Blog Archive

Monday, November 5, 2012

How's the Fall 2012 Anime Season Shaping up?:

Now that we're a good ways into the fall season, a more accurate ranking of this season's quality can be made.  Where do things stand now?  Remember, this is a ranking of 'how much am I looking forward to the next episode?' and not a ranking of a series' overall quality.

1.  Girls und Panzer
2.  Little Busters
3.  Shin Sekai Yori
4.  Sword Art Online
5.  Fairy Tail
6.  Bakuman
7.  Seitokai no Ichizon
8.  Hunter x Hunter
9.  Hayate no Gotoku
10. One Piece
11. Smile Precure
12.  Chuunibyou
13.  Ginga E Kickoff
14.  Btoooom
15.   Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
16.  To Love ru Darkness
17.  Magi
18.  Robotics;Notes
19. Psycho Pass

Naruto appears to be on filler this season, even though there's 70 chapters of manga still available, so it's off the list.  To put this in perspective, Fairy Tail has 40 chapters of manga left to animate and isn't on filler, and One Piece has 35 chapters and isn't on filler.  So Naruto, with twice as much material to work with, refuses to actually use any of it.  I feel like Naruto has been on filler the majority of 2012.  Sigh.

I'm dropping Sakurasou because I don't like the main character boy.  He falls head over heels for a girl simply because she's pretty and exotic looking, when he has a perfectly nice girl who actually likes him right by his side, whom he blithely ignores.  That's pretty much unforgivable.  But to make matters worse, he's wishy-washy, and keeps caring about unimportant things, like people's 'talent' or 'prestige.'  If he cared about their hobbies, or character, or shared interests, or ideologies, or anything meaningful, I could like him, but he thinks people are just totems to be put on poles, and he always places himself at the bottom.  That's not a very good way to look at the world.

I'm dropping Space Brothers because for the last seven episodes or so it's been god-awful boring.  It has been wasting everyone's time doing utterly purposeless things, as though intentionally dragging out completely meaningless content.  Ugh.  It's like the anime is trolling the audience just for kicks.  Who could sit through any more of this crap?  This series used to be pretty good, but that was a long time ago.

Plus I'm dropping Medaka Box because I have zero interest whatsoever in a fighting series where there are no rules to the character's abilities so just whatever the plot wants goes.  When the series wasn't about fighting, it worked just fine, but now that it is about fighting, having a character who's 'perfect' in every way makes every fight utterly boring and pointless.  We already know how every encounter will go, so why even animate it?  What a waste of time.

Hayate no Gotoku has gained ground because it incorporated parts of the manga into the anime, and thus became good again.  I don't know how much of the manga will be animated, or if it will just veer into filler again, but the series has been much better recently as a result.

Seitokai no Ichizon has been hilarious every episode.  I'm really impressed by it.  I hope the coming episodes are just as good, but there's no guarantee of that since the first season wasn't nearly this funny.  Is this going to be like Yuru Yuri, where the second season is way better than the first?  If so, it might end up in the rankings too, just like Yuru Yuri did.

Sword Art Online has basically doubled in quality ever since he started adventuring with his little sister.  Every story doubles in quality when you introduce the word 'immouto.'  Ore no Immouto was automatically good due to the title alone, and Kono Naka ni Hitori, Immouto ga Iru was watchable for the sole reason that the word immouto kept popping up.  Da Capo's entire storyline?  Immouto ai.  Nisemonogatari?  Yeah, a story about immoutos.  Apparently Sword Art Online realized that immouto = seigi and revamped the storyline accordingly.  Is there a single story ever that hasn't been improved by the introduction of an immouto?  Heck, even the newest season of Hayate introduced Nagi's immouto.  It's like Midas' golden touch or something.  Any series graced by the presence of an immouto instantly becomes quality art, and beats out all competitors in an awe inspiring flash.  The main character heroine of Little Busters, Natsume Rin?  Yeah, an immouto.  Best character in Haganai?  The immouto Kobato.  Best character in To Love?  Mikan, the immouto.  The entire storyline of Girls und Panzer?  The main character is the immouto of a more famous tank driver.  The plot of Saki?  Saki is the immouto of a more famous mahjong player who she'll have to face in the finals.  Immoutos are everywhere.  They're all around us.  Immoutos = God.

No comments: