PinkuBentoBox

I’m usually pretty prompt with these entries, generally doing them about a month out. I’ve been slacking off recently I guess, since next season’s only a week away and I’ve already been beaten to this by some far more thorough entries than my own. Anyway, here’s a list of the upcoming shows next season (beginning in July) which I intend to be watching or at least have enough interest in to check out seriously. As usual there’s a few others which I’m also going to keep an eye on and I’m sure there will be one or two that I won’t be expecting at all.

Slayers Revolution

My last entry should have made it pretty clear that I’m somewhat of a Slayers fan, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that this is one of my more anticipated shows for the season. There’s not a huge amount known about what they’re going to do with this yet, but we do know that the plot will be original, rather than adapted from the novels. This could be good or it could be terrible, we’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out. The biggest thing that I can think of which they could pull would be introducing Naga into the ‘normal’ continuity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened. Generally speaking though, as long as it has Xellos I don’t really care what they do <3.

Blade of the Immortal

In all honesty, I suspect that Blade of the Immortal is going to be a huge disappointment. The actual plot of the manga was fairly predictable and a bit trite, though still entertaining enough. Really, the big draw of Immortal was the manga’s artwork. It has a really detailed sort of sketchy style that was never goung to be possible to animate without throwing an astronomical budget at it, and even if they did it I’m not convinced it would look good moving. I’m hesitant about this and I’m adopting a wait-and-see approach, but it could be reasonably good.

Zero no Tsukaima S3

The first season of this was pretty good. It was never anything incredible, but it was solid and enjoyable. What the fuck went wrong with the writing team when they started on S2? The bulk of the character development from S1 was thrown out the window and Louise and Saitou’s relationship was basically reset back to zero. The whole he-looked-at-another-girl-so-I-whipped-him-repeatedly thing went beyond being a gag and really started to grate. There were also a fair number of plot points from S1 that were left hanging. And don’t get me started on the deus ex machina ending.

Yeah, I’ll be watching S3. The new girl has elf ears.

Mahou Tsukai ni Kaisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~

This is actually a sort of tentative entry here. I fully intend to watch the show despite only having a very cursory idea of what it’s about, because I haven’t seen the first season at all. It’s something I’ve been meaning to watch for years now, ever since I saw some of the beautiful watercolour promotional art for it. I’ve just never gotten around to watching the show. My intention is to watch that season first, then if I like it I’ll hit this up too.

Koihime Musou

Whenever Japan completely runs out of ideas they decide to conduct a raid on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Interestingly this is going to be running at least partially alongside Ikkitousen, which is another example of the same material being bastardised into anime. The only real difference I can see in their conception is that Koihime Musou seems like it’s got more moe influence, where Ikkitousen gets most of its inspiration from bad porn (note: I like Ikkitousen and am currently watching GG). I’m not expecting much, but at least this has nice art. Also, bonus points for turning Diao Chan into a muscle-bound crossdressing guy.

Sekirei

With Kanokon ended and Kiss x Sis not hitting until the season after next at the earliest, this seems to be the most likely candidate to take over from Kanokon as the oh-god-I-can’t-believe-they-went-there horrible fanservice show for the season. Seriously, it looks completely lacking in any redeeming features besides being smut. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with smut.

Hidamari Sketch x365

Hidamari Sketch was seriously underloved, and I’m glad to see that it’s getting a full sequel. Back when I first watched it, my impression was that it was what you’d get if you combined Aria with Mahoraba. Like Aria, it has that same sort of warmth to its characters and the same sort of relaxing feeling when you watch. If Aria is like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day, then Hidamari Sketch is like a warm fire on a cold winter’s night. Add to that the fact that you get Akiyuki Shinbo’s unique artistic flair, use of colour and shot composition and I think that this could be my most anticipated show of the season.

Strike Witches

Yeah, I know. The whole premise of Mecha Musume stuff is utterly retarded. I don’t particularly care. I fully expect this show to be multiple shades of awful, but at the same time it has some kind of bizarre appeal to it (and no, it’s not a lolicon thing, before someone suggests that). This is another show that Gonzo are actually trying to be progressive with, like Druaga and Blassreiter. I’m hoping that they allow the same sort of distribution models - personally I was quite happy to drop $2 on each Druaga episode from Crunchyroll, though it would have been nice if they’d offered it in h264 instead of Xvid. Anyway, not expecting much here.

Looks like a reasonable season, especially considering how many shows from last season are ongoing. I just wish there was a decent yuri show, it’s been ages since the last one.