2010 Fall Anime First Impressions

HEROES ARE THE LEGENDARY HEROES

So, since everyone else is doing Anime First Impressions, why don’t I join the party?

…Because I’M NOT POPLAR ENOUGH I’M TOO TALL AND NON-FEMININE ;~;

Anyways, to start off the season, let’s start with some (relatively) ‘familiar’ territory – Bakuman.

That’s right, the manga about drawing manga has been made into an anime, but still about drawing manga.

I’ve probably raised this opinion on numerous (or innumerable?) forums already, but really, there was/is (maybe not will be) no need to make Bakuman into an anime. Best thing it could do is more publicity, but honestly, the manga is better than the manga in virtually every aspect.

It says something about an anime when they’re too lazy to draw anything but his head

The art for the anime looks really strange, for some reason (people don’t close one eye that often, unless if it’s bleeding like a certain person cough cough ); there’s really no movement involved, because everything’s in words; and because everything’s in words, the anime will probably become very boring.

Here’s probably, because as it stands right now, the first few episodes of Bakuman are actually… quite good! Not exactly looking forward to it, but nice ‘backup’ anime in case all others fail; with such a good supporting story already, I strongly doubt this will flunk, only become boring.

Did you see the stunningly coincidental emoticon two paragraphs up? ;)

THE OP IS TOO COOL FOR ME :kozueface:

Anyways, as with Bakuman, Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai (AKA KamiNomi or TWGOK) is an adaption of a manga I’ve read – I didn’t realize it was going to be made into an animu until it was too late to stop reading ;~;

It’s about this creep guy, who’s only into 2D girls. BUT ONE DAY A DEMON FROM HELL COMES AND MAKES HIM DATE LIKE SIXTY THOUSAND PEOPLE OR ELSE HE WILL DIE

…Don’t ask me, I didn’t make up the plot.

For some reason, Kaminomi’s art looks really… weird too. Keima’s lips look like he puts on lipstick every day or something, and generally speaking, it doesn’t look that… correct. No idea why though; not much of an artist (cough cough masha hijack rofl), but even I can tell these slight… distortions.

Anyways, directly contrasting with Bakuman, Kaminomi was something I really wanted to see animated. There’s tons of movement involved, and animating it would smoothen everything out by a lot.

Funny how he’s not actually black, though. Racists.

Everything about Kaminomi (maybe apart from art though) really is, excellent. The OP is stupidly cool, the seiyuu do their job incredibly well, the focus of each frame is a brilliant interpretation and adaptation from manga to anime, etc. etc. etc.

There’s just one last problem though – and that’s on the translator’s part. HorribleSubs, IIRC and AFAIK the only widely spread subbing of the series, Americanizes ‘otomegane’ as ‘dweeb’ and ‘kami-sama’ as ‘divine one’. I suppose it’s sort of a lacuna (lexical gap), but simply by explaining the otomegane pun and kami-sama being God would’ve made it much better…

But my little sister is this cut. BET YA MUST BE JEALOUS HUH

Anyways, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai (and I was thinking Legend of the Legendary Heroes was a long title) is… quite good, actually. Most things this season are quite good. OH WAIT I’M ONLY WATCHING THE GOOD ONES HAHA

Oreimo (Ore, Imouto)’s about this girl who watches porn. Her brother finds out. She then forces her brother to watch porn.

I SAID DON’T ASK ME I’M NOT WEIRD ENOUGH TO MAKE THESE PLOTS

One of the main points is that Oreimo actually exhibits some sign of realism. There’s no implication of any siscon relationships here; their actions seem very realistic, compared to other actions in other anime. If you were a closet otaku, you’d (probably) tell someone everything about your addictiveness just because you haven’t told it to anyone else before. If you found out someone was a closet otaku, but you haven’t socialized with that person for years, you’d want to help him/her out, even if the… ways of helping out seem quite strange.

Oh, one more thing; I never realized this, but @Seanver’s avatar has been Kirino for like, the longest time. I guess there are too many orange-haired people in anime nowadays…

Must be a ko-in-key-dink :o

What else I haven’t noticed is that everything up till this point is alphabetical! So let’s continue that pattern, with Shinrei Tantei Yakumo (Spirit Detective Yakumo) up next.

Some guy has a red eye, but it’s not bleeding, unlike mine. ); With it, he can see SPIRITS OF THE DEAD and he uses that to SOLVE MYSTERIES.

Unlike the other, lighter ones of the season, this one is very dark. The animators were probably just too lazy to add proper lighting :V

However, with Shiki and tl;dw transferring from last season over, the contrast is pretty much balanced for fall.

Yakumo has a really cliche’d concept (who else can see spirits and ghosts? Kurosaki Ichigo), but its execution is brilliant. It’s dark, but sometimes humorous. It’s somewhat creepy, but not horror. It’s mysterious, but realistic.

…but he’s not.

For example (SPOILERS SPOILERS), at the end of both mysteries, it is revealed that the culprits were human all along, and the spirits didn’t do anything (the human pretended to be a spirit). The backstories, even of the single-episode characters are also all very developed, even though it took them less than ten minutes each.

Yakumo is first and foremost a mystery anime; there’s little to do with the supernatural (haven’t ya had enough Occult Academy already?!). If you like things like Detective Conan (BTW 14th movie just came out), you’ll probably enjoy Yakumo.

I AM READY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Finally, the last thing I’m currently watching is… Squidgirl! (Shinryaku! Ika Musume!)

She’s so awesome she has her own twitter de geso!

Squidgirl is about a squid girl (literal translation of her name). That’s it.

She just does stuff.

One scene somewhat irked me, though. This guy makes a squid hat, so when it flies away, Ikamusume thinks it’s dead. Then, she throws it back into the ocean, even though her original point of invading humanity was to stop pollution.

Isn’t that pretty hypocritical?

Then again, it could be that she really thought that was a squid.

THAT IS NOT A GODDAMNED SQUID. God doesn’t damn squids, Poseidon does.

Oh, funnily enough, everything I’m currently watching has no English translation on MAL, either. So many ko-in-key-dinks today!

Also, Sanae is actually Aya?!

“…of fried squid recipes?”

In conclusion, everything I’m watching this season is either from manga (kaminomi/bakuman), light-hearted cause of shiki + tl;dw (oreimo/squidgirl), not gainax (panty & stocking, not sure how it’s progressing currently), and Yakumo because of my bleeding eye.

Oh yeah, also Index, but I’m not done with season 1 yet. :V

From gelbooru.

post scriptum: Cirno x Ikamusume OTP