reminds me much of a Saturday morning cartoon (if anybody still remember those) long time ago called Histeria!, not only it mean to be entertaining, but educational at the same time.

Depending on how well you brain can switch back and forth between real history event and pure ridiculousness, you may either love it or hate it. To me, it's definitely former.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 90 (History drama)

Comedy: 84 (Over the top ridiculousness)

Action: 93 (BURNING!!)

Art/Animation: 90 (Interesting...)

Sound/Music: 89 (Blood pumping)

Character: 90 (Even more interesting)

Plot: ?? (Historic?)

Ending: 86 (There are more to come...)

Re-watch value: 60 (You really want to see more of this ridiculousness?)

Overall: 83 - Really depending on how you can take it

Recommendation: If you like the first one, you probably would like this sequel as well. The problem is, it loses quite some of the freshness from the season one. But in my opinion, it's still a pretty good anime.

[Ended] K-ON!!: Every Good Story Has to End

The first series is a blast. This second series, even though have lost much of the freshness the original series brought, in my opinion, is still one of the top moe comedies I've seen lately.

The biggest downside of this sequel, as I see it, is that it goes onto the offshoot a bit too much to fill in a long season instead of just be happy with another short season. I think the motivation behind this series is a bit more oriented towards being a cash cow than anything else. Granted that's the motivation behind all animes, but when an short series covers two years of school, yet a long series only manages to cover another one year, it seems they have stretched it a bit too far.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 87 (Kinda...)

Comedy: 84 (Lost some freshness)

Action: N/A

Art/Animation: -- (Moe)

Sound/Music: 88 (HTT for the win, but I think season one is better)

Character: 90 (Very interesting)

Plot: N/A

Ending: -- (It really isn't, nor does it need one)

Re-watch value: 70 (May still be funny from time to time)

Overall: 87 - Good, but not nearly as great as the original

Recommendation: All in all, this is still a good series. If you like moe style of comedy, then you would probably still like this.