Ano Hana follows a group of childhood friends who have gone their separate ways but appear headed to come back together, due to the reapparance of their friend who died as a ghost. This one is definitely looking promising, mainly due to the strong characters. Jinta, the male lead, has become a hikkomori and is afraid to talk to people, while other members of the group have become arrogant or dishonest. At the end of the episode, Jinta reunites with one of his old friends in their secret base which has been revamped.

This episode reminded me a lot of 20th Century Boys, except without the evil cults, conspiracies, giant robots and aliens. Ok, well it isn’t that similar, but the part where they both have a secret childhood base and they reunite to save the world does. It’s also reminiscent of the Yotsunoha OVA (which, by the way, I don’t think anyone has heard of but I highly recommend). All in all, we’re in for a heavy does of nostalgia and remembering. I’m not sure why, but I really enjoy that kind of thing. I’ll definitely be blogging this one.

Segways with machine guns. Yes! This is way more awesome than every mecha ever made. I whole-heartedly approve. Humanoid robots are dumb. Mankind invented the wheel thousands of years ago, and humanoid robots are a step backwards. Segways, on the other hand…

The entire premise of a school for mercenaries is pretty creative. But I’m not sure if it’s worth dealing with yet another Kugimiya Rie role with her squealy voice. I already can’t stand Aria. And I’m not optimistic about the classmates either. On the other hand, for once in a show like this we have a pretty good male lead. At first he seemed like the usual wimp, so when he picked Aria up, put on the sweet talk and shot the Segways by himself I was caught off guard (and pleasantly surprised). Nicely done, JCStaff.

If this show could focus on the killer robots, mercenaries and the male lead it would be pretty awesome. If it focuses on Aria blushing and beating the male lead up, and the male lead’s harem, it will be another season of Shakugan no Shana. My bets are on the latter.

C was the show I was looking forward to the most this season, being an original story in the noitaminA timeslot, and I was not disappointed. C appears to consist of two worlds, the real world and the Financial District. From what we’ve seen so far, it appears that Entrepeneurs (abbreviated “entrees”) fight each other for money in the Financial District using both money to control possibilities and some sort of oni-like partner. They bet their future on the fight.

The first segment served as a teaser into the world of the financial district, while the second half took a step back and introduced the main character as he entered into the new world. I already like a character who reacts to a crazy clown guy appearing in his nightmares by ignoring him and continuing to study. His devotion to a government job is a bit odd, but I’m sure we’ll see why in the future. His co-worker doing the shelving is awesome too. Best side character this season.

C seems like to be signaling that it won’t make the same mistake of Fractale in ignoring world building by dedicating the entire first episode to the world and only a few characters. With such a short timeslot, the creators need to use every moment to the fullest, and so far they’re succeeding. The setting is unique and engrossing. But the CG for the Financial District was questionable… Hopefully we won’t see too much of this, or it’ll take some getting used to.

I wish that more studios would take the chance to make anime original works. To overgeneralize broadly, I feel that original works are of higher quality than manga and visual novel adaptations. Maybe it’s just that they’re better suited to the medium, or more likely, the creators just put more effort and resources into an original work.

In the first episode of Denpa Onna, a boy moves from the country to the city and begins to live with his aunt and her daughter. However, her daughter claims to be an alien and stays rolled up in a mattress.

I’m not quite sure what to think about this one. It had its good points, like the main character complaining about how he hasn’t had any chances with girls as he blows off the girl on the train. SHAFT also managed to tune down its usual SHAFT-ness which may be a good sign. I liked the female lead while she was in the mattress, but after she came out and turned out to be a childish moeblob warning sirens started blaring. I prefer insanity when it isn’t just an excuse to make girls look cute and fall on top of people, and this is exactly what I fear is going to happen. But the show isn’t that funny and I doubt the plot will be anything serious, so cuteness is the direction I can best see them going in, unfortunately….

Our lead character is dumber than a monkey. Literally. The protagonists of harem shows like this are always idiots, so I guess it’s kind of refreshing to be upfront about it. In this episode, he took the bus going in the wrong direction, only to be corrected by his little brother. Then a monkey stole his brother’s hat, and he chased it into the forest. He watched the monkey jump on rocks to cross the river. Then, he concluded there was no way across the river, so he waded through it and fell. Then he climbed a tree chasing after the monkey, and the monkey tricked him to jump out of the tree and fall. Then he realized he was lost. He found a ditzy girl to show him the way back, who had a brilliant idea: he could cross the river by jumping on rocks. He manages to fail at this and falls on top of her. I’m sure his idiocy continued, but at this point I started to lose interest.

Anyway, this show has nothing in it that hasn’t been beaten to death a million times. Why do they feel the need to pump out so much of this crap?