The Fall 2011 season was the oasis in the desert of awful anime which comprised Summer 2011.  Then, like all good things, the season drew to a close.  That’s when the dark times began, an era with easily some of the worst shows in recent memory.  These series seem specifically designed to mock the intelligence of the modern anime viewer, and it makes your heart grow cold.  Down your warming beverage of choice, because a shit storm is fast approaching.

Senki Zesshō Symphogear

A pair of pop idols, Tsubasa Kazanari and Kanade Amō, are collectively known as ZweiWing.  Tsubasa is serious, while Kanade is an optimistic airhead (aka a pop idol).  They also fight against an alien race known as Noise using armor known as Symphogear, which conveniently harnesses the power of music.  During one of their generic J-Pop concerts, the Noise attack.  To protect a girl named Hibiki Tachibana, who got severely wounded by the Noise, Kanade sacrificed herself.  Two years later, as Tsubasa has fought the Noise alone, and Hibiki has gained the same power as Kanade.  As such, Hibiki is also an optimistic airhead that wishes to fight alongside Tsubasa, who is none-too-pleased that Hibiki literally wants to replace her dead best friend.  Unadulterated garbage ensues.

Just in case you needed 500 cc’s of mahou-shoujo moe injected directly into your blood stream, Symphogear is happy to oblige.  Unfortunately, that’s all this series provides.  Fighting scenes?  Check.  Transformation sequences?  Check.  Manzai-style relationships?  Check.  The problem is that the buildings, character designs, and generally anything not battle related is laughably bad.

The music is…silly.  We’ve seen random melodic interjections before in shows like Guilty Crown, but Symphogear actually requires the users to sing during the act of fighting.  Logistics aside, the music is just uninspired, and the accompanying soundtrack is equally forgettable.  That’s really quite sad, considering that music is the whole damn premise of the show.

The story, or lack thereof, is about Hibiki growing up and becoming competent, but Tsubasa is still rage-griefing that someone as foolish as Kanade (who she apparently respected) could sacrifice herself to save someone even equally foolish.  Meanwhile, Hibiki’s yuri roommate Miku becomes a sub-plot device, the Noise act as bland as they sound, and the security force the Symphogears work for act like completely chipper.  Then there’s the fact that there are literally only 2 Symphogears, which was down to just 1 for the last 2 years.  You mean to tell me that in all this time, the Noise haven’t taken advantage of this situation at all?  Oh, that’s right, it turns out that the unit commander, although he never actually fights, is far stronger than both Symphogears combined and doesn’t have to sing.

With a whole 2-3 minutes per episode even approaching decent, the entire series is a waste of anyone’s time.  The “musically inclined” Symphogear falls flat, dropping right onto the DEEN’s List.

Brave 10

Brave 10 takes place just before the end of the Sengoku Period of Japanese history.  After the death of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the famous samurai Sanada Yukimura holds the strategically important Ueda castle.  In order to put up a fight against the vastly superior forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Sanada decides to gather ten powerful warriors under his banner.  In the meantime, Tokugawa sends his troops to massacre the temples in Izumo.  There, a young orphaned woman named Isanami is protected by the priests and treated as a priestess.  As the temple burns, she is instructed to escape to Ueda and ask Sanada for protection.  Although she is pursued by Tokugawa’s ninjas, Isanami is saved by an unemployed Iga ninja named Saizou.  He agrees to guide her to Ueda castle, but when they arrive Saizou learns that Sanada has employed a group of Kouga ninja (which the Iga hate).  Fortunately, Saizou is a very powerful ninja, and Isanami holds a very destructive power inside her.  As such, Sanada agrees to protect Isanami and Saizou, in exchange for their help in defeating Tokugawa.

Following in the tried-and-(not necessarily) true shonen fashion, Brave 10 delivers literally everything you’ve come to expect from a brawler anime, and not a single thing more.  The animation is decent, since you need something to keep an audience’s attention.  The music and voice acting are also par for the course.  Saizou is the gruff loner with all the power in the world but no one to use it for.  Meanwhile, Isanami is the typical clingy girl with a crush on the bad boy loner, and as such she spends her time finding ways to be even slightly useful (including occasionally using the destructive power I referenced earlier).

The story then proceeds according to formula: work for a generally good leader, find a rival, have some fights, develop a thin romantic relationship, toss in some psychos, and have some more fights.  Therein lies the problem: nothing about this show is interesting, or clever, or outstanding in any way.  The series follows the shonen formula so strictly that it becomes a tree in the ever-growing forest that vies for action fans.  The story could have delved into the political intrigue or the era, and desperation of the people, or the effects of the rapidly changing times, and it could have done so without detracting from the ever-important fight scenes.  It might have even made any sort of build-up more memorable.  Instead, Brave 10 decides to take the easy route, and the entire series becomes forgettable as a result.  If you want an action show that doesn’t require brain cells, you may as well watch some Basara or Bleach, since they’ll at least offer something slightly more tangible.

Kill Me Baby

Yasuna is a simple fool who lives the carefree lifestyle of a high school girl.  Her best friend is Sonya, who happens to be an assassin.  Sonya’s attempt to fit in often fails when her natural assassin instincts kick in and Yasuna’s attempt to be more friendly with Sonya often gets her hurt or intimidated.  While living in comical obscurity, another young female assassin arrives at their school, who also happens to be a ninja.  Manzai comedy is born.

Kill Me Baby is the anime adaptation of a 4-panel comic, and it certainly shows.  The animation redefines the term “budget,” based entirely on static backgrounds and minimal movements, even when speaking.    Even the OP and ED seem like just a short collection of gif files.  The art is basic chibi-moe, the same you’d find in your favorite Corner sketch at the end of an actual anime episode.  The music is a simple as you could possibly imagine, short pieces placed in between the scenes to better reflect the child-like atmosphere.  Even the ED, although catchy, is total nonsense.  However, the voice acting is surprisingly good, often saving jokes from falling flat.  I wouldn’t be at all shocked if the entire production budget went solely to the actors.  That said, the story itself is practically 4-koma with visuals.  The entire show is just a long string of these silly little skits.  When they hit, they’re funny.  When they don’t, they miss the broad side of a barn.  Although, the faux-ninja assassin does help things, she’s just the supplier of more cheap jokes to further humiliate Yasuna.  That’s unfortunate, because I really wanted this show to become something like Spy vs. Spy.  Everyone likes physical violence, and watching 2, 3, or even 4 different people outwit one another with deadly gags would have made this series far more entertaining.

Instead, the show takes on a repetition that wears itself thin very quickly, and the episode ending can never come soon enough.  It’s difficult to say how hard JC Staff tried with this show, what with its laughably small budget, but it does squeeze as many laughs per yen as humanly possible.  However, some things should never be animated, and as such Kill Me Baby is better left on the comic strip.

Join me next time as I continue to wander to frozen wasteland of anime that is Winter 2012.