Needless

Looks to be the Kamen no Maid Guy/Princess Resurrection/Strawberry Panic! team on this. Who are basically the guys at Madhouse that make the stuff I’m not interested in. Based on a manga by Kami Imai.

Spice And Wolf

More light novel adaptin’ action in the manner in which you demanded! I, however, am still not interested in this dull show. Not this sequel to it.

Bakemonogatari

SHAFT adapt Nisio Isin’s supernatural novels about a school boy turned vampire turned back to school boy turned supernatural problem solver. Still waiting for SHAFT to do something that interests me storywise as much as their animation does. Don’t think this will be it.

Taishō-Era Baseball Girls

Another novel to anime transition. This time Atsushi Kagurazaka’s tale of 1920’s schoolgirls starting a baseball team. The anime appears to have wrung any last vestige of charm from the Sadaji Koike character designs of the characters from the novels.

Zan Sayonara Zetsubō Sensei

SHAFT return to their biggest success with this third TV series of Kôji Kumeta’s manga. Is this the first time SHAFT have had two series on at the same time? The original series of this is the show that made me want to like SHAFT more than I do. Stylistically they are exceptional, it is just the material they tend to adapt does nothing for me.

Hetalia Axis Powers

More of this anthropomorphised WWII nations nonsense. Will this one actually air on TV? Will I actually care?

So the anime industry piddles out a few new series in the next couple of months. Time to get the shots in early!

Weiβ Schwarz

It’s an anime based on a card game. Unfortunately that slot is still ably filled by our favourite angular, Lovecraftian, and now cyberpunk, card game franchise. This show with generic soft faced moppets as its leads stands no chance in changing that.

La Corda D’Oro ~secondo passo~

Pretty boy “reverse harem” gets second season. I see on wikipedia it is in the genre Neoromance, which I read at first as Necromance, which probably is a genre. And if not a genre at the very least a band name.

Kawa no Hikari

This is a one off special, an adaptation of an ecological novel. It features talking animals in the vein of Watership Down and Animals of Farthing Wood. I HATE Watership Down and Animals of Farthing Wood. Talking cartoon animals should be trying to kill one another with anvils, outwitting Police Officers/Park Rangers/Zoo Keepers or battling evil aristocratic toads. This sort of animals in realistic peril cartoons are NO FUN.

Fight Ippatsu! Juden-chan

More of the sort of smutty comedy that Shinichiro Kimura (Burn Up Excess, Cosplay Complex, Hand Maid May and so forth) does a lot of. Unfortunately his brand of smutty comedy tends to be more Carry On Girls rather than Carry On Cleo.

Element Hunters

The promo image looks nice in a sub-Birdy The Mighty sort of way. But then you look at the staff and production company it becomes a lot harder to believe it’ll be any good. However NHK are funding it, and it’s an educational show. The similarly ostensibly educational Marie & Gali looked gorgeous, so there’s some hope here.

COBRA THE ANIMATION: Rokunin no Yūshi

COBRA. Madhouse. Osamu Dezaki. On paper this can’t fail. Dezaki’s original adaptations were great, the question is if the Dezaki of 2009 can match that work?

HATE FUN? SPRING 2009 EDITION: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8

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So after all that, here is what you should absolutely, definitely, check out:

Shin Mazinger – Go Nagai has been well served by his 21st century adaptations thus far, and with Yasuhiro Imagawa in charge this is a must see.
Fullmetal Alchemist – BONES rarely do bad work, and if this is more faithful to the manga, this should be an improvement on the original series.
Eden of the East – As I said, on paper this should be the best show of the year.

If you are fan of the following’s previous endeavours, you’ll be checking these out anyway:

LUPIN III vs. DETECTIVE CONAN
Chi’s Sweet Home – Season 2

And finally here’s a long list of what should be given at least a courtesy glance:

Marie and Gali – Very strong visual design at work here.
Dragonball Kai – It might be the first step on a slippery slope that reduces the budgets of new anime even further, but it will be fascinating to see if it works in improving the flow of the series.
GUIN SAGA – Promising trailers and a home on NHK, not to mention the need to please the many fans of the novels mean this could be great.
Cross Game – Just of the Adachi’s heritage, this has to be worth a look.
Ristorante Paradiso – Production studio is an unknown quantity, but it’s a very interesting choice of manga to adapt to animation.
Soten Koro – Can Madhouse continue their strong run on seinen manga adaptations.
Basquash – If the 3D CG blends nicely this could be a lot of fun.

K-ON

Kyoto Animation are getting their money’s worth out of those musical instrument animation algorithims they used on Haruhi.

Higepiyo

Grumpy faced bearded chick anime based on the grumpy faced bearded chick manga by Risa Itou (Ebichu).

Slap Up Party -Arad Senki-

MMORPG adaptation. Despite that I quite like the character designs, feel like a through back to 90s designs. Hard and angular rather than the softer design choices you see so much of nowadays. The trailer though makes it look like sub-Slayers rubbish. Oh well.

Hatsukoi Limited

OK, I normally rail against these “girls doing funny things” shows, but it’s normally in part due to the often generic aesthetic they end up with. After all, I liked Azumanga Daioh a whole lot, so it’s not like I’m opposed to them out of hand.

So the combination of the character designs, colour design and the assumption that it’s the same Yoshiki Yamakawa directing as directed Hells Angels then it should be worth a look. Even if it is based on a manga by the same person behind Ichigo 100%.

Where is the western release of Hells Angels btw??? Get on that, International Film Festivals and Madhouse!

Chi’s Sweet Home Season 2

PLEASE CONTINUE TO BOW DOWN TO YOUR FELINE GODDESS.

Sugar Bunnies Fleur

Upset at the usurption of their own feline goddess, Sanrio unleash the third batch of Sugarbunnies.

Shinkyoku Sōkai Polyphonica Crimson S

Hey, a sequel to a show I was completely unaware of. Looks like a totally different staff to its original series.

Basquash

Oban Star Racer director Thomas Romain teams up with Shoji Kawamori for a show that hopefully doesn’t resemble Code Lyoko combined with hardline enviromentalism. I mean it appears to be about playing basketball in giant robots, but you can’t be too careful!

Asura Cryin’

Boy meets ghost light novels get adapted by the Nanoha staff. Disinterest levels rising.

07-GHOST

Tokyopop having been pushing the hell out of the mange this is based on in the last 6 months or so. So I’d guess they will be hoping this will give that a boost in interest. I am interested in neither.

Soten Koro

Madhouse adapt Hagin Yi & Gonta King’s historical seinen manga. The best news is Toyoo Ashida (Fist of the North Star) is in the Chief Director’s chair and Hideo Takayama is in charge of the series composition. Takayama’s been doing great work with seinen adaptations of late (Akagi, Kaiji, One Outs, RIDEBACK), so this should be worth checking out.

Ristorante Paradiso

Natsume Ono’s manga is fiercely stylish and if this anime captures half of that it should be worth a look. David Production are a completely unknown quantity to me as studios go, but director Mitsuko Kase was responsible for SaiKano.

Eden of the East

OK. This is potentially THE show of the year, let alone the season.

The noitaminA slot has turned out quality show after quality show (including 2007’s best – Mononoke). But they’ve all been either manga/novel/play adaptations or, in the case of Mononoke, a spin-off from a previous series, Ayakashi (though that particular segment in the series was original material).

Eden of the East represents the first wholly original anime for the slot. And given that anime built from scratch avoid all the problems you get with adaptations, they tend to be better. So when you add that to the fact they don’t put any old rubbish in this slot, then I have high expectations.

Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost In The Shell SAC) writes and directs, with Chika Umino (Honey & Clover, March Comes In Like A Lion) providing character designs.

Shangri-La

Sure, the Range Murata character designs trick the brain into having hope for this. Then you realise it’s a GONZO show. Maybe their reduced production slate might mean this lives up to it’s potential? We shall see.

Tayutama -Kiss on my Deity-

I feel like I should apologise to Queen’s Blade for calling it the sleaziest show this season. This erogame adaptation may prove to be it. At least, for the most part, Queen’s Blade isn’t moe.

Natsu no Arachi!

Shonen romance adaptation from SHAFT. No doubt it will look wonderful. No doubt it will have zero appeal to me storywise.

Tears to Tiara

STANDARD FANTASY ANIME. Based on an erogame. OK, Queen’s Blade is beginning to look like World Masterpiece Theatre at this point.

Saki

More GONZO, this time a show about a high school girl who plays mah jong. Yeah, whatever.

Cross Game

New Adachi adaptation. Baseball, of course. Osamu Sekita, who just started showing up on the credits of the UY episodes I’m writing about at the moment, directs. Will probably check this out as it’s an Adachi story, and I’m interesting in seeing what a modern adaptation of his art style will look like.

Fullmetal Alchemist

For this series hinges on how faithful it is to the original manga. Because otherwise there seems very little point in making it.

Before Green Gables

Yet another show with an odd heritage. Nippon Animation adapt the recently written prequel to Anne of Green Gables, a book they animated in 1979. However that was directed by Isao Takahata. This has Katsuyoshi Yatabe directing it. Yes, the man who gave us Dinosaur King, Gundress and Boku no Pico. What a weird resume that man has.

Hanasekeru Seishounen

Chiaki Kon seems in demand at the moment, and follows Nodame Cantiable Paris with this shoujo romance adaptation. Can’t say the character designs are appealing in anyway whatsoever.

GUIN SAGA

Popular fantasy novel makes the hop to anime. Not overly keen on fantasy stories, but the trailers have been enough to make me want to take a look.

Valkyria Chronicles

Videogame to TV translation #2 of the season. This time from A-1, who are a decent production company, but director Yasutaka Yamamoto has done nothing of note before.

Oh and it’s a videogame adaptation, which invariably suck.

Shin Mazinger

First rumoured to be a Z Mazinger adaptation, this finally materialised as “Shin Mazinger Shōgeki! Z-Hen”. Not “New”. Not “a remake”. This is “True” Mazinger. Whatever that means.

Who cares? It’s Yasuhiro Imagawa (Giant Robo) making his comeback as a director. And he’s writing it too! Yay~!

Metal Fighter Beyblade

When I saw the URL called it MF BEYBLADE, I was kind of hoping I was finally getting to see my favourite rapper in a spinning top based anime. Just like I always wanted.

But no, it’s merely the first Beyblade series in four years. Presumably Battling Spinning Tops didn’t wedge themselves in the kids’ psyche as strongly as Lovecraftian CCGs or pet fighting, and so they’ve laid low, before making a fresh assualt on a new bunch of 8 year olds.

Dragonball Kai

As good as the idea of re-editing a classic, but lengthy, anime to more fit the pacing of the manga it’s based on is, it is also A CHEAP IDEA. So is this really a revival of a classic series, or way to get high ratings in a slot, without having to pay for a new series?

Jewelpet

Presumably the continued success of Sanrio’s Sugar Bunnies shows has prompted to Sega & Sanrio to tap their Jewelpet toys for a similar show.

In which I write far too much about the arguably sleaziest anime of the season…

Queen’s Blade

This is an odd one. Queen’s Blade is based on a series of game books, which in turn are based the classic Lost Worlds game books. Queen’s Blade’s unique sell point is that, unlike the original Lost Worlds books, they feature sexy female warriors suggestively illustrated by famous artists (well, “famous” for drawing sexy women) rather than “Skeleton with Scimitar and Shield” and the like.

Obviously the otaku driven sector of the anime industry is going to eventually get round to everything featuring a sexy drawn lady, and so we have this anime of what is essentially plotless artbooks. Kinji Yoshimoto (Plastic Little, Genshiken 2) directs, a man who is more than familiar with sexily drawn ladies. His shows are often very well animated too, though his Genshiken stint showed he’s far more interested being sexy than being a good director. While everything looked great, the humour had all the life sucked out of it.

Jeez that was a lot to write about a dumb show based on the eternal nerd appeal of chainmail bikinis…

Pandora Hearts

Some sort of generic shonen adaptation from XEBEC. No one fun on the staff and XEBEC aren’t that good anymore.

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~

Oh good grief. More Bee Train nonsense involving assassins, the mafia and mysterious organisations.

Hayate the Combat Butler!!

More butling. I never caught any of the first season. So there you go.

Gokujo!! Mecha Mote Iincho

Adaptation of Tomoko Nishimura’s shojo adaptation. Strangely sparse on the staff details at the moment.