PinkuBentoBox

So, the new season is finally here. Pretty much everything I was interested in has screened by now, with a few to come still. I thought I’d write up a few initial thoughts about some of them, like I did with the April season (there was literally one series for June/July that I cared about, so I didn’t bother there). In this edition, I’ll have a talk about Galaxy Angel II, Negima, Brighter than Dawning Blue, Kanon and Pumpkin Scissors.

To be honest, Galaxy Angel II was the series I was most worried about. I was a big fan of Galaxy Angel and was extremely sad to see it end. It had had a good run, over 120 12-minute episodes, and I guess it was beginning to become a little flat. However I felt that Chitose’s addition added that little spark of something new to it, and it still had potential for another season. But I digress. Right off the bat, I want to reinforce that this is Galaxy Angel II. It is apparently set four years after the end of the original Galaxy Angel. The old characters may still return for cameo appearances, but for the most part they have been replaced with an entirely new cast - the Lune Angel Brigade. Or Rune Angel. I’m not sure what the offical translation is. At this point, the characters are nowhere near as well defined as the original GA cast, however to be fair, GA took pretty much the whole first season to really hit its stride. This time, the ‘lead’ (in the same way that Milfeulle was the lead) is Apricot Sakuraba, Milfeulle’s adorable little sister. The rest of the characters I’m not so sure about. Anise, the Ranpha replacement, seems a bit cliche. While Lily C. Sherbert’s manner of speaking - punctating random sentences by doing a yuri-esque flower-frame pose - is rather amusing, I don’t think her waving her sword around is going to be a match for Forte’s gun fetish. Kahlua and Tequila seem like interesting characters, though I suspect they’ll just be used for fanservice. Also a downer for me is that I really, really don’t like Aya Hirano’s voice. I know that probably means I’m going to be eLynched by the Haruhi Army, but I can’t help it. She always sounds like she’s got a mouthful of mush to me. Nanonano Pudding is the silliest name in ages. Overall, however, I think GA2 has a lot of potential and I’ll definitely watch and see how it progresses.

Pumpkin Scissors kind of left me a little worried. The first episode was entertaining, though not extremely so. I was hoping for something a little more serious, I guess. It seemed to have a slightly too heavy dose of anime schlock, and it ended up coming off as being a little bit silly. I guess it’s just a question of execution, and wrong expectations on my part. I’d dearly love to get another war drama a la Zipang. Or hell, a second season. I was hoping this would be it, but it isn’t. Anyway, that doesn’t detract from the fact that it was an entertaining episode. Well animated, it has a good set of characters and a reasonably interesting plot, plus the action was good. The other part of my worries comes from some of the credits attached to the series. Specifically, it’s a Gonzo series. The term ‘gonzotrash’ is thrown about in jaded animu circles quite regularly, and not without cause. Then again, every now and then Gonzo do actually produce some good work - Vandread, Kiddy Grade, Full Metal Panic, Last Exile and Gankustsuou all come to mind. The problem is that these are really exceptions that prove the rule. Then again, their stuff is incredibly popular, especially among mainstream audiences, so perhaps it’s more that their sense of quality does not align with my own very well. It also looks like Geneon has funded the production. Used to be that you’d see their name on a lot of stuff back when they were Pioneer, but often that didn’t correlate with a license. That’s not the case any more. In other words, fansubs for this may be a little unethical for some people. Whatever. With eclipse working on it the subs should come out very quickly. I’ll definitely be giving this the three episode test - most gonzotrash shows its true colours after three or four episodes, and I’m hoping this isn’t one of them.

Conversely, my expectations for Brighter Than Dawning Blue ~Crescent Love~ (Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro na) were reasonably low. I was really only giving this a look because the game had really nice art, and didn’t expect very much from it at all beyond the usual generic harem stuff. Usually I can’t stand this sort of material, however every now and then I find one that I quite enjoy. This looks like it’s one such. The plot’s pretty much your standard fare - bland guy gets saddled with a harem of cute girls that he’s too afraid to do anything to - with the gimmick being that the primary girl is a Moon Princess. Other than that, it has nice art and a good cast. Unlike most harem anime, I actually find that I like all of the female characters introduced so far. I probably shouldn’t admit to having impure thoughts about Mai… Anyway, it looks like one that I’ll be following idly, not really getting that much into, but certainly enjoying.

Actually, both of the other series I’m going to mention here are technically harem series too. Though, to be honest, Negima doesn’t quite fit the mould, in that Negi is actually not completely bland and useless. As I expected, the Pani Poni Dash team are absolutely perfect for Negima!?. It looks like they’ve basically decided to try and make the show into a more mainstream-oriented thing, which is a good decision in my opinion. This means that Akamatsu’s fanservice-heavy scenes have been basically removed. With their removal, the comedy and action elements are stepped up several notches due to there being more screen time. They look like they know exactly what they’re doing. The characters themselves have their personalities just right, the animation is excellent, the girls who had their hair colours randomly changed by Xebec have been restored, and overall they manage to capture exactly the elements that make Negima such a popular manga. Add in some PPD-style humor and you really have an excellent formula. I also like that they’ve basically gone straight into Evangeline’s arc of the story, which was where the manga actually became worthwhile. I’m looking forward to seeing whether they keep the Libary Island stuff. I see no reason why they wouldn’t. Overall, the first episode of this had me very excited and I can’t wait for the next one.

Finally, Kanon. I’m one of the few people out there who’s been into anime in a big way for over five years, but never got around to seeing Kanon. I actually have the original series on a DVD-R somewhere. In fact, I went to watch it several years back, and found the DVD had been damaged and the first episode rendered unwatchable. I re-downloaded it a while back, but never got around to watching it. I blame part of this on a certain person who shall remain nameless insisting that it was horrible and would rot my brain. Then I heard that it was being remade, so I decided to just wait. I’m really glad I did. Kanon is considered to be a bit of an otaku rite-of-passage, and based off the first episode I can see why. Much like KyoAni’s other work over the last few years, they really show that they are a top-flight outfit when it comes to faithfully adapting things to anime without either ruining the elements which made the original material popular (see: Negima) or adapting too literally and making things seem poorly paced (see: Fate/Stay Night). The downs-syndrome character designs were something that always irked me a bit with Key, but I found that, just as with Air, after a minute or two you don’t really notice it. Their choice to replace Yuuichi (who irritated the hell out of me way back when I watched a bit of ep 1, before encountering the corrupt bit in the episode) with a better design and a better actor (Kyon… let’s call him Kyuuichi, shall we? :P) seems to be inspired to me. Rather than feeling like a generic anime guy, he injects that little bit of character, as well as feeling a lot more natural in the part. On top of that, I clearly fall smack in the middle of the whole demographic that the show is aimed at. Others who have experienced the feeling will know what I mean, though it’s hard to use in a sentence. I feel moe towards Ayu and Nayuki. And by moe I mean what Ken Akamatsu means. I just want to give them both a big hug. This scares me. However I will be first in line to get more of this. Luckily one of the fansubbing groups that has jumped on is Eclipse, who have a great reputation for being extremely fast (12-24 hour turnaround) and usually pretty accurate.