Anime Roundup
Oct. 13th, 2011 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatThe new fall anime is out, so animenite is trying out a bunch of new series again:
Chihayafuru: Will probably not last at animenite, as it seems to be primarily a slice of life / romance series about a pretty but socially awkward girl with a passion for a very Japanese card game called karuta, and her two childhood friends who used to play it with her. Seems cute, and the art style is pretty, although I don't know if I'm interested enough to watch it on my own time.
Fate/Zero: Prequel to Fate/stay night, of which I have neither played the game nor watched the anime, but I've osmosed some details thanks to others I know being into it, enough to know that this is guaranteed to go nowhere good. We've seen two episodes so far and people are already losing their damn minds. In particular, Caster invoking Cthulhu made it a big hit with the animenite crowd, which makes me a little worried about this bunch.
Kimi to Boku: Slice of life about four high school boys who've been friends since childhood. Not sure what theme they're going for; the first episode was about the uptight one's efforts to get one of the two apathetic twins to join a school club, any school club. Apparently they had almost no budget for animation, as a surprising amount of the episode was only barely what you'd call animated. We spent most of the episode trying to convince Billy that yes, all four of those characters are boys. My overall reaction is pretty much "meh."
Kyoukai Senjou No Horizon: The file actually broke halfway through the episode, but nobody was too broken up about it owing to we couldn't tell what was supposed to be going on and the character designs are ridiculous. Special mention to a number of female characters who looked like they had fully-inflated helium balloons taped to their chests in place of breasts. Something about training for battle was all I got out of the episode itself; investigating online provides some further backstory about Earth being destroyed, an "upper world" which was also destroyed, the laws of causation breaking down, and... yeah, I don't know either, and I'm not sure I care too much.
Mawaru Penguindrum: Actually from the summer season, but I don't think I mentioned it before now and we're still watching it, so I might as well include it. From the mind of the guy who brought us Revolutionary Girl Utena, and it shows: two brothers take their ill sister to the aquarium, whereupon she drops dead, and is brought back to life by the penguin hat they bought her as a souvenir. The entity of the hat possesses the girl and commands her brothers to "find the Penguindrum," and crazy ensues in copious amounts. This is one of those shows where we're twelve episodes in and still nobody has any clue what's going on.
Phi Brain: Proving once again that the Japanese can make an action series about anything. This time it's puzzle-solving, which is not that far off the wall as compared to the action series about economics and the tournament sports series about baking bread. Our hero is an obsessive puzzle-solver who, in the first episode, solves a labyrinth which results in his forming "the contract of Orpheus", gaining a funky-looking gold armband and the ability to "use a hundred percent of his brain." The art style kind of bothers me. Third anime of the night to feature an appearance from Koyasu Takehito, who is once again in every damn thing (in this case, he's also in Kyoukai Senjou No Horizon and Mawaru Penguindrum).
Persona 4 the Animation: I already tl;dr'ed about this one. It seems to have caught the group's interest so hopefully we'll stick with it. I have gotten around to actually playing the game as well, up to slightly past the point covered by the first episode, which turns out to have indeed greatly condensed things, probably for the better. Thus far, in spite of some reordering of events which I think works better in the episode format (specifically, the protagonist summons Izanagi during the first visit to the TV world), it's a remarkably close adaptation. We'll see how it goes from here.
Chihayafuru: Will probably not last at animenite, as it seems to be primarily a slice of life / romance series about a pretty but socially awkward girl with a passion for a very Japanese card game called karuta, and her two childhood friends who used to play it with her. Seems cute, and the art style is pretty, although I don't know if I'm interested enough to watch it on my own time.
Fate/Zero: Prequel to Fate/stay night, of which I have neither played the game nor watched the anime, but I've osmosed some details thanks to others I know being into it, enough to know that this is guaranteed to go nowhere good. We've seen two episodes so far and people are already losing their damn minds. In particular, Caster invoking Cthulhu made it a big hit with the animenite crowd, which makes me a little worried about this bunch.
Kimi to Boku: Slice of life about four high school boys who've been friends since childhood. Not sure what theme they're going for; the first episode was about the uptight one's efforts to get one of the two apathetic twins to join a school club, any school club. Apparently they had almost no budget for animation, as a surprising amount of the episode was only barely what you'd call animated. We spent most of the episode trying to convince Billy that yes, all four of those characters are boys. My overall reaction is pretty much "meh."
Kyoukai Senjou No Horizon: The file actually broke halfway through the episode, but nobody was too broken up about it owing to we couldn't tell what was supposed to be going on and the character designs are ridiculous. Special mention to a number of female characters who looked like they had fully-inflated helium balloons taped to their chests in place of breasts. Something about training for battle was all I got out of the episode itself; investigating online provides some further backstory about Earth being destroyed, an "upper world" which was also destroyed, the laws of causation breaking down, and... yeah, I don't know either, and I'm not sure I care too much.
Mawaru Penguindrum: Actually from the summer season, but I don't think I mentioned it before now and we're still watching it, so I might as well include it. From the mind of the guy who brought us Revolutionary Girl Utena, and it shows: two brothers take their ill sister to the aquarium, whereupon she drops dead, and is brought back to life by the penguin hat they bought her as a souvenir. The entity of the hat possesses the girl and commands her brothers to "find the Penguindrum," and crazy ensues in copious amounts. This is one of those shows where we're twelve episodes in and still nobody has any clue what's going on.
Phi Brain: Proving once again that the Japanese can make an action series about anything. This time it's puzzle-solving, which is not that far off the wall as compared to the action series about economics and the tournament sports series about baking bread. Our hero is an obsessive puzzle-solver who, in the first episode, solves a labyrinth which results in his forming "the contract of Orpheus", gaining a funky-looking gold armband and the ability to "use a hundred percent of his brain." The art style kind of bothers me. Third anime of the night to feature an appearance from Koyasu Takehito, who is once again in every damn thing (in this case, he's also in Kyoukai Senjou No Horizon and Mawaru Penguindrum).
Persona 4 the Animation: I already tl;dr'ed about this one. It seems to have caught the group's interest so hopefully we'll stick with it. I have gotten around to actually playing the game as well, up to slightly past the point covered by the first episode, which turns out to have indeed greatly condensed things, probably for the better. Thus far, in spite of some reordering of events which I think works better in the episode format (specifically, the protagonist summons Izanagi during the first visit to the TV world), it's a remarkably close adaptation. We'll see how it goes from here.
