Winter 2013 Anime First Impressions:

We've finally reached the meat of the new winter anime season.  How does it look now?  Let's do it item by item:

Sasami-san:  Okay, this series is trying to be some sort of cool, avant garde art, but to me it just looks dumb.  It has the exact same flaws as Kyousougiga.  The characters are all out of this world unbelievable and strangely one dimensional.  The plot makes no sense.  And the action scenes seem to be just thrown in there for no reason except that they look cool.  I'm okay with continuing to watch it because I kind of like the main character, and her problem of not wishing to be a hikikimori but just finding herself incapable of being anything else.  There were also some really cool jokes in the episode, referring to koi to senkyou to choco and the like.  The overall situation reminds me a lot of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Haruhi was a good anime, so maybe this one will grow on me too.

Vividred Operation:  I really like the building block elements of this series.  It has magical girls who have to fight to save the world.  That's a great formula.  It has a loving family with a really cute immouto.  That's a great formula.  It's done by A-1 pictures, which makes everything look beautiful.  That's always a great formula.  But I still have my doubts.  I can't help it that sex sells and therefore there will be tons of fanservice shots showing off how sexy these young girls are, and I'm willing to overlook that.  Da Capo III is full of sexuality too this season, as is Haganai for that matter.  I have a bigger doubt than that.  It feels like the whole story is put together by some sort of artistic mass manufacturing plant, which has identified all the secret ingredients to a good story and then just assembled them according to computer specifications down to the last vertex.  Are we sure this story was written by a human?  Maybe it's just the compilation of every high selling artistic work in the past derived by some sort of supercomputer deep in the heart of Japan?  I've heard of machines composing music before, maybe this time they've just made the whole anime.  I like the story, but at the same time I can't help but feel manipulated into liking it based off of survey data and brain feedback mapping mechanisms.  For all I know I've been brainwashed into liking this show, it feels so artificially good.  I don't think there's a single unique aspect to this show.  It's less like a living person and more like a Frankenstein's Monster.  But it's still a very excellent Frankenstein's Monster.  Don't get me wrong.  This could be one of the best anime series ever -- but if so it will be a very eerie good anime.

Kotoura-san:  Kotoura-san had the best first episode of any anime this season.  It was fantastic, moving, and yet subtly delivered and flowed naturally.  It was beautiful.  However, I don't think any future episodes of this series will be any good.  This is because the author chose to work with a very limited idea that has already reached its full depth of exploration.  The idea was, what if a psychic inadvertently isolated herself by being too blunt with the truth that only she always knew about people's hearts?  I can see this problem coming up with a kid who doesn't know any better, but that won't happen anymore now that she's an adult.  Furthermore, since she's fundamentally a good, attractive girl there will always be a boy willing to brave her psychic-ness to keep her company.  In fact, there will inevitably be hundreds of boys who would love to be her boyfriend, psychic powers and all.  Maybe if the story were about a boy, who can't just get thousands of girls to fawn over him by being nice and good looking, the problem would be a bit deeper.  But any high school girl who wants the company of a guy can instantly have one, no questions asked.  Therefore, her period of isolation is already over and now her life will never have any troubles again.  The idea that launched this show is already over -- the girl has no problems and never will have any problems again.  From here on she can just enjoy her life with her newly created circle of pro-psychic-powers-friends.

I've seen the same mistake made in other shows, like Natsuyuki Rendezvous, which launched with a great first episode but didn't have enough content to continue.  A good story doesn't have an issue that can just be solved so easily, that the whole problem is solved in the first episode.  A good story waits to solve its problems till the very end.  But oh well.  As things stand, Koutura-san is incredibly good.  I won't give up on it until it actually becomes bad.  Maybe the next few episodes won't be as bad as I expect, and the series will stay at least watchable into the future.

Yama no Susume:  Aside from being only three minutes long per episode, this is a good series.  It has genuine characters you could actually believe exist, and its humor is based around these believable ironic moments.  Mountain climbing is really fun so any anime about it is automatically good as well.

Ai Mai Mi:  This series is both short and bad.  It makes no sense.  The people aren't believable.  The humor isn't funny.

GJ-Bu:  The same as Ai Mai mi, except it's longer.  A girl seen eating giant piles of meat non-stop who is still sporting a perfect figure.  A girl who's effortlessly the best chess player in the world.  A girl who's so stupid she can't even tell that she isn't tall enough to change out a light bulb.  And the annoying obligatory male lead to make tsukomi jabs at all the bokes around him, with no actual character of his own.  This is junk.

Mangirl:  This series is another short, just three minutes each or so, but it's actually funny and is about making manga, which is a good subject.  Hardly scintillating but watchable.

Tamako Market:  Everything about this episode is great except for the bird.  Unfortunately, this giant, loud, fat, ugly, rude bird is about 90% of the story thus far.  He has virtually all of the spoken lines.  I did not expect this story to be about an annoying bird.  That wasn't shown in any of the previews.  This is just ridiculous.  Kyoto Animation previewed a cute storyline about cute girls eating cute candy.  But they trolled us.  It's actually about an annoying talking bird.  Really, Kyoto Animation?  Really?  You chose to draw this instead of Little Busters?  Congratulations, you're officially retarded.

Maybe, just maybe, the story will stop being about the bird and will start to focus on the female lead and her cute immouto.  If so, the story can still be salvaged.  If not, I'll be watching it for the same reason I watched Chuunibyou, and the sole reason I watched Chuunibyou -- the fantastic art and animation that only Kyoto Animation can do, to the point that I can just ignore all the dialogue and concentrate on the pretty pictures.

For the company that did Haruhi, Full Metal Panic, and Clannad, it grieves me sorely that it's come to this train wreck of an original anime concept, 'giant fat rude bird and friends'.  God help us.

Last but not least -->

Love Live:  Love Live is the best anime released this season.  I wouldn't be surprised if it were the best anime released this year.  It's absolutely beautiful -- to be expected from a story about idols.  The girls are gorgeous, the songs are gorgeous, the costumes are gorgeous, the colors are bright and cheerful, the whole universe is happy when Love Live starts airing.  But unlike the soulless and incongruent quality of Tamako Market's art, this story also has a great plot.  It reminds me a lot of Girls und Panzer.  The school of our high school heroines is being shut down for lack of new students.  In Japan, you see, there are one half as many children as there were in previous generations, so half the schools in the country are just rotting empty husks.  Since there's no point keeping the same level of infrastructure for a population that's been decimated worse than the black plague ever hit Europe, the worst performing schools are being shut down one after the next.  And no, this is not some sort of sci fi plot element, this is just the reality of present day Japan.  Feminism means women have no real interest in marrying or having kids, and the economy makes raising a child so prohibitively expensive that only the super rich can afford it anyway.  The cost of owning a house is four times as high as it would be in America.  Parents must pay for their own childrens' education, the state barely helps at all.  Wages are low and everything in Japan is expensive, making even meat a rare delicacy.  Paying for just one child to reach adulthood will cost you about $500,000 dollars.  Each additional child will probably tack on another $200,000.  For a country with median wages of just $30,000 a year, how many years of working and saving would parents have to perform before they could afford just two children in the home?  Assuming they spent $20,000 of the $30,000 on themselves each year, it would take 70 years to save enough to have two kids.  By then, even the long lived Japanese tend to be too old, frail, and past menopause to make a go of it.  A society that expects you to defer childbirth until you're approximately 100 years old is a society headed for extinction.

However, these particular high school heroines do not wish to have their particular school closed.  And in this cut throat world of school competitions, unless you can show society that your school is better than average, you can't make the cut.  Like any herd of antelope your goal is to sacrifice your brethren to the wolves by outrunning not the wolves, but simply the slowest other antelope in the herd.  It's okay if school children elsewhere suffer and die from their lack of schools, but at least we shall survive until tomorrow.

How can they outshine all their competitors?  How else?  By forming a school idol group and shining more brilliantly than anyone else on Earth!  Once the world has come to recognize this earthshatteringly wonderful group of girls, who can sing, dance, and dress up to best show off their incredible beauty to the world, no one would want to cancel the school that gave them birth.  It's a dog eat dog world, but someone has to do it.

But not only are these girls superficially wonderful.  They're genuinely wonderful too.  They have a strong sense of friendship, effort, and victory, but are also realistic and assailed by doubts.  They don't think everything will work out if they just try hard, or some other naive easygoing lifestyle.  They just think the situation is so dire that even clutching at straws is reasonable.  These girls, who waver between desperation and despair, show off their true strength of character that you can't have if you magically just have endless optimism and faith in the world.  In the first episode of Love Live, so many things happen, so many cool lines are said, so many feelings are expressed by the cast, that it's just heart-stealing.  If you aren't rooting for this school by the end of the episode you are a heartless monster.  If you don't want to watch the next episode of Love Live you are a heartless monster.  If you don't think this is one of the best series ever you are a heartless monster.  As for me, I'll start it off ranked at #119, and then see how far it rises from there.

P.S. :  What about Amnesia?  Oh, I forgot!  ;)

Okay.  Here's the problem with Amnesia.  I don't particularly hate any of the characters.  I don't even hate the idea of a girl waking up and having amnesia one day, and trying to adjust to that.  Negima, for instance, had a great story arc about that.  What I hate is that everyone is dressed in outlandishly outrageous punk outfits that no boy would ever be caught dead in.  They all have freaky heterochromatic eyes.  Not just one of them.  EVERY BOY IN THE SHOW.  They have scary tatoos and piercings and jewelry and please let me stop I don't want to look at this series anymore make it go awayyyyyyyyyyyyy.

This must be what girls find attractive, or they wouldn't make these series, but I'm not interested in this stuff whatsoever.  It seems terribly niche, and terribly inadequate as more than the female equivalent of fan service.  To Love ru Darkness is okay, because A) I'm a boy and B) there's also a good, heartfelt story underneath.  Amnesia is not okay because A) I'm a boy and B) I'm not gay.

As for "The Unlimited" it's not worth watching, I already know it's bad without having to watch any of it.  Same with Senyuu.

Obviously the new Haganai is good, since it's a continuation of the old good Haganai.  Naruto ceases being filler as of next week.  I assume Chihayafuru will be the same.  Ginga E Kickoff still isn't being translated so still doesn't really exist.  So let's see how many series we can watch this fine winter, in order of how excited I am to see the very next episode:

#1.  Smile Precure
#2.  Love Live
#3.  Little Busters
#4.  Shin Sekai Yori
#5.  Da Capo III
#6.  Bakuman
#7.  Fairy Tail
#8.  One Piece
#9.  Hunter x Hunter
#10.  Naruto
#11.  AKB0048
#12.  Oreshura
#13.  Vividred Operation
#14.  Haganai
#15.  Chihayafuru
#16.  Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
#17.  Kotoura-san
#18.  Tamako Market
#19.  Sasami-san
#20.  Robotics;Notes
#21.  Yama no Susume
#22.  Mangirl

So we have 20 actual series of anime and two 3 minute short series to work with.  This was about the same level we started with in the Fall of 2012, before a lot of series started flickering away and disappointing me.  Hopefully this time the casualty rate won't be as high.  If we could genuinely hold on to all 22 series, this would be one of the best anime seasons ever.  Even with 2/3 of them surviving, we're looking at a great beginning to the new year.  Thank you, Japan, for continuously being better than the West in all things.  That single episode of Kotoura-san was more satisfying than the entirety of A Memory of Light.  The same could be said of Love Live, Oreshura or Vividred Operation.  At this point, practically anything made in Japan is better than the best art made outside of Japan.  It's not even a competition anymore.

However, there's still a great deal of competition for what's the best anime ever, within Japan.  So now with this new winter update, how should our top 120 rankings look?  I'm not confident in any other series reaching my rankings aside from Love Live, so Saint Tail will have to stay for now.  Hopefully Vividred Operation will win that spot in the future, or perhaps one of the others, but for now it's just too early to say.  I've updated the timelines to reflect any series with currently airing or planned content for 2013 as extending into the year 2013, so that people know what they have to look forward to in the near future:

1. Clannad (2007-2009)
2. Pretty Cure (2004-2013+)
3. One Piece (1999-2013+)
4. Code Geass (2006-2013+)
5. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha/Triangle Hearts (2000-2012)
6. Fairy Tail (2009-2013+)
7. Naruto (2002-2013+)
8. K-On! (2009-2011)

9. Seikai no Monshou/Senki/Danshou (1999-2005)
10. Dragonball (1986-2013+)
11. Higurashi/Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (2006-2013+)
12. Kanon (2002-2007)
13. Haruhi Suzumiya (2006-2010)
14. Da Capo (2003-2013+)

15. To Aru Majutsu no Index/Kagaku no Railgun (2008-2013+)
16. Katanagatari (2010)
17. The Idolm@ster (2007-2013+)
18. Bakuman (2010-2013+)

19. Full Metal Panic! (2002-2006)

20. Angel Beats (2010)
21. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011-2013+)

22. Kobato (2009-2012)
23. Working! (2010-2012)
24. Record of Lodoss War (1990-1998)
25. The World God Only Knows (2010-2013+)
26. Hayate no Gotoku (2007-2013+)
27. Sora no Woto (2010)
28. Toradora! (2008-2011)
29. Basilisk (2005)
30. Saki (2009-2013+)

31. Galaxy Angel (2001-2006)
32. Major (2004-2012)

33. Shin Sekai Yori (2012-2013+)
34. Inuyasha (2000-2010)
35. Ranma 1/2 (1989-2008)
36. Sailor Moon (1992-2013+)
37. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007-2009)

38. Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (2010-2012)

39. Air (2005)
40. Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai (2012)

41. Hanasaku Iroha (2011-2013+)

42. Rurouni Kenshin (1996-2013+)

43. Evangelion (1995-2013+)

44. Prince of Tennis (2001-2012)
45. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
46. Vandread (2000-2001)

47. Ef (2007-2008)
48. Ore no Immouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (2010-2013+)
49. Uuchuu no Stellvia (2003)
50. Utawarerumono (2006-2010)
51. Summer Wars (2009)
52. Little Busters (2012-2013+)

53. Angelic Layer (2001)
54. Cowboy Bebop (1998-2001)
55. Bleach (2004-2012)
56. Bake-(etc)-monogatari (2009-2013+)
57. 12 Kingdoms (2002-2003)
58. Strike Witches (2007-2012)
59. AKB0048 (2012-2013+)

60. Nichijou (2011-2012)
61. Hunter x Hunter (1999-2013+)
62. Sword Art Online (2012)

63. Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai (2011-2013+) 

64. Fate/Stay/Etc (2006-2013+)

65. Claymore (2007)

66. Macross (1982-2012)

67. Sora no Otoshimono (2009-2012+)
68. Card Captor Sakura/Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle (1998-2009)
69. Mononoke Hime (1997)

70. Berserk (1997-2013+)

71. Usagi Drop (2011-2012)

72. Shakugan no Shana (2005-2012)

73. Amagami SS (2010-2012)

74. Valkyria Chronicles (2009-2011)

75. Girls und Panzer (2012-2013+)

76. Samurai Champloo (2004-2005)

77. Battle Athletes (1997-1998)

78. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (2011-2013+)
79. Martian Successor Nadesico (1996-1998)
80. Natsuiro Kiseki (2012)

81. Hyouka (2012-2013)

82. Break Blade (2010-2011)
83. Kimi ni Todoke (2009-2011)
84. Spice and Wolf (2008-2009)
85. To Heart (1999-2012)
86. Akaneiro ni Somaru Saka (2008-2009)  
87. Azumanga Daioh (2002)
88. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
89. Scrapped Princess (2003)
90. Steins;Gate (2011-2013+)
91. Ghost in the Shell (1995-2011+)
92. Shinryaku! Ika Musume (2010-2013+)

93. Zero no Tsukaima (2006-2012)
94. Tamayura (2010-2013+)

95. Baccano (2007-2008)
96. High School of the Dead (2010-2011)
97. Hikaru no Go (2001-2004)
98. Tari Tari (2012)

99. Yuru Yuri (2011-2012)

100. Spirited Away (2001)

101. Lucky Star (2007-2008)

102. Seitokai no Ichizon (2009-2012)

103. Flame of Recca (1997-1998)

104. Bastard! (1992)

105. Gunbuster (1988-2012)
106. Shamanic Princess (1996-1998)

107. Soul Eater (2008-2009)
108. Moshidora (2011)

109. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

110. Gosick (2011)
111. Akira (1988)

112. Guyver (1986-2006)
113. Ginga E Kickoff (2012-2013+)

114. Fatal Fury (1992-1994)

115. School Days (2007-2008)

116. Death Note (2006-2008)

117. Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (2009)

118. Alien Nine (2001-2002)

119.  Love live (2010-2013+)

120. Saint Tail (1995-1996)

Mondai ji Tachi hasn't aired yet but who knows, it might be good too.  We'll have to wait and see for that one.  Once we see that show and Ginga E Kickoff is finally translated, the winter anime season will have finally begun.