The Summer 2011 Anime Preview Guide

Zac Bertschy

Zac Bertschy is the Executive Editor of Anime News Network. He enjoys bunny rabbits, vodka, and the lingering malaise of defeat.

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No. 6

Rating: 4

Inside “No. 6”, a futuristic and seemingly idyllic city, elite student Shion is going about his day-to-day life, working hard to ace the “Special Course” and become a blue-blooded member of society. This all changes when a self-proclaimed “rat”, an escaped prisoner from the “Lost City”, shows up in his room on the stormy afternoon of Shion's 12th birthday. Rather than turn the “rat” in, Shion gives him food, clothes and secret shelter – and is unendingly curious about where he came from, fearless even in the face of the rat's violent outbursts.

Based on a manga of the same name that started only 6 months ago, No. 6 is a beautiful – if somewhat inscrutable at this point – noitaminA show that has a ton of promise but gives us only a tiny little serving of story in this pilot episode. The whole thing is absolutely dripping with Phillip K. Dick inspiration; even the look of it all feels as though it were somewhat lifted from the aesthetic choices in Spielberg's adaptation of Minority Report (and to a lesser extent, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence) and the story itself, a futuristic city with what appears to be a cruel caste system in place that has created a society of pampered elites, sounds excerpted from a book of Dick's short stories. It'd have been nice if this episode were an hour long, if only to give us a better handle on exactly what's going on; the show isn't confusing, it just isn't giving us much plot to go on so far. The fact that the whole thing is intriguing enough to make me want to see more is a solid mark in its favor, but I can't help but think they could've given us just a little more of the story in the first episode.

Production-wise, this is Bones firing on all cylinders. Beautiful character animation, gorgeous, understated backdrops and a score that harkens to the best of Phillip Glass (hello again Minority Report) make this show one of the most handsome offerings so far this season, even if the character designs are utilitarian; they're more gorgeous in motion than still. It's difficult to tell exactly where this is going and it feels like we haven't even scratched the surface as to what this story is actually about, but if you're looking for mature sci-fi, you should check this one out.

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Mayo Chiki

Rating: blergh

Okay, so in this one we have a super-wealthy cutest-girl-in-school, Suzutsuki, who brings her male butler Konoe to school, who is actually a girl (and at no point even kinda resembles a boy, but that's beside the point). Hapless “look at boobs, scream in terror, get punched” guy Sakamachi discovers her girl-peeing in the men's bathroom and she starts kicking his ass for discovering her secret, which has little effect because his sister beats him up every morning and he's immune to pain. In the middle of the fight a frog in a formaldehyde jar falls from a high cabinet and he rushes in to push her out of the way, and of course they stumble and fall to the ground, and somehow this results in her shirt being ripped completely open and his hand lands on her boob. It's not only plausible, it's hilarious.

So Sakamachi gets captured by Suzutsuki, who chains him to a bed in the nurse's office. She also ties up Konoe for some reason and fits her with a ball gag (which gets pulled out with lovingly-animated spit strings for those of you who really dig that sort of thing) and then spends roughly the entire rest of the episode setting up the dumb gimmick that fuels this whole thing: Konoe is the last in a line of butlers destined to serve Suzutsuki's rich family, but she's a girl so she can't be a butler, so the head of the family tells her that if she can go for three years masquerading as a boy and nobody notices her, she can continue her service as a butler and persons unable to show that one of the forbidden classifications applies to them may try to argue that they are of a group defined by a law in a way that violates the general guarantee of equality and equal protection. To succeed, they must establish that the classification used in the law fails the rational nexus test, which is a three-stage test formulated by the courts. The first stage of the test involves an examination as to whether the law differentiates amongst classes of individuals

 

Wait sorry that's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the 12th amendment of the constitution of Singapore.

Anyway so in order for Konoe to become a true butler she has to remain undetected, but Sakamachi knows, so Suzutsuki proposes that she'll help Sakamachi with his “nervous reaction” to being touched by girls (he gets nosebleeds, which is a truly inspired choice) in exchange for his silence on Konoe's actual gender. If he doesn't agree to this, she'll have him killed. If you're wondering why she doesn't just say “if you tell anyone I'll kill you”, it's because this is a dumb sex comedy and they assume nobody will ask questions like that.

At any rate the whole thing wraps up with Sakamachi discovering Konoe showering in his house and he sees her naked and she punches him, which is super funny. Oh, and at one point he falls down at school and sees a really big pair of boobs that belong to a girl who has cat ears or dog ears or fox ears or whatever they are. She's in the credits so I assume she's in here for a reason, but I'm not going to find out because I'm never going to watch another episode of this show. But now you know it exists.

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Blood-C

Rating: 2

So at some point some executive somewhere was struggling to come up with something to fill up the summer season and noticed a copy of Blood: The Last Vampire sitting on his desk and said “Hey, what if Clamp made that?”

And so now we have Blood-C, which is basically a typical Clamp teenage-heroine series awkwardly duct taped on to the premise of Blood. Saya is now a super-genki highschool shrine maiden who sings songs about how tasty her breakfast was and what a great day it's going to be on her way to school, which is populated by the usual cast of zany lovable classmates and one Mysterious Guy Who Will Later Drive The Plot Somehow (notably their high school uniforms are super gothic red ‘n black Hot Topic numbers, since this is still a Blood show). Then there's a commercial break and Saya fights a Buddha statue with giant Mantis-like pincers in a lake, apropos of nothing. She kills it, her dad (who is the priest at the temple Saya lives at) pats her on the head, says “Good job, Saya! Now go take a bath.” The end!

The production values are all just fine, the animation is pretty solid (save for a couple minutes of cash-saving standoff shots between Saya and the insect statue thing), and really there isn't anything to complain about aside from the fact that there is no compelling reason to continue watching this whatsoever. They make zero attempt to set up any kind of overarching story; hell, we don't even know why Saya is fighting a monster in the woods in the first place, aside from daddy telling her it's her duty. “She goes to school then kills a monster” is literally all that happens in this episode. The preview shows a couple seconds of a fight scene and then a couple seconds of some lovingly-rendered cake on a doily, which probably sums up what Blood-C is better than anything.

Blood-C is streaming at NicoNico.com.

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WARNING: The following preview for Usagi Drop will at least make you curious enough to look up spoilers for the conclusion of the manga. If you don't want to even be a teensy bit spoiled, move along.

Usagi Drop

Rating: BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ENDING

Daikichi is a shiftless salaryman who, upon attending his grandfather's funeral, learns that the dearly departed left something behind – namely Rin, a quiet, thoughtful 6-year old girl who's currently being scorned by the family. Perturbed by the way they're treating her, Daikichi volunteers to take Rin in and raise her himself.

This show is gorgeous and subtle – the artistry on display here is really outstanding, with muted pastel colors and simple but effective animation by Production I.G that really complements the spare, sketchy art style. The pacing is languid, but it's a pleasant sort of languid, and the score is beautiful as well. In of production value and storytelling quality, this is really something special.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to enjoy even a minute of this thing because I've been spoiled about what happens at the end of the now-concluded manga, where apparently all this pleasant quietness pulls the parking brake and takes a hard-right turn straight into Downtown Creepyville. If you know what happens in the manga – and at this point the spoiler has been tossed around so much it's hard to believe anyone interested in this title hasn't been spoiled – all your brain can do during the perfectly-executed bit of subdued artistry that is the first episode of Usagi Drop is scream “OKAY BUT ARE THEY GOING TO CHANGE THE ENDING BOY I HOPE THEY CHANGE THE ENDING I REALLY CAN'T THINK ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHETHER OR NOT THEY'RE GOING TO CHANGE THE ENDING BECAUSE MAN THAT ENDING IS CREEPY AS HELL WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT”

Watching this show is like petting an adorable fluffy warm little kitten that's purring and falling asleep on your lap who you know is going to grow up into one of those cats that vomits all over everything and pees in the bed. Personally I'm going to wait until this adaptation concludes, get spoiled on how they end it, and then decide whether or not I'm going to watch it.

Usagi Drop is streaming at Crunchyroll.

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Twin Angel Twinkle Paradise

Rating: guh

Alright, here's what this is: two little girls, a redhead and a blue-haired one with a giant, carefully-animated rack (go ahead, try and guess their personality traits!) are secretly a crime-fighting magical girl duo known as Twin Angel. They have screechy high-pitched voices – moreso than you'd expect from something like this - and big chunky plastic celphone accessories that produce a cutesy mascot character who helps them strip naked and transform. They fight the “Ohohoho” blonde princess villain (nobody's tired of that yet, right?) who is trying to steal pieces of the “Holy Grail”, which are just a bunch of famous works of art that will inevitably serve as macguffins for a monster-of-the-week thing combined with a fetch-quest structure that allows for plenty of filler episodes. There's a boatload of really leaden pandering and lazy fanservice – the villain's tank at one point produces a giant cat head, which spews out a gas that gives the two girls cat ears and tails and distracts them with scratch pads and feather dusters, which sounds like it could be funny but isn't. They get saved by the world's least clever Tuxedo Mask homage character. The whole thing has this strange retro look and feel to it – as though it assumes everyone is really nostalgic for the grotesque look of late 90's forgettable, uninteresting neon magical girl junk like Hyperdoll or Saber Marionette J, but wishes those shows were as craven in their fetish pandering as we are in 2011.

When there's a scene transition, this vomitous spew of spinning rainbow-colored stars comes rocketing in from the bottom right corner of the screen, as though there's a seriously intoxicated unicorn sitting down there who's watching the show along with you.

I don't really know who this thing is supposed to be for and I don't think you should watch it. If I had to visually describe how I felt while watching Twin Angel Rainbow Sparkle Whatever, this would be it:

Twin Angel Twinkle Paradise is streaming at NicoNico.com.