First Impressions

A new season of anime is starting. Time for the first impressions. This entry will be updated each time I watch a new series.

Daphne in the Brilliant Blue: The storyline is pretty ok. Lots of fan services. Sort of sad I guess. The last scene was unexpected. Waiting for episode 2.

Kita He ~Diamond Dust Drops~: Kita = North, He = Towards. (in this case) No idea what the title means. The first episode didn’t really get through to me. It seems to me like it’s trying to evoke some sort of emotional response from the audience or something. Didn’t exactly work. The story is about a girl working in a fish stall together with her mother. Her father passed away and they were in debt and poor and dying of hunger, etc etc. She was betrothed to a rich owner of a hotel guy who likes her but she sort of hate him and etc etc. There is this cool jazz guy who she likes to hang out with but her mother doesn’t like him and etc etc. SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE THOSE FORBBIDEN LOVE SOAP OPERAS! I might watch episode two if I feel like it…

Yumeria: On the night of his 16th birthday, the main character dreamt about a girl in a weird costume fighting off a monster. He woke up and found the girl lying next to him. Naked. Welcome to the first harem of this season. Can’t really get much plot from the first episode, but it seems like there are 5 girls (who have not met in the first episode) fighting off some kind of evil forces, which takes place in the main character’s dream? Anyway, the harem portion is pretty standard stuff, with humor mixed in at the right places, however I pray that the combat portion doesn’t turn into a Power Rangers thing… Well, I’ll keep track of this series and see how it goes.

Cosmopolitan Prayers: This has one of those beginnings that make absolutely no sense at all and makes you go “WTF?!??” Let’s sum up what I have learnt from the 12 minutes long episode. The main character is a cosplayer. She was tricked by someone into doing some kind of ritual and released some things from someplace. In the process she went to another dimension/universe/time/whattheheck and met these people who wear funky costumes and use magic-like abilities call Charms. (which they have to strip to use? LoL) They are the Cosmopolitan Prayers, aka Cosprayer, (a play on words, since cosplayer sounds the same in Japanese as they do not differentiate between “r” and “l”) apparently they do something along the lines of monster-slaying/exorcist or what crap. Did I mention that they drive around in colour-coded monster trucks that reminds me strongly of sentai? Oh yeah, I was thinking that this anime had a surprising little amount of fan-services for a mostly-girl cast. Well, let’s just say the ED proved me wrong. Really, really wrong. Since there are only 8 episodes and each one is only 12 minutes, I’ll probably keep watching this to see how this turns out.

Area 88: Based on a very very old OVA, which I guess is either based on, or based on by, the arcade game UN Squadron. (mmm… nostalgic..) The storyline is pretty light in the first episode, but there is enough to give me some hope for the future ones. The fight scenes are pretty lame though, especially since all the aircrafts are 20-year-old antiques. F-8E, MiG-15… WTF? Well I’ll see how this turns out.

Mezzo: The TV series for the hentai ova Mezzo Forte. About this 3 people who belong to Danger Service Agency, which, from the context of the first episode, I guess is some kind of mercenaries-for-hire group. I don’t like the character designs and the plot just lost me half way through the episode. The action sequences are fairly ok, but not many other redeeming factors. Attempts at humor failed horribly. I might watch another episode to see if it gets better.

Maria-sama ga Miteru: Quite an interesting beginning. The story is set in an all-girls school. There’s a system in the school called the “soeur” (meaning sister) where a senior takes a junior as her petite soeur and trains/guides her. Basically the main character, Yumi, is asked by a very popular upperclass girl, Sachiko, who she secretly admires, to be her soeur. However it turns out that Sachiko only asked her because she needed a petite soeur in order to voice her opinions in the Student Council so as to escape from her role in a school play. After hearing this, Yumi rejected the offer. The Student Council made a bet with Sachiko: If she can convince Yumi into being her soeur, she can quit the play. That sets the story for the rest of the series, which will probably revolve around this…

In other words: HEAVY YURI UNDERTONES. Seriously, Sachiko and Yumi look like they were going to kiss or something in a few scenes… This whole soeur business sounds a bit too much like courtship.

Still, the premises is interesting enough, so I’ll probably keep up with this series. The whole thing reminds me of Fruits Basket for some reason. (which was the first thing I thought of when I saw the series poster)