My Anime Summerseason watch list

A new season has started, a few more weeks ago, I wanted to publish this post a lot earlier, but it turned out longer than expected. I always need some time to mentally digest the shows I’ve followed in the old season before I start with the new stuff. I’ve taken a look at quite a few shows, but not everything I’ve started turned out as expected and I dropped some shows. Anyway not everything is bad in this Summer season, here are the shows I’ve enjoyed so far, Blood C, Ikoku Meiro no Croisée, Nekogami Yaoyorozu, Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel: Kyun Kyun Tokimeki Paradise!!, The iDOLM@STER, Mawaru Penguindrum, Usagi Drop, Rou Kyuu Bu!, Mayo Chiki! My impressions are based on the 4-5 episode aired episodes of each show I’ve seen so far.

dont forget the vote at the end of this post 😉

Blood C

This 12 episode long show was made by studio Clamp and Production I.G, the story centers around Saya, a beautiful tall grown girl with braided black hair and glasses, it seems like I created the characterdesign haha anyway, she’s really pretty. She is a happy and kind girl, who is acting slightly worldly innocent in a few situations. Saya can be quite clumsy and is easily distracted by her surrounding. Together with her father she lives at the Ukishima Shrine in a very rural village.

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She lives her daily live as a teenager, but at night she has to take over the task of her passed away mother, she slays terrible and ugly monsters, who eat the people of the rural village since ancient times. The only weapon against them is a sacred katana which only Saya can use.
She manges to kill the monsters, but she never stays unharmed, which is quite painful to watch, poor Saya :(. The fact that Saya is a young girl and no tough superhero, can be seen after the fights. Aside from her wounds, she always appears emotional disturbed and her body is shivering.
The fights are full of action and look epic, even though its very bloody and hard, in general I try to to avoid such scary shows, but somehow I like that part of Blood C. Albeit the show isn’t scary all the time, there are also calm and funny moments, at least before sunset *Buuuh*.

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Blood C features an appealing animation art and one of the nicest looking school uniform designs I’ve seen so far. One of the strange things of this show is that Saya always fights in her school uniform and damages them regularly, I learned that these uniforms are expensive in japan, why doesn’t she use a battle suit. It’s also strange that Saya doesn’t own a bike, when she always arrives late at school and has to walk a lot around the village to search for scary monsters.

Ikoku Meiro no Croisée

My first reaction after a few seconds of watching was “No! not again an old boring europe setting I don’t want this anymore”. Btw have you enjoyed the story of Gosick, aside from the cute Victorica? I didn’t liked most of the second half, too dark and too fragmented storytelling 🙁 .

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Back to Croisée, before I completely lost my interest I heard the light steps from a cute little angel called Yune dressed in a vivid kimono, she looked so enchanting, I said to myself in case I also like her voice Im completely done for haha. Yune is a 13 year old girl who comes from japan and for what reason ever Yune is accompanying an old bearded man called Oscar who took her along to Paris. Both start to live at the house of Oscars nephew Claude who owns a small iron workshop in the shopping district. At first Claude isn’t very amused about the new guest and the idea of his uncle to let Yune live with them. After a few obstacles which appear caused by cultural differences, Claude gets used to Yune and Yune gets slowly used to Claude and the new environment.
To spice things up there is a spoiled and rich girl called Alice whose family owns the shopping district. She is interested in japanese things and a quite spoiled brat, but means no harm.

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Ikoku Meiro no Croisée is a slice of life anime without detectives or stuff like that, it somehow has a cozy atmosphere like Aria the animation, the whole shopping district where this story takes place appears very lively, together with the music and the architecture, this show manages to create the charm of an old european city. The daily life of the three is quite enjoyable and also the lighthearted comedy is nice. I can somehow identify myself with Claude and his attitude.

Nekogami Yaoyorozu

This show was made my studio AIC+ and centers around the cat godess Mayu who was banned from the realm of gods after playing several dumb tricks, now she she lives on earth at the house of Koyama Yuzu, who is running an antique shop. In the neighbood live more earthbound gods. In the anime we follow the mainly funny and happy daily life adventures of Mayu and her friends.

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This shows feels a little bit inspired by Touhou, well I don’t know enough about Touhou to cover my comparision, but the characterdesign shows some similarities and gives off a certain feel.
This anime is good to start your day, the lighthearted slice of life mixed with comedy plot is easy to digest and the opening song is really nice and catching, when you watch this show at night you’ll probably fall asleep XD. Necogami is no great show, but the likeable characters with their interesting characterdesigns and the interactions between them make it at least entertaining.

Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel: Kyun Kyun Tokimeki Paradise!!

This 12 episode long show was made by the studio J.C. Staff. It is originally based on a pachinko slot machine, a few years ago there was a two episode long Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel OVA where Haruka Minazuki and Aoi Kannazuki are two students at St. Cherine academy, both are the magical girl duo Twin Angel who fight against thieves and weird supervillains. Of course this concept isn’t new, but I really like this new adaption of Twin Angel, it doesn’t take itself too serious and shows a few parody elements here and there. I like the oldschool anime flair of Twin Angel, it somehow reminds me of shows like Samurai Pizza Cats and Sailor Moon.

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This show features three of my favorite voice actressess. The main characters Kurumi, Aoi and Haruka are voiced by – Kugimiya, Rie, Noto, Mamiko(Sawako) and Tamura, Yukari(Nanoha) could I ask for more ^-^. Of course I could ask for more, but this shows is nice. It’s funny, nearly 1/4 as weird as Tantei Opera Milky Holmes and has cute characters in cute outfits and the action is nice.

The iDOLM@STER

This show was made by studio A1 – Pictures and shows us the daily adventures of the staff of 765 pro a idol managing agency and their 13 aspiring idols. A new producer has arrived and as to be expected at first everything at 765 pro is chaotic and somehow messed up, but that can be quite entertaining. The main selling point of this show is the variety of female characters, a nice mixture of cute and funny individuals. So far this anime takes its time to portray each of the 13 girls in a sufficient way and screentime. Its fun to watch and the animation art looks very good.

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I somehow dislike the idol industry, the girls somehow sell themselves and always have to pretend that their are cheerful and friendly anyway this anime is brave enough to show the downsides of being an idol at some parts, like staging at lame locations and appearing on stupid TV shows.

Mawaru Penguindrum

This 24 episode long show was made by studio Brains Base and the story centers around the siblings Kanba, Shouma and Himari who are living together in the house of their passed away parents. Himari has something like a tumor and the doctor gives her only a few more weeks to live. After a trip to the aquarium Himari collapses and dies in the hospital, but then a miracle happens and Himari is brought back to life. Later we learn that the penguin hat they’ve bought at the souvenir shop of the aquarium is a extraterstial liveform who keeps Himari healthy and alife.
When the penguin hat takes over Himari’s body she transforms into an arrogant and sassy penguin queen and if Kanba and shouma won’t obey her, their sister Himari will die for real.

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This sounds all quite sad but Mawaru Penguindrum is no sad show, I can hardly put it into words, but this anime is totally funny and the way of storytelling is different, very creative and mainly unpredictable. The characters and the setting are very interesting and additional to that the animation style looks simply awesome with the very colorful and playful design. You could also say that this show has a real psychadelic look with all the signs and colorful things everywhere. This show is probably my favorite in this season, its so creative and the plot appears very promising.

Usagi Drop

This 11 episode long show was also made by studio Production I.G, the story centers about Daikichi, a 30 year old guy whose life will totally change soon. At the funeral of his grandfather Daikichi learns, that his grandfather had an illegimate child, called Rin. Her father passed away and also her mother left her behind. Now Rin has nobody who could  take care of her, even nobody of the relatives wants to give her a home. They even consider to give her into public care, Daikichi doesn’t want that to happen and so he takes her into his home. Daikichi has to reconcile Rins needs, his work and his life, but he manages to be a good spare dad for his new family member.

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Usagi Drop spares us with the random loli, oni-chan crap, Daikichi really wants to give Rin a good home and take good care of her. Rin behaves like a real child, when you have smaller children in your family, you’ll probably notice that Rin is a realistic character as well. I like the attempt of this show to act in a more mature way than most other animes these days. The relationship between Rin and Daikichi is very nice and heartwarming, I really their daily life adventures.

Also the opening song “Sweet Drops” from Puffy is done very well, a beautiful song.

Rou Kyuu Bu!

This 12 episode long show was made by studio Magic Capsule and Studio Blanc. The story centers around the the highschoolboy Subaru, his aunt is the advisor of the female elementary school basketball team and somehow forces Subaru to be their trainer for at least 3 days.
The members of the team are happy about having a trainer, because they want to teach the male basketball team a lesson. As I’ve read the description of the anime I thought that Subaru would be a girl, but I was wrong and so the show takes a quite different direction than I’ve expected.

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A few of Subaru’s friends and other people make fun of Subaru because of his job as elementary school basketball trainer, they call him prince lolicon and whatnot. At first Subaru isn’t that enthuisastic about being the trainer of a female elementary school basketball team, but after he learns about the circumstances of the team and why they want to win, he gives his best to help the girls with improving their skills. After some time Subaru shows traces of affection torwards Tomoka, the ace of his team. Im curious about how the story will go on.

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I dislike seductive acting lolis in anime, but in case of Rou Kyuu Bu! they are mainly acting in a cute way. I try to ignore them the inappropriate scenes. I keep watching this show because  the girls are cute, I like basketball, the show has funny moments, the characters are interesting.

Mayo Chiki!

This show was made by studio Feel and TBS, the main characters are Kinjirou who always gets nosebleed when a girl touches him and Subaru who works as a butler. Subara is only allowed to keep working as a butler at the Suzutsuki household when nobody at school notices that Subaru is actually a girl. One day Kinjirou accidently discovers that Subaru is a girl and the chaos begins.

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Suzutsuki Kanade the boss and friend of Subaru forces Kinjirou to keep silent about this incident, but in return she wants to help him with overcoming his so called gynophobia. Well in fact she is only teasing him for her personal joy in the first place. As the sadistic girl she is Kanade puts Subara and Kinjirou into embarrasing and risky situations who could even expose Subaru’s true gender, but thanks to that both become very close soon. The show has a harem flair to it and a few girls try to approach Kinjirou in a more or less violent fashion during the first few eps.

This show is a bit silly sometimes, some things doesn’t really makes sense, but its very funny, entertaining and the fanservice is quite nice. One point I have to mention, is the animation art of this show, it looks very well done, crisp and clean, also the design of the eyes looks great.

That was my “little” watch list for this season, with the ongoing shows from last season and the new shows Im at my limit with the shows Im following. I initially watched a few more shows but I couldn’t bring myself to like Sacred Seven, the same can be said about Gainax’s Dantalian no Shoka where I’ve expected a lot more and Kamisama no Memochou is on hold for the time being.

Which shows of summerseason 2011 are you watching?  What are your favorites so far?
If you have any suggestions how I could improve my Anime Season post please let me know.

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