Summer Season and First Impressions

Looks like the new series are rolling out now. Feels free to post your feelings about how you're feeling about them early on in the series. I've only watched two so far, with insanely different results. Glasslip: This series is already a bane to me. What starts out as a romantic, slice-of-life comedy quickly turns into a melodrama where the main character is a psychopath, but we're supposed to find him mysterious and charming. In reality, all he's done is make terrible metaphors and implied that he would kill someone's pet chicken just to prove a point. The girl he scared quite horribly with this implication... is going to be his love interest. If this series isn't intending to be a horror anime, then it is just going to be pretty f***ed up to watch. Wish me luck. Tokyo Ghoul: Oh yeah! THIS is a horror anime! I love the main character's determination and heart already in this series, which is actually a surprise to me. I thought he'd be too bland and boring, and he is... or was. You see, the notion of suddenly waking up and becoming a "monster" isn't new, but it is certainly difficult to portray in any media. Previously, the series Pupa took a shot at it with mixed results. Tokyo Ghoul, however, seems to know how to handle the emotions attached to the notion of "losing ones humanity" in a much more delicate fashion. Not to heap too much praise on this series early on, though, I can tell that characterization is still going to be an issue with many of the "ghouls" in this series, as the only ones we've seen so far are "pathetic weaklings", "psychotic powerhouses", and "peacekeepers". Hopefully, they can expand a bit more of the types of ghouls, and show more humanity in some of the others, not just the main character. Phew! That felt good to get off my chest! It's days like these that I miss reviewing.

Rail Wars!: With bland, cliche characters, and even MORE cliche situations, most of the first episode of Rail Wars was a huge flop, though it did have a bit of redemption near the end. I'll get to that a bit later. Rail Wars fails in several areas. The characters are either so bland you can't really get invested or so over-the-top that you can't take them seriously. You have the "average" main character (you know, the same guy you've seen in 100 other anime), the dumb, yet lovable best friend, the mousy genius girl with gravity-defying breasts, and the girl tsundere that hasn't quite unlocked the "dere" yet. I won't even mention the hardass teacher. The situations are just as painful to watch. It's only the first episode and we've already had: 1. The wind blows and the main character catches a glimpse of the mousy girl's panties. 2. The dumb, lovable friend eats a full-course meal during class. 3. Tsundere girl has a hopelessly violent nature. 4. Mousy girl's breasts bounce in slow motion while running laps, and the main character trips while staring at them. 5. The main character and mousy girl know each other from way back (but shhh! We're not supposed to have figured that out yet!) 6. "Oh no! We did the right thing, but won't be able to graduate because of some complete bullshit! ...Oh wait. Nevermind." That's the short list. Now for the good. In the last several minutes of the episode, we got to see these guys working as a team in a couple of different situations. Seeing these four actually work off of each other was really entertaining, actually, and even though it was only for the sake of catching a couple of purse-snatchers, it was really fun to see how these guys could very well make a strong team. The four each brought something with them to the group, or at least complimented each others' positive attributes. Overall, while I feel like this episode will still be painful to watch in the beginning, I think as the series rolls forward (no pun intended), the viewers will either warm up to the characters or the characters will become less obnoxious... I hope.

Aldnoah.Zero: Try to post this directly after watching the episode is difficult, as I am still fairly speechless. This series is going to be good, but it's going to be a fairly hard to watch, seeing as how this series doesn't want to pull any punches. The epic moments will most certainly be amazing every time with music from the group that did Kill La Kill at the wheel. The characters aren't too bad so far, though they aren't breaking ground either. I'd say they're likely to grow on you over time. As for the plot, well, there's certainly something to be said for the amount of exposition given in this first episode. I found myself pausing frequently, trying to read both the characters' dialogue, as well as the (convenient) news feed in the background of most scenes. Mostly, I don't believe it was necessary to make things as convoluted as they did, but I don't blame Aldnoah.Zero TOO much for trying to have a deep story. I just sincerely hope the rest of the series can slow down a bit, especially with the first episode knocking the wind out of us.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun: I'm not really much of a shoujo anime guy, but I'll check out a series if it sounds promising. Saying that, I'm glad I trusted my instincts when I saw "Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun" because it is HILARIOUS! I love the hyper-active imagination of the female protagonist, Sakura. She's a pleasure to watch, and the situations she finds herself in are just as entertaining. I have no problem with the male protagonist, Nazaki, even though he plays more of the "emotionless"-type of character, he really shines when coming up with off-the-wall ideas for the shoujo manga he writes. The two make a great couple, and play extremely well off of each other. If the series can keep up with level of humor throughout the season, I will be taking a closer look at shoujo anime in the future.