It’s really hard to watch the anime this season. The one thing that I’m grateful for is the fact that despite their many, many faults, there are a number of things that bad anime has that really separates itself from good anime. I have no idea if this is something I can attribute to the industry in general, or if it really only applies to this season in particular. Time will tell.

Something that definitely deserves some praise is the anime community this time around. There’s a lot less argument over the quality of shows, for starters. I haven’t seen anyone claim that Infinite Stratos is a deep deconstruction of a female-dominated society in a school environment (not that we’d know anything about that). Rather, we’re back to arguing over who the lead will eventually hook up with. (this time its by country rather than hair color, see: “color wars” from Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou).

What’s even more impressive is how fast 4ch picked up on Madoka. If you’ve seen any of Puella Magi Madoka Magica this season, you might know it as the anime in which magical girls get attacked by the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OP. Upon closer look however, you’ll notice that there are a large amount of strange characters in the magic world created by a witch, as well as a number of other unrecognizable symbols. While 2ch was ‘gasming over the art and how cute Madoka was, 4ch had already cracked the crazy symbols in the background. Following the discovery from episode 2 that some of the text was in German, it was soon followed that the symbols are actually translating to German, and not English as previously thought on 2ch. After much of the text was translated, it was found that it contained a large amount of exposition into the “alternate reality” created by witches. Despite the fact that this is just another “mahou shoujo,” the fact that the community was so quick to pick up on it is still pretty nifty.

There are a few other anime that came out that I surprisingly have high hopes for, even when I wasn’t previously interested in them when I saw them on the chart a while back. Fractale appears to be the most promising, while Gosick appears to be at least watchable. I’m a little cautious about both, since we’re so early in the series, but if they’re at least good for the first three episodes, we can get away with putting them up at showings and let the rest of you make your own opinions. While we’re at it, this site has made it extremely easy to follow when the shows are coming out and tell when the next episodes are coming out.

Switching gears back over to the bad anime, the quality of BAD is particularly high this season. What I like to call the “Garzey’s Wing Law” is holding up this season. The law basically states that the worse the show is, the better its overall soundtrack (on Garzey’s wiki page, the only thing critically acclaimed about Garzey’s Wing was the soundtrack in spite of being the WORST anime to have ever come out. I quote: “However, the music in the anime has been praised as being phenomenally powerful and touchingly endearing”). Some of the top contenders for best soundtrack, in my opinion, were Dragon Crisis and Freezing. Granted, the good anime has good soundtrack too, whether its Madoka’s slightly futuristic sound with a dark tone, or Fractale’s more celtic influence. Basically, what I’m saying is that in spite of some really predictable plots and far more PLOT, there’ll at least be some decent music this season.

Our first meeting is coming up on the 19th and its temporarily at Alderson Hall 151 because the MME department needs HH202 for four weeks. AH151 is the only room on the left on the first floor hallway. It’s easy to miss because it kind of looks like a closet but its actually a stadium seating lecture hall. Also, its like soundproof so even if we’re watching anime you probably won’t know we’re even in there. Make sure to tell your friends!