In my grand (?) tradition of adding other shows together to achieve new ones. I hereby declare that idolmaster is what happens when you add Evangelion and Angelic Layer together, then throw in a splash of moe obsession…

Basic story is that the moon has exploded. This is bad. Tidal levels are all thrown out of whack, and the moon is made out of rocks. These rocks like to interfere with cell reception when they’re not falling out of the sky. But that’s not a problem when the world has a country like Japan, where they can just launch little girls into space to fight the falling debris.

It’s funny, it’s slightly quirky. It’s also pretty standard issue girl- from- the- sticks- who- thinks- she’s- gonna- be- a- rock- star- winds- up- driving- a- giant- robot- to- save- the- planet- from- falling- meteors fare. Penny enjoyed it sufficiently that I think we’re gonna try to follow this one if at all possible.

The year is 2035 and a strange blight has wiped out much of the planet. For some reason, the UN has somehow managed to convince nations to wage a “wise” war against each other – where each country provides a champion to duel it out with other nations champions. In big robots.

The mecha are CG, and their art doesn’t quite fit, but it’s better than it could be. The show’s art in general is much more on the realistic side. Everyone has brown hair, has more realistic eyes and facial shapes, etc… I like it. Penny’d probably hate it though. The music didn’t do anything for me. In fact, 5 minutes after watching episode one, I don’t remember anything about the music, so I guess I’ll just file it under forgettably typical.

Despite the cliche wrappings, this one looks pretty good. It’s being subbed by one of my favorite groups, so that’s also a plus.

So far… shrug. It’s definitely got some sort of period setting to it. The title suggests that this is somehow related to the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. But koutetsu (鋼鉄)? It means ‘steel’, so shrug. Some generic war reference perhaps? Shrug.

Nothing I’m seeing is overtly reminiscient of the Sanguo period, at least nothing matches up with my admittedly limited knowledge of the age. Episode one introduces us to two nations, ‘Gi’ and ‘Go’. And there’s a magical cube that makes people jump around and grow mecha arms and throw lightning and stuff. And ninjas steal things.

I’m not horribly impressed with the show, and I don’t think it has anything to do with my lack of enthusiasm coming in. And, I don’t think it’s just that I’m being turned off by the yaoi overtones in our hero’s relationship with his master. I’m honestly… just kind of bored with the show. It’s a lightly scifi flavoured retelling of a fantasy retelling of one of the most highly romanticized periods in Chinese history… and everything feels a bit too watered down.

That said, the art is decent, the animation is decent. The facial close-ups annoy me – it feels like they distort the proportions. Meh. I’m not really planning on watching episode two of this one, but I won’t walk out of the room if somebody else puts it on.

A group of 15 kids (14 seventh-graders and one’s fourth-grade sister) are lumped together for some variety of summer camp/schooling/mandatory fun. A whole lot of nothing happens. Then nothing else happens. Then nothing happens again. Then one of the boys tortures a crab. Then they have a brief philosophical debate about the morality of killing the crab.

Then the kids get bored and decide to explore a cave, where they bump into a guy who tricks them into signing on as pilots for a mecha responsible for defending the planet against a series of impending alien invasions.

All in all, I think I might like it. It looks like the plot might go somewhere next episode, so I’m hopeful. However, their CG mecha integration with the normal artwork fails – always a losing point in my book. The music is good, the art is good.

The storytelling is slow and sort of laid back, as if the story is happening whether or not the camera is there. And sometimes the camera man runs out of tape.

Maybe it’s how she seems to be slightly obsessed with other “cute people”. Maybe it’s her inflexibility and willful ignorance. Maybe it’s the scary pink costume (nothing wrong with pink, esp on a magical girl, but this particular costume annoys me).

What I do know is that her transformation phrase sets my teeth on edge. She shouts out “I am God”. In English. No “Parallel Parallel” or “Moon Magic Make-Up” sort of spell. Straight up unfiltered blasphemous narcissism.

My wife seemed vaguely interested in this one. It feels almost eerily like a cross-over between Sakura and Pretear, with some sincerely interesting plot points… but unless episode number two is way better than episode one, Penny’ll have to download the rest of the subs herself

Shining Tears was not my favorite game in the series, but I liked it better than NEO (well, I liked almost everything better than NEO). Tears at least looks like it belongs in the series (even if it is an action RPG where all of the previous games were tactical RPG’s). NEO’s just annoying Anyways…

Shining Tears X Wind seems to be an interlude between the world/plot of Shining Tears with its upcoming spiritual sequel, Shining Wind (due in Japan this May). After watching episode one, I’m not entirely sure what to call the anime any more… because it is certainly not just a rehashing of the Tears story, and I don’t think it’s going to be the Wind story…

Oh, but what is the story? Well, start with two worlds, the Tears world and something a bit more modern. The two universes collide, high school kids go missing, cherry trees long thought barren go into bloom, something happens with mirrors, Mao throws fireballs, some guy who looks like Xion but is apparently really named Zero flies around with black & white wings, Souma is probably our main character because he does the Utena thing and pulls a sword out of a girl, and goblins pop out of silly little dimensional rifts. But not necessarily in that order.

So far, my knowledge of Tears makes the show quite interesting but is hardly necessary or even relevant to overall enjoyment (or ability to follow the rapid plot advancement in the episode). My only complaints so far are pretty minor – The story might be going just a bit too fast to enjoy, and Mao doesn’t look quite as crisp in the anime as she does in the Tears artwork (but that’s hardly surprising, and at least she looks better than how the Disgaea characters wound up in their recent anime adaptation).

I’m gonna be watching this one if it kills me. And I’m being pleasantly surprised. The music is mediocre and the art is average, but they’re also providing me with a new story that promises to involve characters I already like and am familiar with.

The show starts off as your average highschool romance. We have a boy who likes to take photographs of the sky. The boy has a sister who is hospitalized for unexplained reasons. He and a female friend (whom he’s likely had since childhood, of course), visit her regularly.

The boy’s photographic obsession with the sky is getting him in trouble with the women in his life – he even ditches his sister’s belated birthday party in order to take a shot of the sunset.

Well, he meets a girl who likes some sort of strange tomato juice that can only be acquired from vending machines and apparently only comes out at night. We shall assume that she is primary love interest #1. She is also probably homeless.

Not a whole lot else really happens during the show… the tomato juice at night girl is not only homeless, she is likely on the run from your standard issue evil syndicate and/or bounty hunter cadre. The episode ends with a brief action sequence of the girl being chased after by one such bounty hunter.

Oh, and there’s a gothic lolita type girl who lives in a box under a bridge or something? Shrug.

I’m not sure about this one. The music is pretty good, if typical. The art is artistic and interesting, but not astounding. Hopefully, the story will pick up and become much more interesting with the next episode.

I assume that events take place somewhere in modern day Mexico, but the show doesn’t really ever say.

To translate the title, allow me to present the conversation I had with my wife’s sister’s husband’s brother, who is substantially more supeingo de jouzu than I am.

Ammon: el cazador de la bruja... the witch hunter?
Ben: Correct.
Ammon: nod, hmm
Ben: The hunter of the witch.
Ammon: yeah
Ben: Not the hunter who is a witch.

I think this one’s a keeper so far. I love the music, I love the artwork. I like the writing. There’s some humor, but not too much. The story progresses at a good rate and is both easy to follow and easy to get sucked into.

However, the thing that scares me most about this whole show is that SquEnix is one of the sponsors…

Things start off with a kid being left for dead after falling overboard during a heavy storm and end with him being thoroughly trapped and incapable of escaping an island that has somehow become inhabited entirely by girls between the age of 10 and 20 (plus grandma, who’s somewhere between one and two hundred years old).

As is to be expected by the genre, there is fan service, but there’s more hinted fan service than actual. Mostly, the show seems to be slapstick humor as our hero runs for his life while the females of the village attempt to capture him for breeding purposes.

I’m not going to give a recommendation for this one, but it was kind of funny, so shrug

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann opens with some random space pirate sort of scene but quickly gets to what I assume is the the core story. Our hero lives in an underground village where they eat mole-pigs, are ruled over by a generically mean and overbearing village elder, and where he works as a digger – to expand the city. The people are scared that the roof will collapse in an earthquake – and they don’t believe in the surface world.

Well, the surface world comes crashing down and our little hero winds up driving a strange little mecha…

Pretty standard art and music. It’s a Gainax show, after all. Also, being Gainax, it is pretty sophomoric humor and lots of it. So far, it looks like it’ll be more like Abenobashi than FLCL or Eva. That’s not really a good thing in my book, but it’s not necessarily a bad one either. Time and one more episode will tell if I’m gonna try to stick this one out.

Apparently, a number of years ago, a Hell Gate opened up in Tokyo (or wherever we are, but I’ll assume Tokyo because it’s traditional). The people built a wall and a fake sky and don’t know what’s on the outside… but there are also still Chinese transfer students and French spies… so I’m not sure precisely what area is enclosed by the wall yet.

Around the same time that the gate opened and the wall was thrown up, people with supernatural powers did too. There are two types, Contractors and Dolls. It seems that contractors have a single ability that they can use but they have to pay supernatural forces for it afterward by performing some sort of individual ritual. Not sure what dolls are, but it looks like there’s a major personality difference between the two types.

Unlike many superpower shows, this one does well to stick to telling the story in stead of wasting the viewer’s time with endless repetitive action sequences. The first episode does have plenty of action… three chase scenes and two fights. But the action is secondary to the story – which is being told in a way that guarantees that I’ll be following this one.

General story is that our hero has a pair of deadbeat parents who rely on him working part-time jobs to support them. The parents rack up an obscene debt from some yakuza loan sharks and offer to sell their son into slavery as payment – and then they skip town.

Hayate decides that all of his hard work was pointless and that the only way to survive would be to embark upon a life of crime. So… he tries to kidnap the first wealthy looking person he bumps into and botches things sufficiently that he winds up accidentally confessing his undying love for her, protecting her from real kidnappers, and getting hired as her personal bodyguard/manservant.

Episode two is already out as well, and I’ve got it queued in my playlist after I catch up on all of the other new shows I’m checking out

A group of half-demon type girls seem to be in the business of eradicating the full demons on a contract basis. The humans call these girls “Claymore” (prolly after their honking big swords).

The art is good, the action is well done. The music is better than it could be, but nothing that’s stuck in my head so far. The character development for the two main characters is well done, they grow and become much more interesting over the course of the one episode.

The violence is violent. Not so much of the internal organs spilling out, but a few steps below there. There’s a bit of suspense and suggested gore, but nothing terribly overt. Not for the childrens.

The story for episode one is involving and interesting. More than any of the shows I’ve watched so far from this season, this one makes me eager for more.

The mech design is pretty standard so far, no YF-21 here folks. The first enemy race encountered are giant centipede looking bug monsters (in the sub I caught, the people called them ‘ants’ – I didn’t pay sufficient attention to the Japanese to tell if that was what they were actually being called).

The plot doesn’t move very far in episode one. Human fleet arrives at desolate planet, their psychic leader princess lady directs them to search for signs of life. They find a feral little kid. The bugs attack. End of episode.

The music is mediocre. The opening and closing songs are completely forgettable – standard issue derivative jpop love songs that make no sense in the given context. But meh, whatever.

The art is good. In fact, I’m quite impressed. Not that the art is amazing, but that it is better than most mecha shows these days. They use CG, but not in a jarring fashion. It fits together. There is not that sort of Zoids ugliness you get when the character & background art has absolutely nothing in common with the mech CG. This reason alone is probably enough that I’ll try to watch the next few episodes.

The first thing I noticed was that the music was gorgeous. The second thing I noticed was that the art was just as good. The show is an experience for the senses.

However, aside from the consistently overwhelmingly good art and music… the storytelling itself is very random and hard to follow. The viewer is dropped into events with no prior explanation. New (possibly major) characters are introduced in isolation of each other for seconds at a time and are then never visited again, etc… There is also some gender confusion as to the main character – I think it’s male, but I could be wrong. Shrug.

I’ll give this one another episode before passing judgement, but if the story doesn’t start explaining itself soon… I’m probably going to file this one away and forget about it until I stumble across the soundtrack.