Those 1337 sued One Piece downloading pirates from last month? 1336 of them have had the charges dropped against them. In short, it was all a massive show of strength from Funimation. All a bit of a joke really, although I do rather like the idea that there’s still one guy out there getting sued. Poor guy, he’s taking the slack for the millions of other downloaders.

Man, the news in these monthly updates are always depressing. I suppose that’s because the actual good news from this month is stuff like top quality directors announcing they’re working on new anime, and that news will show up in the relevant season preview anyway. Ah well, onto the proper part of the post.

A Grade

A- Madoka Magica

Epis­odes 5-8

The one thing holding back Madoka Magica until now was I didn’t care for the characters. They were more a collection of plot points than people. This led to my reaction to a lot of the scenes being “I see what you did there” rather than getting emotionally attached. That problem hasn’t really been solved, but instead I’ve found myself getting really into each characters story. I don’t care about them as people, but lordy me am I ever emotionally invested in watching Madoka’s constant battle with her wimpyness. Plus this show has Kyubey, who has reached Johan Liebert levels of awesome villains. A lot still hinges on the ending, but I’m finally convinced that Madoka Magica has the makings of a classic.

B Grade

B Break Blade

Episode 3

Pretty much ‘as you were’ in terms of quality for Break Blade. Plot’s kicking along nicely. Sure, some of the scenes are clunkier than the very mecha they pilot, but the show mainly thrives on the battlefield. It’s there where the significant plot twists occur. It’s there where everyone goes through significant character development. But most importantly, it’s there where those fantastic mecha duke it out in those brilliantly choreographed fight sequences. Looking forward to see how they handle the second half of this series. Just so long as they don’t finish without completing the plot. You don’t make six movies solely to advertise a manga.

B– Level E

Epis­odes 4-7

Episode 4 was crap and I don’t understand why people said otherwise. The story was dull and went nowhere and if putting a grainy filter over everything counts as good animation, then I’m going to sit in a corner and cry. On the other hand, I loved the whole colour ranger arc. One of the aspects that made it work was how each of the kids had their own clear personalities. Considering they only had 3 episodes to convey their personalities in, that was quite an achievement in it’s own right. I’m still not as big on this series as many other people are, but it’s a solid comedy and one of the few genuinely good shows this season.

C Grade

C+ Fractale

Epis­odes 4-6

I honestly think people are too harsh on Fractale. Ignore what’s going on outside of the show itself, what we have here is a decent whimsical adventure with some funny morals and an annoying tendency to make ecchi ‘jokes’. It’s not going to win any awards and neither is it particularly memorable, but it produces some quality moments and is a fairly enjoyable way to spend 25 minutes a week. That said, when you air in Noitamina and your director claims this show will be loved by anyone, I really shouldn’t find myself giving this show the same type of scores I was giving Highschool of the Dead.

C Welcome to the Space Show

In the words of Sven Goran Eriksson, “First half good, second half not so good”. Welcome to the Space Show is a magical space journey about a bunch of kids being brought to a moon colony by a talking dog. Apart from the gorgeous animation that one would expect from a studio trying to pull a Ghibli, one of the things that really stood out was the little winks at larger society messages through little things the kids said or did. Which makes it all the more disappointing when they threw aside all those messages in the second half and made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The plot went mad, introducing concepts and characters out of nowhere. Nothing came together, nothing made sense and the whole thing was a gigantic mess. I’m genuinely pissed off at this movie that it threw away it’s awesome first half to descend into such crap. Ah well, at least it still looked pretty.

C Bak­u­man

Epis­odes 18-21

Bakuman has fallen into this strange state of being laughed at rather than with. There’s a silly, self-mocking side to it now, not all of which I’m even sure is intentional. Maybe that’s just my brain searching for ways to entertain myself while watching this anime. It’s a self-defence mechanism my mind has created to enjoy anime I don’t really like. Usually I attempt this by looking for fanservice. Now it’s looking for when the show makes fun of it’s own dreadful romance and laughable rivalries. But hey, I’m enjoying Bakuman more because of this approach, so I’m perfectly OK with this new arrangement.

C- Wan­der­ing Son

Epis­odes 4-6

When I said before this show aired that I thought it might be too fluffy for my tastes, people commented saying that the manga wasn’t fluffy at all and was actually quite harsh. I wish you people were right. When this show focuses on that wry sense of humour it has, it’s great. It’s brilliant at these little subtle jabs that you know has mucked up a kids head but never directly tells you that it has. But then it’s all “oh dear, we might have been too harsh there. Quick! Play more tinkly piano music!”. It’s as frustrating as hell when you can see a good show in the making but it keeps shooting itself in the foot. I guess I’ll have to mark this down as an off-season for Noitamina.

D Grade

D- Suite Precure

Episodes 1-4

Heartcatch Precure got a lot of praise from the anime community, more so than any of the Precure franchise I’d certainly ever seen. Heck, I’d barely ever seen Precure talked about until Heartcatch burst on the scene. My automatic bias towards magical girl series, what with all the pink and them having silly names like Magical Musical ~Chu~ ~Chu~ Lyrical Heart and Soul Puni Puni Girl SOS, kept me away from Heartcatch, but that bias has been dropping steadily ever since.  So when the first episode of Suite showed up, I decided now is as good a time as any to jump on the Precure bandwagon. That said, Suite Precure is pretty bloody awful. I’m mainly just waiting to see how long the combo of bitchin’ transformation sequences and CGI dancing endings can keep me going. Probably not for that much longer.

D- Ore no Imouto True Route OVA

Episode 12

Blogging Ore no Imouto was incredibly fun, inspite of (or possibly because) of all the raging I did. Because of that, I was planning to blog the True Route OVA’s as well. However the changes between the original episode 12 and this were so minimal it wasn’t worth my time writing anything. The changes consisted of:

1. A man playing porn games in the street
2. Kyousuke riding a bicycle
3. Kirino not headbutting Kyousuke
4. Kuroneko saying Senpai.

I think I’ll wait for more episodes to come out before I say anything. Or maybe I’ll just not write anything at all. It would be hard to top my tsundereview from episode 12 anyway.

D- Hiyokoi

Considering this is the shojoiest shojo OVA possible, it wasn’t nearly as painful to sit through as it could have been. It was rather lacking in sparklespace, even if the female lead was one of those ones you’re meant to d’awww at because she’s so small and cute and bleargh. I did get a massive guffaw when the male love interest was so bishie he could make it snow at will! One day I hope to be as beautiful enough that I can control the weather.

E Grade

E+ Rio Rainbow Gate

Episodes 1-8

Forgot to include this last month. My brain apparently tried to wipe this series from my mind. Which is probably why I come back every week, right? Nope, I come back every week because this show is horrendous. It’s awful on so many levels in so many ways that you simply can’t look away. I’d like to call it ‘so bad it’s good‘, but Rainbow Gate doesn’t achieve that level often enough to warrant watching it. The drama in episodes 7 and 8 have been particularly amusing/horrible. The ‘best’ scene by far was Rio riding a holographic shark while dodging meteorites. That will be something for a twelve days post at the end of the year.

E Afterschool Pleiadas

It wasn’t that I had placed unrealistic expectations on this or anything. It’s nothing more than an advertisement for a car company featuring magical girls. I went in expecting nothing and came out getting less than I hoped. Basically, I was bored out of my mind watching this 20 minute thingamabob. You’d think a studio like Gainax making an advertisement would use that as an excuse to go a bit mad with their animation, but there was nothing in here. Boring as fuck, I hope Subaru make no money out of this whatsoever.

F Grade

You can tell how ‘into’ anime I am at any given time by counting how much crap I persist with. As you can probably tell, my obsession with these cartoons has been reaching dangerous levels recently. Still no F’s though.