A brilliant anime with a very different art style and presentation. The story, as it were, is narrated to us by the nameless protagonist, as he agonises over how to pursue his "ideal campus life". Along the way he meets several other unusual characters, including his demonic-looking partner-in-crime Ozu and the mysterious Akashi, both of whom he seems to share a strange link with.
One complaint some people have with the series is that the narration from the protagonist is very fast and it's very difficult to read the subtitles in time. Whilst the dialogue is indeed quick, it is possible to keep up if you concentrate enough. Even if you find yourself needing to pause occasionally to digest a particularly verbose line, I would still absolutely recommend everyone give this series a go. Amongst a myriad of other, more "standard" anime, this one definitely stands out.
Finally after almost a full seasons worth of OVAs, an actual second season has been confirmed :D
I ended up enjoying this series far more than I expected. The initial premise sounds like it would lose its novelty fast and it kinda does, but the series does enough new and different in the latter episodes to keep it fresh. I grew to like the 2 protagonists more as time went on which is always a good thing.
By no means an essential watch, but overall a pleasant and enjoyable watch.
Edit: After season 2, my recommendation for this series is a lot stronger. It does a great job at further developing and endearing the cast to us and now I just want a Season 3 too! Guess I'll have to read the manga.
This series was certainly an interesting watch. From the synopsis alone you may be forgiven for assuming this could turn into another raunchy high school love comedy, but nothing could be further from the truth. This series is dark and twisted, and a brilliant watch because of it. The main character is a thoroughly unlikeable, cowardly (and pretentious) wimp, which may sound like a turn-off for watching the series, but stick with it, because the series basically revolves around him being tormented by the messed up girl, Nakamura.
What I really liked was that this series took scenarios that, in other series, would be played for comedy, only here they're not funny and cause a great deal of angst and torment for all involved.
Another thing that sets this series aside from most other anime is the style of animation which uses rotoscoping. This style sadly was enough to make a lot of snobs turn their noses up at the series without ever giving it a chance. Personally I have no problem with the animation style and in fact wish more series would do this. (Trapeze is the only other example I can think of off the top of my head http://trakt.tv/show/trapeze)
It's a shame that the series hasn't done too well in sales because that means we probably won't get a second season. This really is unfortunate, because whilst stuff definitely does happen in this series, by the end you are definitely left with the impression that things are only going to get more twisted and messed up and that we've only started down the path of depravity (and in fact, the last episode makes this very clear). This series is adapted from a Manga though, so if you do really like what you see you can read that to find out what happens next.
Much as I wish I could rate the series higher, there are a few things stopping me from giving it a better score. The animation quality is sadly somewhat lacking. There are lots of crowd shots where nobody is moving at all, which is all the more frustrating because if anything, it should be easier to animate crowds in this style. Some scenes were drawn out a big too long to the point where you just want something to happen already (a good example would be the walk home after the infamous "classroom" scene. Yes building atmosphere is fine and everything but 5+ minutes of just walking? Come on...). And even though there's a lot of schadenfreude to be had from watching Kasuga suffer at the hands of Nakamura, he is still pretty insufferable and cringeworthy to watch at times.
In spite of all it's flaws however, this is still a very interesting and different show that I would definitely recommend. Just be aware that if you want to know what happens next, you'll probably have to read the manga.
I'm enjoying this series but I wonder what kind of "ending" it will have. From what I can see this series is covering the events of the "Introductory Chapter". There is then a "Closing Chapter" set 3 years later that seems a lot longer and introduces a bunch more characters. I wonder if the plan is to have another season to cover this at some point.
As @sp1ti says, this is another "cute girls doing cute things" show, but this one is really cute so unless you absolutely despise this "genre" as a whole, you'll probably enjoy it. Not an essential watch by any means, but great for putting a smile on your face after a long stressful day.
Season 2 (Astral Ocean) - a bad sequel and, taken standalone, a bad show. Awful directing, annoying one-dimensional characters, a messy, convoluted plot. Overall, just bad.
Even if you liked E7, I wouldn't recommend this.
This is one of the first anime series I ever watched and holds a special place in my heart. Objectively speaking this probably isn't the best series or adaption of source material (The Manga is definitely better and offers a more definitive ending), but I still think it's quite enjoyable. A lot of people don't like Naru but I do. She was my first tunsdere, I think :P
I really enjoyed this series.
The title and artwork suggests this would just be another "monster girl" fanservice show, and I suppose to some degree it is. What I wasn't expecting was that in addition to that it also had a lot of heartwarming and charming moments. Rather than just being a continuous stream of raunchy jokes, we end up with Kobayashi and Tohru (the titular Dragon Maid) basically creating a kind of surrogate family together (with the adorable loli dragon as their "daughter"), which leads to a lot of genuine "aww" moments as they settle into living together. There is still a fair amount of fanservice but it's pretty tame compared to a lot of anime. The source material is by the same author as the series "I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying" (https://trakt.tv/shows/i-can-t-understand-what-my-husband-is-saying) and like this series it ends up being a lot more heartfelt and sweet than the name and premise might otherwise suggest.
Of course this being a KyoAni show it shouldn't be surprising to learn that the animation quality is great as always. It's not as noticable here due to the art style being a bit more subdued, but it still looks great and is directed really well.
Probably one of my favourites this season and I was really glad to see this one being great and not another Phantom World.
Season 2 is coming July 2021!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sro80JOeFNw&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=KyoaniChannel
Welcome back KyoAni :)
Despite the rather boring sounding name, this is an awesome and hilarious show. The show is produced by Sunrise and directed by the same person who directs Gintama, and it shows. Each episode is divided into several skits lasting a few minutes each. For a show like this, this turns out to work very well.
If you enjoy Gintama, you absolutely owe it to yourself to watch this gem.
Whilst this series does occasionally feel like a bit too much of a wish fulfilment fantasy (especially considering a lot of the target demographic will probably be around the age of our main character and may or may not have particularly good or rewarding jobs), I was surprised at how enjoyable and sincere it was, considering what is quite a silly premise if you think about it.
Animation is fairly standard and to be honest the music too for the most part (although it was cool having a different ED song every episode), but the characters were well fleshed out and fun to be around and for me this was where the series really stood out - the characters and the drama. It also delved a lot deeper into some of the psychological issues certain characters face a lot more than expected. Whilst it usually maintained a fairly light and comedic touch (with the occasional but not too frequent journey into teen melodrama), there were a few unexpectedly poignant and deep issues brought up, one in particular towards the end which I won't spoil.
Overall a very enjoyable series that was quite hard to put down. Not helped by the fact that, as others have said, every episode was released on the same day, which is quite interesting and not something we see often with anime. It will be interesting to see if this distribution method was a one-off or if there will be more series like this in the future.
A pretty excellent adventure fantasy series with a fascinating premise, some gorgeous visuals and music and lovable characters. This is a series that, despite the rather cutesey animation style, gets pretty dark and disturbing at points and certainly isn't afraid to subject characters to some pretty brutal stuff. However this never feels like it's done for shock value, more to emphasize the dangers of venturing into the unknown. Definitely one of the strongest of the season and I'm hoping they continue the story at some point.
5 episodes in, having started late and blasted through all 5 in a single night, and so far this series is excellent. Utterly crazy, awesome action and very funny - it doesn't take itself seriously for a second and seems to be having a lot of fun doing it. I've found myself either cheering or laughing every episode so far.
I really liked this series. Considering that this was a random pick up and I had zero expectations, I was very pleasantly surprised. As a 4-koma series, comedy is the name of the game and what you get is a never ending stream of gags and silly situations and the vast majority worked for me. This is probably the funniest series I've seen since Daily Lives of High School Boys, another unexpectedly great and amusing series.
If you want a fun series with likeable characters that is relentlessly funny and makes some playful jabs at the Shoujo genre, I'd definitely recommend this one.
"Surprisingly good" best sums this one up. I know, take one look at the premise and you'll think "Oh boy, it's one of THOSE", and it kind of is, but with a couple of twists. Here it's actually the girl's the perverted lead of the show, stringing along the clueless guy who really doesn't get what's going on in her head 90% of the time (and who can blame him - she's nuts!). This role reversal provides a lot of the humour for the show. It's also rather sweet at times. Despite proclaiming to become the ultimate slut and get 100 sex friends, poor Yamada struggles to get even one!
Overall a surprisingly enjoyable watch and something a little bit different from harem fare. A little bit.
Another "cute girls doing cute things" series. Quite an enjoyable watch and some moments are genuinely quite unexpected and funny. The girls are generally quite likeable and Nobue (the older sister of one of them and unofficial babysitter most of the time) is pretty cool as well.
Not a mindblowing series, but a relaxing and enjoyable watch with some quite funny moments.
Yeah, I love this series. I've always been a fan of Key anyway and I remember being so stoked when I heard about this new project. For what it's worth this ranks in my top 3 Key works (along with Clannad and Rewrite, the latter of which sadly doesn't have an anime adaption(yet...?))
If you've seen other Key works like Clannad, Kanon or Air, you probably already know that they tend to enjoy mixing comedy with tragedy, often whiplashing you between the two very quickly. Whilst these elements are certainly present in Angel Beats, and whilst the pasts of some of these characters are still pretty horrible and tragic, I don't think the series generally wallows in it as much as other Key works perhaps did.
The series has a nice mix of action, comedy, music and drama and it works really well. It also has TONNES of characters (A trait it shares with Little Busters I guess) which sadly, due to the series only being 13 episodes long, don't all have time to be developed to their full. Still, they are all a fun and silly bunch generally, and watching their antics is very enjoyable indeed.
Finally some good news for anyone who wanted more. Key have finally announced that an Angel Beats Visual Novel will be released in 2014. By the looks of it, it will be released in separate chapters (or beats), but hopefully this will give people a chance to learn more about the characters that didn't get much screen time in the anime (well, assuming it ever gets translated :D)
http://key.visualarts.gr.jp/angelbeats/index.html
An enjoyable 13 episode romp through a silly theme park with fantasy elements thrown in.
The series looks great and holds up to KyoAni's usual high quality of animation for the most part, although a couple of episodes do seem to suffer some "still frame" budget issues (which they may or may not fix in the BD releases). The comedy usually works well and the plot never gets too serious to not retain the light hearted enjoyment factor. Most of the characters are likeable and play off each other well.
This is probably KyoAni's most "fanservicey" show in recent years, although still very tame compared to some out there. Whilst it's obviously aiming primarily for the male demographic, I don't see why others couldn't enjoy it too. And hey, if you are a hetero male, all the better, as there are lots of cute girls to gawk at (Sento best).
A fun experience overall with all but a couple of episodes hitting their mark and hitting it well. Definitely one of KyoAni's best shows in recent memory.
Don't let the cute visuals fool you, behind this lies a comedy that can be pretty dark and effed up at times, but brilliantly so (here is a pretty good example from episode 1 which is by no means the only effed up thing in that episode ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42u4ytkzAWw). The story is anything but standard as well, this is a strange world where we are told that humans are dying out and the fairies are the new dominant species on the planet. Our nameless heroine serves as the mediator between humanity and the fairies, which as you might expect, gets her into many bizarre situations.
One of the things I really like about the series is that behind the cute visuals is a setting that is actually pretty dark. Humanity is dying out, and the fairies may look cute, but they are also rather creepy and respond rather strangely to human interaction. It's hard to know what they actually think of humans, and I at least got the impression that when humanity eventually does die out, they probably won't care or even notice.
I love our heroine in this story. Sure, she's cute like almost every girl in every anime, but she also possesses a dry/deadpan sense of humour which you see regularly when she is confronted with yet another bizarre situation. I found her very charming and it made it all the more enjoyable following her through this bizarre post-apocalyptic (kind of) world.
If you want something a bit quirky and different from your standard harem-anime-in-a-school fare, I'd definitely recommend this one. The series was written by Romeo Tanaka who has previously written some great Visual Novels (my favourite being Cross Channel). If you're familiar with his works then you might go into this knowing what to expect. Hopefully we will get to see more mainstream anime series by him in the future!
Fans of the anime may be interested to know that Key have finally set a release date for the first volume of the upcoming Angel Beats Visual Novel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8campmH6TI
Of course, this will be released in Japanese only at first, but with the success of the recent Clannad English release kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sekaiproject/clannad-official-english-release), I am hopeful of an English release someday too :)
There will also be another "Special episode" OVA released around the same time.
I loved this series. It took a few episodes for me to really get into it, but this and Nozaki-kun ended up being my favourite series this season. Well done slice of life with enjoyable characters and some decent comedy.
I really liked Naru. It would have been very easy for her to have been the "really annoying kid character" you very often get, but I found her genuinely charming and endearing. For the most part, she spoke and acted like an actual child would, where a lot of series would mess up by having her act too much like a wiseass, or worse, some precocious loli. Thankfully, neither was the case here.
Handa himself came across as a flawed but quite sympathetic character. Watching his (usually startled) reactions to the things happening around him never got old!
The supporting cast were great too. They were all pretty upbeat and seemed fun to be around. I'd love to go hang out with them all on that island!
Overall a wonderful watch.
10 episodes in so far and this show has definitely grown on me. I wasn't totally sold (but was intrigued) by the first couple of episodes and it has built itself up at a good pace since then. There's a nice mixture of story-of-the-week but with an overall narrative going which I think works really well here and gives you time to learn more about Dororo and Hyakkimaru and see them develop.
And wow, I was not expecting the show to be quite so gory or deal with such harsh themes either. Then again, I'm not massively familiar with most of Tezuka Osamu's work (for my sins), other than knowing he was the author of Astro Boy and is considered by some to be the father of manga/anime.
Turned out to be an awesome series, to nobody's surprise. Even if you have no real interest in Table Tennis (like me), this series is still worth watching. As mentioned in my other shout, it has some great staff behind it and it shows.
The characters are interesting and watching them grow throughout the series in a believable way is very enjoyable. Although the series often resorts to a kind of comic-panel-not-quite-still-frame style for some of it's action pieces, the fully animated parts are very fluid and exciting to watch. Overall just a damn good show. And don't be a snob about the art style, for the love of god. Some people might not like it (I didn't mind it at all), but don't let that put you off watching it - the story and characters more than make up for it.
I'm hovering between giving this one an 8 or a 9. I've rated it 8 for now but it's something I might revisit at some point.
Based on the title/subject matter, I wasn't particularly interested, until I saw that this will be by the guy who brought us Tekkonkinkreet (http://trakt.tv/movie/tekkonkinkreet-2007) and will be directed by the guy who, amongst other things, brought us The Tatami Galaxy (http://trakt.tv/show/the-tatami-galaxy).
This will also air in the noitaminA time slot, which admittedly isn't always a measure of quality, but normally does promise at least something a bit different!
I sense potential here!
And here is a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmZVuMDlw-w
An interesting and enjoyable series. I found the various phenomena inflicted on our characters to be interesting ideas which raised a lot of "what if" questions for if you yourself were facing a similar situation. I didn't think the concept was always executed as well as it could have been, but it was interesting nonetheless.
I generally liked the characters, although at points some did annoy me a bit, Iori being the main offender (especially in the final arc). The series did tend to get a bit too angsty for my liking at times as well, but not to a degree where it ruined things too much or stopped me watching. The final 4 episode arc, which was aired a couple of months after the "regular" TV broadcast ended, wrapped things up quite nicely and gave a satisfying conclusion for me, whilst still keeping the door open for a possible sequel.
Overall, a very enjoyable watch.
Wow, talk about a hidden gem. I really am loving the charm and the humour of the series. The characters are fun and likeable. Each episode is usually split into 2 smaller stories and they work quite well and are varied and engaging. On top of that we have the usual SHAFT art style.
It's a real shame that this one apparently bombed in sales and we'll probably never get more :(
As @sp1ti says, another "cute girls being cute" series. Nothing massively remarkable, although this one is pretty damn cute, high risk of diabetes abound.
Upped my rating from 6 to 7 after watching most of the second series. I'd say it's a lot better (and funnier) than the first. It's still quite a hit and miss series, and a LOT of the references are going to go way over your head. Still, it's quite enjoyable in it's own way.
Re-watching this recent reminded me of what a little gem this series is. It's charming, funny and moving. Tsukimi is lovely and I like that she actually does look "plain" rather than us just being told she is (because generic anime art style makes it hard to tell who's supposed to be attractive and who's supposed to be ugly).
I believe this series falls under the "Josei" (older girls/ladies) category and I'm sure a lot of women can probably relate to some of the issues Tsukimi has to deal with. But speaking as a Male who was probably not the primary target audience, I still really enjoyed this show and most of the characters.
It's just a shame it's only 11 episodes long, because as has been said before, it ends a little abruptly and could have easily continued for another cour.
