Winter 2013 Anime Season

Winter 2013 anime season has started finished eons ago*!Of course my number one primo anticipation was CHIHAYAFURU 2.The club is looking to get some new recruits and eyeballing the current crop of first-years, while the ladies of the first-years are eyeballing Taichi.With the first episode I wasn't sure about the first obvious eventual member, but by the second I could see she would at least be interesting and not as annoying as I feared.The second member isodd.Anyway, I'm excited to see where this is going to go!(10 MONTH LATER NOTE:This season was poorly paced and relied heavily on flashbacks.I still greatly enjoyed it, especially the final episodes, but it did get pretty draggy at times)



I would've been happy with just Chihayafuru 2, but so far I've found maybe a couple of other anime to watch as well, along with continuing Psycho-Pass and Space Brothers from previous seasons.




*NOTE:Okay, I was going through old posts and what not and for some reason this never posted? And of course it's now fall--;ANYWAY, I just threw it up now as is with some edits about dropping etc.



BAKUMATSU GAIJINDEN ROMAN:A sort of combination between Lupin III (same mangaka) and Robin Hood, set during samurai times.I'm not completely sold on this show.The main characters are a brother-sister team where by day, the brother is lazy and gets money doing odd jobs while the sister makes chopsticks and tries to make her lazyass brother go out and work.By night, they rob the rich to feed the poor.The animation is eh, and the stories are ok, but there's so far there's one insane thing that happens in the end of each episode I've seen that keeps me vaguely interested.Not 100% sure I'll be sticking around, but maybe.(10 MONTH LATER NOTE:Dropped after 3rd episode)THE UNLIMITED:A spin off of Zettai Karen Children (which I have no intention of watching as it has controversial loli elements), this has the villain from that series become one of the major "good" (?) guys of this series.He has surrounded himself with people with varying psychic powers, including one who can cancel out other psychic powers who is not what he seems to be.So far it seems to be sorta bad (maybe goodor neutral) guys fighting worse guys, soI'm curious to see where this goes. (10 MONTH LATER NOTE: Lasted about 5 or 6 episodes before dropping.Just didn't hold my interest)LOVE LIVE! SCHOOL IDOL PROJECT:I honestly wouldn't have touched this if Zac from ANN hadn't given it a 4/5 score.It looks like your stereotypically bland pretty girls doing cutesy things.An all-girls' school is on the edge of closing its doors due to lack of student entry.A group of girls get the idea to become school idols (i.e. girls who sing and dance to poppy music on stage) and they're on a deadline to get their idol group going (and be good!) before the school goes under.The songs are fun and happy.The OP sequence is energetic and cute.However the second episode sorta regressed to semi-blandness, and there was some totally unnecessary and out-of-place boob groping, so I'm suspicious.I'll give it a couple more episodes, but my guard is up now.(10 MONTH LATER NOTE:Boob grabby girl continued to be boob grabby, which was annoying as hell.I put it on hiatus after episode 8.I do need to go back and finish it sometime, so it's not thoroughly dropped)MANGIRL:The VERY unfortunately named "Mangirl," a portmanteau of "manga" and "girl."However, don't EVER do an image search for "mangirl" without adding the extremely key word, "anime."Anyway, this is a series of 5 minute episodes of girls trying to get into the manga business.I found the first episode way too fast and full of way too much information to even absorb anything.Pass.AMNESIA:I wish I could forget ever seeing this show.You'd think pretty boys could go a long way to making an anime at least tolerable, but no.This girl gets amnesia and some fairy thing shows up to tell her this, and the girl works in a restaurant filled with pretty boys, but she can't tell them she has amnesia, anzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.The girl was so flat and bland and dead boring with no personality at all because this was based on a dating sim type game where the player is the girl.The guys are blandly handsome (they do admittedly have pretty iridescent eyes; that was kinda cool I guess), and entirely mundane personalities.There's also some evil dude hanging around outside.Too bad I don't care what he wants.Oh yeah, for some reason they guys have extremely elaborate clothes and look like they're out of Final Fantasy or something.I'm yawning as I type this.Massive pass.TAMAKO MARKET:A last minute addition.It features two families of competing mochi sellers.One tries to be traditional, while the other tries to be more modern.Of course one has a son, and the other has a daughter (two actually), and the older is the same age as the son.There is also a very peculiar cockatoo-type bird who can talk and shoot light beams from its eyes and I don't know what it's doing here.It arrived in a flower arrangement.I'm not crazy about the bird.I do like the human characters; they seem kinda fun.I especially like Tamako's father.I'll see how long I can tolerate the lunatic bird.I also now want mochi, except all my mochi went bad from New Year's before I could eat it with shoyu and sugar (I did get several helpings of ozoni in, so that's good at least).(10 MONTH LATER NOTE: I thought the 1st ep was kinda cute, but The Anime Network was showing it and put the rest of the series behind a paywall.Eff that shiz.I'll wait until it hopefully shows up on Crunchyroll once Sentai releases the DVD/BDs)
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