Mikan and Itsuki; Itsuki uses the Glam Sight; Nekoyashiki and friends.
The 2007 Anime Season, as seen by me.
Part 2: 2007, Autumn Season.
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2007: SECOND SEASON:
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First, the ones we dropped:
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Blue Drop--Orphan Mari Wakatake, who can't remember anything about the accident in which her parents were killed, has been raised by her grandmother and given the run of the estate. Now Grandmother's financial fortunes are a bit uncertain, and, fearing for Mari's future, she decides to send her off --much against her will--to an exclusive boarding school. To make matters worse, when angry Mari reluctantly tries introducing herself to her new roommate, the girl has a violent flashback, her eyes glow blue and she tries to throttle Mari to death. Does Mari want out of here now? You betcha. But that night she spots her roomie sneaking around the grounds, and when she follows her, she sees the girl apparently reporting to a huge, black craft hidden in the woods. By episode two the ship is sending her robot bird messengers which address her as "Commander" ... ANN's summary gives a lot of backstory about a past alien attack on earth and these two girls' unique standing as the only survivors, plus a lot more I won't say here, and...ehh. I doubt this'll work. Just seems way too complex and potentially emotionally subtle for Studio GONZO to handle. (I've found exactly one person who watched all of it...)
Prism Ark--Based on the video games Prism Hearts and sequel Prism Ark, this is a fairytale-like series whose sweetness and innocence I basically like, but it's just so...inconsequential. In episode 1--after introducing two young knights-in-training, Hyaweh and his sweetheart Priecia--the narrator, Komet, steps back to tell a tale from the past. Once upon a time in Wind Land, there was a long, exhausting Holy War between the followers of Lelihion and the Sablum Empire, until wise King Gustav forged a truce. Now there's been peace for twelve years, and and one summer King Gustav's children, Prinsea and her sickly little brother Hans, become best friends with a country boy named Maistel. Maistel and Prinsea (who will become Priecia's parents) fall in love and make a vow to marry one day; Maistel and Hans likewise promise to train and become great knights together. When Hans' ill-health takes his life, Prinsea vows to attain knighthood in his stead. Thus was set in motion, Komet tells us, "a story of knights who fight for Wind Land and all the world." Which is fine and all, but...I just don't think I'm gonna have time for it.
Night Wizard: the Animation--Renji Hiiragi just wants to attend his classes, graduate from high school, and not be the black sheep of his family. But how is a kid supposed to save up the credits to graduate when he's a Night Wizard, and keeps being yanked off on missions, sometimes two or three a day? His latest assignment is to protect Elis Shiho, who's a new transfer student at his academy, and Renji understandably hopes this will permit him to be around school enough of the day to actually get to class. But that's until they learn that Elis, too, is a Night Wizard, and possesses one of the Seven Sacred Jewels...OK, OK, it's got that Bleach thing going, so it's not much on originality, but it's basically engaging and funny, and Renji very likeable. ==Ultimately though--as I keep having to say here--only so many hours in the day...
Juushin Enbu ("Hero Tales")--The legends say that of the Hokushin-Tenkun--the Seven Stars of the Great Bear--the most powerful and ominous are Hagun, the Conqueror's Star, and its rival, Tonrou. These two stars have never before incarnated in the same era. But now a powerful Imperial general named Keirou, the incarnation of Tonrou, is plotting to steal the Hero's Sword, Kenkaranpo, which is hidden and guarded in a secret temple. With the power of the star and the sword combined, is he planning to overthrow the Emperor? He may have a surprise coming, because only the one who can draw the Hero's Sword from its sheath can officially become the new Emperor (the current Emperor has never been able to do it, which is a deep, dark secret only the temple's priesthood knows), and the only one living who has drawn the sword is... oh, you knew this was coming--Taitou, an orphan kid raised by the temple, who is, of course, the incarnation of Hagun. You already know they're gonna fight and Taitou will win. Yay him. *yawn*
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Saw in entirety:
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Moyashimon (Tales of Agriculture)--"College student Tadayasu Sawaki has a unique ability. He can see and communicate with bacteria and other microorganisms. Hijinks ensue."--but that doesn't come even close to capturing the low-key, off-kilter charm of this itty-bitty (only eleven episodes) series. Sawaki, the heir to a sake' brewery, has always been able to see and hear bacteria, which appear to him as cute, cheerful little beasties. Attending an agricultural college, he falls into the orbit of a slightly mysterious professor who has plans for his ability, dodges the get-rich-fast schemes of some conniving classmates, heads off potential outbreaks of food poisoning, deals with his best friend's decision to start dressing in Loli-Goth drag, and generally negotiates the rapids of college life with the tireless help and counsel of his chatty little friends. It's hard to convey just what a charmer this is, because it's so subtle; the characters are so likeable that when they confront personal issues you genuinely want them to be OK, and the bacteria are just so goshdarn cute (the OP, Sarasa Ifu's bouncy "Curriculum", is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud). I'd never heard of this one, watched it on a friend's recommendation and am really glad I did.
Rental Magica--Quite a disappointment. Teenager Iba Itsuki is the new boss of Astral, his father's wizards-for-hire temp agency ("A mage to meet your needs!" their business cards say), but he's not at all sure he's the right guy for the job. He's a bit of a coward, not great at strategy, hasn't much business sense, and frankly, he's pretty much a Muggle. But his employees--Celtic Wiccan Honami (I want her rocket-powered broom a LOT), little Shinto priestess Mikan, kitty-loving onmyouji Nekoyashiki ("mansion of cats"), and their ghost apprentice, Kuroha--have great faith in him, even though he needs a lot of protecting and rescuing. And there is the fact that when he takes off the black patch that covers the whole right side of his face, and reveals that magenta-red slit-pupiled eye, he suddenly turns into a tactician and fight choreographer second to none. (This power is called the Glam Sight--"glam" being short for "glamour" in the old sense--and it gives the ability to see the flow of magic and read an opponent like a printed page; but there's some concern about just what such acute sight might do to a human's sanity, and just what did happen to Itsuki's father...) Adelicia Mathers (!), boss of Astral's main competitors Goetia, has a lot more experience and apparently the whole Western High Ceremonial Magick cookbook and daemon directory on her side, but Astral gives her a solid run for her grimoires.
--Started out pretty tasty, especially for a magickal-trivia fangirl and lover of the supernatural-detective genre like myself (and for awhile Shinsen outdid themselves, with pages of detailed footnotes on every episode), but ended up going nowhere at all, with absolutely no resolution to any of the points it raised. Is the Glam Sight eventually going to destroy Itsuki? (A hastily patched-on development suggested that he was going to have to stop even using it, which makes zero sense--it's his only serious command skill-- AND cancels out two of the series' main plot threads. Come ON now.) Is he going to step up and find himself as the real leader of Astral? What about his father? Is he even going to have to choose between Honami and Adelicia?
...24 episodes of fairly enjoyable spellcasting and beastie-thwarting that ended up as...only that. Sigh.
Ghost Hound--The much-awaited new series from Masamune Shirow and Production I.G., of Ghost in the Shell fame; an atmospheric, moody tale of sleep research, lucid dreaming, and a mysterious crime eleven years in the past. In September of 1996, three-year-old Komori Tarou and his older sister Mizuka, the children of a successful sake' brewer, were kidnapped and held for ransom by a man with no previous criminal record. Through a series of blunders, the kidnapper was killed before the children were found, and by the time they were located Tarou's sister was dead. Now he's in therapy, a student of lucid dreaming, and in his dreams he tries and tries to find out what she knew, but he can never get her to wake up in time... Meanwhile, classmate Ogami Makoto's father killed himself soon after the kidnapping, and everyone suspects some connection but nothing is known for sure; and a nosy transfer student called Nakajima Masayuki spends all his time trying to wheedle stories about these dark events out of Tarou and Makoto, who keep trying to steer clear. But then one night they all have the same out-of-body experience... I love its haunting mood and stylish directing, and it's got the most inventive, evocative use of sound I think I've ever heard in an anime. Its 'huh?' anticlimactic ending threw me way off track, and I'm still not completely sure what I think of it, but overall, still the best thing I saw this season.
Dragonaut: the Resonance--I know, I know, this one is painfully dumb and loaded with fanservice and pretty awful really, but...I d'know, I just thought it was fun. =)--Years ago Jin Takahashi lost his family when his father, a space shuttle pilot, apparently made an error that caused a fatal explosion. Now, teenaged Jin learns that the truth of the shuttle accident has been hidden by the government: it wasn't his father's error that caused the crash but the shuttle's collision with an alien bio-machine--a Dragon. The International Solarsystem Development Agency (ISDA) offers him a deal: they'll clear his father's name if he'll join the government's covert force working with the Dragons they've secretly bred on earth from the genetic blueprint of the alien original. (Its purpose, revealed slightly later, is to save Earth from colliding with the goddess-planetoid Thanatos, home base and mother of the Dragons.) Jin can't decide, but his childhood best friend Kazuki is already a Dragonaut, and then the flying pink-haired girl who's been saving his danger-prone life turns out to be a Dragon herself... Will Jin sign up? What about the other Dragons and their pilots? how many women with racks the size of Bleach Captain Matsumoto's should one anime be allowed to have, and exactly how much yaoi and yuri subtext can one show cram into each episode?
In particular, the all-guy triangle subplot gave me more giggles than anything else in the fall season. See, it's like this: at a formative point in the earth-born dragons' development, each one is introduced to its prospective human pilot in a semi-mystical laboratory procedure called a "Resonance". If the Resonance is successful, human and dragon are supposedly bonded by unshakable loyalty as soon as the dragon emerges from its egg. (Our villains, the secretive Gillard Army, are willing to do anything to find out the secret of the Resonance process, which the ISDA keeps under triple lock and key.) Kazuki has been Resonanced with the newest and coolest of the dragons, G-10, whom he calls Gio, and can hardly wait for the adventures they're to have together. But to his dismay, when Gio hatches he already has an agenda of his own: protecting Toa, the mysterious pink-haired dragon girl. Learning that Jin has the same goal, Gio teams up with the orphan kid and leaves Kazuki in the lurch, and, bye-bye childhood friendship: Kazuki's furious jealousy knows no bounds. (One blogger commented that he's acting "like a girl jilted on prom night", and that's it exactly.) Watching Jin and Gio gradually warm up to each other while Kazuki spits and sizzles in helpless rage ("Gio is mine!") is so delectable that I honestly don't mind all the boobage. =) (Don't even start me on the thing between Raina (green-haired megane dish), and his dragon, Howlingstar, who just plain adores him...*happysigh*...) And did I forget to mention that the dragons in their human forms are pretty much all total knockouts? yeah, I guess I did. =)
--as you can see, this one was fun for a lot of varied reasons, some of them probably unseemly. The dragons are CGI and a bit intrusive, and--as I mentioned--the fanservice borders on the ridiculous, but, what can I say? It never bored me and just about always got me to smile.
Wiki's page has a good overview of the characters.
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Suteki Tantei Labyrinth--A series with so much backstory it could hardly wait to start delivering it.
30 years ago, in the 21st Century, Tokyo was badly damaged in a major earthquake referred to as "the Great Fall". Many moved off to nearby Shinto, and many moved in with bad intentions;
the remains of Tokyo became a hotbed of violent organized crime. But life goes on in "the abandoned city", now called Kyuto.
Kids at Seishuiin Academy go to school, and detectives
determinedly pursue the unexplicable crimes they call "phantom cases". Meanwhile, in an old mansion deep in the forest outside town, there lives
a saintly, reclusive
eleven-year-old named Hyouga Mayuki, who in his quest for "the truth that shines through the mystery" sometimes solves
crimes that are baffling
the cops, and calls them with anonymous clues; while a silver-haired thief named Byakko (named for the mythical White Tiger of the West), seeks "the way to the secret
of life...the path to God",
which she's sure is hidden in the Hyouga family mansion. In the first two episodes, Byakko instigates
a series of serial bombings, and raids the family estate only to be foiled by Mayuki's quiet, courteous butler,
Seiran, and his tag-team of tattooed girl fighters;
two detectives meet their mystery informant;
Mayuki ventures into the outside world and attends school for the first time; there are new friends, a 12th birthday party,
and enigmatic Seiran musing that "it's too early for anything to begin yet". --I have a hunch there's something special about this one;
there's so much mystery about angelic little Mayuki, the quiet network of protection that surrounds him, and Byakko's search, that it
that it adds up to a series I'd begun really looking forward to. It was abandoned by subbers for awhile, then belatedly picked back up--I still might find time for the rest of it...
...go back to the 2006 spring season.
...return to Amalgam links page.
Still might see all of:
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...go on to the 2008 spring and summer season.
...go ALL the way back to Seasonal Reviews Mainpage for all anime series reviews 2005-10.