Star Driver and Zombie will be delayed for obvious reasons. You can donate to the Japanese Red Cross here.

Apologies for the map covering a quarter of the screen, but honestly, it wasn’t really blocking much. I can’t for the life of me figure out where this show is trying to go. The first episode was funny – and Nao still is an interesting character. But every other episode has just pushed her into the background reliving the same jokes and following Shuusuke around, peeking from behind bushes. Why don’t the creators let Nao and Iroha actually do something for a change instead of stalking Shuusuke? It was somewhat funny for the first episode when Iroha did it, but my tolerance was exceeded long ago. It doesn’t help that they overused Kondou for a series of episodes, which pushed Nao and Iroha into the background, only to apparently forget about her now.

And now not only do Nao and Iroha remain as stalkers, but we get two new characters with barely any time left in the show. What in the world were they thinking introducing this cosplay girl? She is ridiculous (in a painful way) and her sister is not much better. I guess Nao having a yuri lover could have potential, but otherwise I couldn’t see any point to this episode. I guess the joke was supposed to be how shameless Shuusuke was? It might be funny except this is the punchline for every other joke in this show (the other half being that Nao and Iroha are stalkers).

They already passed the point the manga ended a while ago (it hadn’t gotten to the trip to the pool with Kondou), so this may be part of the problem.  The manga probably had enough material for at most six episodes (and a lot of this was too drawn out). Some shows manage to make anime original material which is better than the original series, but this is not one of them. Every original part the creators have attempted has been, frankly, a dismal failure. Overall this series has been quite disappointing, although in retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised. The director, Keitarou Motonaga, has a history of poor adaptations with one notable exception.