So you can read about the upcoming shows in the spring season without my help, so I'll just say what I think about them:

Bus Gamer: bishies == lose. Also the concept is silly: why would any corporation participate? (the risk/reward ratio isn't there.)

Golgo 13: grim and gritty

Ikuze Gen-san: chibi-DBZ without flight or energy blasts?

...I just like saying "chibi-DBZ"...

Macross Frontier: It's Macross, so I'm not interested.

Kyou Kara Maou 3rd season: Sequel to something I haven't seen.

Allison to Lillia: Super powered orphans on the run.

Kanokon: Lycanthropes are sexy!!!

Probably the story in this one is going to be just as insipid as high school harem comedies usually are, but the fox girl really is a fox, and the wolf girl is damned nice looking, too. And what's with the fox girl changing hair color when she transforms? It almost looks like she's becoming a super-saiyajin. All of which suggests that this is "Rosario + Vampire" except lighter and fluffier, if that were possible.

Zettai Karen Children: Powerfluff girls!

Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion R2: The chins are as pointy as ever.

Nabari no Ou: Well, it might be OK, but probably not.

Soul Eater: grim and gritty!

Vampire Knight: This sounds like a shoujo romance series to me. Sob sob angst angst blech.

Monochrome Factor: This is Venus versus Virus except done with bishies.

Uchino 3 Shimai: There's got to be an audience for this somewhere, but not in this house.

Kamen no Maid Guy: You know it can't be good from the name.

Actually, a real indication that something's wrong is that the lead character is a high school girl, and they don't show any pictures of her on the official series web site.

Kaiba: Theconcept is silly enough, but the character art really ices it. No thanks.

Crystal Blaze: Aah! It's got a cute dog in it!

Da Capo, the next generation: Or so it really should be named. Why? Why was this made?

Y'all know I like harem shows, but I do have my limits. I've looked into the original series and it looks formulaic and angst-ridden. This can't be any better.

RD Sennou Chousashitsu: Sounds like a "Ghost in the Shell" ripoff. grim and gritty

Himitsu Top Secret: This one, too.

Toshokan Sensou: Seems to be the season of cyberpunk.

Wagaya no Oinari-sama: Yay! More wolf girls!

Actually, it's a single fox-person who has both male and female forms, so I dunno. Also strange in other ways. But it could be decent. Probably not, though. Lots of ways this could go, and most of them suck.

Nijuu Menzou Musume: Hmmm... might be good. ???

To Love-ru: And every season has to have a fan-service overload. Damn but those girls look good!

But the story is right out of the book of cliches. "One day, while he bathes, a mysterious nude girl appears out of nowhere. Her name is Lala and she comes from the planet Deviluke, where she is the heir to the throne. Her father wants her to return to her home planet so she can marry one of the husband candidates, but she decides that she wants to marry Rito in order to stay on Earth." Um... It's like a malformed offspring formed by hybridizing Girls Bravo with Urusei Yatsura.

Wasn't there a show like this last year? Something about a gorgeous girl who was queen of the moon coming to the earth and moving in with some hapless loser? I remember that the consensus was that the queen of the moon was gorgeous but the show was braindead.

This seems like more of the same.

xxxHOLic Kei: The latest travesty inflicted on us by CLAMP.

Kure-nai: From the description, this is a series that can't figure out what it's trying to be.

S-A ~Special-A~: This kind of high school romance story just isn't for me. How is this different from, for instance, "Suzuka" in any way except details?

Junjou Romantica: Love and layer cakes! Shounen-ai!

The Tower of Druaga ~the Aegis of URUK~: An RPG adaptation from Gonzo.

Itazura na Kiss: A shoujo series that covers 10 years.

Neo Angelique Abyss: Gad, look at all the bishies.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: This better be a comedy, that's all I've got to say. ???

This could be the sleeper hit of this season, IF it's handled well.

Amatsuki: I've already seen .Hack/Sign, and I thought it sucked.

Blassreiter: "There can be only one!" Hasn't this been done?

The winter season this year has really been a disappointment, and spring isn't going to be any better. The only things that might be worth anything at all are a couple of fan service shows that will probably have half-wit plots, and one really goofy show that better damned well be a comedy.

Sigh... It's no damned wonder the R1 market is going into the toilet.

UPDATE: Ubu Roi responds.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:16 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
Post contains 823 words, total size 7 kb.

1 You're writing off a show called "Library Wars" before it airs? Come on, that's like a big neon sign saying "watch me!" here. ;p

Every season, I look around and go "meh". Every season I get a pleasant surprise somewhere. Something won't suck...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 04, 2008 09:23 PM (LMDdY)

2 The one you're talking about gives me "R.O.D." vibes, and that's not a good thing.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 04, 2008 10:18 PM (+rSRq)

3 Yeah, it's really hard to tell until there's at least a trailer. Potemayo and Moyashimon both came out of nowhere to be my favourites of last year.

(Link's broken, by the way. They're using smart quotes in URLs?! Bleah. Let's see if I can do a linky.  Hmm.  Seems to work.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at March 04, 2008 10:21 PM (PiXy!)

4 Wasn't there a show like this last year? Something about a gorgeous girl who was queen of the moon coming to the earth and moving in with some hapless loser? I remember that the consensus was that the queen of the moon was gorgeous but the show was braindead.

Crescent Love, and I actually liked the show for the very reasons that Ubu hated it.  It was in 2006, though.

Posted by: Wonderduck at March 04, 2008 10:31 PM (AW3EJ)

5 Pixy, probably the link got ruined because I composed this article in FrontPage.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 04, 2008 10:58 PM (+rSRq)

6 Link fixed.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 04, 2008 11:17 PM (+rSRq)

7 Hmmm... I dunno, from the screenshots I've seen, I'd have to pick Horo over either the fox or the wolf here.

Posted by: BigD at March 04, 2008 11:55 PM (JJ4vV)

8

Pixy, probably the link got ruined because I composed this article in FrontPage.

Ah, okay.  I thought it might be Minx corrupting it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at March 05, 2008 12:25 AM (PiXy!)

9 Definitely gonna be watching Kyouran Kazoku Nikki.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at March 05, 2008 01:51 AM (PiXy!)

10 I'd pick Horo too, but then she's spent a fair bit of screen time naked. Who knows, maybe Kanokon will up the ante.

Posted by: mparker762 at March 05, 2008 04:36 AM (icUaS)

11 I'm curious as to how you put Code Geass in your pointy chins category because it's far removed from a shoujo romance story?   Clamp's artwork is the only pointy chin thing about it. 

Posted by: Doyen at March 05, 2008 07:31 AM (99V/z)

12

Actually, my main negative reaction to Code Geass was the character art. But nothing else I've read about it suggests there's anything there for me.

I was more interested in trying to be amusing in this article than analytic and "fair", OK?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 05, 2008 08:53 AM (+rSRq)

13

Code Geass can do no wrong in my view, because I expect nothing from it except a train wreck of a plot.  About the time of the "desert island" episode (or maybe it was the death of Shirley's father), I realized that there was no point in trying to analyze this show or subject it to any kind of logic or objective standard.

Bluntly, the writers are just blowing sh*t up for the fun of it, so I just watch it to see what they're going to do next. 

Hump a table?  Done that.

Reveal a patricide?  Done that.

Have the "hero" double-cross his allies?  Done that.

Turn friends into enemies?  Sure.

Introduce a lop-eared bunny with a switchblade?  I wouldn't rule it out...

Posted by: ubu at March 05, 2008 12:02 PM (dhRpo)

14 Ubu is channeling Owen and the countless other bloggers who claimed that Code Geass was a trainwreck of such epic proportions that we had to watch it. I am afraid that I do not quite follow the logic.

Posted by: Author at March 05, 2008 01:18 PM (qNSKg)

15 I bet you've never watched Plan 9 from Outer Space, either...

Posted by: BigD at March 05, 2008 01:23 PM (JJ4vV)

16

Pete, I think some of it is the gambler's fallacy. "This has been such utter shit, it can't possibly keep being this bad. And if I just stick with it, maybe something will happen to make me not regret having invested all this time in watching the show."

The second Shakugan no Shana is in fact doing that, almost. They wasted half the show on high school angst, and now, finally, they're beginning to get into some action, as well as starting to reveal backstory again. I bet a lot of people who are invested in Code Geass are hoping that something will eventually develop which will make clear that the series really was better than it seems to be right now.

Because if that doesn't happen, they're going to feel like idiots for having watched it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 05, 2008 02:43 PM (+rSRq)

17 I think it's more from the MST3K entertainingly bad school of cinematic theory.  Thus, Kanon is simply bad, but Code Geass is so bad it's good, particularly if watched in the company of friends and/or beer.

Personally, I don't have the time... Or the friends or the beer, for that matter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at March 05, 2008 04:15 PM (PiXy!)

18 I am in no way expecting CG2 to get better, and will be very disappointed if it does.   Actually, it could get worse by going down the "so bad it's bad" road, and the two summer episodes came close to doing that from incoherency.

But it's very much a personal taste. 

I mean, look at what we know is coming:  Bunny-girl Kallen!  I mean, how freaking panderificly awesome can you get?  We've had table-humping, now we get Kallen going ninja in a bunny-girl outfit!  Shirley is really going to have to work to top this; the poor thing's only claim to a unique form of insanity was wiped from her memory.  Maybe a scene where she sneaks into the same club, trying to catch Lulu messing around with CC. She's almost caught by security and has to escape by pretending to be an entertainer, jumping into a g-string and doing a pole dance, only to discover that Rival is in the audience--and not recognizing Shirley, he propositions her.   Mmm... yeah, that could work.

Posted by: ubu at March 05, 2008 05:05 PM (GeU+Z)

19 Somebody throw a bucket of ice water on Ubu to cool him down!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 05, 2008 06:52 PM (+rSRq)

Hide Comments | Add Comment