Because I want to say something, but I’m not up to saying much.
Last Season in a Nutshell
Kannagi: Played up the teen hijinks, played down the supernatural angle after the first three episodes. Bad move. Kannagi spends the majority of the series acting like a self-centered selfish bitch.
Torou no Index: Talk, talk, talk. Yeah, some action, but too much talk. Premise was hard to buy. Index’s friends never consulted a doctor, only mages? Ridiculous. Also suffers from the fact that it’s a pastiche of multiple light novels; FMP had the same problem. Dropped it.
Macademi Wasshoi: Enjoyable and crazy little series. The character designs are a bit off-putting at first, but the writers clearly had lots of inspiration for one-off gags and such. What the hell was with the rocket though? Unless the philosophy espoused by it is going to play a role in the plot later on. Waiting on the rest to be fansubbed.
Akane-iro: Well, that’s different. Teen delinquent lives with sexy little sister and rich heiress fiancé, while his parents roam the world being daredevil secret agents. Big Spoiler:
That’s all I followed for more than three episodes; the rest left me going, “Enh”. Which is an improvement over what this season is offering so far. Though I’ve only seen two series openers, unless KissuSissu is a series, and not just an OVA or pilot.
New Season in a Nutshell (so far):
Maria+Holic: I don’t like assholes, and “Maria” is a prize among assholes. Also, I don’t like shows that screw around with reality — Kanako rips a tree out of the ground when she’s upset over finding out her dream girl is a boy. Nobody notices or cares. There is a slim possibility that my crap-o-meter is mis-calibrated right now; I may give this series a second chance. Later. Much later.
Akikan!: Dear God in Heaven. I didn’t think it was possible to make Sekirei look like high quality entertainment, but this show does it. Excuse me while I scream.
AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Thank you.
KissuSisu: “Nothing says loving like home cooking.” Wait, make that “nothing says loving like horny sisters.” This time, the (step-)sisters choose the brother. And they’re not shy about it. Dad’s all for it. The brother is not. Not as out there as Kanokon was, but it pushes the borders a bit. Is this a series, or a one-off OVA, or an advertisement for a hentai series?
About the rocket in Macademi Wasshoi: [spoiler]The theme of the series is about belonging, about having a place, about being comfortable with who you are and what you are doing there, and who you do it with.
Part of that is for tools and creations. A creation that doesn’t get used has no reason to exist. That was Falce’s fate, originally; Falcesque created her, but never named her, and never told her what her function was. She finally is fulfilled because she’s become Takuto’s staff. That’s her place, that’s her function, and that’s all she wants or needs.
That episode was about three more creations. First was the diary. It had been abandoned, somehow, and became spiritized and wandered the halls begging people to use her. From the description, and in particular from the reported “Use me! Use me!”, recognized a kindred spirit. She is able to spiritize, and to unspiritize, items, and she was able to restore the diary to its original form. And Sakuma started using it, which is all it really wanted. (Even if it was being used for porn.)
The rest of that episode was about Trin, who was having identity issues about her loli form. Trin is an AI. They don’t say so explicitly but I think she was created by Professor Sagami, and he was the one who designed her virtual appearance. Later, he created a golem body for her to wear when she needed to operate in the real world.
Trin wasn’t comfortable with that body, that shape, because she didn’t understand how it related to her function. She admired the shape of the rocket (and we’ll carefully ignore the Freudian imagery; sometimes a rocket is just a rocket, OK?) because it was sleek and functional and clean. (In other words, it was what we engineers refer to as “elegant”.)
So Takuto’s team took her to see it, and Falce used her ability to spiritize items to spiritize the rocket so that she could talk to him. And he helped her to realize that her form does have a meaning. It is, of course, intended to make it easier for humans to interact with her without feeling creepy or threatened. By making her a cute girl, she’s not in the uncanny valley and she also isn’t scary.
It’s not just the things. The next episode was about Eine and her “sister”, and about how Eine has come to feel comfortable in her job as Sakuma’s tsukaima. All of which is setup for what is revealed about Takuto, and I’ll put that in a separate spoiler block.[/spoiler]
About Takuto: [spoiler]Takuto is an incarnation of the creator of all things. And I think that what will eventually become clear is that the reason that Maria, the Creator, entered the world was that she, too, was lonely. She, too, wanted a place to be, a function, a job to do, people to be around.[/spoiler]
Rats. That should have been “Falce recognized a kindred spirit”.
I got bored with Index when the chain-smoking loli teacher stopped appearing in episodes.
Kiss x sis is planned to be an OVA series. A very ecchi OVA, to be certain, but not quite a full-fledged ero anime. I was underwhelmed when I first read about it at dotclue; incest is hardly untrodden ground for anime, even excluding porn, and the old they’re-not-actually-related-by-blood-so-it’s-ok copout lessens the novelty even more. After actually watching the episode, though… wow. Maybe I’m just behind the curve with respect to current trends in ecchi anime, but damned if my jaw didn’t drop at more than one point. Pushing borders, indeed.
Is it just me, or does the voice of Riko sound almost exactly like Wolfie from Kanokon? I’m sure I’m just imagining that Ako sounds like Chizaru.. the seiyuu names don’t match, but I’d bet they’re aliases.
The official site has photos of Ayana Taketasu (Ako) and Yuiko Tatsumi (Riko), so it’s pretty unlikely that they’re aliases for established voice actresses. It seems to be the first anime role for either of them.