Fall 2013 Anime Season Viewing List and Early Impressions
Okay, here is everything I am watching this fall season in order from oldest to newest, Monday to Sunday;
1. One Piece
2. Naruto Shippuden
3. Gundam Build Fighters
4. Arpeggio of Blue Steel
5. Non Non Biyori
6. Tokyo Ravens
7. BlazBlue: Alter Memory
8. Copellion
9. Beyond the Boundary
10. Phi Brain Season 3
11. My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering With My School Romantic Comedy
12. Kill la Kill
13. Gallilei Donna
14. Infinite Stratos 2
15. Golden Time
16. Valvrave the Liberator: Second Season
17. Nagi no Asakura
18. Strike the Blood
19. I Couldn't Become A Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided To Get A Job
20. Freezing Vibration
21. Unbreakable Machine Doll
22. Log Horizon
23. Little Busters: Refrain
24. Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods
25. Outbreak Company
26. Walkure Romanze
Now for some early impressions;
Copellion is compelling and a pleasant watch, as I expected it might be. But, also as I expected, it has that feel of a show that might otherwise be overlooked. It doesn’t strike the chord of a blockbuster, but it is very good. That puts it middle of the pack, and as such you get the schoolhouse syndrome – in school the only ones who stood out were the bad kids/troublemakers and the top straight-A students. Copellion isn’t one of the bad kids, and it isn’t A+. It is middle of the pack, which makes it easy to forget in what has turned out to be a seemingly well above keel season of anime.
Outbreak Company is a wonderful little show too. It might be one of those shows that surprises to the upside. The story isn’t particularly spectacular, but the visuals are stunning. The battle scenes in the first episode will hook you very quickly. If they can keep that sort of thing going, this show could be a sleeper hit. I am worried that the male lead is going to be a whinny, annoying, nuisance.
Gundam Build Fighters targets two simple crowds, possibly three; children and fans who like model kits and want to be sold some, fans of giant robot battles, and possibly die-hard fans of anything with “Gundam” attached to it. The show is fairly straightforward, juvenile affair. Think Yu-Gi-Oh, or Cardfight Vanguard, or even last season’s Fantasia Doll, except instead of virtual cards you get virtual robots. It’s great if all you care about is seeing Gundams fighting, but if you want a good story to go along with it, this might be one to skip or marathon at the end of its run.
My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My School Romantic Comedy wins a couple awards. First, longest title of the season. Haven’t seen it abbreviated like WATAMOTE was last season, so yeah… really long name. Second, for now, I think it may be the best comedy. It already looks like it will have its moments of sober drama, but the premise alone is hilarious. And while it has plenty of ecchi elements (is driven on it really) it isn’t even the most ecchi show on the season (which is likely the show with the second longest title, I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job).
Arpeggio of Blue Steel is the likely critic’s choice of the season I’m thinking. That is driven mainly by the fact that it is entirely (I think it’s entirely?) CGI. Sort of like 3D, CGI either works or it doesn’t. It either looks good, or it’s a sad attempt at a gimmick to pull eyeballs over. It’s not perfect, but the CGI is relatively good here. It certainly isn’t as bad as I feared it might be. If you recall a show on TV a few years back called Code Lyoko, it’s probably better than that shows attempt at CGI, which if I remember was considered fairly good for its time. I wouldn’t exactly say a lot more people should start doing it, but it seems done well enough so far that there should not be undue reservation in adding this to the assortment of regular animation styles. The story is also pretty good, despite the odd track it seems it will be taking in terms of a harem of alien battleship A.Is. Can’t say I know what to expect, but it’s interesting thus far.
I will be reviewing Little Busters: Refrain. I hadn’t expected it prior to the start of the season, but I was able to catch up on the first series. It wasn’t a matter of not wanting to see it, only that at the time it started streaming on Crunchyroll I didn’t have the time to keep up with it. But, I’m up to date now (a little ticked, but I’ll talk about that another time) so I’ll be reviewing Refrain, which is a compelling show. I don’t usually follow the names or studios attached to shows, but after watching anime for a long time you start to catch on to some things. Little Busters is by Key, and Key has a regular set of devices they employ in their stories. If you know about any story by Key, then you know what you might be expecting for how it’s all gonna end.
My only real disappointment in terms of the anime thus far this season is that there isn't a good horror story to watch. It's nice to have a new horror anime to follow in October, even if it will end in December/January, but what can you do?
The only other thing I will mention now is the quality of streams. No streaming source has proven perfect at what it does in the past. Funimation’s site has been in beta for an eternity, only recently coming out of beta. That meant that many times it was an impossible task to even get on the site, much less watch anything on it. Still having spotty issues, but it at least seems to be making some strides in the right direction. For Crunchyroll their problems seem to have been with some of the servers the streams come from. This means that the stream will stutter or stop regardless of the selected quality. It has always been a matter of hit or miss depending on the specific show, so hopefully they’ll get better servers to even things out. Viz’s issue has been mostly with its subtitles. They use this tiny font that is very hard to read from even small distances.
Well, that’s all for now. Another Halloween song (sort of). A great song from a great anime one might want to consider marathon viewing close to Halloween. Hope to see you next week.
1. One Piece
2. Naruto Shippuden
3. Gundam Build Fighters
4. Arpeggio of Blue Steel
5. Non Non Biyori
6. Tokyo Ravens
7. BlazBlue: Alter Memory
8. Copellion
9. Beyond the Boundary
10. Phi Brain Season 3
11. My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering With My School Romantic Comedy
12. Kill la Kill
13. Gallilei Donna
14. Infinite Stratos 2
15. Golden Time
16. Valvrave the Liberator: Second Season
17. Nagi no Asakura
18. Strike the Blood
19. I Couldn't Become A Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided To Get A Job
20. Freezing Vibration
21. Unbreakable Machine Doll
22. Log Horizon
23. Little Busters: Refrain
24. Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods
25. Outbreak Company
26. Walkure Romanze
Now for some early impressions;
Copellion is compelling and a pleasant watch, as I expected it might be. But, also as I expected, it has that feel of a show that might otherwise be overlooked. It doesn’t strike the chord of a blockbuster, but it is very good. That puts it middle of the pack, and as such you get the schoolhouse syndrome – in school the only ones who stood out were the bad kids/troublemakers and the top straight-A students. Copellion isn’t one of the bad kids, and it isn’t A+. It is middle of the pack, which makes it easy to forget in what has turned out to be a seemingly well above keel season of anime.
Outbreak Company is a wonderful little show too. It might be one of those shows that surprises to the upside. The story isn’t particularly spectacular, but the visuals are stunning. The battle scenes in the first episode will hook you very quickly. If they can keep that sort of thing going, this show could be a sleeper hit. I am worried that the male lead is going to be a whinny, annoying, nuisance.
Gundam Build Fighters targets two simple crowds, possibly three; children and fans who like model kits and want to be sold some, fans of giant robot battles, and possibly die-hard fans of anything with “Gundam” attached to it. The show is fairly straightforward, juvenile affair. Think Yu-Gi-Oh, or Cardfight Vanguard, or even last season’s Fantasia Doll, except instead of virtual cards you get virtual robots. It’s great if all you care about is seeing Gundams fighting, but if you want a good story to go along with it, this might be one to skip or marathon at the end of its run.
My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My School Romantic Comedy wins a couple awards. First, longest title of the season. Haven’t seen it abbreviated like WATAMOTE was last season, so yeah… really long name. Second, for now, I think it may be the best comedy. It already looks like it will have its moments of sober drama, but the premise alone is hilarious. And while it has plenty of ecchi elements (is driven on it really) it isn’t even the most ecchi show on the season (which is likely the show with the second longest title, I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job).
Arpeggio of Blue Steel is the likely critic’s choice of the season I’m thinking. That is driven mainly by the fact that it is entirely (I think it’s entirely?) CGI. Sort of like 3D, CGI either works or it doesn’t. It either looks good, or it’s a sad attempt at a gimmick to pull eyeballs over. It’s not perfect, but the CGI is relatively good here. It certainly isn’t as bad as I feared it might be. If you recall a show on TV a few years back called Code Lyoko, it’s probably better than that shows attempt at CGI, which if I remember was considered fairly good for its time. I wouldn’t exactly say a lot more people should start doing it, but it seems done well enough so far that there should not be undue reservation in adding this to the assortment of regular animation styles. The story is also pretty good, despite the odd track it seems it will be taking in terms of a harem of alien battleship A.Is. Can’t say I know what to expect, but it’s interesting thus far.
I will be reviewing Little Busters: Refrain. I hadn’t expected it prior to the start of the season, but I was able to catch up on the first series. It wasn’t a matter of not wanting to see it, only that at the time it started streaming on Crunchyroll I didn’t have the time to keep up with it. But, I’m up to date now (a little ticked, but I’ll talk about that another time) so I’ll be reviewing Refrain, which is a compelling show. I don’t usually follow the names or studios attached to shows, but after watching anime for a long time you start to catch on to some things. Little Busters is by Key, and Key has a regular set of devices they employ in their stories. If you know about any story by Key, then you know what you might be expecting for how it’s all gonna end.
My only real disappointment in terms of the anime thus far this season is that there isn't a good horror story to watch. It's nice to have a new horror anime to follow in October, even if it will end in December/January, but what can you do?
The only other thing I will mention now is the quality of streams. No streaming source has proven perfect at what it does in the past. Funimation’s site has been in beta for an eternity, only recently coming out of beta. That meant that many times it was an impossible task to even get on the site, much less watch anything on it. Still having spotty issues, but it at least seems to be making some strides in the right direction. For Crunchyroll their problems seem to have been with some of the servers the streams come from. This means that the stream will stutter or stop regardless of the selected quality. It has always been a matter of hit or miss depending on the specific show, so hopefully they’ll get better servers to even things out. Viz’s issue has been mostly with its subtitles. They use this tiny font that is very hard to read from even small distances.
Well, that’s all for now. Another Halloween song (sort of). A great song from a great anime one might want to consider marathon viewing close to Halloween. Hope to see you next week.
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