Long title: What If a Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker’s Management. The premise doesn’t seem very promising, but the show did manage to come together nicely. It’s quite corny, there’s no getting around that, but the show has a certain earnestness and straightforwardness which makes me forgiving of the cheesy drama and predictable events. It’s like the creators know the show is corny, but instead of trying to gloss over it they just face it head on. I found it kind of refreshing.

The highlight for me was the segments involving Drucker’s book. We learn about marketing, the customers, and innobetion. It’s hilarious how all of the baseball team managers end up getting their own copy and quote from it like it’s the Gospel. All with their curious pronunciation of key words. 🙂

The characters are interesting, but don’t all get enough time to develop in the short length of the show. I don’t think that much could have been done about this. The characters do tend to be rather corny again, but I find that part of the charm. Yuki is is the stereotypical kind sickly girl, Minami is mostly average all around and hates baseball for the corniest reason imaginable, freckle boy is a nervous wreck,  etc. My personal favorite is Ayano, whose main line is “Um. Ah. Hai”.

The corniness did cross the line on the second to last episode, though, when the whole cast spent the entire episode wailing. Minami’s ranting also made no sense whatsoever. I felt that this was by far the weakest point of the entire show and completely out of place in a show which was otherwise entirely upbeat. Fortunately in the final episode it managed to recover its mood, but the damage was already done. The creators seemed to also entirely forget about Drucker for the last few episodes, which made for some of the best segments originally.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Corny but overall solid.
• Characters – 8 / 10 – Again, solid, but not too much depth.
• Production – 8 / 10 – Not spectacular, but decent and consistent.
• Overall – B

Recommendations – Giant Killing, Kamichu

Dreameater Merry: Shakugan no Shana III. Merry=Shana, Yumeji=Yuuji, Yui=Yoshida. About half the show consisted of battles in dreams, and the fighting was quite well done. Except most of the battles were two people talking about how they believed in themselves and explaining their attacks. I shouldn’t be surprised by this though, considering the track record of all shounen fighting shows ever created. The other half of the show consisted of people looking beyond the camera from one side of the screen and tilting their necks with the wind blowing through their hair. Sure, it’s a nice pose, but when it’s the only pose in your show there’s an issue.

With that said, I largely enjoyed Yumekui Merry overall. Sure, it doesn’t have the most original plot or the best dialogue, but its excellent execution helps to make up for that. The visuals and music are both fantastic, especially for the scenes in the dream world.

• Plot / Script – 7 / 10 – Fairly predictable plot, dialogue is often overly sentimental and preachy.
• Characters – 7 / 10 – Yumeji and Merry struck me poorly because their main pastime seems to looking cool and posing. The two main antagonists didn’t really do much except laugh evilly too.
• Production – 9 / 10 – Gorgeous visuals and the music fits very well.
• Overall – C-

Recommendations – Shakugan no Shana, Pandora Hearts

After watching the first episode of Level E, I decided against blogging it because nothing much seemed to be happening and it wasn’t all that funny. Boy was I wrong. The entire first episode was simply a setup for the amazing twist the creators were preparing for episodes two and three. This just goes to show not to judge anything by its first episode.

The series is a collection of short stories centered around Baka-Ouji and other aliens living on the Earth. Prince Baka spends most of his time goofing off by playing elaborate pranks on random people, so most of the humor centers around this. The short stories have enough variety that it doesn’t get stale— we have a murder mystery, a power rangers parody, a romantic comedy, and intergalactic politics, all with twists which make the stories not quite what they seem.

My personal favorite part of this show was Kraft, the Prince’s retainer who is most affected by his pranks and is always trying to kill or oppose him, but ends up falling into his schemes anyway. He provides a “sanity” check on the prince, but in doing so has ended up becoming even more insane.

On the negative side, none of the story arcs are really on part with the first one. This is a comment more on how great the first arc was than on the others, which are still hilarious (particularly the final arc). I think the main reason is that after the viewers are aware of the prince’s true nature, it isn’t so easy to be fooled anymore.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Great buildup and execution of the jokes.
• Characters – 8 / 10 – Strong characters, but doesn’t focus too much on individuals due to the arc nature of the show.
• Production – 8  / 10 – Consistent animation.
• Overall – B+

Recommendations – Gintama, Oh! Edo Rocket, Galaxy Angel

I’ll confess, the main reasons I’m still watching this are for Biri-biri, to see what’ll get hacked on next to Crystal Dragon Jesus, and to see which girl Touma is going to punch in the face next. Index II has made especially good progress in the last category.

Index II has followed in the footsteps of the first season, maintaining more or less the same quality. It’s good for what it is, a fun action show, once Touma decides to stop talking to his enemies or on his cellphone and punch people. I felt like there were less Touma monologues in this season, so that’s good.

My favorite part about this series is the setting. It’s quite imaginative, and gives a sense that there’s a lot more to it than their showing. Building a world like this is an ambitious project, and the creators are doing well with it. Magic is awesome, espers are awesome, and crystal dragon Jesus is awesome.

The biggest problem is the characters. Not that they’re uninteresting; to the contrary, the characters are very strong. The problem is that there are too many of them and they never get enough attention. I mean, look at that maid girl who sits on the robot— she appeared in the ending credits, but who was she again? Himegami, Komoe-sensei and even Index barely showed up. It would help if they found a way to make more of the characters play a role in each of the arcs, since right now only a few characters take part in each one.

• Plot / Script – 7 / 10 – Great world-building, but Touma can be talkative and preachy.
• Characters – 7 / 10 – Strong characters, but they don’t get enough attention.
• Production – 7  / 10 – Consistent but fairly standard.
• Overall – C-

Recommendations – Asura Cryin’, Shakugan no Shana, Legend of Legendary Heroes….