First Look at the New Titles for the Fall of 2014

Terraformars: In the 21st century humans sent algae and cockroaches to terraform Mars.  500 years later a deadly virus is threatening humanities existence. A special team of genetically modified people are assembled to travel to Mars and retrieve a sample of the virus that can be used to create an antidote.  This is the third such mission undertaken.  The first two failed because the crew members were exterminated by the giant cockroaches descended from the original ones sent.

    I really don't expect to be watching this one past a few obligatory episodes.  The animation is pretty shoddy and the characters are less than interesting.  It reminds me if a poorly done 70s seinen manga.  On top of the shoddy art and disinteresting story it’s graphically edited for its more extreme violence...or so it seems.

Gundam G no Roconguista: Set far in the future on the Gundam timeline, Earth appears to be peaceful and prosperous thanks in part to a system of space elevators.  A group of trainee pilots, on the first official visit to orbit, find themselves under attack from pirates.  In a daring attempt the youngest recruit, Bellri, is able to combat the pirates mobile suit well enough to capture it with the help of two other squad mates.  A mysterious and semi catatonic girl who is also aboard the elevator reacts to the strange mobile suit and its feisty female pilot.

    I really dig the throw back to the 70s character designs in this show.  Something tells me this pirate group is not really a pirate group and may be something more akin to the mysterious Gundam organization from Gundam 00 (episode two reveals the feisty girl is royalty from another country, global war is afoot!).  So far the story is light and easy going, the characters appear to be enjoying themselves, even under duress.  I'm sure that will change at some point in the story when harsh reality sets in.  It will be interesting to see the stories message unfold.

Danna ga Nani o Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken: A normal woman ends up marrying a professional otaku blogger, for reasons even she doesn't understand.  Yet in some ways she finds happiness and only has to figure out how to manipulate her obsessive husband to suit her wants and needs.

    Aside from the paid blogger thing this is kind of like my life!!  Maybe not totally, but my wife is completely normal, non-otaku and shakes her head at my passions.  So, that being said, I think I'm going to enjoy this series, even if the episodes are four minutes long.  It will be interesting to see if it develops beyond random scenarios and builds an overall story line.

Sora no Method: Years after moving to Tokyo, Momoka returns to the small village of her early childhood, but her memories are lost to the mists if time.  The first full morning at her old home she is greeted by a bizarre girl calling herself Noel, who seems to know her.  Confused by the situation she tells the strange girl to leave.  Fragments of memory start to come to her and she realizes the Noel is a girl she became friends with before moving away.  Noel is also related to the alien ship that remains dormant above the village.

    Not sure what’s up with the spaceship or the girl’s connection to it.  On the onset the story is about Momoka returning to a forgotten past and dealing with her mother being dead.  It will be interesting to see her being reunited with her lost friends and discovering the secrets behind Noel and why Momoka moved.  But this series also seems rather stereo typical of mundane shojo slice of life dramas.  The brief flashes and encounters with past friends seem to be establishing them as rote personalities.  Glasses girl, tsundere, etc.  On top of that, the character designs look pretty shoddy...so I'm not sure how long this one will stick around.

Okami Shojo to Kuro Ooji:  With her high school debut, Erika, who has a nasty habit of lying ends up befriending 2 questionable girls who brag about dating men.  She fabricates a boyfriend of her own to impress them.  When her lies start to be questioned she tries to cover them up by taking a photo of a random guy on the street.  Unfortunately for her that guy is one of the more sought after guys in her school.  When he learns about her predicament he agrees to help her out.  On the condition she is his dog, almost literally.  What started out as a lucky break now seems to be a fitting punishment for her lies.

     Not sure how I feel about this one.  The feminist in me really wants to hate it for what it represents.  It’s also a worn out plot devise that's seen quite  a few incarnations recently.  But,  I'll give it a shot even though the ending can be seen from a mile away.

World Trigger: A remote town in Japan is one day perturbed by the appearance of a gate to a different dimension.  Powerful creatures dubbed Neighbors come through the gate and conventional weapons are unable to defeat them.  All hope is lost until a group of people show up who claim to have been preparing for this event for long time and are able to defeat the invaders.  They are welcomed and set up a defensive perimeter in the city.  Four years later the Neighbors still show up and the group dispatches them with their specially trained powers.  A new recruit of an unusual sort arrives to help out,  a humanoid that is from the other side of the gate and can use their powers to combat invading neighbors.

     I will not be continuing to watch this beyond episode one,  it’s a shoddy,  played out and hole riddled plot shonen  battle series.  It comes complete with power ups,  transformation sequences,  catch phrases and relatable adolescent characters.  The art work is horrible and of little depth.  The comedic segments seem forced and out of place.  There are to many clichés in this series for me to even want to begin addressing...I guess if you yearned for a kid friendly Attack on Titan this is what you would get.

Gugure Kokkuri-san: A lonely orphan girl summons a fox spirit with the Japanese version of an Ouija board.  The fox spirit decides to stick around and haunt her to become her guardian.  The girl,  who rejects contact and feelings does what she can to keep him at bay, but at the same time coyly welcoming a break from her lonely life.

    This could end up being my favorite show of the new season.  Its pretty funny and has some moments of sentiment and emotion, unfortunately those moments are disrupted in text book fashion.  Either way the main characters are enjoyable and the real test will be to see how additional characters are integrated.  So far though,  entertaining and enjoyable.

 

Orenchi no Furo Jijo: One day Tatsumi inadvertently saves a merman from dying on the shore of a river.  Now he has to deal with the pampered bi-shonen refusing to return to the dirty natural waterways,  favoring his bath tub instead.

    Not sure how I feel about this one after its first 2 minutes episode. The animation is pretty shoddy and I'm not sure how long the gag will last even with the length each episode is.  I feel this thing could very easily turn into some weird fantasy BL thing.  If it does, whatever, as long as its entertaining.  Time will tell though how this one pans out.

Inou Battle wa Ichijou-kei no Naka de:  Five members of the literature club gain super powers,  but half a year later they still don't understand why and haven't found any justifiable reason to have them.

     This is a rather funny series that turns the super power genre on its head by keeping its characters in mostly mundane situations.  The only male member of the club is the only one expecting legions of bad guys to start showing up and insists on everyone honing their abilities and continuing to practice them.  The problem is that his power is apparently useless.  If this show maintains its mundane scenario it could be quite entertaining and enjoyable.  Hopefully it doesn't turn into some shonen battle shlock where these kids are chosen defenders of the world...then it would become truly mundane and uninteresting.  If it keeps up with the struggles of pointlessly having super powers, you want to hide, this could be good for a half a season or so.

Magic Kaito 1492: Kaito dreams of being a famous magician like his father who died 8 year earlier.  When a famous illusionist thief returns after an 8 year absence he discovers his fathers secret and decides to take up his mantle in order to find out if his father was murdered.

    This is a classic shonen detective story.  Its like a cross between Lupin and Conan mixed with illusionist parlor tricks.  The character designs are like something out of the 80s...the noses...like carrots.  The entire premise is cliche , especially since Kaito lives next door to his police rival, who appears to be a keystone detective.  With all of these faults I think I may enjoy this show.  It looks like its going to be a fun throwback to an older time that produced some quality shows.  I don't see this one being memorable but I do think its going to be a decent homage.

 Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete: The members of the astronomy club for some reason are known for their abilities to intervene in conflicts between students, sometimes rather forcefully.  When unease between its own members occurs the ones not involved do their best to correct the situation.  Two members, So and Kaori, are childhood friends and live together.  When Kaori's deep feelings for So start to cause problems regarding her jealousy the club does its best to make So aware of the situation and to make amends.  They confess their feelings to each other and things start to look like they will return to normal, when...Kaori gets killed by a bus.  Much misery and sadness occurs.  Then in the last 2 minutes of the episode time jumps back a few days and some mysterious girl crashes into the roof of the school, naked.

    OK, so this show is based on a galge of sorts.  It stinks of galge through out the first episode.  Ko is the main character and you can tell he's not actually interested in his childhood friend/house mate.  He's more got the hots for another girl in the club.  But when everyone pushes him to realize Kaori's feelings he goes along and thinks its a good idea too, but then shes killed, but then we jump back in time...  So I knew this show dealt with time travel to an extent but I do not understand how or why and to what end.  The president of the club has this mystery cube and apparently with it or something else has the ability to alter time.  She slyly demonstrated this through out the episode and her reaction to people wondering why she was always were she needed to be was pretty well done.  I love stories that deal with time travel but I have a growing disdain for galge based anime.  So I'm a bit torn.  I will keep going with this one until it gives me some solid reasons to not continue, as I am intrigued by the time travel aspects of it.  In some ways it also seems like a cheap knock off of Suzumuya Haruhi no Yuutsu.  When Kaori got obliterated by the truck I also has a flashback to the amazingly depressing Kimi ga Nozomu Eien.

Donten ni Warau: Taking place 11 years after the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and with it the samurai's status.  Factions of people still upset about the Meiji restorations attempts at Westernization sometimes plot to overthrow the government.  In order to deal with these dangerous factions a special prison is built in the middle of lake Biwa to contain them.  Three orphaned brothers who are famed for their swordsmanship are entrusted with transporting and helping to capture these rebellious samurai.

    Not sure how I feel about this show.  It looks nice and I usually enjoy stories that take place in this period of time.  But the the main characters are rather annoying and out of place.  Its like the only reason they were created was to make girls fawn over them and prime cosplay opportunities.  The series seems like it was designed by a committee that wanted to come up with a shonen battle series appealing to women.

Shingeki no Bahamut Genesis: In a world of high fantasy different factions worked together to fight the legendary dragon god Bahamut before it could do more damage.  1000 years later the world is a relatively peaceful place with its different races and factions living in relative harmony.  A flashy and reckless bounty hunter named Favaro ends up running into a woman who comes from a far away land who asks for help in getting home.  She has in her possession one of the two pieces that contain Bahamut.  He knows nothing about her or her secrets and thinks he a gullible woman like he toys with in bars.  Unfortunately for him shes way more powerful and intelligent than he suspect.

    Even though this is fantasy, which I'm not usually a fan of, and based on a video game, which I'm barely a fan of, I think I'm going to really enjoy this show.  The characters and the pace look like something you would expect from Watanabe Shinichiro.  The first episode was highly entertaining and I cant wait for episode 2.  So far,  fantastic, it's like Dungeons & Dragons meets Cowboy Bebop.

Ai Tenchi Muyo: We find the protagonist of this legacy harem title a new student teacher at an all girls school.  It seems Tenchi,  who has fought intergalactic terrorists, is a bit unsure of his new surroundings and the seemingly overtly sexual student body.

   The fact that the episodes are 4 minutes long should have been the first clue...but it looks like the anime that can be considered one of the originators of the harem genre is now being redone to fit modern day standards of the genre.  I'm not particularly enamored with this possibility.  In fact this rather pisses me off...and I thought Shin Tenchi was useless.  This show appears to be a barrel scrapping attempt to kill a semi respected franchise...so much hatred...  Things get even more confusing when episode 3 features Tenchi in a completely different scenario were Washu sends him to some past time to search for two friends of hers who are stuck there.  I'm sure there is some link between both story lines but I am not sure how eager I am to find out...

Parasyte the Maxim: A mysterious worm like creature is invading people and eating their brains through out Japan.  Once the host body is taken over the parasite controls them to further it's life, usually feasting on living things around it.  Shinichi was lucky and the parasite that came for him was only able to bore into his hand.  Now the sentient creature has struck a bargain for mutual survival with his host.  The creature leads him to search out others of his kind in order for both of them to figure out what going on.

    This is a straight action horror series.  I found out that it is based on a manga from the late 80's, early 90's, which is a bit unusual these days as most everything that is coming out is fresh and new.  Regardless, this comes from the same time period that spawned some of anime's most notable and infamous horror titles; Guyver and Genocyber.  I have never been a fan of those shows but won't let that determine my thoughts on this show.  Still, as it stands, I am not too interested in this one as I have little taste for this style of horror.  The main character is being dragged around by the creature inside of him, which has unlimited shape changing abilities.  Likely it will just be a series of gruesome battles inter-cut with scenes of savagery enacted by the parasites that ate their victims brains.  Already the opening sequence showed one devouring someones head.  So we will see after a few episodes if this breaks out of the plot devices I foresee and becomes interesting.

Shirobako: Five girls who make up their high schools animation club promise to one day work together in Tokyo for an anime production company.  The first episode skips ahead a few years to focus on one of the girls who is working hard as a production assistant for an anime company.  The episode details the drama and hardships faced with trying to get a new series completed on time for all of its release dates.

    I think I am going to enjoy this show, I always like the series' that have behind the scenes looks at the industry, regardless of how overly dramatic they can be.  It looks like its going to be a fun and somewhat informative view into the crazed life of those in the anime industry.  Already the show has shown that it can muster up a large cast of support characters with varying personalities and backgrounds.  As a bonus there are some comical and smile inducing nods to Initial D in the episode.  It will be interesting to see how they bring in the other girls and if there will be that push to see them fulfill their dream of working together.  In the end I think this will be light and fun and easy going.

Shigatsu wi Kimi no Uso: Tsubaki and Kosei are childhood friends and neighbors but live opposite lives.  Tsubaki is bright, energetic and full of life.  Kosei on the other hand is depressed and uninspired, living in a world of loneliness and doubt.  Kosei was a child prodigy at the piano, due in part to his musician mother and her strict training.  After his mothers death Kosei found that he could no longer play the piano and without that one thing in his life found that there was little left for him in the world.  He now spends his days floating through a gray world.  Tsubaki invites him on a group date in which she is trying to hook up two of her friends.  Kosei is instantly mesmerized by Tsubaki's friend, Kaori, who is filled with more energy and life than even Tsubaki.  Kaori plays violin and her energy reignites something in Kosei.

    This one might be entertaining, especially given the dark undertones and the less than sparkling character backgrounds.  It feels like it will be similar to Nodame Cantabile but less happy go lucky.  I can sense the love triangle that will cause friction.  There seems to be some pain and sadness in Kaori's life as well that could be interesting once it bubbles to the surface.  I'm not a fan of the character designs on this one, classic shojo big eyes with detailed eyelashes (even though the manga is apparently classified as shonen)

Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai: At Shiomi Academy all of the best and brightest students in Japan gather to challenge themselves.  The campus is incredibly large; with classes being close to 600 students.  Kyotaro can sometimes sense when major incidents are going to happen.  In the process of saving a new student from death he ends up grabbing her breast.  The scene of him doing this goes viral and he can't escape the label of molester now.  The girl seeks him out and they apologize over the misunderstanding and work to clear things out.  She along with her friend convince him to join their small group effort to make her less of an introvert.  Things are moving in the shadows of the school though and they all seem to have their eyes on Kyotaro and his abilities of premonition.

    Its tough to tell how this show is going to end up.  On one hand its a set up for a glaringly obvious harem based on a galge, but the supernatural elements and 'people working from the shadows' aspect adds another layer that may or may not suck.  So far though, not very impressed.  The animation is pretty boring and annoying and the main lead is a whiny bitch.  So, five episodes then we see whats up.