Winter Season ’08 (part 1?)

Posted On January 11, 2008

The winter season has started, but unlike every other blog I’ve come across, I am in fact not watching every show that rears its poorly animated head. I am a very discerning creature, and after about four or so years of seriously watching anime I can tell just from various promotional materials what would probably interest me. Thusly, out of all the current offerings that have aired up to this point, I have only watched three shows, all of which I will cover now.

• Rosario + Vampire: Stupid fanservice show– based on a Jump title and animated by studio Gonzo. I can’t really say that this combination is one that produces anything of respectable quality, but so long as Gonzo doesn’t screw up the animation, I could watch this for 13 episodes. If it starts looking like Soul Link then I’ll stop, since poorly rendered fanservice is just retarded.
• Wolf and Spices: Cheap but not ugly animation mixed with a boring premise and as of right now boring characters. Yes, I find it boring, even if Cunningham loves the book to pieces.
• Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: More of the same, which isn’t a bad thing at all. The show has the same clean minimalism that defined the first series, but steps up the key-frames for more fluid sequences. Soundtrack is a mixture of old and new (mostly new) so it’s not like they decided to cheap-out on anything. It’s hard to tell if the humour will remain the same. This episode was mostly bizarre, but only because the first eight or so minutes were based around the nonsensical stories found on the dust-jacket flaps of the original manga. The normal part of the show also has weirder moments too, so it’s hard to tell where this new season will go. Anyway, it’s the best thing I’ve seen so far.

That’s all. Apart from those three, I’m waiting for subs of Minami-ke ~Okawari~ and Gunslinger Girl 2. Yeah, I know they’ve gotten mixed reviews, but I need to see them for myself. I’d watch Hakaba Kitarou and Noramimi if people actually subbed them, though.