Fall 2013 Anime Season

[Keropi]

Another new anime season is coming up:
http://anichart.net/fall

I'm most looking forward to seeing these:

Tokyo Ravens ----- I've been enjoying the manga for awhile (my enjoyment rating is currently at 6.50). I look forward to seeing the heart of the story. They haven't gotten to that part yet after 18 chapters. I look forward to hearing Kana Hanazawa voicing the reverse trap.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel ----- Been enjoying this manga (my enjoyment rating is currently at 7.30). I love seeing the World War II ships fighting each other. I've read 45 chapters and there's no ending in sight. I guess they are going to make up their own ending.

Unbreakable Machine Doll ----- Enjoying this manga (my enjoyment rating is currently at 7.00). It's a harem storyline, but it concentrates more on the action and the intrigue. Unfortunately the character designs make the characters look younger and delicate compared to the manga.

Strike the Blood ---- I've only read 9 chapters of this (my enjoyment rating of it is now at 6.40). The character artwork is not going to look as good as the manga, but I expected that. Should be at least somewhat interesting.

Nagi no Asukara ----- I've read only 2 chapters (my e-rating is currently at 6.30). This is a slice-of-life story with young students in a rural area. The regular humans and the people of the sea have to try to get along with each other as they try to attend the same school. It seemed kind of cute. Hopefully the anime will work out.

I'm less interested in these anime:

Valvrave 2nd season
Coppelion
Kyoukai no Kanata
Outbreak Company
Infinite Stratos 2nd season
Golden Time
Yuusha ni Narenakatta
Yozakura Quartet 2nd season
White Album 2

The other anime I'm less certain about. Noucome sounds familiar though. That sounds like a manga I just started reading, but I can't find the paper that I wrote down what manga chapters I've read recently.

What anime are you guys most interested in seeing?

[animeobsessed]

At first glance I didn't see much, but taking a closer look there are a few I want to see:

High on my list
Kuroko no Basket 2 - enjoyed the first season, was waiting for it to continue
Chihayafura OVA - loved the series
Free OVA - watching this series
Suisei no Gargantia OVA - also liked this series - glad there's more

Will check these out:
Tokyo Raven
Nappa Kairiku Bushi Road
Ace of Diamond - though it sounds very much like another baseball series
Space Pirate Captain Harlock - movie

[AR-99]

ATM: Coppelion, Outbreak Company, and Walkure Romanze.

[darksuzaku]

Judging only by those brief descriptions and the pictures of the series i guess i might have interest in a few:

Coppelion
Nagi no Asukara
Golden Time
Strike the Blood
Magi (2nd season)
Unbreakable Machine Doll
Tokyo Ravens
Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova

[Keropi]

Random Curiosity has their anime season preview up:
http://randomc.net/2013/09/18/fall-2013-preview/

Now I remember. That Noucome anime reminds me of the webcomic "The Gamer" where multiple choices pop up in the main character's head. So that's another version of incorporating gaming stuff into real life.

That 3-D CG in Arpeggio and Machine Doll has me a bit worried. I hope it won't look too bad. At least one good thing is that Jouji Nakata will be voicing the dragon in Unbreakable Machine Doll. I've always loved his voice from way back when he was doing those live action movies a long time ago.

I can't wait to see Heavy Cruiser Takao in Arpeggio.

[Keropi]

I worked 39-40 hours for seven weeks straight setting up our Christmas stuff and preparing for a Vice President visit to our store so I haven't had a lot of time to watch the shows from this season. I kept going to sleep early because I was so tired from work.

I'm not caught up with everything, but from what I have seen so far I like the second season of Valvrave with it's semi-Code Geass/Sunrise Studio-like plot twists. I like Kyoukai no Kanata more than I thought I would. The artwork is excellent. I'm enjoying Golden Time too. I haven't watched an adult romance anime for a long time.

I think Tokyo Ravens is okay so far. I like it a little less than I like the manga. I think the best parts of Tokyo Ravens are the very beginning and the very end. The middle part is only okay. I like Arpeggio even though they greatly simplified the manga's plot and left out a lot of the manga's characters. The anime is different from the manga,, but the themes and the tone of the anime and manga are still pretty similar so far.

I liked White Album 2 and Nagi no Asukara, but it always takes me longer to watch dramatic, emotional stories...if I even watch them at all. It's just easier for me to watch the lighter, fluffy stuff. Strike the Blood is okay. I don't like Machine Doll as much as the manga, but that was to be expected. I still don't care for the artwork of the anime/novels.

I think Log Horizon is getting more interesting. I don't know how that Ending Credits singer can sing so high.

I'm skipping Freezing Vibration until the current story arc is over. It's the arc that lead to a lot of people to quit reading the manga (because of how annoying it was). I'm finding Noucome to be more amusing than when it first started. Outbreak Company became too awkward for me to watch. I don't think I'm going to be able to watch any more of it.

[Keropi]

I didn't have much luck this season. The two assistant managers in our department got their positions eliminated so we had to make up for it by working harder and longer hours. I was too tired to watch much this season compared to what I wanted to. Never got to watch much of a number of shows. Maybe someday I could watch more of Nagi no Asukara, Kyoukai no Kanata among others.

Arpeggio was disappointing to me because they cut out a lot of the plot from the manga, simplified the story and made up weird stuff for the ending. Oh well, there's always the manga to read. I'll just keep going with that and try to forget about the anime.

Strike the Blood comes off pretty shallow too without the novel's details, but there was no way they were going to include all those details in the anime.

Machine Doll seemed to come off better as an anime adaption compared the above mentioned two. The original source for Machine Doll was easier to adapt to anime form.

I'm enjoying Log Horizon.

I would have enjoyed this season more if I wasn't so exhausted most of the time.

[AR-99]

With the season over, here's how my picks fared:

*Coppelion: Started out decent but had trouble sustaining itself as the season went on. Still, I'd like to see more of this series.

*Gifu Dodo: Continued from summer. I found this a decent series although the arcs took time to develop and it was more talking and less action than expected. However from what I've read about its sales numbers it appears to be stopping where it is.

*Miss Monochrome: OK, didn't find it as funny as it is, but tolerable at less than 4 min./ep.

*Kill La Kill: Easily the most over the top, ridiculous series I've seen in a while and saved the season.

*Outbreak Company: An interesting take on otaku culture from a different POV. Despite its shortcomings the series has potential and I'd like to see more.

*Walkure Romanze: This would probably have been better if it had gone straight to OVA as an H release since it's based on an eroge. The ending was left open but we never got to see what made the MC such hot shit as a knight that 5 women all wanted him as their begleiter and he never really picked one until the end. Hard to see how a sequel to this will come about since the main event that the season focused on, the summer jousting tourney, is over.

[GuyvarIII]

I’m continuing to watch crafty Sei’s political moves to unite China and boisterous Shin’s battles to become THE Greatest General under the Heavens in “Kingdom 2” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHbTrs1UCi4). Fortunately, they're using a lot less CG this year, so it's easier on the eyes this time. And, I’m watching the following 'new' anime from this season:

Samurai Flamenco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCajl_zZbTw)
This is my favorite new show of the season. It got me hooked with bumbling lead Masayoshi’s brutally honest spiel to a group of punks; how nobody cares what they do, because no one expects them to ever amount to anything. I liked the interaction between long-suffering, stand-up guy, Goto, and, enthusiastic odd-ball, Masayoshi. It has since morphed into a straight-up Sentai show. But, it has great little darkly humorous touches, as when Masayoshi at first felt sorry for the humans-turned-monsters who died, but then sloughed it off when it became mundane and repetitive. And now, the show is heading into Giant Robot territory!

Yowamushi Pedal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpaYnWC0VDk)
So far, it’s a solid sports show. Despite all their little eccentricities and geeky tendencies, all the protagonists are wonderful people, and they’re going to push themselves to become stronger while becoming great friends. Unfortunately, the designs are a little fugly. But, it’s a very “feel good” show.

Gundam Build Fighters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGA_xKm95zg)
I’ve never been much of a fan of those Magic the Gathering type card game shows, like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Even though this program features plastic models, the formula is the same. The idea, that we could achieve something like World Peace if everyone just bought more cards/plastic toys, is outrageous, self-serving marketing dressed up as an easily swallowed, sugarcoated pill of a kids' show. That being said, the mecha battles in this anime are awesome! For the past years, I’ve had to accept mostly badly textured robots and choreography challenged fights that don’t look one tenth as good as these. I hope with shows like this, Gundam Unicorn, and Mazinkaizer SKL, we're entering a “second renaissance” of cool looking robots in anime.

Kill La Kill (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ClQ7zkHtXY)
It’s very reminiscent of a lot of older OVAs, especially Go Nagai's pervy Kekko Kamen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwKFaDUSKM), and even the warden and prisoner fights from Riki-Oh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R30XMCgKdKA). So far, Kill la Kill has been able to keep its gag running fairly well without beating it to death … yet.

[Keropi]

It's good that you have something you like to watch right now.

I know a guy that likes more older style, non-moe anime and he finds it tough going. He often doesn't watch anything new from the entire anime season because he can't find anything that won't annoy him in some way.

[GuyvarIII]

It's good that you have something you like to watch right now.

I know a guy that likes more older style, non-moe anime and he finds it tough going. He often doesn't watch anything new from the entire anime season because he can't find anything that won't annoy him in some way.

Well, even though many older fans like to delude themselves into believing that Moe suddenly showed up in the late nineties and early 2000s, “Project A-ko” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEzTvvhVsbE) and “Cosmos Pink Shock” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW6Y1sFiCZE) were already poking fun at the trope in 1986 with their characters of C-ko and Micchi.

I consider the lead girl, Mizuki, in my all time favorite anime, “The Guyver”, to be Moe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOVsuldARQ I dare you to skip to 14:30 and tell me that’s not Moe). And, it’s not like older staple characters like “Macross’” Minmei (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAwTd3yyNCI), “Iczer-1’s” Nagisa (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OajnA0YtbKQ), or “Leda’s” Yohko (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AQaOzOrFLw), weren’t Moe. However, I do feel that Moe character designs have overall become more uniform, and not as pretty as the design work of Haruhiko Mikimoto, Toshihiro Hirano, and Mutsumi Inomata.

Also, I do get bored in a lot of shows where seemingly every female character is some type of Moe figure. And, I do think the longer limbed female designs of yesteryear, like Kawajiri's Kagero (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcF3NqaxCNM) and Makie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh-Z5VMRJzQ), and Leji Matsumoto's Emeraldas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV0AvMHV3sI) and Maetel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzWZ0dgBA-A), are more elegant. But, Moe shows can offer more than just character traits and design… an interesting story; good pacing; beautiful backgrounds; well choreographed action; cool mechanical designs; fun, thought provoking, and/or interesting situations; etc.

I, too, find most Moe characters annoying, and they are not immediately appealing.
But, if a Moe show has something else I do find appealing, I’ll watch it.
Though I find I usually keep following the less Moe entries in any given season.