For all that its pacing was horrendous– the first and last episode in particular dump metric shit-tons of explication on the viewer –I really enjoyed the Hatenkou Yuugi anime, mostly for the sharp dialogue and good voice acting which made for awesome banter.

BUT! The anime was only 10 episodes long. And it just ended. With a giant cliffhanger-ish thing. Surely– surely! –that means that it’ll get a sequel, even if it was overall a bit lackluster (and I’m sure downright uninteresting to many), right? RIGHT?!

If you want to blather with me about the last episode, feel free to do so in the comments. I’d love to have someone to whine with.

Okay, we’ve discussed how disappointingly clunky and QUALITY the anime adaptation of Minari Endoh’s manga Hatenkou Yuugi (aka Dazzle) is. However, I’ve found the series’ saving grace: the dialogue. Whether it’s an extended silly scene (like episode 6’s “Surname Poker” game, featuring way too many Suzuki), or in the middle of a dramatic moment, or even during a fight scene, the dialogue has some good, snappy moments (much like the manga).

Some examples from episode 7 (#1 and 2 are my faves– go Baroqueheat!):

• Title: Mnemosyne ~Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi~
• Studio: XEBEC
• Genre: Horror

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥½
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (Less awesome than I expected, but still…lesbian torture porn with zombies? How can I resist?)

Thoughts:
Rin is a green-haired, green-eyed, at least somewhat invincible private detective. Her assistant, Mimi, plies her with alcohol and makes her go searching for cats. Instead, Rin finds a mystery: a guy who feels disconnected from his reality. Being the sort of badass samaritan she is, Rin takes on the case and does whatever killing, fighting, and seducing necessary to solve it. And she’s very good at all of those things.

The mystery leads to her being briefly captured by our bad guy (…girl) Sayara, who is obsessed with seeking immortality and with piercing. Cue the aforementioned lesbian torture porn, and boy is there plenty of it (even in the ED theme).

If that’s your bag, then this is definitely your show. Those with less affinity for blood– or who have very sensitive minds and nipples –may wish to avoid it. That said, there’s an interesting story lining up here, and we haven’t even addressed everything that was introduced in the 45-minute first episode, including an entirely separate rival of Rin’s, who is completely unexplained thus far.

That said, I think I’m glad that this is only a 6-episode show, because I’m not sure how much of this kinda thing I can take. I’m not especially a horror fan, but there’s some great dialogue and I am interested in the mystery, so I’ll stick with it.

By the way, if you’re interested, I spent a little time researching the pronunciation of “Mnemosyne,” and there are two: “ni-mah-zi-nee” and “ni-mah-suh-nee.” Enjoy! ♥

• Title: Hakaba Kitarou (Graveyard Kitarou)
• Studio: Toei
• Genre: Horror

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥♥

Thoughts:
Hakaba Kitarou isn’t just the umpteenth adaptation of Shigeru Mizuki’s manga of the same name, it’s also the most recent attempt to actually go back to the original source material, both in style and story. The anime opens with the story of Kitarou’s birth, a tale which involves his parents– the last two remaining members of the Yuurei (Ghost) Tribe –and an insurance agent of some kind who stumbles upon the couple researching a strange case at a hospital. Long story short, the human adopts baby Kitarou, a youkai (demon) child, and then he and his mother are both confused (and, in his mom’s case, horrified) when the kid doesn’t turn out perfectly normal. *cough*

The first episode is chock-full of exposition and, as such, suffers from slightly-too-speedy pacing (as is common enough in first eps). But the visuals more than make up for it. This is what TOKYOPOP’s “imanga” would look like if they really went the whole nine yards– not that anime is TOKYOPOP’s goal, really, but if you took the basic concept of adapting manga into something that you watch in a video format, and then gave it a huge budget, plenty of time, and a team of pros, you’d get Hakaba Kitarou’s style. You can practically tell what Mizuki’s panels were in the original manga, and the art is very faithful. It can be a little disconcerting to see humans depicted in such a relatively realistic fashion and youkai in a more cartoon style, but you’ll get over it, because the show is honestly just really neat to watch.

As for the story: the characters are interesting, and Kitarou isn’t what I expected either. I’ve never read the manga, but from what I’ve seen and read I always expected him to be much more of a peacenik do-gooder type. Thus far, he’s actually quite the trouble-maker, causing a lot of trouble to his foster-father (you actually do feel pretty bad for said foster-father, even if he’s a bit of an idiot– he meant well. His mother can go choke and die though).

I definitely recommend watching at least the first episode. It’s a faithful adaptation of a true classic and a really innovative art and animation style combo. You may decide that the story and characters aren’t your cup of tea, but the visuals will definitely prevent you from feeling like it was a waste of time.

• Title: Minamike ~Okawari~ (”Minamike ~Another Serving~”)
• Studio: Aslead
• Genre: Comedy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥½

• Animation: ♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (Is this show auditioning for the Ministry of Silly walks?)

Thoughts:
Is it a remake? A sequel? WHAT IS IT?!

Minamike ~Okawari~ is the winter ‘08 anime adaptation of the manga Minamike, but produced by a different studio than the fall ‘07 adaptation (fall’s was by Dome, this one is Aslead). It features the same seiyuu and also picks up where the last show left off– not that there’s a lot of continuity in this slice-of-life, but there are some aspects, largely Chiaki’s male classmate Makoto pretending to be a female in order to get close to Chiaki’s eldest sister Haruka, a fact that isn’t well-explained to someone who hasn’t watched the first season.

The setup of Minamike, if you missed it the first time, is three orphan sisters who live together: sarcastic, cynical elementary school Chiaki; hyper, over-the-top middle schooler Kana; and sweet and kind high schooler Haruka. These three have their own wacky sets of friends (like Makoto/Mako-chan, Kana’s somewhat dim classmate Fujioka who has a crush on her, Haruka’s would-be bishounen boyfriend who never gets around to actually talking to her, etc) and the series really focuses on the goofy interactions amongst them all.

Okawari continues this tradition, but the art style isn’t quite as solid (and is, I think, less representative of mangaka Coharu Sakuraba’s original work). Both the visuals and the timing pack a bit less of a punch than the first season, but it’s still pretty wacky fun. There’s plenty of “bakayarou!” in there for you, and this first ep is an onsen ep, so plenty of fanservice too.

And hey, how can a show with not one but TWO delicious traps ever fail? All in all, enjoyable if you liked the first season– but the first season was better, at least based on the first ep of the second season, so try and catch it first.

That reference to “silly walks” is about Kana, who walks very oddly at the beginning of the OP and then the entire ED video is her doing a super “hip” walk. It’s weird.

Okay, it’s a pretty unscientific manner of gauging popularity, but I dare you to come up with something better. Hashihime has one of those reports about what anime has the most completed threads (=1000 posts) on 2channel, and the winner for winter ‘08 anime so far is Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei by a longshot– 67 to 17 for second-placer True Tears. Yatterman, surprisingly, takes third with 13. Shigofumi and Spice and Wolf round out the top five with 11 and 9, respectively.

Catch the rest of the list here. Make sure you read the added notes (like the fact that Minamike ~Okawari~ is sharing threads with its predecessor, making it hard to gauge). And try to ignore things like the fact that Hatenkou Yuugi accidentally got named Hakuten Yuugi (which is kinda funny; “Hatenkou Yuugi” would = roughly “Unprecedented Games,” “Hakuten Yuugi” would = “Infectious Games.” Like, as in a disease-type infection).

Original source: Hashihime

• Title: Yatterman New Series
• Studio: Tatsunoko Productions
• Genre: Kids

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥½
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Sorry, I don’t date geezers.)

Thoughts:
Okay, I don’t know how many of you are really into the classics and whatnot, but here’s this remake of the ‘77 mecha Yatterman, and they’re also making a couple of live-action movies based on it– directed by Takashi Miike (of MPD Psycho and Sukiyaki Western Django fame). So I figured I’d better check out the show.

The plot is something like this: Gan-chan and his girlfriend Ai-chan reconstruct an old robot called Yatterwan, a dog mech. They stumble upon the evil schemes of the Doronbo trio (a hot woman with a surprisingly old voice named Doronjo, plus her two moronic lackeys) and combine with the Yatterwan to become Yatterman and the Yatterwan (no name for Ai-chan’s superhero self so far) to defeat the trio, which they do with ease and life goes on.

Now, unless you’re really hardcore into that old-school feel, I can’t say I’d recommend this one. It’s so retro, it’s…well, old. Except for the animation, which is pretty decent-quality, and the art, which has a solid retro-meets-superflat style, it’s completely mindless and infantile, even for a kids’ cartoon. It’s excessively formulaic, albeit with a formula that would be nostalgic if you grew up watching this show. I’m not sure I’d like it even if I was a little kid (and if I did, it would probably be for purely aesthetic reasons; the characters are too dumb to even be funny).

Though I do have to say that the ED sequence is actually hilarious. It’s sort of one of those classic emo people-walking-in-rain-looking-at-stuff bits, which is so at odds with the rest of the show that it’s a complete hoot. And the ED sequence also ends with a shot of the villainess Doronjo’s clothing lying on a couch, which is so reminiscent of Lucky Star’s uniform-on-a-desk that I couldn’t help but chortle.

So unless you’re a nostalgia-freak, I wouldn’t bother with more than a single episode of the show– and even that only if you’re curious about what the show’s about and/or the updated style.

• Title: ARIA the Origination
• Studio: HAL Filmworks
• Genre: Slice-of-Life

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥½

• Animation: ♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Those sure are some big yawns.)

Thoughts:
Okay, I admit it: I don’t really get the appeal of ARIA. Yes, it’s all really very pretty. But nothing particularly funny or interesting happens. In fact, nothing happens, period, pretty much.

ARIA is set in a future where humans have colonized other planets, including a planet called Aqua upon which a city called Neo-Venezia has been founded. Like its real-life counterpart, Neo-Venezia has canals instead of streets and gondolas instead of cars. ARIA’s lead character is Akari, an earth-born young woman who has come to Neo-Venezia to train to be an “undine,” a professional gondolier/tour guide. But she starts out as a trainee and will have to work her way up to being a “prima,” or fully-qualified gondolier.

Which, in and of itself, is a perfectly acceptable setup. But here is what happens in the first episode of ARIA: the Origination: Akari practices with two other trainees from other gondolier companies, bumps into a couple of guys she knows at a cafe, eats lunch with her supervisor/trainer Alicia, receives a package from a former client, and shares the package’s contents (some sakura jam and tea) with the other trainees and all three of their teachers. During their snack, they talk about how all of them– even the primas –can still improve at being gondoliers.

There’s no real conflict whatsoever; there’s just a bunch of nice, pretty girls living a nice, pretty life. Which, for me, is a problem; a story needs conflict or else there’s no story. And thus, ARIA and I have just never gotten along. I once discussed this with a friend of mine, who told me it was an “atmosphere” show, but I don’t think that’s any excuse really. I told him that if I wanted “atmosphere” I’d actually go somewhere where there was some instead of watching some on a screen. For me, it might as well be an incredibly well-animated screensaver.

That said, there are still plenty of people who really ARIA (and I’ve no doubt raised some of their ire). But if you’ve liked previous iterations of the series (such as the manga or the previous two seasons of the anime), you’ll no doubt continue to enjoy this third season. And if you like the idea of spending a calm, relaxing 20-25 minutes without any nasty burdens like a “story” or a “plot,” well, here’s your show.

It’s not my cup of tea, though.

• Title: Shigofumi
• Studio: J.C. Staff
• Genre: Fantasy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥½
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥ (ED only)
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (The end of the first ep cinched a watch for the second ep for me, but I’m worried about our lead characters.)

Thoughts:
I’ve heard a lot of praise for Shigofumi, but I’m worried that it built up my expectations too high, because I find myself interested in continuing but not all that impressed. The animation is good, of course, and the story is interesting– if a bit emo and dramatic, at least so far –but I’m a little worried about the primary characters.

Fumika is, frankly, incredibly boring so far. She acts a little bit like Geass’s C.C., but without the sexy and without the evil. In other words, she’s kind of a blank, except that she likes pizza. I even find her character design to be completely uninteresting. Hopefully that’ll change as the series goes on, but Kanaka– her staff –is more interesting, albeit kind of obnoxious to listen to. (Something about her voice grates on me, which is a shame since she’s voiced by Yuki Matsuoka– a.k.a. Azumanga Daioh’s Osaka, one of my favorite anime characters of all time.)

For those who haven’t watched it yet: Fumika is a mail carrier for the dead. That is to say, there’s a brief period immediately following death during which the dead can send a letter to the living with their last wishes, confessions, etc. Kanaka is her companion staff, and what exactly her role is in delivering the letters is still unclear. (Her actual role so far is a perky foil to Fumika’s stoic self.)

Now, the kids whose story is told in episode 1 and presumably 2, they are interesting. Shouta is a budding rocket scientist and Asuna is his would-be lady-love, if he could ever confess to her. When a letter from Asuna’s dead father arrives via Fumika addressed to Asuna’s lover, Shouta declares that he’ll become her lover because it would be too sad for Asuna’s dad’s final words to go undelivered. (I don’t know whether he expects Fumika and Kanaka to stick around and watch, or what.)

Anyway, he gets the idea in his head that he’ll confess to Asuna once his rocket successfully launches. But before the launch happens he manages to read the letter– left behind by Kanaka, although how a staff is supposed to carry a letter I have no clue –and learns a terrible secret about Asuna, etc. I shan’t spoil, but Asuna quickly becomes the most interesting character in the piece.

It looks like the next episode will wrap up this little arc and then it’ll move on to a new story. Before the show started I think a lot of people suggested that Shigofumi would be similar to Shinigami no Ballad, so I’ll tell you right now that based on this arc, it’s really not. Shinigami no Ballad was very sweet and had a certain innocence about it; Shigofumi is, thus far, all about horrible truths revealed after death. And Fumika is nowhere near as cute as Momo.

Oh, and before I forget: I haven’t really mentioned the animation quality and whatnot because all the technical stuff is really quite good, although not amazing.

I think that if the focus stays more on the small arcs, and the effect that the shigofumi letters have, this could be a really great series. But I worry that if the focus strays more onto Fumika and Kanaka, it might just get on my nerves– though if the focus was more on them, presumably they’d expand on the characters and maybe I’d like them better. We shall see!

• Title: Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino
• Studio: Artland
• Genre: Drama

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (A relatively optimistic first episode, considering that it’s a sequel to a somewhat dark drama.)

Thoughts:
Henrietta is one of a group of girls effectively “owned” and “operated” by the Social Welfare Agency of Italy; ostensibly an organization for helping orphans, but in fact an elite government-operated dissident-emoval operation featuring young, cybernetically-enhanced girls paired with handlers who they’re trained to adore. Each pair is known as a “fratello,” and the relationship between a “little sister” and her “older brother” is one of the key focuses of the original series.

If you haven’t watched the first season of Gunslinger Girl, you should at some point– but you’ll understand the setup well enough based on the first episoe of Il Teatrino, which introduces most of the main characters as well as the basic idea.

The delicate balance between adoration for a “brother” and obsession with him– and desire for him to return affections –caused some serious drama in the first season, not to mention that a world full of young girls who are turned into killing machines isn’t exactly sunshine, rainbows, and kittens. Yet as I said before, this first episode is remarkably positive considering the previous season. Granted, it focuses on Henrietta and her “brother” Jose, who have one of the better fratello relationships in the series– largely because Jose isn’t an awe-inspiring prick, like some of the “brothers.”

I suspect that the series will turn more towards the melancholy that the setting sort of mandates eventually. But it’s also worth noting that, as others have suggested, the animation budget seems smaller for season 2 than season 1. The art and animation aren’t bad, but they’re not as sharp and clean and styled as they were for the first season. You can see comparisons between the season 1 art and season 2 art at wikipedia, btw.

Also, the OP isn’t anywhere near as cool as the OP for the first season. But it’d be hard to beat “The Light Before We Land” anyway, because it’s such a beautiful song (and it fits the mood of the first season perfectly– if you want to see what I mean about the melancholy mood, just go listen to that song).

I’m going to keep watching on the promise that now that exposition is over, the show will get back to its moody philosophizing, which I rather liked about the first season. If I took the series on its own…well, I’d still keep on it, because frankly, it’s an interesting concept.