Omohide.com

Well, I’m back after my exam-month break, ready to tackle some new anime series.  After waiting a bit for first impressions to start popping in, I ended up picking three series to try out at this relatively early point in the season.  Ookiku Furikabutte, of course, I was going to follow anyways due to being a huge fan of the original. Giant Killing, solely on the praise given to it by psgels on his blog.  Finally, Yojou-han Shinwa Takei seemed interesting and different, and appeared to lack otaku tropes, so I decided it was worth a shot as well.  That’s not to say I’m not open to try other series as more detailed reviews come in (perhaps unveiling a hidden gem), but my scanthrough of the season just seems to show a lot of fanservice, visual novel, moe or action shows that I’m not particularly interested in.

Yojou-han Shinwa Taekei

(Based on the first episode) Colour me impressed.  While there still needs to be some more work in terms of getting me to empathize with the cast on a more human level, my reaction to the series is otherwise overwhelmingly positive.  It’s slightly eccentric, smartly written, and very, very enjoyable.  The last “eccentric” anime I tried was Kūchū Buranko, which I dropped after the first episode.  Yojou-han feels different, though, primarily because I truly wanted to know what happened to the main character, and this kept me watching.  It did an excellent job of “selling” his personality and character to the viewers, and the style doesn’t feel as if it’s trying to be eccentric for the sake of being different.  Of course, this is all subjective and I’m sure there are people who will say the exact opposite about those two series.  The other thing I should mention is what everyone has been mentioning – there’s a lot of fast-talking.  It didn’t bother me for the most part, but I suppose I just have a liking for that quirky style of delivery.  This one is high on my importance list, and I’m eagerly waiting for the next episode.

Giant Killing

(Based on the first episode) I’m not a fan of soccer and have never seen a soccer-oriented anime at all.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because I said the same thing about baseball anime – before being sucked into Touch and Ookiku Furikabutte and being able to see the value in stories about sports, and their possible undercurrents of teamwork, friendship, and similar such themes.  So I approached Giant Killing with an open mind and was rewarded – the show sucked me in from the beginning.  It involves two things that I am a sucker for – 1) stories of underdogs rising to success, and 2) mysterious-but-immensely-talented “teacher” characters.  The main character, Tatsumi, isn’t wholly likeable yet – and I’m told that this is due to a change from the manga-anime transition, but I can’t say that I didn’t find myself engrossed in his story.  The players here are older than those of OoFuri or Touch, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though I will admit that I like OoFuri’s concept of a young, newbie team overcoming expectations.  But that’s neither here nor there – I don’t know where Giant Killing is heading but I certainly like what I’ve seen so far.  The art and music are quite good as well.  High hopes for this on.

Ookiku Furikabutte Season 2

(Based on the first few episodes) Considering I spent a fair bit of the previous paragraph praising OoFuri, I suppose this one is a tad redundant.  As expected, Ookiku Furikabutte‘s second season doesn’t differ too greatly from the first – and that’s fine by me.  You still have the same charming interactions and same great characters.  I did notice, though, that the pace of the baseball games seem to have sped up just a tad.  I suppose it wasn’t realistic to expect every single game to be portrayed in as much detail as the two from the original season, and that the level of detail is proportional to the game’s importance.  The first game from S1 was, well, the first game, and the second was a big match against a big name school.  The first match of S2, then, is a relatively quieter affair.  Still, I look forward to the next “important” match, even though I know it will be painful to have to wait for the conclusion of a game, week by week, for nearly ten episodes.  In short – I still love Ookiku Furikabutte.