Anime Summer Season 2012 – Judgement Day

Hi people don’t worry or should I say don’t be pleased too quickly, Wieselhead.de isn’t dead yet. Studies, figure delays and a completely messed up time management put my blogging activities on hiatus, how sad. But let’s forget about it, today I will share my impressions about the shows I’ve watched in this Anime Summer Season which is more or less over.

I’ve followed Rinne no Lagrange 2, Oda Nobuna no Yabou, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, Hagure Yuusha no Estetica, Tari Tari, Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon II, Yuru Yuri ♪♪ and Arcana Famiglia.

I’ve heard that Kokoro Connect is very good, but I had no time for more shows.

Arcana Famiglia

Ah this one was the dissapointment in this season, Im not known for being picky with my anime, but this show completely went downhill after it’s first episode. The Arcana Family is a kind yet mafia like organization who rule on the island of Regalo. The first episode started quite promising, where the main heroine Felicità and her loyal henchman chased some criminals through the streets. Later that day Felicita’s father, also the head of the Arcana Famiglia announces a game, the arcana duello. Every member of the Arcana Famiglia has mystical powers that are derived from tarot cards. The winner will be the new boss and also marry Felicità, the only daughter of the current boss, against her will of course. Well, this duel only takes place in the last episode.

This anime has a reverse harem setting so the majority of the cast are males. All of them have different personalities and are kind of quirky, but calling that show a reverse harem would be too much, aside from her attendant Luca, Liberta, Nova and the cool Debito who would jump on any senorina, no one is really interested in getting close to her. They are too old for her, anyway.

Before the arcana duello happens the story mainly follows  Liberta, Felicita and Nova through pretty random events where they try to get better control over their arcana powers. It feels more like the writers stumpled until the final than a good paced show with an interesting storyline.

It’s not the fault of the characters, that this anime felt so disappointing, with a different more action orientated setting this could have been something far more interesting and entertaining.

 

Yuru Yuri ♪♪ – Second Season

Shortly before I started watching the second season, I quickly marathoned the first one. It was a quite amusing slice of life comedy, even though not the best out there. Next to the daily life adventures of the 4 girls, Akari, Kyouko, Yui and Chinatsu, who have the occupied former tea ceremony club room, Yuru Yuri shows several examples of friendship and one sided affection between middle schoolers with a little Yuri (lesbian) influences here and there.

This time the side characters Himawari and Sakurako play a bigger part than in the first season.

Yuru Yuri was always more of a lighthearted comedy, while there were a few scenes which portrayed the friendship between the girls in the first season, in the second these scenes became even more rare in favor of more comedy. Personally I liked this kind of humor a lot, only the scenes where Akari was mistreated annoyed me. I became quite the Akari fanboy, she’s so cute. I’ve fallen for this kind and cheerful little girl who gets no real attention of her friends.

In case you liked the first season, you should enjoy this second season as well, except you expected some character and story development, that doesn’t really happens, but it’s hilarious comedy nevertheless.

 

Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita

In the future decreasing birthrates downsized the number of humans who are living on earth. Now there aren’t enough skilled people to maintain the former high tech infrastructure and the people live in a low tech environment. The niche the humans once had was taken over by fairies, tiny, shy but friendly creatures. Our main character is Watashi also called Okashi-chan, she works for the UN as mediator between humans and fairies.

She is a very pretty kindly voiced girl but also very smart and able to easily look behind peoples facade. A nice character trait of Watashi is, that she isn’t as friendly and innocent as her outer appearance implies her sarcastic remarks are fun to watch. In her job she is guided by her grandfather who has an affection towards firearms, she also gets help from her silent asisstant.

In the first half the viewer is introduced in the crazy world of this show. The fairies can do several unbelievable things, which are helpful for humans, but sometimes they also like to play little pranks. The fairies are a pretty weird bunch, at first they appear very creepy, but as the story progressed these creatures turn really adorable. Not only the fairies are portrayed, there are also crazy individuals under the human inhabitants of the town where Watashi works.

Most stories are told from in a narrative fashion from Watashi’s point of view. In general each episode contains a single story, but there were also stories which filled two episodes. The episode aren’t really in order, so the second half mainly centers around Watashi herself, these episodes portray events from the past where the viewer learns how she became the person she’s today.

Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita was an refreshingly creative, surreal and crazy anime with nice pacing and good timed comedy moments. I found it to be very entertaining with it’s queer characters, unique settings and strangely funny dialogs. The animation style is nice and bright with pastel colors and offers an appealing character design. It was one of my favorites in this season.

 

Hagure Yuusha no Estetica

In every season there is one anime with lots of ecchiness, Hagure Yuusha no Estetica is one of such shows, but handled things in a slightly different manner. The anime starts when the main character is going to leave the world of Alleyzard after he helped the Queen. Back in our world Akatsuki is accepted at a kind of shady international training organization named Babel which protects and makes use of young people who returned from different worlds. Akatsuki took something from Alleyzard with him, Miu the daughter of the demon king, he ones defeated.

Akatsuki promised the demon king to protect his daughter. In the new world Akatsuki wants to give the shy and insecure Miu a normal life with fun and friends. His methods to accomplish that are more than just odd, even though he has good intentions, he always involves Miu into embarrassing situations where he gropes her boobs or does slightly sadistic things to her or other girls from the cast, ecchi fanservice galore. The first few episodes are rather lighthearted with some comedy and fanservice here and there, but in the middle it starts to get a little bit darker with some more action. The main character was quite unusual to see in an anime.

In the last few years, anime has tortured us with a number overly wimpy and pityful male lead characters but in this show we get to see a different kind of lead character. Akatsuki is a pretty strong, skilled and confident guy with a cool, alpha male delinquent attitude. He can’t use any magic, but he can alter the flow of energy around him. The female lead character is Miu, she’s cute, but she’s quite clumsy and a not very confident girl, seeing her falling for Akatsuki ecchi tricks makes her a bit pityful as well. I’d really that she gets more confident in the future.

Aside from the manly main character, the anime was nothing really new, but entertaining at least. It ended in an open more promising way, another season would be interesting even though it seems as if there could be material for more than 12 further episodes since this anime is based on a light novel. I liked to watch this show even though it had some flaws.

 

Tari Tari

This anime of the summer season, portrayed the daily life adventures of five teenagers before their graduation, we followed Konatsu, Wakana, Sawa, Wien and Taichi.

Most of Tari Tari’s storyline consists of these teenagers who are pursuing their dreams and ambitions and overcome many obstacles which get into their way during these last months of their highschool life. The story begins after one of the female main characters, Konatsu was bullied by the choir club advisor who won’t allow her to sing anymore and so she quits the club.

Being someone who loves to sing, she wants to create her own club. Konatsu, Wakana, Sawa, Wien and Taichi end up in this club. At first they barely know eachother, but soon they grow together as friends. At first it appeared as if Konatsu would be the main character, but her position was taken by Wakana very soon, who seems to have lost her liking for music and any other sorts of fun a girl of her age should have after a tragic turn of events in her past.

The story of Tari Tari had a very good pacing, these 13 episodes felt quite long in a positive way. Aside from Wakana’s story there were even more touching moments, but also entertaining comedy. One of the bad parts of the the anime is that it doesn’t take it’s male main characters seriously, even though they have their own stories they remain bystanders for most of the time. Due to its length of just 13 episodes it would have been difficult to cover even more events, but nevertheless I would have liked to see some more group activities and also some romance. Anyway it has been a nice anime with a very appealing animation style and touching stories.

 

Oda Nobuna no Yabou

One day during a battle in the Sengoku period a boy from the future named Sagara Yoshiharu finds himslf in the middle of two fighting warlords. He was saved by the Oda Nobuna party, unlike in other animes that took place in this period like Sengoku Basara, Oda Nobunaga is no devilish bearded man,  it’s a pretty blonde tsundere girl voiced by the lovely Itou, Kanae.
In these alternative most famous warriors and warlods are young female’s of different age.

Because of the many historical games he played, which took place in the Sengoku period, he has a huge amount of knowledge about battles and the outcomes of certain decisions. After showing good results Sagara becomes an advisor of Nobuna in order to make her dream of uniting Japan come true. Except two girls all of them approach him in a tsundere fashion and is always called monkey. After he showed good results he is still monkey, but Nobuna comes closer to her goal, but the higher she comes the more enemies gather in the rest of Japan, who are after her life.

When going outside Sagara is often grouped with the loli warriors of the Nobuna clan, Oda Nobuna no Yabou has quite adorable loli characters in the cast, well thats an understatement.
I’ve rarely seen anything as adorable like them, but aside from being cute they are capable individuals with nice personalities and impressive fighting skills. Aww Goemon and Hanbei were my favorites. The older ones were quite adorable as well, but aside from being strong warriors most of them are still girls with innocent and fragile feelings.

This anime is categorized as romantic comedy, which is true most of the time, but in the battles it can get quite serious and people die.

I was loking forward to this anime from MADhouse since it was announced and I wasn’t dissapointed by it all, it was a very cool and entertaining the setting was also a good part of this show, the only thing I could complain about is the short length of 12 episodes I expected it would be longer. I hope there will be a 2nd season and nice figures of the Nobuna Clan girls.

 

Rinne no Lagrange Season 2

This was the final season of Rinne no Lagrange with the story of Madoka and her extraterrestial friends Lan and Muginami. I admit that I don’t really remember much from season one, to give an entirely fair judgement to the overall anime I have to rewatch all the episodes again, soon.

Anyway shortly after Lan and Muginami left earth in the last episode of season, the conflict between Le Garite and De Metrio escalated and both sides want to use Madoka and the power of the Vox unit for their purposes. Lan and Muginami have been kind of brainwashed by their brothers, the rulers of these two planets, to catch Madoka before the other party does.

Rinne no Lagrange always was a mix of cute girls doing cute things and mecha, while showing less action than before this anime is still very cute, it’s very nice how the friendship of these three is portrayed. This anime has its serious moments with some mental faces and blood, but overall it’s quite lighthearted and fun to watch most of the time. The first season left some open questions most of them were answered even though these revelations could have had more impact.

With “Marble (マーブル)” as Opening Song and “Jersey-Bu Tamashi!” as Ending Song,
Rinne no Lagranne provided great songs befitting the atmosphere of this show.Juding from my impressions from this second season I liked Rinne no Lagrange a lot, there was no real villain and no yuri marriage in it this anime which might have been nice, but aside from that it was fun to watch and it had a very satisfying Happy End.

 

Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon II

I really underestimated Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon at first and labeled it as weird and shallow anime with ridiculously big boobs dropping it after 3 episodes. Well, after I’ve heard about a second season I gave it another try and realized that my first judgement was totally wrong.

The creative concept of it is just awesome. It’s quite the infodump at first, but once you understand the setting a bit, there are rarely shows that reach this level of entertainment.

Aside from showing an new chapter the second season isn’t much different from the first season. This seasons events center around the floating city Musashi that arrived at England in order to make an alliance or at least getting another Armor of Deadly Sins in order to restore the emotions of Horizon. Aside from Musashi and England also Tres Espana is involved, in order to follow the Testament Tres España is preparing its own armada for war against England.

A very good point of Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon is how it’s characters are portrayed, even though 13 episodes don’t appear to be much to give screentime to a large number of characters, but it works surprsingly good. Most of them even some of the (evil) Tres Espana ones are very likeable. With Mary Stuart we get a very sweet and appealing new character ^^.

It is fun to follow the sidestories of these individuals, like Tenzo’s love story or Malga who lost her confidence for example. The interaction between the characters of Musashiit really feels lika a real close class community. Next to the actually serious plot this anime has a lot of comedy in between, be it funny dialogs, slapstick or some Otaku culture references.

Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon also offers very good action scenes in combination withe impressive animation style this looks really wow! I also like the different fighting styles and special abilities each character has. This anime has a fast paced, not to be confused with rushed storyline, if you pay attention it all makes sense, even though it’s nearly impossible to get a hold of all these small and big events on first watch, so I will watch it again like I did with the season before.

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This were all the shows that I followed through this season, I had some entertaining weeks.

Let me know about your impressions in this season, which shows did you like and which shows made you suffer while watching?