Bishounen silliness that goofs around with the whole fantasy genre of Earthlings magically finding themselves in fantasy worlds where they are inexplicably important. Rather that travelling to the magical world in question by magic portal or wardrobe, hero Yuri Shibuya is instead sucked down a school toilet. Junji Nishimura (Urusei Yatsura) does his best, but struggles with a budget that must be comparatively lower that what he had to work with during the peak years of Urusei Yatsura.
Successful enough to produce 2 sequels on TV, it’s another example of how Studio Deen’s approach of low budget shows aimed at niche audiences that are already fanatical about the properties in question (this was a light novel originally) has kept them chugging along. Even though in terms of creativity and production quality, their best years are years behind them.
Kyo kara Maoh! 3rd Season
Popular goofy bishounen fantasy returns.
Macross Frontier
Latest Macross series starts proper. I’ve seen in numerous places people thinking they’ll need to have seen every episode of previous Macross series to follow this, which I found odd. Surely the sheer distance between series would suggest that’s not the case. Did Gundam series ever have this problem of perception?
On the basis of the first episode they aired a while back, I’m tentatively looking forward to this. Unusually, it was the thing that normally turns me off a show – CGI mecha battles – that I found to be strongest element of that first episode. The weakest point was the character designs, which looked like they belonged in a digitally animated porn OAV.
xxxHolic: Kei
As much as I like Tsutomu Mizushima, and I found the Clamp design and situation a good match to his Sam Raimi inspired direction, the first series of this left me bored about a third of the way in (his movie version, on the other hand, is excellent).
Budget problems and underwhelming scripts killed the show for me. For a studio like Production IG it was a little disappointing to see the animation quality drop off so quickly. Mizushima’s on this series too, but so are the people responsible for writing the last series, so unless I hear that Mizushima’s producing his best work, I’m not interested.
Allison & Lillia
Based on two manga by Shigusawa Keiichi (Kino’s Journey), this is an NHK series animated by Madhouse, so there is potential classiness incoming. That said, director Masayoshi Nishida hasn’t really set my world alight in the past, but the combo of source material, broadcaster and studio should make it worth a look.