In what was a first for me, I watched this on Crunchyroll. It’s a little disappointing, animation-wise. It’s very limited, feeling very static for much of its runnning time, and the character design loses some of the charm of Natsume Ono’s art work. But it’s worth writing a little about, as it has some sexual politics to it that are fairly refreshing in this age of otakubait shows about schoolgirls.

The main character, Nicoletta, is in her early 20’s. And she falls for Claudio, a married, middle-aged man who works at the restaurant owned by her mother’s new husband. Her mother meanwhile, has made all the men who work at the restaurant wear glasses, which attracts an clientele of women who lust after them. Unlike the typical sex object characters in an anime however, they are all fully aware of it, and there’s a fun scene where they all discuss the matter round a table.

By being a middle-aged man’s fantasy of being hit upon by a younger woman (the internet tells me that the manga appeared in a seinen magazine*), but written from the woman’s POV, it neatly creates a story that doesn’t feel like either gender is being fetishised too much.

The weaknesses in its actual animation production make it an ideal candidate for watching streamed rather than purchasing, and I’ll probably check out future episodes.

Here’s a couple of links that go some way to suggesting why this particular manga got an anime made:

Japanese words of anime fans, by anime fans, for anime fans -カレセン[karesen]
The Japan Times – The withered middle-aged guy becomes a hot item in Japan’s dating market

* Have just read that Erotics F contains content for both men and women, so take all of that with a pinch of salt.

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.