Pre-Viewing Impressions: Summer 2011 Anime

Holy crap I've been so terribly horribly busy lately that I'm about 3 weeks behind on most of this seasons anime that I'm watching and I haven't watched any of Fairy Tail or FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood in about two months, maybe more. School work is also piling up given that it's almost summer and there's finals and study guides for finals, so you can probably imagine why I haven't posted in a while. And I've had issues with my boyfriend who then broke up with me however I still love him very much and hope we can be together again; so I've been on and off depressed about that. Enough about my personal life, given that the summer anime season is upon us (really starts in July), and this post will be shorter than most of its kind, I figure I may as well get it done.

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Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu 2:

Since the first season of this was pretty entertaining, I figure season 2 may as well be worth the watch. Plus if I remember correctly season one ended with a cliffhanger, or at the very least I know the F class didn't accomplish their set goal, which was beating the A class.

That being said this takes place in a school, following the adventures of class F who, like their name states, has a grade of F. They therefor have the shittiest conditions, broken/non-existent desks, shabby, minimally-furnished room, ect. Their goal? To defeat class A (whose classroom is like that of a palace, padded chairs, laptops, beautiful curtains, high-class food, ect) and take their classroom. This is done by battles of summoned beings: little chibi forms of each character that fights other summoned beings, their health and hitting power is based on the score on their most recent test in that subject.

Definitely original, and while there were several factors that annoyed me a bit, for the most part season one was good enough to make me want to see season two. Especially given how intense the final battle was. I'd reccomend trying season 1 before this comes out and giving them a look. Season one really is quite a quick watch.

Dantalian no Shoka:

Surrounding a seemingly-mystery premise with a guy who inherits this mansion and encounters this girl who is  a gateway to this demonic bookshelf. As one could imagine the demonic bookshelf holds the books of, well, demons. Then there's something about using the access to this bookshelf to solve cases of prohibited books or something. Seems interesting enough.

I know I've been asking this same thing of basically every new season of anime now, but I could really use a new good mystery. The last good one was Psychic Detective Yakumo given that Gosick didn't really suit my fancy. However it's been a while since anything as amazing as Spiral or Death Note has come along...now that I think of it Spiral desperately needs a second season. Anyway though, I'm getting waaaay off track, not like I expect this one to live up to either of those, just saying a good mystery would  be much appreciated. I'm not quite sure why but this one seems like it'll have more of a Pandora Hearts feel to it. Which, I enjoyed the premise of Pandora Hearts but it was too slow and dry for me. So I guess as long as this one manages to not do that it should turn out pretty good. I also quite enjoy Dalian's character design, she's very pretty.

Itsuka Tenma:

Supposedly this has something to do with a boy having a dream about a female vampire giving him her "poison" whatever that means. But personally all I see are kick-ass character designs and two awesome looking male characters w/ awesome-looking powers, one in the form of a sword. 'Nuff said.

In all seriousness though, those two guys are pretty much my whole reason for wanting to see this, because their designs are awesome and I absolutely love the way the sword and...arm power looks. I think I'll refer to that as the Devil-Bringer-Look-Alike for anybody who's played Devil May Cry 4. Which leads me to believe there'll be some fighting involved which is always a plus. Also that cat girl (I think) contributes to that same reasoning, she looks actiony and like she can control lightning or something.

Now here's a point you wont see me make often, in the trailer there was an absolutely adorable near-kissing scene between...I think the pink-haired girl and the guy with the Devil-Bringer-Look-Alike. It was sooooo cute and quite honestly if I could find a romance anime that's cute without being stupid or love-triangle-like, then I'd be a happy camper. Shocker coming from me right? Yeah well I like anime couples...in fact I have 111 and counting random anime couple (not from any anime) pictures saved on my comp. Most romance anime are simply too obnoxious to watch.

Kamisama Dolls:

Some murder anyone? Yeah sure in an anime...or any work of fiction for that matter, I'll take as much of that as the creators are willing to dish out. Better be good though, a show with some serious mind-bending intrigue has gotta come about at some point right?

Anyway, these people are apparently at a party of some sort and in the hallway there's a bloodied dead body. The little girl in that picture, the younger sister of the main character, informs them that the murderer is some guy named Aki with his Kamisama Doll. Seems interesting enough in theory, though what made me really want to see it was watching the 'Story Side' trailer. That looks pretty damn kick-ass in a lot of parts. Also if there's gonna be a cute focus (not creepy incest) on the relationship between this little girl and her big brother, even better, because I've always found those sorts of relationships adorable.

It doesn't seem particularly mystery-ish to be honest, however at least the plot idea of the murders seems interesting enough. God I sound like some sort of creep...I'm not, really, I promise, I'm just overly fascinated with psychology, murder, crime, mystery, critical/lateral/logical thinking and plan on going into the field of Forensics. Wow now that I think of it a forensic-based anime would be AMAZING... *fantasizes about that*

Kamisama Memo:

Centers around a NEET Detective girl. A cookie to who can figure out the one word there that makes me wanna see this. Obviously detective. And the NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training, usually referring to otaku) bit somewhat interests me too, not entirely sure why.

But yeah anyway, doesn't look to be too deep of a mystery, so I'm not really getting my hopes up for that, but still I think it could be pretty neat (pun intended). And I gotta say the girl has a sort of very cute prettiness about her and her hair reminds me of my own Chitaka alter-ego when I draw what she's supposed to look like.

I do wonder how old this girl is though, honestly, look at all the stuffed animals. She seems like she's 10...how can you be a NEET or a detective at 10 years old? O.o Then again a child-genius angle wouldn't be bad either. Those are usually pretty good, like Ayumu of Spiral or...well I don't know if you could count Yako from Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro since she's not actually the one really solving the mysteries until kinda the end, but you get my point.

Nurarihyon no Mago 2nd Season:

Despite making me want to take a nap directly after watching just about every episode, the first season of this was actually pretty good, and left off in a spot where a second season is definitely needed.

The one thing that bothered me a lot about the first season though was all the time spent on Rikuo in his human form and all his friends with their stupid ghost-hunting club. So for one thing I really hope there's less of that in this season and quite frankly Kiyotsugu pissed me off, I don't know if I could take much more of him.

But I'd absolutely love to see more of Yuki-Onna, Night Rikuo, Gozu and Kurotabo. Fight scenes with them would be even better, because while the fight scenes in the first season were good, they were very few and far between. I am looking forward to seeing more of this anime though and I really hope it'll be an improvement on the already-pretty-solid first season. It's Shonen Jump though, so I have some faith.

Sacred Seven:

Lastly, this is probably a shocker to anyone who knows my general distaste for mecha anime, but from watching IS: Infinite Stratos and Code Geass I've become a bit more open. And again my visually oriented mind was hooked when I saw the picture and the trailer I thought it looked pretty cool and honestly those two things are a big part of the reason I actually want to see this.

To be honest I really don't know much about what the story is supposed to be, but it seems very action-oriented by the looks of the trailer and the school setting interested me to. Not that I generally like anime in a school setting, but action and fighting anime in a school setting are pretty neat. Plus that reminds me a bit of Infinite Stratos minus the ecchi, which is always good, There looked to be only one upcoming title focused on ecchi *does a strange dance in celebration*. Wow...looking at that picture I just realized that I think the purple/black robot is flipping someone off, that's unexpected O.o And also, just some added information, by the bits of the trailer that I understood it seemed the orange-haired girl is a princess or important person of some kind with a special power. Guess we'll just wait and see.

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So thats it for the anime I want to see this season surprisingly. Usually there's more but whatever, maybe that means I'll actually have more time to post and get through my want to watch list this summer. I think I've realized I need to throw more of my usual ranty humor into my posts, similar to UltimateUKFFFan's Top 10 Lists and Zero Punctuation's game reviews. The two that inspired me to start this blog. So yeah, I'll try to be more humorus with my rants like when I'm ranting with friends.