all biased opinions are up!
Inu x Boku SS
because of her family's wealth and power, Ririchiyo (CV Hidaka Rina) had always have problems fitting in anywhere. to get away from her family's influence, she decides to move out on her own. at her new apartment, aside from meeting her childhood Renshou (CV Hosoya Yoshimasa) and the other residents, she also meets her personal Secret Service (SS) agent, Soushi (CV Nakamura Yuuichi). these agents are assigned to each resident, who like them are all half-blood ayakashi, to protect them against full-blood demons who wants to kill them. although she is resistant to the idea of a bodyguard/butler at her side, Soushi is very "persuasive", so much as to even say that she can treat him like her dog.
if the name of the building, Maison de Ayakashi, isn't obvious enough that demons are involved, you can see most of the characters in their true forms in the last 5 minutes of Ep01. from Soushi transforming into kyuubi, Renshou into Ittan-momen, Renshou's SS agent Nobara (CV Hikasa Youko) into Yuki-onna, and Karuta (CV Hanazawa Kana) into Gashadokuro.
Karuta's client, Shoukiin (CV Sugita Tomokazu), hasn't been introduced yet, and he will most likely be the main third wheel in possibly budding relationship of our main couple seeing that he is Ririchiyo's fiancé. but hey, he is still voiced by Sugita-san so i'm expecting lots of laughter from him anyway. in case you think Inu is drama, it isn't. more like a cross between Kamisama no Memochou and Nekogami Yaoyorozu, with Ririchiyo and Soushi taking over Alice and Narumi's roles, swapping the cat gods for ayakashi, add in some romance, all done in a relatively light-hearted mood. even the part when the characters were turned into their ayakashi form to confront the burglar was pretty comical, with Karuta completely pwn-ing him.
they're still holding on to what Ririchiyo's true form is and i am very interested to know what kind of ayakashi she is. more importantly, Miyano Mamoru is also in the casting and he hasn't appeared yet! so yes, i definitely will be watching this. hohoho.
posted 13 Jan,
Aquarion Evol
taken from ANN: 12,000 years have passed in this world, the story of Apollon and Sylvie have become a children's story called "Skies Of Aquaria". The "Abductors" from Altea come to Earth with only one purpose, to invade and harvest humans. DAEVA, the Aquaria Academy exists to train men and women to use Aquaria, but they cannot ever merge because of Guize stones, these block an "unholy union" between genders. The story follows Amata (CV Kaji Yuuki) and Mikono (CV Kayano Ai) in their enrollment into DAEVA, and fight against the Abductors.
although i've never gotten around to watching the original Aquarion, it was hard to not watch this especially with all the beautiful mecha designs, a city setting modeled after Venice and Kanno Youko-composed music. i'm still trying to get my head around the story (definitely need to do intensive reading on wikipedia), but at least i'm able to keep up with what is happening in the hour-long premier.
character and cast-wise, we have Kaji-san and Kayano-san as our main leads again. with Guilty Crown only half-way through, it might take some adjusting seeing how similar their roles are overlapping each other. besides that, both shows also share Uchiyama Kouki voicing as the main protagonist, along with Hanazawa Kana and Nakamura Yuuichi who are also in GC. much too repetitively from what i can see. thankfully the shows are airing on different days, so it'll be good to separate and not try to watch both consecutively.
posted 11 Jan,
Danshi Koukousei No Nichijou
unlike Kimi to Boku, this is no refreshing slice-of-life show. in Danshi (AKA Daily Lives of High School Boys), what we have are how boys usually are if they were studying in an all-boys school, idiotic and unafraid to show their stupidity to their peers. the 3 leads boys, Tadakuni (CV Irino Miyu), Hidenori (CV Sugita Tomokazu), and Yoshitake (CV Suzumura Kenichi) will guide you along to absolute hilarity as you laugh your way through the entire series.
Sugita-san, the king of gag and comedy, is part of the reason why this show rocks. Irino-san, differing from his Chizuru character in Kimi to Boku, is the straight man Tadakuni, and sometimes i do feel a certain sense of pity for him whenever he's being trolled by his 2 friends. even as i'm laughing so hard my stomach hurts. Yoshitake, well, you can always count on him to come up with idiotic ideas when you're bored (or rather, when he's bored).
it's no secret that i love gag comedy, and this show is already promising to be the best gag anime this year. while some of the jokes might be alittle hard to catch, especially since they parody alot of anime, most are so simple you will be able to identify almost instantaneously. was already on board on continuing the show after watching the two 5-min mini skits shown before the premier, and although i wondered what's the use of putting both skits back into Ep01, i still laughed my guts out at the same places. at least it means those that never caught the mini skits can get to watch it, because the skirt-wearing skit is hilarious.
if you're a fan of gag comedy, Danshi definitely should be at the top of your anime picks this season to watch. WATCH IT!
posted 10 Jan,
Poyopoyo Kansatsu Nikki
3min-per-episode series about a very round cat, Poyo, and the Satou family after it was picked up by the daughter Moe (CV Mimori Suzuko) when she was out drunk one night.
if only the cats i've always encountered in real life are as cute as the ones in anime. have concluded that my love for cats can only resides in 2D. those where they stay in my monitor screen and not try to run into my house or poo outside my front door. (seriously, these are real incidents that just happened not too long ago. my house is being stalked by a cat!) then maybe i wouldn't be so terrified of them in real life. *sigh*
Mouretsu Pirates
AKA Bodacious Space Pirates. set in a fictional galaxy known as "Umi no Akeboshi", high schooler Mariko (CV Komatsu Mikako) recently found out the father she never knew, whom her mother Ririka (CV Kaida Yuko) conveniently "forgot" to mention, has passed away. as the only direct descendent, she is the only one who can inherit her father as the captain of the legal space pirates ship, Bentenmaru.
the other main lead is transfer student Chiaki (CV Hanazawa Kana), who seems to know more about Mariko than said-person herself. they seem to be taking their time to introduce the characters instead of a force-feed of the whole cast, so we haven't seen much of the pirate crew except Misa (CV Itou Shizuka) and Cain (CV Matsukaze Masaya) who were sent to look for Mariko. both of them going "underground" at Mariko's high school with the intention of "scouting" new blood for the pirates is so cliché, most otakus can smell it a mile away.
even without the huge and prominent seiyuu cast, i'm already well onboard since i'm generally a fan of most sci-fi space series. what really catches my interest, as with all these futuristic shows, are how they envision/portray the technology that could happen say 10, 20 or maybe 100 years later. i personally would love to be able to be reading a fashion magazine, "throw" a model figure on a screen and make her do a 360 degrees spin, all in the comforts of my sofa. HA!
posted 09 Jan,
Brave10
instead of Oda Nobunaga as the usual antagonist in many Sengoku-period anime, we have Tokugawa Ieyasu as the bad guy this time. taking backseats are Sanada Yukimura (CV Morikawa Toshiyuki) and Date Masamune (CV Koyasu Takehito), the latter whom haven't even appeared in Ep01, while Sanada's Ten Braves, mainly Kirigakura Saizou (CV Ono Daisuke) and Sarutobi Sasuke (CV Kakihara Tetsuya), gets to be in the limelight. there's also the Izumo Miko, Isanami (CV Satou Rina), who is the reason why Saizou is reluctantly recruited into the Brave10 troop in the first place.
something very different which i'm trying to get used to is hearing Kakihara-san voice a more serious character compared to his Natsu in Fairy Tail, while it is much easier with Ono-san since his led-by-the-nose Saizou has some similarities to his Satou character in Working!. (ie. they're both led around the nose by the ladies in the house.) looking at Ep01, most of the comic relief indeed stems from the Isanami X Saizou (main couple batter) front, or on the Saizou X Sasuke (arch-rival batter) end.
and finally, the easy-on-the-eyes bishounen character designs are definitely a plus point to any anime i watch. HA!
posted 06 Jan,
New Prince of Tennis
the princes are back. and this time, they are set to challenge not their peers, but upper-classmen from the Japan Under-17 team.
even though the main TV series ended in 2005, we were never really without the princes since there were numerous OVAs and movies in the last 6 years. what i do like about the new system, is that i don't have to be rooting for a particular school because my favorite prince is there. i just have to root for the actual prince himself. HA!
i went through the whole tenipuri TV series as a whole marathon run back in 2006, so it'll be new for me to watch this on a weekly basis. that puts my current WSJ series at 9 shows weekly. it's a pity Nurarihyon ended last month, though i'm sure season 3 will be out some time in the future, if it follows the same cycle as Bakuman. of course, what i won't mind even more if they restart Reborn! again. that is, if the current manga material is sufficient to at least get through a year or more. *fingers crossed*
posted 05 Jan,
Natsume Yuujinchou Shi
we didn't have to wait long for the fourth season after all. instead of the usual light-hearted yokai moments, the story immediately delved into Natsume (CV Kamiya Hiroshi) heading straight into a pinch with evil yokais and getting caught by Matoba Seiji (CV Suwabe Junichi).
was funny seeing Nyanko-sensei (CV Inoue Kazuhiko) yell at Natsume for getting caught and him just sitting there listening to a maneki-neko rant at him. but that goes to show how close these two are. there's a certain degree of closure i can feel, with putting Matoba out so early in the show, that this may be the last season so they need to get the main "antagonist" out and running. but unlike other shows i wouldn't mention, i wouldn't mind more even if there is a fifth season.
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