Fall 2011 Anime Review - Part II

Now it’s time for Part 2 of the Fall 2011 Anime Review. And it’s the last column before the new year? What’s in stock for next year? Hell if I know. I don’t really plan these things more than one week in advance. Nonetheless! Here is Part 2.

Again, all plot summaries are taken from Anime News Network.

Chiyahafuru

Plot Summary: Chihaya Ayase is a frank and ebullient girl who becomes fascinated by the obscure world of competitive karuta, a card game based on Japanese poetry. Introduced to the aggressive style of the game by a quiet and thoughtful elementary school classmate named Arata Wataya, the two quickly become close friends. They start playing as a group with Taichi Mashima, Chihaya’s smart and athletic childhood friend, until they have to part ways during their middle school years due to several circumstances. As their high school life begins, they meet once again.

Chihayafuru is most certainly my favorite anime in this anime season. There are a lot of good ones. Like Future Dairy and Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter x Hunter (that’s the same guy who did YuYu Hakusho). But Chihayafuru trumps them.

The basic plot is it’s a show about karuta. But only people like me who love Japanese culture would keep watching it just for the karuta. It’s about Chihaya, Taichi, Kanada, Nikuman-kun, and Desktomaru-kun going through a growth.

Chihaya clearly still loves her childhood friend and karuta inspiration, Arata. And Taichi clearly loves Chihaya, who is oblivious. And it’s adorable. Not since Usagi Drop have I loved an anime this much. I watch the 24 minutes and it feels like 5 or 10 minutes have gone by. It’s one of those kinds of shows. [To put that in perspective for you, I’m painfully aware that Boardwalk Empire is 55 minutes, but I also acknowledge that I love the show. Comparatively, Dexter and Fringe speed by in what feels like 20 minutes or so to me.]

What does it for me is that it’s a combined huge Japanese culture information dump with great characters that you want to love. Even the antagonists have their redeeming qualities in the end. I mean, [SPOILERS] they just beat Hokou Academy and the two characters I really didn’t like (the white haired guy and Retro-kun), I liked by the end of the next episodes. Or at least didn’t hate as much. Because it turns out that the white haired guy is a 3rd year this year, so it’s his last chance at winning the nationals, and Retro-kun holds an emotional attachment to the trophy that’s been in their clubroom since he was in middle school. [END SPOILERS]

Basically, if you like cool characters and don’t mind learning a bit about Japanese culture (or sub-culture) on the way, check out Chihayafuru. Because it has blown my mind in how good it is.

Guilty Crown

Plot Summary: After the outbreak of the unidentified virus “Lost Christmas” in 2029, Japan has been under the control of a multi-nation organization called GHQ. Ohma Shu is a 17 year old boy who has a psychic power in his right hand. He can use the power “Ability of King” to extract tools or weapons from his friends. He has been avoiding making trouble for others but his life changes when he meets a girl Yuzuriha Inori, a member of a resistance guerrilla group called “Funeral Parlor,” whose members pilot mecha weapons to fight against the government.

For starters, when a show is being directed by the same guy who did the Death Note anime and written by the same guy who did Code Geass, it’s hard to pass up.

But Guilty Crown is the gateway anime of this season, I think. It’s only going to be two, 13 episode seasons (I think, give or take a few episodes). And it’s got pretty much everything you want out of an anime to start someone off with. Of course shows like Trigun, Bebop, and Evangelion are still going to be mainstays. But this has made its mark.

Through 11 episodes, one of the most stunning things about this is its music. The music in the series is pretty, if you’ll excuse the language, bitchin’. Again, not up to the level of Bebop, but it’s still good.

But the story itself interests me as well. Of course, Japan is in a state of unrest. And, of course, they’re the underdogs. So we have Funeral Parlor, who are a group of revolutionaries looking to change Japan for the better. And the main character, of course, joins them in their quest for righteousness.

What’s good is that it’s not just a rip off of Code Geass or Death Note. It certainly feels like it in the first few episodes that it’s copying Code Geass a little. But it gets over that and makes its own thing happen.

I feel like Shu’s ability is kind of a copout to give characterization to minor characters, or people who I feel are minor characters. But putting that aside, Shu’s conflict with doing the “right” thing is done in an entertaining enough way, and in a very cool setting, to make me want to keep watching. It’s certainly not the best show this season, but it has its moments where I was like, “Wow.”

Hunter x Hunter

Plot Summary: Gon Freecs’ father abandoned him as a baby in order to become a Hunter, an elite class with a license to go anywhere or do almost anything. Now 12 years old, Gon wishes to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a great Hunter. While Gon faces the unexpected challenges the Hunter Examination throws at him, he makes friends with three other candidates Kurapika, Leorio, and Killua.

Another show from Yoshihiro Togashi. He previously had YuYu Hakusho and Level E put into anime and, in fact, Hunter x Hunter had a previous anime incarnation. But this one starts at the very beginning and reworks everything (unlike Dragonball Kai which was just the Z footage remastered and with filler cut out significantly, I think). Being a huge YuYu Hakusho fan, I had to check this show out.

While you clearly have Yusuke as Gon, Kurapika as Kurama, Leorio as Kuwabara, and Killua as Hiei, it still entertains me greatly (Togashi has typecasted these four in The Five-Man Band the same way he did YuYu Hakusho, so it’s to be expected that they’re similar).

Despite this obvious similarity, I love Hunter x Hunter. I was looking for a shonen action series to take up the spot of Naruto and BLEACH because I dropped both of those. Fairy Tail is a mainstay, I picked up One Piece post time skip, and now I have Hunter x Hunter, which is sure to last a while.

Having only gotten 13 episodes into the series, I haven’t had much to look at in terms of characters beyond their general archtypes (I mean, come on, this is a shonen action series. We aren’t looking for character stuff until at least episode 15). But the action itself has excited me greatly. And if anyone can do that, it’s Yoshihiro Togashi, the man who did it second (Akira Toriyama FTW?).

Check it out if you’re looking for another shonen action series. It won’t disappoint, I’m sure. But if you want more, look to Chihayafuru or something.

You and Me (Kimi to Boku.)

Plot Summary: 4 friends, twins Yuta and Yuki Asaba, the cute and girly Shun Matsuoka, and the class representative Kaname Tsukahara, have known each other since kindergarten. When a half-Japanese transfer student named Chizuru Tachibana joins their group, he brings a new dynamic to their friendship.

You and Me is a pleasant little story about four boys who have been friends since kindergarten and a fifth who made friends when they were around that age, but never went to school with them. It’s basically K-ON! with boys and without music.

So if you don’t really like the slice of life genre, then don’t bother with the show. But for those of you who enjoy a good slice of life, this show’s worth a look.

I do like slice of life and I thought this show was one of the best this season. Certainly not the best, but it entertained me from week to week.

Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing

Plot Summary: Fam is part of the Sky Pirates, a group that assaults ships following the code of the First harpoon – the first to hit the target with a harpoon has the right to decide how to proceed on the assault. They target minor vessels and prosper on an isolated location, until one day they take off for a mission that will change their lives and for all Turan Kingdom citizens by rescuing their two princesses from Ades Federation betrayal.

This new Last Exile is just as visually stunning as the last. If you’re even remotely a fan of cyberpunk, or appreciate amazing designs, check out both Last Exile shows.

But this is really a show that I would prefer to watch big blocks of episodes at a time. It doesn’t take me much to get into the world of Last Exile, but the story itself is complex enough that it serves itself to a marathon rather than a week by week viewing. This is definitely a show that I’ll check out when it comes out on BD.

What draws me into this show more than the previous one is, true to Japan style, the cute characters. Fam and Gisey and Milia are all so cute. Of course, they all have their own great characters. And it’s great to see Tatiana, Alister, and Dio again.

The way the show is set up, it’s fine to just pick up this show. You’ll understand everything about it without having had seen the previous one. Having said that, I highly suggest watching the first Last Exile just because of the quality of both of these shows.

Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls!

Plot Summary: Kawakami City is famous for its strong dedication to its samurai ancestors. A healthy fighting spirit is always valued and it's even an important factor for success at school. Yamato, a second year student from Kawakami High school, is always with his close friends (4 boys and 3 girls). They have all known each other since they were young and have done many things together. While they have many other friends, this group of seven is a close-knit, inseparable group. They even have a secret base where they meet. With the new semester, they welcome two girls into their group and shortly after things begin to change…

If you thought to yourself, “Hey, I liked Baka and Test, but would like it even more in a feudal Japan-type setting.” then the first episode will not disappoint. But the next 11 episodes basically have nothing to do with that. In fact, I have no idea why “Class A” and “Class F” were fighting or what the differences between the classes are.

What Majikoi-Oh! did was give me 11 episodes of fanservice-y entertainment. In shonen fighting fashion. I could go on and on about the imperfections of this show and how it isn’t good. It would honestly take too long. And with a show like this, I don’t think it matters.

So all I’ll say is this: If you want to watch some cool fights while not at all being able to follow the plot (or at the very least, the reasons behind the plot), then check it out.

Mashiro-Iro Symphony – The color of lovers

Plot Summary: The traditional girls-only Yuihime Private Academy is considering the possibility of starting to accept both genders and has thus made an agreement with a neighboring school to receive some of its students as an experiment to see the reaction to this adaptation. Shingo Uryu is one of the many students transferred for a ten month experimental phase at Yuihime Academy. He, his sister, and his fellow relocated colleagues are impressed by the sophisticated campus, but even more by the resistance of many students who don’t want the boys over there.

This started out being my least favorite show of the season. As it went on, though, it sort of redeemed itself. It took a really long time to set up everything and nothing seemed to move until episode three or four, maybe.

Then it went into a typical love story, like that in a visual novel. Because, guess what, it was originally a visual novel. This one doesn’t really set itself apart from the other adaptations I’ve seen (Shuffle, Kanon, etc.) but it has its own charms to it. If you’ve seen one, you’ve really seen them all.

The characters themselves didn’t stand out to me much either. Shingo, the main boy who of course has the love of all the ladies, was just your ordinary, average guy. He didn’t really have that “change the world” quality that a lot of the other protagonists in this type of show has. He also has a little sister. And I commend Japan on not exploiting a love affair between the two in this show.

[For those of you who don’t know, it’s a common-ish thing in the eroge to have a brother-sister sexual relationship. Of course, it’s frowned upon in most situations in real life, but the allure of forbidden love is enticing enough for the pervy teenagers of Akihabara. And by in most situations, I mean if they aren’t blood related. As in the son’s biological mother and the daughter’s biological father got married after their respective biological father and mother died or something. You get the point?]

What was creative-ish was the Nuko Club. A club that’s made to help injured animals and return them to the wild. But that’s about the shows only redeeming quality. So if you like a sappy love story, go ahead and watch it. If that’s not your thing, skip it and move on to the next show.

The Future Dairy (Mirai Nikki)

Plot Summary: Yukiteru Amano (Yuki) is a loner who never really interacts with people and prefers writing a diary on his cell phone with his only companion being an imaginary friend named Deus Ex Machina, the God of Time and Space. However, Yuki soon learns that Deus is not a figment of his imagination but real when Deus makes him a participant in a battle royale with eleven others. Within this “Diary Game,” the contestants are given special diaries that can predict the future with each diary having unique features that gives them both advantages and disadvantages.

What’s so great about Future Dairy is its amazing concept and execution of said concept. Horizon did the first one, Future Dairy did the second one.

The one thing that bugs me is that it’s really unrealistic, even within the scope of itself. But it has an answer to that! A character, who is the God of Time and Space, literally named Deus Ex Machina, is making it happen.

What really bugs me are the characters. None of them seem to have any redeeming qualities besides, “I don’t want to die.” As of the latest episode, I’m starting to like Uryu Minene (or Ninth) the best just because she’s at least stayed consistent. Well, I guess Yukiteru and Yuno have as well, but I kind of hate them.

But I keep watching because this is literally a fight for your life against twelve other people with “future dairies.” As you might imagine, they tell you the future. Yukiteru has the Discriminate Diary, which tells him the future x days (I don’t remember how many) in advance of everything but his future. Because it’s other name is the Observation Diary. Because it’s everything he could be perceiving.

Then Yuno has the Love Diary, which conveniently tells her in a VERY stalker sort of way, everything that Yukiteru will be doing in x days.

Other diaries include the Breeder’s Diary, the Escape Diary, the Case Diary, the Hyper Vision Diary, the Murder Diary, the Clairvoyance Diary, and the Justice Diary.

It’s one of the best thriller anime I’ve ever seen. Twists and turns around every corner and definitely something to show the family. [Don’t actually show this to your family.]

Squid Girl!?

Plot Summary: The nefarious Squid Girl is back to continue her self-appointed mission to invade the surface world. Or that’s what she would do, if she could just stop getting distracted by squidding movies, reading squidly manga, and making friends as only a squid could make them. Squid Girl must overcome not only danger found at every turn, but her own squidly good nature as well.

Squid Girl continues to be a hilarious and pleasant show week by week. It’s the kind of show that I would actually prefer to watch week by week. While Squid Girl’s antics are cute and funny, it’s a little too much to take in more than one episode at a time.

As it is a comedy show at its core, you have to be interested in a certain level of Japanese-style comedy. Most people who watch anime are, so that should be no problem. But if you get into it, it’s going to be good.

What’s really good about this show is the shorts that it has sometimes with a little, itty bitty Squid Girl going on some random adventure for about 6 minutes. The one in the first season was most definitely the highlight of that season. Absolutely no dialogue and I loved every minute of it. In fact, that short is the reason I picked up the rest of the show.

While there are some parts of the show that I just didn’t find funny, it’s worth picking up either season for a few laughs. I mean, you watch the first episode of the first season and you can pick pretty much everything else from there.

Wagnaria’!!

Plot Summary: Set in a family restaurant in Hokkaido, the northern prefecture of Japan, 16-year-old high school student Takanashi Souta works part-time along with his strange co-workers: Taneshima Popura, a high school girl who's a year older than Souta who's easily mistaken for a elementary/middle schooler, and Shirafuji Kyoko, the 28-year-old store manager who doesn't bother to do any work at all.
Life goes on at the Wagnaria family restaurant as its peculiar employees try to provide a good service despite their individual eccentricities.

Wagnaria’!!, for those of you who don’t know, is a continuation of, you guessed it, Wagnaria!! Neither season really has an overarching plot, but that’s ok. It’s not really a show for an overarching plot. What it does is entertain the hell out of me with its amazing characters from week to week.

First you have our protagonist, Takanashi. He loves everything that’s tiny, like his sempai, Taneshima, who inspired him to get the job in the first episode of the first season, and water fleas. Yes, this boy loves the tiny little water fleas. But Takanashi and Taneshima didn’t know each other at the time. He just thought he would help out who he thought was an elementary school student. Turns out that she’s at least a full head shorter than Takanashi, and one year older.
Takanashi also has four sisters, one younger and three older. The eldest is a lawyer and divorced at an indeterminate amount of time before the beginning. The second is a novelist who finds it difficult to do anything but crawl and write. Otherwise she loses too much energy. The third is a aikido instructor who loves to drink and is frequently dumped, which leads to more drinking. And the youngest is a 6th grader who has a lot on her plate. She has to take care of basically her entire family alongside our protagonist.

Our next character would be Taneshima, who has a complex about being so short and has trouble saying Takanashi. Instead she calls him Katanashi, comically. Then there’s Sato-san who is the chain smoking cook of Wagnaria. He picks on Taneshima endlessly.

And the list keeps going on from an androphobic to a girl who wants so much to be normal, that it’s abnormal, a girl who carries a katana around everywhere, a man who blackmails you and smiles while doing it, and a girl who is called Yamada and no one really knows who she is.

This smorgasbord of characters keeps me wanting to watch every week just to see what kind of hilarious shenanigans they get into. Having never worked at a family restaurant, I can’t say whether the accounts of what go on is accurate. But I can say that I love watching it happen. It’s like a working version of Azumanga Daioh. Maybe that’s why it’s called Working!! in Japan.