Spring Anime

April 27, 2009 at 11:07 pm (Anime)

At first glance I had low expectation for the Spring anime line-up; I’m glad I went ahead and pulled a lot of ep-ones though, because it’s turned out considerably better than I expected.

After about three weeks, two shows stand out: Eden of the East (in the Noitamina slot) and Shangri-la. Both have good production quality, are engaging, and have at least started out at a reasonable pace with the suggestion of a well-rounded story. I’d recommend them to pretty much anyone.

The Full Metal Alchemist remake feels like it’s intentionally targeted at an audience that’s already seen the original (because they’re compressing a lot of the rehashed story material, to get to the manga branch point faster). I thought the first run of it was competent and I enjoyed watching it (though was annoyed at the unresolved ending, even with the movie); so far it looks like this will be at least as good.

If you’ve never seen Dragonball Z, you might want to catch the HD rebroadcast (or a few episodes at least). Really, if you look at it as a classical anime, it doesn’t seem bad at all, particularly while it’s free of extreme overseas editing (i.e. the American TV release). The first episode starts with a ~10 minute recap of everything that happens in Dragonball, so you don’t need to read/watch that first.

SHAFT’s molestation of Natsu no Arashi seems to amount to a mild groping, rather than a rusty trombone party. The first episode made me a little motion sick (there are more cuts in SHAFTs animation than in a lincoln park fanboy), but I anchored myself to my Jin Kobayashi worship and either my inner ear started compensating slightly or they are just lapsing into male recovery period after 2.5 eps. If you don’t have a problem with SHAFT’s bullshit, and/or are also a big Jin Kobayashi fan, you might enjoy. Or you could just read the manga, and avoid the unnecessary lense flares and pink filters.

I’ve only caught one episode of Hatsukoi Limited, but it looks worth watching if you’re into shoujo romance.

I also tried to watch the new Mazinger Z and was just incredibly confused. I have no idea what is going on in that show. Granted I was a little sleepy at the time.

Still a few shows to look at, but nothing else is leaping out.