The Winter 2011 Anime Preview Guide

Carlo Santos

Born in a hospital named after a famous dead person, Carlo discovered his obsessive-compulsive powers at an early age and began to consume art, culture and technology at an alarming rate. This led to his current 6-year stint with Anime News Network where he contributes reviews, writes the Right Turn Only!! manga column and can sometimes be seen prowling convention halls with a camera in his hand and a violin case on his back. Heaven help those who have to be subjected to either of them.

---

Beelzebub

Rating: 2 (of 5)

Review:
Beelzebub sounds like a great name for a metal band, the kind that tries to make up for its technical shortcomings by being as loud and fast as possible. The same could be said of this show, where the characters seem to be constantly yelling and being subjected to exaggerated acts of violence (or at least running from them). The story begins with Tatsumi Oga, a delinquent who is hated by the other troublemakers at his school—and weirds them out even more when he shows up one day with a baby in tow. As he explains to his best friend, Oga found the baby floating down the river (a covenient excuse that requires no further backstory!) and took it into his care. However, Oga's adventures in babysitting take an abrupt left turn when an imperious woman bursts in and tells him that the baby is the spawn of the Demon Lord and must now be raised to destroy all humanity. Well, that would certainly explain why he crackles with lightning and causes minor calamities everytime he cries.

This is one of those comedies where the premise itself is a lot funnier than the actual execution, which relies too much on repeating the same lowbrow jokes: Oga is a real tough guy!!!!! But he's trying to raise a baby. Ha ha, contradiction! Also the baby shoots lightning when it gets upset! It's like one of those Vince Vaughn goofball movies combined with supernatural-fantasy theatrics. The visuals are dialed down accordingly to meet these middling standards: Oga and company look fairly detailed with their sneering facial features and intense yanki poses, but the action itself lacks finesse, resorting to still-frame pans, looping animation patterns, and occasional cheap special effects. But they're yelling a lot and people are fighting and there's falling electric pylons so who cares!

If low-budget cheeseball humor suits your tastes, then by all means, enjoy this series as much as possible. Just don't expect subtlety and substance in a show where the title character has his privates hanging out.

Beelzebub is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

---

Gosick

Rating: 3 (of 5)

Review:
I said it when I reviewed the Gosick light novel, and I'll say it again: it's hard to go wrong with a loli tsundere detective girl. Studio BONES seems to agree, staying true to the original as they adapt the period mystery series into one of the few decent offerings this barren winter season.

The story begins in an alternate early-20th-century Europe, where the decidedly foreign Kazuya Kujo attends a prestigious school in the pretty-sure-it-wasn't-in-Hetalia nation of Saubure. One day, a chance encounter brings Kujo face-to-face with another outsider: Victorique, a doll-like blonde who spends all day in the botanical garden at the top of the school library because she's too smart and too bored to hang out with the plebes. Instead, Victorique's daily brain exercises come from Grevil, a daffy police inspector who comes to her with cases that she solves on the spot while he takes the credit. However, the latest whodunit leads Victorique and Kujo to accept a ominous invitation aboard a cruise ship... and that's where the fun really starts. Unfortunately, that's also where the episode ends.

Much as I hate saying it, Gosick does get better later on—well-developed mysteries are not the kind that achieve greatness in a single episode. But the opener does enough things right to keep viewers interested: the setting carries much of the visual appeal, with rich details and pastel tones that make up the rolling countryside, the quaint city streets, and the gorgeously decorated garden where Kazuya and Victorique meet for the first time. (Too bad they won't be seeing that place again for a long while.) The characters, despite being fairly typical archetypes, have their charm points too: Victorique with her eccentric rolling around on the floor, the inspector with his self-assured dandyism. Elegant pretend-classical music in the background adds the final touch in evoking the right time and place, and if the script works out as planned, our loli tsundere detective girl and her Japanese friend should have one hell of an adventure on that boat. Trust me on this. I've read the book.

Gosick is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

---

Cardfight!! Vanguard

Rating: 0 (of 5)
Hairstyling: -15

Review:
Welcome to the thrilling world of Cardfight!! Vanguard, a world where shampoo no longer exists! This is the only logical explanation for the epidemic of bedhead that has struck all the protagonists in the show. I mean, just look at those spiky, gravity-defying hairdos. It's like they hired a character designer who used to work in topiary! Actually, that may not be too far-fetched, since the choppy, unrefined visuals make it look like the entire production was outsourced to the planet Mars.

Bankrolled by the Bushiroad game company—the same cretins who funded last season's zero-scoring Milky Holmes—Cardfight!! Vanguard is not so much an anime as it is a 25-minute commercial for the collectible card game of the same name. Aichi Sendou, who resembles a lost DeviantArt drawing, is a shy schoolboy whose only solace is his extremely rare "Blaster Blade" card. When bullies forcibly take the card from him, Aichi heads to the local game shop and challenges the supposedly unbeatable player who now owns his card. What follows is a groundbreaking moment in Japanese animation: the first-ever CCG instructional video embedded into an anime series. Between the overbearing synthesizer music, the jargon-loaded narration that still manages to miss important points, and the painfully cheesy sci-fi-meets-fantasy look of the "fighting in another dimension" scenes, this how-to-play segment will either leave you pleading for sweet death or (if you're like me) laughing uncontrollably at its sheer badness. And perhaps also wondering why collectible card game mechanics has remained essentially unchanged since Magic: The Gathering.

The real kicker, though, is that they got JAM Project to perform the opening theme. How is it that one of the most audacious anime theme song bands of all time, testosterone oozing from every lyric and electric guitars ablaze, got themselves pulled into this embarrassment where the protagonists are so "manly" that they do their fighting with little pieces of cardboard? Personally, I imagine myself entering the world of Cardfight!! Vanguard with a nice, heavy set of mahjong tiles. Now those babies do some real damage—especially when hurled at your opponent.

Cardfight!! Vanguard is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

---

Yumekui Merry

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)

Review:
Midway through the first episode of Yumekui Merry, the titular heroine yells a question at the villain that very often applies to shows of this type:

"Why are you saying stuff that doesn't make sense like it's so profound?!"

That, in a nutshell, is what's wrong here. There's a thin line between "withholding information so that the viewer wants to find out more," and "withholding information so that everything is really confusing." Unfortunately, Yumekui Merry errs on the side of the latter, with a haphazard exposition that goes something like this: schoolboy Yumeji (oh ha ha ha, his name contains the word for "dream") is renowned among his peers for being able to sense the auras surrounding their dreams. However, things start getting weird when Yumeji's dream from the previous night—an unsettling experience where he's being chased by dozens of cats—resurfaces in the waking world. At this point, he is threatened by Chaser John Doe, an evil apparition who looks like the love child of Jack Skellington and the Grim Reaper. Coming to Yumeji's rescue, however, is Merry Nightmare, a mysterious girl from the dream world who has crossed over into the physical realm (though she's not sure how). Thus begins a supernatural adventure that makes little to no sense!

Now, don't get me wrong about the show: it does have positive elements, like decent background art (Yumeji's hometown has a convincing liveliness and depth to it), a well-choreographed fight scene between Merry and John Doe, and the kind of premise that guarantees some suspenseful, mind-bending intrigue. It's just that those elements have been thrown into this hodgepodge called Episode 1 without any sense of organization. Just look at the early scenes where Merry is wandering about town; although it works as foreshadowing, those scenes lack any logical connection to Yumeji's activities. It's just a random girl wandering about town. That kind of scripting ultimately results in some kind of bizarre anime Mad Lib, where individual parts work out well, but the overall result just feels "off." And that may be what stops a lot of people from sticking around for Episode 2.

---

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Rating: 4.5 (of 5)

Review:
On a list of anime directors least likely to work on a magical girl show, Akiyuki Shinbo (Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, Bakemonogatari) would probably rank just behind the likes of Hideaki Anno and Mamoru Oshii. Yet here he is, offering his idiosyncratic take on a genre typified by the swirls and sparkles of Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Shugo Chara!. If those shows represent the pinnacle of the form, then Madoka Magica is the one that arrives at that pinnacle by descending from the sky upside-down: an artistically daring work that succeeds on its own unusual .

Madoka Magica's only major fault is deigning to follow the formula of all magical girl origin stories: Madoka Kaname is an ordinary student who has her life turned sideways when the gorgeous but mysterious Homura Akemi transfers into Madoka's class. After a few languidly-paced scenes of school life and hanging out with friends, Shinbo and Studio SHAFT finally put their man psychedelic animator hats on and give us some of the most surreal, eye-meltingly beautiful sorcery/transformation/I-don't-even-know-what scenes ever to grace a TV or computer screen. All right, so maybe a lot of it is just the cut-and-paste techniques that Shinbo has mastered over the years, but no one does it like he does. Plus it melds incredibly well with Ume Aoki's (Hidamari Sketch) character designs.

With all the gushing over Shinbo, one must not forget the unmistakable Yuki Kajiura on the soundtrack—the early and middle scenes are punctuated by some light acoustic balladry, as befits their slow pace, but Kajiura is still at her theatrical best when the OMINOUS CHORAL MUSIC starts up for key action scenes. Obviously, this series has armed itself with top-notch visual and musical elements (not to mention some lively, punchy voice acting) ... but will the story be able to match it down the line?

Consider, if you will, Homura's utterance that says everything that ever needed to be said about the magical girl paradox:

"Don't try to become something you're not. You'll only lose everything."

Deep stuff.

---

Infinite Stratos

Rating: 1 (of 5)

Review:
In a clever ploy to lure unsuspecting viewers, Infinite Stratos invokes the entertainment-industry form of the Pareto principle and spends 80% of the animation budget on 20% of the pilot episode. Yes, as you may have guessed, the show begins with several minutes of seriously intense, mind-blowing, mid-air mecha combat.

Followed by twenty minutes of seriously intense, mind-blowingly bad high school harem hijinks.

This is the story of one Ichika Orimura, who apparently is the luckiest teenage boy on earth because he is the only male to ever qualify for the IS (Infinite Stratos) mobile suit pilot-training program. (Don't even ask why the IS system only works with females; proper science is obviously not a priority for this series.) This also makes things incredibly awkward when he realizes that his next three years of schooling will be spent entirely in the company of lovely young women! Further adding to the embarrassment is his older sister taking on the role of homeroom teacher—gee, what a surprise—and his childhood friend turning out to be his roommate. This parade of clichés continues with the introduction of another one of Ichika's classmates—an English-born beauty whose traits include long blonde hair (to denote how foreign she is, clearly) and a horrifically annoying stuck-up attitude. If they were trying to kick off an anime series with the most unlikable characters ever, this one would be quite the contender with its underachieving sad-sack hero and a cast of heroines who exist only to batter his self-esteem.

Unimaginative character designs and sloppy animation also mark this series as a candidate for the scrap heap—watch the extremely awkward camera pan right after the eyecatch, where Ichika and friend appear to levitate in their dorm room. The credits sequences are similarly uninspired, with Minami Kuribayashi, queen of mediocre action anime theme songs, giving us yet another techno-laced pump-it-up number that sounds like everything else she's ever done.

And to think, this was adapted from a light novel? This is barely good enough to qualify for a shovelware dating sim.

---

Rio - Rainbow Gate!

Rating: 2 (of 5)

Review:
New anime fans are often indoctrinated with the notion that "Japan can make a cartoon out of anything." But just because they can, doesn't mean they should. Case in point: Rio – Rainbow Gate! , which will probably be ed more for being "the anime based on a line of pachinko machines" than for any actual artistic merits.

Episode 1 begins by introducing the series' mind-boggling cosmopolitan setting, where the Vegas-like "Howard Resort" rises above a city dotted with San Franciscan cable cars upon a sun-kissed resort island. Sadly, this geographic mashup is about where the inventiveness stops, as the rest of the episode congeals into a fanservice-laden slop about the joy of gambling. The story centers around Rio, a curvaceous casino dealer who apparently cannot afford enough clothes to cover up her midsection and is rumored to bring incredible luck to those graced by her presence. However, Rio gets caught up in some action-thriller shenanigans when a skeevy guy in a Miami Vice-inspired outfit tries to accost a little girl named Mint and her teddy bear, Choco.

Naturally, this conflict of interest between a would-be predator and a watchful casino dealer forces Rio to resolve the issue in a manner befitting a gambling series: with a round of poker! The outcome of the game cleverly reverses the "everybody is impossibly lucky" trope that plagues other similarly-themed titles, but one poker match with a twist isn't enough to an otherwise flimsy plotline that fizzles out with a lightweight ending involving the teddy bear.

able but unspectacular visuals set the tone for this episode, where most of the animation budget goes into a fight scene between Rio and Miami Vice Guy's goons, plus a blatant CGI sequence where Rio enters a magical dreamspace to summon her luck. Character designs are bland and forgettable, even among the scantily-clad bunny girls that work the casino floor. At least the series comes with a big band jazz soundtrack to match the casino theme—but like most real Vegas productions, it's all just empty glitz and glamour.

Rio - Rainbow Gate! is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

---