Queen’s Blade Spoilers… unfortunately

There have been shows that made me question what exactly I was doing with my life, but never one like Queen’s Blade: Rurou no Senshi. I knew it wasn’t going to be the next Claymore or anything, but I wanted some action to fill the void, and I like to see what each new season has to offer. The fact that I sat through all 25 minutes of this show is a miracle. This show missed the mark soo hard it’s almost funny; but then I remembered what I just watched and cried inside.

Queen’s Blade fails at being an anime. It was boring to the point of tears, not even the action scenes were exciting. Not once did I care about a word anyone said, in fact I couldn’t quote a single line from the show which I had just finished minutes ago. Queen’s Blade fails at being a hentai show. Titty shots, ass shots, crotch shots galore: but not one of them made me stop and say “damn, lets pull my weiner out and spank one off.” I’ll relate this show to being an R-rated porn film (I saw the R-rated Pirates, it was bad). Story, acting, voice work, art… that’s not exactly why porn is watched, so take out the porn parts and you get shit. Queen’s Blade is exactly like that.

What made it the worst for me was the fucking demon, Kugimiya Rie went from voicing my favorite show last season (Toradora!) to quite possibly the worst shit I’ve ever laid eyes on. Titty Magic. Period. WHAT THE FUCK?! Why in the world would you believe titty magic would be an acceptable form of fighting? Surely some ronery otaku is sitting in his house wristing off, but fuck! Let’s squeeze our tits and make a liquid come out that just so happens to melt clothing so we can see your nipples in on your oversized breasticles.  Yet that wasn’t even the worst of it. In order to kill this demon our main heroine, whose name slips my mind, literally makes her tits explode. Ugh. Yes, tits pressing against tits to make demon tits expand by filling up with magic goo and exploding……………… words really can’t describe the utter rage I had when the credits started rolling. Fuck.

Maria Holic is a story about Miyamae Kanako who is afraid of boys. Now this instantly brings memories of Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun, which is not that good of a thing to do. The difference here is that she enrolls at an all girls school in order to find a lesbian partner. Wow. Turns out that the “perfect” one, Shidou Mariya, is actually a cross dressing guy. What? This just screams red flags as far as I’m concerned. I could handle the cross dressing in Ouran Host Club, but this just seems weird. If there is one thing that I’ve always seemed to avoid more than long running shounen shows it’s ones about cross dressing and/or boyxboy romance. The show is being produced by two pretty well known studios; SHAFT and GENCO. Voice talent includes Kobayashi Yuu and Inoue Marina, who have both done some good work in great shows. Maria†Holic is scheduled to air on January 5th with 13 episodes.

Official Site
Info at ANN
Info at MAL

Verdict: Try (at some point)

Everyone’s favorite slice of life show about three sisters living alone is back! (pretty specific huh?) It takes quite a bit to make a slice of life show good because there usually isn’t some outstanding plot to keep people hooked. Instead it takes memorable characters; people who you really enjoy watching. Minami-ke has just the right blend of characters which makes it one of the better “mundane” anime around. I will admit that the show stumbled a bit in the second season with some less than fantastic supporting roles, mainly the one that lived next door. There were also some minor art tweaks that irked me, but that was easy to look past. If season 3 can pick up where the show left off and bring back the quirkiness that made the first season soo good I can expect this to be a top contender to kick off the new year. Okaeri is schedule to air on January 5th with 13 episodes.

Official Site
Info at ANN
Info at MAL

Verdict: Watch

So what is this show actually about? After some mild digging on my usual sites little information came to the surface. Yes folks, I had to turn to good ‘ol wikipedia to find out what this one’s about. Fuji Touya is a college student who is dating up and coming idol singer Morikawa Yuki. Sounds good already. Nothing worse than watching ANOTHER show about some pathetic dunce trying to find a girl. But only a small niche of people would want such a happy slice of life, so we need drama. Rely on Okata Rina, another idol who is part of the same agency as Morikawa, to add just the right twist to make the show interesting. Now according to the wiki article this was quite the unique visual novel. In fact it was nicknamed White Drug in Korea due to it’s addictive qualities. Since the main character already has a girlfriend the player has the option to stay or leave the current relationship. Damn! Sounds like the show could go in a lot of different directions. White Album is being produced by Seven Arcs, the same people who did Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. Voice talent from two of my favorites, Hirano Aya and Mizuki Nana, only adds to the list of reasons to give this one a go (yet voice talent doesn’t = quality… *cough* Akane-Iro ni Somura Saka *cough*). At this point all I can really ask for is that the one image on MAL is not representative of what the show will look like, because it definitely isn’t very pretty compared to the other art I’ve seen for the show. White Album will premier on January 4th with an undetermined number of episodes.

Official Site
Info at ANN
Info at MAL

Verdict: Try

Akikan! started out as romantic comedy light novels by Riku Ranjō and Hiro Suzuhira. The premise of the show is that a typical high school boy buys a can of juice and it turns into a beautiful girl. A slew of other can girls appear and hilarity supposedly ensues. So what makes this show different from every other romantic comedy show that involves other-worldly girls? Well the can girls need carbon dioxide to survive and the only way for them to receive it is through kissing. Ugh… I hate to judge a show before I see at least one episode but this just reeks of mediocrity and fan service. After watching a 10 second clip of the show on the official website I couldn’t help but solidify that notion. If that didn’t set me off enough my favorite voice actress, Noto Mamiko, is back to charm us probably with another one of her cut/copy soft spoken jobs, which is ironic considering her character’s name is Yell. Other notable voice is Fukuyama Jun of Lelouch Lamperouge fame. It also seems as though many voices from Kure-nai (one of my favorites) are present, which is not all too surprising since both shows are produced by Brains Base. Akikan! is scheduled to air on January 3rd with 12 episodes.

Official Site
Info at ANN
Info at MAL

Verdict: Pass

Shikabane Hime: Kuro is the sequel to the fall series Shikabane Hime: Aka. While I have not been watching the original show I will say that I checked out the first episode when it first aired to see if I would be interested. The show did catch my eye but I decided to hold off on it for the time being since my schedule is already pretty full at the moment. I’m going to assume that the second season continues on the story of Makina Hoshimura in her quest to kill 108 corpses in order to go to heaven. Obviously I could be wrong considering I’m not up to date with the show and have not read the manga. The story seemed interesting enough to make me want to watch it eventually, but who knows when that will be (still haven’t watched season 2 of Black Lagoon and I finished the original months ago). I did like the animation and overall art style from the one episode I saw. A lot of people seemed to dislike the scribbly drawing of the monster, but I found it to be rather fitting. It is not yet known whether FUNimation will acquire the second season or not. They have been posting up subbed episodes of the original season over at Hulu, though they can be a bit slow at updating the list. Letters were sent to fansub groups to cease distribution of the show which has been pretty effective. Kuro will premier on January 1st with an unknown amount of episodes (though I’ll take a stab and guess 13 like the first season).

Official Site
Info at ANN
Info at MAL

Verdict: Pending on Season 1

Not much has really happened in the manga department during the time I took off. In fact, I’m probably still on the same exact chapter of Monster now as I was back in August. I feel like I need to be in the mood to sit down and tackle a chapter, but at the same time I don’t know what kind of mood that is. Elfen Lied was wrapped up in a disturbing manner that left me slightly unsatisfied, yet completely content. To-LOVE-Ru and Claymore have been kept up to date. I find Claymore to be pretty uneventful all around mostly because there is supposed to be a cohesive story, but I can’t be arsed to figure what happened last when a new chapter is released.

On the other hand two mangas have been digested. First, Rosario + Vampire, an ecchi comedy about a boy who winds up enrolling at a school full of monsters who despise humans. Overall it was a pretty good read. Each chapter had enough beef to it that I felt fulfilled reading it, yet each chapter (sans a few) were pretty stand alone with an overall story keeping everything connected. I watched the anime after finishing up and was thoroughly disgusted (enough to make me pass on season 2 of it). Bitter Virgin also found it’s way onto my completed list bringing along a pretty dark story about some high schoolers. It was long enough to tell the story with multiple twists and some shock factor (for a manga at least) yet short enough to keep everything to the point with little filler.

Hayate no Gotoku! has been started and up to date to fill in the void until season 2 of the anime is aired. Mx0 has also been added to the reading list with about 2/3 of it completed. This was basically picked at random and turned out to be pretty good.

I did not expect to take an entire 4 months off from the good old blog, but god damn how time can just fly by. I haven’t lost interest in anime, in fact this might be my busiest season yet. Unfortunately I learned a lesson that voice actors do not make a show. Akane-Iro ni Somaru Saka has crushed my poor soul into never anticipating a show again. I should have listened to my gut feelings but the stellar cast got the best of me. Note to self: avoid School Days staff as much as possible. On the other hand there are two complete stand-outs for me in Kannagi and Toradora. The art styles of both are what initially intrigued me but they turned out to be pretty damn good. Lesser known talent in Kannagi is not only refreshing but exciting. I’m eager to see what Haruka Tomatsu (Nagi, Lala Deviluke) will end up voicing next. And who would have thought that another one of Kugimiya’s psycho tsundere lolis would sit just right? I will admit I cringe everytime I hear a “shut-up” or dog and master reference though.

Other shows being force fed this season include ef – a tale of melodies, which is surprisingly darker than I thought it would be, but in a weird kind of good way. Clannad After Story, which seems to be more of the same shit different week. Not a bad diversion between other shows, but nothing that I guess would qualify as a necessary sequel. I’d rather see KyoAni working on Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2 or something completely new. To Aru Majutsu no Index has been pretty solid so far as well, and could wind up a real winner in my books if it keeps the quality up for a full 24 episodes.

Due to exams and vacations W50Anime is on hiatus until further notice.

Hmm… so I’m pretty sure we have just about covered all the normal ecchi comedy episodes after this. We’ve had multiple pool scenarios, the hotspring… oh shit, have we done beach yet? If there has been one show that I would say sums up the word mediocrity it would have to be To-LOVE-Ru. I didn’t really find this episode enjoyable. There were three redeeming things that happened. Number one: Lala’s twin tails. She definitely needs to keep those. Number two: Yami at a hotspring. Number three: commercial break Yui picture. On the other hand this episode missed two major things that make the show good. Yui and Mikan. What kind of dick leave’s his younger sister behind while going on an underground excavating adventure in search of hotsprings? And please tell me I’m not the only one that wants to break Haruna’s neck. I never found her this irritating in the manga. What is it about her in the show that I just can’t stand?! As much as I want that Trouble Quest episode I really do not want this show to have a second season, and am willing to compromise.