First Look: Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou

First things first; why is there a guy in a skirt in the picture?

The opening of this series showcase the kind of madness one can expect from this anime. There is that guy, then, if you see on the rooftops, you will see a girl playing with bubbles. And the two people running in the foreground is probably the couple being focused on in this anime.

Just from the opening sequence, you already can guess how the story is going to run but anyways, here are my first impressions for the anime.

The anime looks pretty nice, and very showy. It introduces the main character, Usa moving to live alone in the dorms. After 2 minutes after that introduction, Usa means a fellow dorm mate attempting to peek at grade school students. By the halfway mark, Usa is introduced to system in the dorm where women are able to swing weapons at the guys when they attempt to even step into the female area of the dormitory.

From that crazy beginning, it seems familiar to an anime in the past (Sakurasou) but the only difference here is that only the main character and his female interest are the students this time. The rest of them is a bum, a working woman who has bad choices in men and a femme fatale. With this kind of crazy setting, of course there will be all kinds of trouble to come about to the main character.

Animation-wise, the anime does pretty well. The character's faces really depict the actual reactions that you would expect to make in that kind of scenario and is kind of funny to see how they would try to solve it. The opening and ending songs are also pretty decent, making this anime as one of the must-watch for this season.

Score: 7.5/10 - Pretty decent

First Look: Black Bullet

Lolis, action and plenty of mystery. That is almost a perfect of recipe of a successful anime and Black Bullet contains all of them in nice amounts. (The loli part is just a joke, there are plenty of anime out there that has plenty of loli and the anime they starred in still sucked).

Black Bullet depicts a bleak world where an infection of sorts almost wipes out mankind. The main character, Rentaro manages to survive a meeting with a Gastrea, a being/creature that is transformed from a human due to the infection. The way it spreads is almost like as if its a zombie; the Gastrea would attack people and if the person manages to survive but sustain serious injury, the infection cells would slowly corrode the human body and mind and take over, transforming into Gastrea.

In order to counter this, a system where a promoter (human being) is paired with an initiator (a super human) is created. The various promoter and initiator combinations take on the Gastrea, mainly due to that fact that normal weapons don't harm the Gastrea and of course, only Initiators being the only ones that are able to deal heavy damage to them. (Of course you should expect that. If you didn't, then you haven't been watching much anime/dramas)

I can't really elaborate much more on this because if I do, it would seriously go into spoilers and reading spoilers about an anime really turns of the experience of watching it. 

All in all, the anime is pretty decent. The action is smooth and nice, the jokes (tsukomi - did I spell that right?) is pretty ok, and there is plenty of gore. With the amount of mystery being hinted at the beginning, I would probably think that the storyline might be quite nice, maybe close to awesome if they could pull it off. The opening sequence for the anime is also quite decent. The opening is sung by Fripside and if you had watched plenty of anime before this, you would know that Fripside is the main group that sungs most of the opening songs in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun.

Well, with the decent start, hopefully this series would pick up and end in an exciting note.

Score: 9/10

First Look: Yu-Gi-Oh Arc V!

Yu-Gi-Oh returns once more with a new season. And like every new season, new tactics and cards are introduced. This season's new move is called Pendulum Summoning.

The world has gotten more and more complex since it was first introduced. First was about Monster Fusions and Ritual Fusions; next was advanced summoning and then followed by Syncho summoning. The previous season was Exceed summoning.

The episode starts out nicely with the introduction of the main character and how he views his father as his inspiration in order to duel. As the events played out in the episode, he somehow got a chance to take on a champion winner from previous tournament and he held his own against the champion. Things took a turn for the worst and during this time, he somehow "remembers" how to use pendulum summoning and in one turn the whole card duel to his favor.

Although the anime started out pretty weirdly, animation was pretty nice; the last two monsters that the main character summoned looked pretty badass. Hopefully, this yu-gi-oh series is a much better one than the previous season.

Score: 6.5/10

First Look: Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei starts off with a whole set of jargon and confusing theories and sparkly scenery of a pair siblings but animation-wise, the anime is pretty strong. If you had read the manga or even the light novel, the first episode of this series would appear quite epic; relatively ok storyline, a pretty decent animation - possibly awesome fighting scenes in the future and a great opening song. The opening song is sung by Lisa, one of my favorite Japanese singer; she's the one who sung the opening for Sword Art Online and the Fate Zero series.

Overall, the anime has great potential; the first episode may have been a disappointment but in time, the series would definitely improve. Once you understand their world and realize how badass the main character can be, it will surely become a pretty enjoyable anime.

Score: 7.5/10

First Look: No Game No Life

Spring Anime 2014 starts pretty nicely with No Game No Life

The story starts off in an interesting fashion where a pair siblings closed themselves off from reality and spend most of their time gaming until they received an email. The email simply stated a simple question:

If there was a world where simple games decided everything... a world on a board, what would you think about that?

It's pretty interesting to see how some of the animes being released nowadays can even post such philosophical questions. For me, I would think that such a world might be a boring one but probably I am missing out some important aspects of it...


The opening music for this anime is pretty awesome and on the first day of its release, I put the music on loop and probably heard it like hundreds of times. The animation is pretty nice and smooth and the storyline (for the first episode at least), is one that instantly hooked me in. As I am writing this post, I already can't wait for the next episode to be released.

Spring Anime 2014 Lineup

There are a number of anime coming up in Spring 2014.

Some of them do look nice; maybe Mahouka and Black Bullet. But some of the others, maybe a "watch first, then judge" approach might be needed for them.

1. Akuma No Riddle
2. Atelier Escha & Logy ~ Tasogare no Sora no Renkinjutsushi
3. Black Bullet
4. Blade & Soul
5. Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou
6. Break Blade (TV)
7. Captain Earth
8. Date A Live Season 2
9. Fairy Tail Season 2 
10. Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?
11. Gokukoku no Brynhildr
12. Hitsugi no Chaika
13. Ishuukan Friends
14. Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken: Stardust Crusaders
15. Kanajo ga Flag wo Oraretara
16. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R
17. Love Live! School Idol Project Season 2
18. M3 - Sono Kuroki Hagane
19. Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei
20. Majin Bone
21. Mekaku City Actors
22. Mushishi Zoku Shou
23. No Game No Life
24. Ryuugajou Nanana no Maizoukin
25. Seikoku no Dragonar
26. Selector Infected WIXOSS
27. Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii
28. Soul Eater Not!
29. Yu Gi Oh Arc V

These list of 29 anime already excluded those that do not interest me; those that portray gay vibes; reverse harem animes, sports anime.

With so many anime in the list and with some leftover from Winter 2014 Anime such as Nisekai and Nobunaga The Fool, its probably a wonder how I can even complete my work...

Winter 2014 Anime Review: Nobanagun

A winter anime series in 2014 where famous characters of the past such as Nobunaga, Isaac Newton and Gandhi are reborn into the world. Their purpose of their rebirth; to defeat monsters, invaders of earth.

The series actually started out pretty strong but weird at the same time. The main character is a girl named Shio Ogura who have this weird fetish over guns and weaponry. The first episode starts off with Shio Ogura and her classmates heading to Taiwan for a class trip but they were then attacked by monsters. Her memories of her past life as Nobunaga awakens and she equips herself with some orb and transform into an ultimate killing machine.

Action-wise, the series stands pretty strong with interesting abilities for each of the characters. Unfortunately, even with such strong action scenes, the series fail because of the lack of storyline. Even after 5 episodes in, no main theme or story seem to flow and it becomes a bore at that point. Another negative point behind the series is poor choice for opening and closing sequences which just sounds like just mere guitar and drums sounds stitched together.

Here are some links for the description of the series

AnimeNewsNetwork
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=15678