Our usual review-writer was occupied with horrendous work hours conflicting with club showings, and I got buried under a pile of projects which wrecked my plans to write the reviews myself. To make up for lost time, this post is going to be divided into two parts: a long list of shows that weren’t particularly noteworthy, and a shorter list at the end of gems from this semester’s showings.

Kuroko’s Basketball (9/19/12)

For the most part, a by-the-numbers shounen sports show. The twist — the main character and his eventual rivals have nigh-supernatural abilities — puts it a step above vanilla sports stories in watchability, though.

Zetman (9/19/12)

A dark, perhaps even deconstructionist, take on superheroes. Features a demon-transforming hero and a high-tech batman-style hero. If you’ve enjoyed the darker stories to come out of Marvel and DC, you might want to check this one out.

Saint Seiya (9/26/12)

Entertaining as a sort of “What if the 80′s had the production values of the 00′s?” but otherwise pretty forgettable.

Hyouka (9/26/12)

KyoAni does a story about a snarky protagonist and an energetic and offbeat female lead, who form a club with some friends in a modern-day high school where the group finds themselves wrapped up in various odd goings-ons. Okay, that might be a little unfair. Maybe. (Watch out for the ending on this one!)

.Hack//Quantum (10/3/12)

If you’re into .Hack//, I suspect this would be an interesting exploration of a few more aspects of the setting. Otherwise, it’s an solid and entertaining sci-fi movie.

Sakamichi no Apollon (10/10/12)

Going into this, know one thing: it is based on a josei manga. This means there’s a lot of drama and people being angsty and generally unhappy with themselves. If you can get through that, though, there are a handful of very good musical scenes and BGM pieces done in mid-century jazz-style.

Joshiraku (10/17/12)

The behind-the-scenes antics of a quintent of rakugo performers, filled with just as much wordplay and silliness as their actual rakugo performances. If you just absolutely have to have your four- five-girl comedy anime cravings sated, this is a good way to do just that.

Sword Art Online (10/17/12)

MMO: The Anime. If you’ve ever been a part of a guild in an MMO (or any other similar video game), you can have a lot of fun with this show pointing and laughing at all the sorts of idiots, heros, and shenanigans you’d see in a real MMO. Don’t take that as damning with praise, though; SAO is solid action show in its own right. It’s just so much more fun with a bit of self-deprecating nostalgia.

Eureka Seven AO (10/24/12)

Unlike the movie the club watched a few semesters ago, this is a direct sequel in the same timeline/dimension/whatever as the original Eureka Seven series. Without that connection, though, it didn’t stand out as more than a very colorful super-mecha show.

Binbougami ga! (10/24/12)[promote]

Was Nyaruko too high of power-level for you to catch all the references? Binbougami might be more your speed; at its lowest it references DBZ. If you can’t catch that … what anime have you been watching?

Nazo no Kanojo (10/31/12)

You know, I watch shows about schoolgirls, giant robots, monsters, transforming heroes, teenage drama, superpowers, magic, music, violence, and much more for a couple hours every Wednesday, so if this show is your kind of thing, I’m not really in a position to judge you. I, for one, found it to be an entertaining spectacle of one of the strangest love stories I’ve seen in a while (and for what it’s worth, it wasn’t a terrible love story at that, just cliche in an anime sort of way).

Genocyber (10/31/12)

Perhaps you have seen M.D. Geist? Director Koichi Ohata returns to style with a 6-part OVA series full of the same gratuitous and over-the-top violence you loved in Geist. It’s all held together by a forgettable plot and grungy pre-millenial animation, which makes it perfect for killing 45 otherwise-wasted minutes of your life watching people explode or transform into freakish dragon/human/cyborg/monster things.

Folktales From Japan (11/7/12)

This is exactly what it says on the tin. Classic folktales from Japan repackaged in a cutesy, pastel-colored visual format. Alas, however, the series does not include a retelling of the Bamboo-Cutter’s Daughter. For shame!

Acchi Kocchi (11/7/12)

A slice of life romantic comedy with the usual jokes and physical comedy. Allow me to save you some time: this is the one scene truly worth watching from the first few episodes.

H Ga Dekinai (11/14/12)

Meh. Ecchi/comedy/action/whatever show of the season. Tits and ass everywhere; clothes dissolve like tissue paper in rain. You know what this show is going to be like, and you know if you’ll like it or not.

Upotte!! (11/14/12)

I wanted to give this show a larger writeup for being so freaking out there, but I also didn’t want to honor it any more than absolutely necessary. Words do not do it justice, not that it deserves any; go grab the first few episodes (we have them on the club drive) and marvel for yourself at the sheer aneurysm-inducing “ WAT”.

Queen’s Blade (11/14/12)

24-minute excuses for women to have their shirts (and skirts … and pants … and everything else) blown/torn/dissolved/cut/ripped/slashed off. If you are watching this show, you already know exactly what you want and exactly what you are getting.

Loup=Garous (11/28/12)

This movie really could have been pretty good. The setting (a post-pandemic dystopia full of shut-ins) has potential, and the choice to follow teenagers as the protagonists means you can do some interesting things with how you let the audience perceive the world. Unfortunately, the movie tries too hard, things get weird in a hurry, and everything just sort of falls apart. Still entertaining, though, if you can get a few friends together to give it an MST3K treatment.

The Winners

There were some stand-outs this semester, though. I’ll give them each a bit more time and attention, since these shows stand out somehow or have broader appeal than most of the shows mentioned above. You might find something you like the in the list above, but I believe there is a much better chance that you’ll enjoy any one of the anime below.

Jormungand

Jormungand was our featured anime for the semester (specifically, we watched the first cour of two scheduled). It follows Koko Hekmatyar, a black market arms dealer, and her band of mercenary misfits (with special focus on her newest recruit, the child soldier Jonah) as they get into and out of troubles in their line of duty. Oftentimes, however, the source of the trouble is caused by a bit of someone’s past or a streak of honor among this pack of thieves.

Jormungand is, in my eyes, nothing much more than really well done action-escapism. I remember barely three characters (Koko, Jonah, Valmet), none of the music, and not much of the plot, but plenty of enjoying myself.

The entire show is very slick, visually speaking, which speaks well of the talents of newcomer studio White Fox (major works so far: Katanagatari, Tears to Tiara, Steins;Gate). There’s a lot of play with light and shadows, as well as copious amounts of smoke and tracer rounds, plus more wonky camera angles than you can shake a stick at.  This visual direction gives the combat scenes a Hollywood sort of feel.

Trouble is, that Hollywood veneer bleeds over into the characters and plot somewhat. Aside from Koko and Jonah, the character leads, and Valmet, a hyper-butch badass, I doubt I’d be able to put names to character faces. The episode plots all mostly boil down to “[Koko pisses off a competitor/crew member’s checkered past catches up to them], Koko et al try to negotiate out, negotiations go south, bullets fly, Koko et al escape to fight another day.” It’s all just so much fluff connecting action scene to action scene.

Which, really, is not a bad thing to be. Settle in, grab some snacks, and cheer along as a ragtag bunch of hardened mercenaries let fly several dozen pounds of lead into the bad guys.

Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita (10/10/12)

Keep your thinking cap on hand; this one asks you to rub a couple brain cells together to keep up with its humor. Jinrui aims to be a satire show, and although the later episodes lack the punch of the first few, it holds to its strengths to the end.

Litmus test for a comedy show: Is it funny?

Yes, yes it is. As I alluded to above, the comedy falls off after the first two arcs, but never becomes unfunny. The lowest point is probably the “Time Management” arc, which was difficult for the same reason Endless Eight was difficult. On the other end of the spectrum, you get the amazing first four episodes, which I definitely recommend to anyone who has a sense of humor.

Visually, Jinrui goes off the deep end with sweet, pastel color palettes despite using more common character designs and animations. I could certainly see it not being everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed it and thought it felt right for the tone the show was aiming for.

Prince of Tennis: Two Samurais, The First Game (10/3/12)

Allow me to summarize this movie with two pictures:

Aw yeah

Gyo (10/31/12)

Quality body horror right here. A virus from the depths of the ocean surfaces and begins infecting the sealife  in the waters around Japan, and eventually spreads to the local human populace as well. The virus causes the host’s soft tissues to undergo acute necrosis, causing a noxious gas to constantly and violently emit from every orifice. And to top it all off, they get strapped into one of these beauties:

This isn’t any kind of creepy, jumpscare, what’s-around-the-corner horror. This is civilization-doomed, hordes-of-monsters, gross-out-scenes horror. Most of the early scenes are a slow burn as the protagonists make their ways through a rapidly dissolving civilization. People around and squabbling over twinkies slowly give way to fish monsters and eventually the human equivalent pictured above. Stick around for the latter half, though — Gyo delights (like any good horror movie) in finding horrible ways to off its main characters.

Definitely check out Gyo if you need a quick horror fix (which wouldn’t surprise me; 2012 has been pretty light on that particular genre).

Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo (11/28/12)

Go watch this movie. It’s gorgeous, adventurous, and uplifting. As much as he might try to humbly deny it, Makoto Shinkai definitely deserves a place alongside Hayao Miyazaki as a name to follow in anime.

Asuna, our heroine, lost her father when she was young and her mother currently works the crazy shifts at the local hospital. Because of this, she spends much of her time alone, either studying or listening to a crystal-receptor radio left to her by her father. The radio doesn’t tune in to the usual frequencies — instead, it constantly plays haunting, abstract melodies. One day, a monstrous creature chases her onto a bridge, where a mysterious young man saves her life. She notices a crystal on his necklace matches the one on her radio, but he runs off before she has time to ask him about it. Thus begins the adventure of Asuna’s life; before the end of it she will escape military covert ops, venture to a land of myth, build and lose friendships, and eventually learn how to let go of those who have been lost.

If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I’m not actually much good at analysis. So I’ll leave covering the deep themes and such that the movie explores to the professional critics (or Matt, if he gets bored). Instead, I’ll reiterate that the movie is gorgeous. Ghibli gorgeous. The characters are softly drawn and colored, but the real standouts are the backgrounds. I’m flipping through the movie again as I write this, and I can’t find a background that doesn’t fit the scene like a glove: fantastic landscapes on wide shots, homely attention to detail in houses, desolate emptiness when the mood turns sour. I’ll also mention that even though I’m usually pretty fail at everything music, even I could tell that a lot of love went into the soundtrack.

This movie is well worth your time. Watch it.

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That does it for reviews for the semester. Stay tuned for Top 10 lists for 2012 from the asshole row and friends — of course, if you’re reading this, odds are good you’re actually in the asshole row. If you’re not, come join us during a showing. We’ll be the guys in the front row making fun of the anime and fools of ourselves.