Summer Season 2010 Post Mortem

The fall season of anime has already started, which means that the summer season has come to a close. Of course, most of us watch more shows than we could – or care to – write about, and here are our brief thoughts about what we watched this past season.

The Bungaku Shoujo Movie: Miu, Touko, and Konoha

This post contains vague spoilers for the Bungaku Shoujo movie.

As lolikitsune and Ryan have said in their excellent posts about the Bungaku Shoujo movie, this is a film about Konoha Inoue. Despite being the lead, though, Konoha is not a character who drives events. It feels more as though things are happening around him, and he is merely reacting to them; while these events centre on him – they push him to both act and look inside himself – he does not force them to happen. (Perhaps this reflects his mostly passive personality.) Instead, the drivers of the film’s plot are Miu Asakura, and, more subtly, Touko Amano.

[ナツ]

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes 13 – But where is Yin?

While I would love to do a mid series review for this show, my focus on my midterms is going to limit this post to just the normal episode review, but this was by no means a normal episode. I would venture to say that more happened in this episode than in the past two or three episodes. Though there were many things in this episode that caught my attention, the introduction of the Gastark King, Riphal Edea, and the similarities/differences between him and Sion will be the focus of this post.

You're in the wrong show.

Amagami SS Sae Arc – Third Time’s the Charm

The third parallel story arc, featuring the shy and quiet first year Sae Nakata as the heroine, finished up last week. True to form, the story was not compelling in the slightest, the characters were typical to a fault, and everything came together far too easily. But by twisting the storytelling formula just slightly, AIC turned the entire ship around and produced what is easily the best arc of the anime yet. In fact, the success I saw in this arc leaves me with hope that AIC is fully aware of how to handle Amagami SS, and it could end up being one of the best high school romance series in recent years. Do I sound crazy? Read on.

Giant Killing 25 – Determination

I didn’t expect the game to wrap up in this episode, but it certainly made for some exciting action.  I enjoyed how they set up this game as the end result for all the framing they set up throughout the series.  Every character got spotlighted for a while in individual games.  The game against Osaka serves to tie all these individual threads together.  No one player shined too brightly; instead, everyone had their moments with all the focus on themselves.  They’ve advanced from a motley crew of novice and experienced players to a real team determined to seize victory.

Yeah, this is my new wallpaper.

Ookami-san and Seven Companions 12 – Not So Happily Ever After

After the “ending” of the main plot provided in the previous episode, I was expecting one final side story to take advantage of this show’s premise. Turns out, I was hoping for too much, as another main plot thread returned before taking several steps back. It was a somehow fitting way to end this series, which kept raising expectations, only to spend the rest of the time crushing them.

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes 12 – A Bit of a Letdown

For several episodes now, we were led along thinking that the elimination of the nobles was going to be some big event. This episode made it perfectly clear that this show’s heroes have far bigger fish to fry by basically glossing over the execution of some two hundred people in seconds. Instead, events made it perfectly clear that the plot has already moved on to the upcoming conflict between Roland and Gastark. Unfortunately, this upcoming conflict doesn’t seem any more interesting than the last.

Setting aside their differences for now.

Giant Killing 24 – Frustration

Well my predictions for the rest of this series have officially gone out the window.  Of course, I don’t see this as a terrible thing, because it means Giant Killing has still kept me guessing about how exactly ETU will tackle the Osaka problem.  Last week, they had managed to shake the focus of Dulfer’s players.  Now the team continues to devolve into frustration toward their current situation.  Tatsumi and his team have managed to play a large quantity of the players for fools, and as expected, they are none too happy about it.

Good job Akasaki, you finally went the distance!

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes 11 – Same Product, Different Packaging

After six or seven episodes of Sion contemplating his next move, we finally get to see him address the anti-king movement. And what does he do? He gives everybody allied with him promotions. Now while there may be some grand master plan at work here, I was expecting something a bit more exciting to happen. In fact, it seems all this episode did was remind us of the various plot lines introduced in the past few episodes, but tried to make it seem like something new.

I will shake my fist, but not actually do anything. Just like every other politician.

Ookami-san and Seven Companions 11 – That’s It? Really?

The word of the week is anticlimactic. After last week, I was expecting the story to continue all the through to the end of the series, but it all came to an end in this episode. It even omitted the OP, as is common with final episodes. That’s not to say that this one provided closure. No, it seems that J.C. Staff is gunning for a 2nd season, and doing a poor job of it. Hopefully the final episode can provide some lulz before this mediocre series closes out.