Bloodivores: When your protagonist is a violent, angry, bratty, cocky, wunderkind bank robber, the story really can't do anything that would ever make him watchable. Thankfully all the main characters are machine gunned down at the end of the episode so the series can end here without any additional waste of our time. Fail.
Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku: This is a great beginning. The art, voice acting, animation, etc, everything is spot on. My only complaint is this series is one of those giant bait and switch works where you go from laid back magical girl story to danganropa/mayoiga/mirai nikki. I'm not looking forward to the 'switch' part of this series, starting from episode 2, I preferred the 'bait' that episode 1 represents. But who knows, maybe the massive genre shift part of the series will also be good. No way to tell until after ep 2. Pass.
Shuumatsu no Izetta: With art and animation quality reminiscent of Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, there's opportunity for this show to be a breakout hit. This story is not a hit piece on the Nazis. This is clearly a different world, and the German Empire is a different entity than the Nazis were. It just borrows some of the politics and aesthetics of the era while weaving its own tale. For one thing, in the real world there is no principality of Edylhyte or whatever, nor is there magic, so I think we're safely covering new ground at this point. I can cheer for the heroes in this story without hating on anyone from the real world. I do wonder if the plot can be sufficiently interesting if they just resist evil invaders for a whole season though. A little too black and white perhaps? We'll see. Pass.
Touken Ranbu Hanamaru: A giant exposition dump to explain the lame setting that allows for a giant harem of sengoku fetishized bishounen to exist. Only women with zero taste and gays could enjoy this crap. Fail.
Trickster: A bunch of slightly mad/evil/whatever protagonists work together to solve supernatural, super technological crimes. Or something. They're also all super good looking and always trying to act cool for whatever reason. Plus one of the characters is a complete ripoff of Zeref from Fairy Tail. It's rather impressive how naked the plagiarism is. None of this appeals to me. It's probably aimed at women from the beginning, which is how most anime ends up sucking. Fail.
Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume: Moe Ping pong. I don't mind either of these categories, so combining them is also fine. My only complaint with this show is that there's probably very little more they can do with it than they've already displayed. What is entertaining for 30 minutes may not be after 6 hours. Let's hope they can keep things fresh and exciting, but realistically I doubt that will be the case all the way until the end. Pass.
Nobunaga no Shinobi: Charming, but it's not worth keeping track of because the episodes are too short. It takes more effort to follow the series than the payoff is worth. Fail.
Soushin Shoujo Matoi: The art style is horrendous, especially for the normally fantastic White Fox. The adult characters are all rude and obnoxious. You would think they would have picked up how to be polite and mature and considerate of others sometime during their long lives, but no. There's way too much reliance on edgy, surreal, 'modern art' type situations. When you bury a typical cute magical girl story in so much garbage, not even the mahou shoujo genre can succeed. Fail.
All Out!: In the first few minutes we have a bunch of delinquent bullies who only ever appear in fictional stories randomly taking on a giant (which would never happen), then getting physically attacked by a shrimp (which would also never happen), then the giant and the shrimp end up fighting of all things (again which would never happen). After that I gave up and stopped watching, so who knows how many more violent fights and bullying incidents occurred within just the first episode. If life in Japan really is as rotten as this show depicted, I counsel dropping a hundred more nukes on the island and this time finishing it off for good. If not, they need to stop creating lame melodramatic situations in order to 'spice up' their normal sports shows. One or the other. Fail.
Flip Flappers: Is this an anime or an acid trip? The art style is weird enough, but then you have girls surfing through the sky, sudden weird events that are never explained, inanimate objects coming to life, getting sexually harassed by a robot, getting sexually harassed continuously by a girl you've just met for the first time who insists on acting like you've been best friends forever, robot kidnappers, suddenly transforming into a super saiyan because hey why not, having a robot that could explain the parallel world you just fell into but choosing to play in the snow instead without any worries or cares. . . the number of inexplicable and retarded/insane decisions by the main characters and the setting so far is too high to count. If the artists aren't going to take their work seriously and even attempt to make it understandable and appealing to the outside audience, I don't see why we should waste our valuable time paying any further attention to them. This should have been left as some sort of college classroom project, it's just not at the professional level. Fail.
Stella no Mahou: Cute girls get together to do a typical high school club activity. This time it's making doujin games. I preferred New Game's setting of being an actual workplace making actual games among people who were actual adults. But New Game is one of the best anime ever, so that's not a fair comparison. I'm sure Stella no Mahou will be decent in its own way. Pass.
Drifters: The plot/setting is needlessly complicated and the protagonists are too quick to resort to violence. The art style is kinda lame too. And the attempts at humor all fall flat. There are way too many Oda Nobunaga based anime and they all suck. This is just one more to throw onto the garbage pile. Fail.
Many of these shows are getting ready to air their 2nd episode, so a first impressions post won't make sense unless I post this now. However, there are still many shows whose first episode hasn't aired yet or hasn't been translated yet, which I'll deal with in a follow-up part 2 post:
Soul Buster, Idol Memories, Girlish Number, Long Riders, 3-gatsu no Lion, and Occultic;Nine.
So far the fall season's new shows haven't impressed. Izetta might be genuinely great, but the others look mediocre at best. Perhaps the six remaining shows can reverse this trend? Until everything's been released there's just no telling.
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