Yuru Yuri

Yuru Yuri:  B+

Yuru:  A term or sound implying laziness or an easygoing manner.  Yuri:  Girls love, romance or sexuality between women.   So, Yuru Yuri is easygoing girlish romance.  It's a slice of life show about a relatively small (a main cast of 8) group of middle school girls who form an awkward web of romantic entanglements, many of which are obvious and many of which are vehemently denied by those involved in them.  Nearly all of them are one-sided or are in that odd stage where neither one has recognized the relationship as being affection yet.

It's difficult to describe what makes me enjoy it as a series so much.  One thing is the relative awareness of the girls of each others' feelings: with only a handful of exceptions, all the girls are pretty much aware of the various crushes that are going on, even the ones who are the targets of those crushes.  Another is the series' mix of schadenfreude (a staple of any comedy) with sweetness, as much as the series is mean to its characters, we have long moments of getting to see them being nice to each other, we get to see why they're friends in the first place.

If you're into girls being awkward and silly and also sometimes just being children, Yuru Yuri will give you plenty to laugh at.  If you need men in your stories to enjoy them, or if you expect fan service or resolution to extended romantic silliness, move on.

Rozen Maiden

Rozen Maiden:  B

I've been referring to this show to my friends as "Gothloli Highlander," because that is the main thrust of the plot.  There are magical, animate dolls (the eponymous Rozen Maidens) who were created to play the "Alice Game," a battle where each of the seven sister-dolls fights to take each others "Rosa Mystica," which is their animating magical soul, and after having taken all of them, the winner will become Alice, the ultimate girl, beloved by their Father and their creator.

The series actually focuses more on the relationships between the Rozen Maiden dolls, who are, despite their centuries-old existences, still children, and each has a different outlook on their creation, their sisters, and the Alice Game.  The series attempts to reasonably discuss the effects of this particular goal of existence on a group, especially a group that has become familiar with one another over an extended period of centuries.

I enjoyed the series for its emotional content and the weird childishness of the dolls, even the more mature ones have a number of childish quirks that stand out as making them interesting characters, more than just a collection of well-written traits.  If I were to criticize the series, I would say that the characters' elaborate costumes draw too much of the animation budget, the combat scenes are distinctly lacking in dynamism or animation quality.

The series is two seasons and an OVA, but the series, both in its manga and anime forms, has suffered from executive changes and sudden cancellations, the second season of the anime is a divergent plot from the manga, and the original manga cut off after a sudden deus ex machina before beginning again in an alternate universe.  Overall, the anime manages to be a coherent story that is functional, though unresolved.

If the idea of watching dolls that might as well be human bicker, laugh, love, fight and learn appeals to you, you'll probably enjoy Rozen Maiden.  If you need action or find emotional subplots tiring, you probably won't.

Ao no Exorcist

Ao no Exorcist:  C

The antichrist reaches puberty and joins a school which trains exorcists for the Catholic church so that he can kick Satan's ass.

Ao no Exorcist (The Blue Exorcist) is a shonen series that has a similar concept to many other series like it, and that makes it difficult to criticize or praise.  I was fairly certain of what I was getting into with the first episode (Naruto with Christian demonology instead of ninjas) and I was neither impressed nor disappointed. It's competently written, the characters are effective and the series overall holds itself together, but it doesn't really do any more than that.

I feel a little bad for being completely unsurprised by this series.  I said after the third episode, "Huh, I think this is getting a C," and my opinion of it didn't change for twenty-two more episodes.  I don't think I gave it that grade because I want to be right, despite the fact that there were good, even awesome moments in the series, it just wasn't as brilliantly crafted or well-written as I've come to expect from my grading system, and the awesome moments were far outnumbered by predictable (but not bad) story and action.  But I feel kind of bad about it.

If you're into shonen and like to see the Japanese perspective on the 'fun' parts of Christian mythology and demonology, you can have some fun with Ao no Exorcist.  I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who hadn't expressed a vested interest in either shonen anime as a genre or silly Japanese takes on Christianity as a theme.

Anime News

The two series I'm really enjoying watching (Dog Days' and Yuru Yuri ♪♪) are both mid-season, so giving a report on them would be inappropriate.  Instead I figured I'd just talk about what Japan's coming out with in the next few months.

First of all, disappointing to me personally is the news that Kizumonogatari (the prequel movie to Bakemonogatari) has been delayed by Shaft.  However, instead, over the course of October we're going to be treated to a couple of Madoka Magica movies, so I guess it's okay in the end.   Of course, there's the problem that we won't actually be able to WATCH those except as illegal and poor-quality camrips until around spring or summer next year, but that's how movies go.

Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 is coming out soon too, but has the exact same problem as the new Madoka movies; we won't actually be able to watch it for quite a while.  I'm looking forward to it, though.

I have confirmed that a second season of Medaka Box will be airing.  So that's great.

Shaft, in addition to the Madoka Movies (which are probably in post by now) is also working on a new season of Hidamari Sketch.

It seems as though we'll be getting YET ANOTHER season of  Hayate no Gotoku, which I can't deny a bit of childish glee for.

There's a Toaru Majutsu no Index movie coming up late in the year (maybe early next year).

News I didn't expect to hear: Production IG is making a Mass Effect anime movie slated for Winter 2012 with the subtitle "Paragon Lost. "  I suspect that'll make the jump to the US fairly quickly, since the franchise is quite popular over here.

There are a lot of other series coming out that I haven't done the research on to know if they're worth watching, and I'm sure some of them will be showing up on THIS VERY BLOG in the future.

Utawarerumono

Utawarerumono:  D+

I first heard of this series when I was shown the DVD special... it must have been 4 years ago.  It was amusing and kind of silly, but given that the title (which translates to "The One Being Sung") is a rather complex mishmash of japanese syllables, it didn't stick in my head and I lost it until a friend reminded me of the name a few weeks ago.  So I decided I'd watch it.

And I really really wanted to like it.  The characters held my attention and the fantasy world felt fantastic and mysterious.  The protagonist clearly had some powerful magical dark secret (and amnesia, which worked out well, actually) and I was looking forward to learning more about it.

One of my first complaints were the pointlessly evil villains.  These guys were moustache-twirling, dog-kicking, incredibly-skilled-but-good-hearted-subordinate-who-refused-to-massacre-a-village-full-of-innocent-people-firing idiot villains.  And they don't stop showing up, either.  Maybe I've just been spoiled by other anime that have provided justifications for why people are bastards, but that was my first disappointment.  But whatever, right?  We beat up some bad guys and save the world.  It's cool.

More characters keep getting rolled as the series progresses on, especially female characters.  This isn't really surprising, originally, Utawarerumono was a turn-based strategy hentai game, but very few elements of the original fan service or naughty bits are left over (in TVTropes terms, the underwear has been very well bleached).  I think we don't even see cleavage until episode 3?  Anyway, that combined with the fact that the girls' reasons for being attracted to the protagonist are either well-justified or just left out led me to enjoy the first half of the series.

Now, I'm going to spoil the ending, because it's the part of the series that ruins it.

Then, around episode 18 or so, things just start going downhill, and they start going downhill fast.  A character who was made sympathetic begins making outstandingly bad decisions.  We suddenly have invincible mecha in our fantasy setting (which isn't that bad, it's anime, right?).  And then the invincible mecha aren't invincible any more, and our protagonist can turn into a kaiju.  That's his dark secret.  He turns into godzilla.  And then evil godzilla shows up and they fight.  And the protagonist has to be sealed beneath the earth for the safety of the world.  The end.

Even that could have been made a credible story except for the fact that so many of the characters wind up not mattering at all to the ongoing story, they were only put in there because they were in the original game and taking them out would have displeased their fans.

It reminded me more than anything of the Fate Stay Night anime: they clearly have way more story and characterization and plot than they can ever fit into 26 episodes, so they tried to make a cohesive and expansive story out of everything, but they wind up not giving enough focus to the things that would have made that story make sense because they're trying to give screen time to everything else in it.  Which is really too bad, because there are some nice ideas and some genuinely lovable characters in this series, and it's really disappointing that they series they're in sucks so bad.

I should mention in regard to Fate Stay Night's anime: I also played/read the Visual Novel, and it was mind-blowingly good, a truly brilliant example of what can be done with a voiced and partially animated choose-your-own-adventure story that takes full advantage of its multiple endings and branching plot trees to deepen characterization and plot.  So I think it's very likely that the Utawarerumono GAME is actually really good, worth making into an anime, certainly.

But unless you have a disturbing fetish for animal ears, tails and disappointment, I recommend against watching the series.