iAnime Fan

Behold, the first official trap of 2009.

I don’t care if Kuro Shitsuji is behind by several weeks - I’m writing about Maria†Holic, dammit.

Kanako Miyamae is a innocent lesbian who transfers into Ame no Kisaki girl’s school, in search of her fated one. And there, one of the first things she finds is Mariya Shidou, who she abruptly labels as her chosen one. However, circumstances force her to realize that Mariya isn’t the average girl you’d find attending a girl’s school, but rather a crossdressing guy. Mariya, not willing to trust Kanako with his secret, forces Kanako into a situation in which she is under a 24 watch.

Oh gawd. I’d been interested in Maria†Holic from the start, and it definitely didn’t fail to fulfill my expectations. It was funny, the character designs weren’t cliche, the animation was great, and it seems like the perfect premise for 12 episodes. The only thing that bothered me was the setting, but that much is inevitable. For some reason, all the yuri’s take place in all-girl schools.

btw, the ED is made of solid win - we get pixelly goodness. I love a unique OP/ED.

Kurokami was an interesting watch, too. I started reading the summary and I was assuming that it was simply another one of your boy meets magical girl and they live happily ever after anime, but then I reached the part about the main char getting his arm ripped off and it intrigued me.

Keita Ibuki is a high school student who likes to keep himself detached from the rest of society, not making plans with horrible excuses and then going to arcades instead. He has no mother, because she was killed in a car accident when Keita was young, but one of his childhood friends acts as a mother and takes care of him anyway. He has no other family to speak of,or at least no other family was mentioned during the episode. One day at school, one of his friends, Risa, explains that she saw someone who looked exactly like her at a concert she went to the other day, and you’re all thinking, “Oh shit” because we all know she dies. =_= That same day, while eating ramen at the local ramen stand, he came across a girl who looked as if she were homeless and poor. He treated her to some ramen, and she began talking about twin fantasies. Keita mentions that his mother was killed after she saw someone who looked exactly like her, and the girl explains that there are always three people who look exactly like each other. If one sees another, and the either one isn’t the origin, then they both die, and the third absorbs their fates. If Keita’s mother had been the origin, she wouldn’t have been killed. However, their conversation is interrupted when a freak with a baseball bat hits the girl with said baseball bat. Insert awesome fight scene here, and then the police arrive, causing the fight to have no real winner. The two disappear immediately, and Keita is left wondering what the hell just happened.

The next day at school, Keita discovers that Risa died, and he goes emo, running out of class and screaming as loud as possible when he gets to a bridge under construction. While returning, he meets Mayu, the little girl who lives right next to him, and she explains that she saw a girl that looked like she could be her twin. Keita freaks out, but it’s too late, because poor little Mayu-chan ran into the street and got crushed by a truck, flying blood in the air, disevered body parts and all. Keita meets the girl from the ramen stand while standing in shock, and the episode ends as such.

Kurokami was completely different from what I envisioned. I expected it to be a bit more like Akikan!, but I was proved wrong with the gore factor. Seriously? Little girl gets run over by an eighteen-wheeler?

Not to mention the premise. The idea of twin fantasies is interesting, and I’ve never heard of the legend before, so it’ll be an interesting watch. Keita’s character isn’t too cliche, although his “mother” is - but that’s okay, as long as she isn’t too important. The only downside, I would say, is that so many people saw their twins in a two day span - is it really that common? There are only three people who look the same out of 6 billion in the world, so I find it unrealistic that two people would die in one episode. Then again, the series needed something to kick off the concept, so I guess that much was inevitable. I’ll be sticking around for the next episode, definitely.

Akikan!, on the other hand, was your typical boy meets magical girl and they live happily ever after. I was totally expecting shitloads of fanservice, but within the first five minutes, all the poor males in the audience were bombarded with manservice. And it wasn’t even GOOD manservice.

Kakeru Daichi is a nerd who hasn’t had a girlfriend for 16 years (AKA his entire life. =_=), and one day, out of the blue, he drinks a soda can directly after a shower, and viola, a cute girl appears kissing him on the lips. He immediately makes a move, deciding that this was a dream, and she blasts him with soda, explaining that it was magic. However, she’s interrupted when Hidehiko Otoya and Airin Tazaki appear, wanting to talk to Kakeru about soda cans magically turning into girls. Hidehiko quickly notices that Kakeru is still naked and starts making his moves, albeit his initial purpose, and Airin takes action by dragging the gay man off. Soon after, Kakeru gets fed up with the girl and locks her in a closet, and keeps her there. (This is why you can’t get the girls, Kakeru. =_=) The next day at school, Kakeru accidentally makes a girl cry, and then gets his ass kicked by the famed lesbian of the school. He gets home, saves the soda can girl from near death, and decides that her name should be Melon.

I can tell, without even having seen all the new anime for winter 2009, Akikan! is definitely going to be the weirdest. Animation was mediocre at parts, and character designs were pretty cliche, but even so, I enjoyed the episode. The puns and references were all hilarious, and I plain fell out of my chair when Hidehiko visited. While the humor may’ve been this series’s only good part, I’ll definitely sitck around for episode 2.

So there you have it, the first three shows of the season. White Album coming up next. >_< I’l decide which shows I’ll blog after I’ve gotten a taste of everything, so until then. XD Kuro Shitsuji will be written about and caught up to by the 8th. I say this now so I don’t have any excuses later. DX

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Assorted Episodic Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.