July Roundup

I’ve been wanting to do these monthly roundup posts for a while now but I wanted to wait until I had a loyal following who genuinely cared about what I had to say. However after realising that I would never achieve that level of internet stardom I decided I would post them anyway.

I’m going to use my letter-grade system for these because I’ve found that this system works the best for me.

A Grade: One of the tops of the year. Get ready for some fanboying here

A Spice and Wolf

Is this an over-reaction to the end of episode 3? Well yes, but still. This season of Spice and Wolf has completely blown me away. Even a Horo-less episode 4 was still great stuff. Brains Base deserve a certain amount of credit but not all of it. With a developed relationship, this season had more of a chance to stir things up a bit. I guess BB are just lucky they got to animate the best bits of the books but what a job they’ve done with them so far.

A- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

The thing about FMA is it always produces quality. While Guin or Hetalia jump about from amazing to dull, FMA produces the goods in every episode. And that folks is why many people consider FMA to be one of the greatest anime ever. BTW does anyone have any idea how long this series will last for? I wonder if this will go into the 100’s…

 

 

B Grade: Hugely entertaining stuff. Not amazing but definitely worth watching

B Guin Saga

I wish I had started blogging this anime, it would’ve been a huge amount of fun. While this arc isn’t as good as the last one it does have badass Remus. With Amnelius walking around in a dress the whole time, he’s become one of the most badass characters in the anime, even more than Istovan. Yes, by the damp towel of Janus, even more badass than the Crimson Mercenary. But not more badass than Guin. He still has a while to go before he can lead an army of macho men in loincloths.

B Cross Game

I know I may have had a bit of a whinge at the artwork in Cross Game recently but I still really like this anime. What I would really like to see is Azuma fall for Aoba. It would just be funny on so many different levels. Plus there was some hints from Azuma in the last episode that there was a little bit of relief when he found out she wasn’t going out with Kou. Well actually it’s hard to tell with the lack of facial expressions available to Azuma so expressing relief was down to his voice actor.

B Hetalia Axis Powers

Ah good Hetalia. How I love good Hetalia. So much better than bad Hetalia. And that’s about the most intelligent thing you will hear me say about this anime in this post. Absolutely everything I can say about a 5 minute episode I cram into my blog posts so I’m kinda stumped for anything new to write here.

 

B-Bakemonogatari

Yeah I’m really only watching this for Senjogahara (they should make more purple haired girls in anime) because episode 3 made me fall head-over-heels for her. I seriously hope they do put her in a nakkid apron before the end. At the same time I can understand why people won’t like this. But I do, so sucks to be them.

 

B-Sora no Manimani

I hope episode 3 was just a glitch and the rest of this anime goes back to the form of the first 2. Otherwise this might drop down to a C grade.  Manimani can be so charmingly funny at times although i have a nasty feeling that there will be absolutely no resolution to any possible romances. It just strikes me as that kind of anime. I hope I’m wrong and the club president does in fact end up with his own harem.

B- Pandora Hearts

Pandora just does not have the quality in it to ever rise above a B- and I’ve come to accept that by this stage. If only this was being made by someone other than Xebec…It’s still a very good anime with the best cast of characters this year has produced, although I’ve noticed a notable lack of Alice these last few episodes. This is a serious problem and I expect it to be rectified as soon as possible. Even extra doses of Break cannot make up for this catastrophic flaw with these last few episodes.

 

 

C Grade: It’s good enough to keep watching but it’s not that memorable

C+Umineko

It’s not a very well made show at all but I must admit episode 5 ramped up my interest in this anime considerably. OK the characters are still a bunch of one-dimensional idiots and Maria needs to be introduced to he business end of a flamethrower but I really want to see what happens next. Not having seen Higurashi, I have no idea how they plan to explain what just happened in that episode, which just makes it even more interesting.

C Tokyo Magnitude

Pretty much the definitive C Grade anime. It’s fun to watch and some of those scenes are really intense but one day after the episode ends and I’ve totally forgotten what exactly happened and what any of the characters names are. It just strikes me as though Bones spent so much effort making a believable earthquake and forgot about making an enjoyable story. I know some people would rage if I called this series fluff, but that’s what it is to me.

C Canaan

It has hot girls and lots of gunfights and exploshuns! It’s a shame that’s all it has thus far. I’m still waiting for some resemblance of a plot to appear. Plus I don’t really care about any of the characters. I guess Type-Moon isn’t really my sort of thing. I’ve been sifting my way through the Kara no Kyokai movies and I have exactly the same feelings about them. They are very pretty to look at but that really is about it. Plus with Horo and Senjogahara it’s not like there’s an absence of hot girls this season.

C- Princess Lover

The plot is as cliche as you can get, the characters are forgettable, the animation is horrible and every girl has bounding breasts and black holes up their skirts. And yet whoever was writing the script for this anime was a fucking genius. Shame he was working on Princess Lover. Maybe if this was another season I might have kept with it but there’s too many others and this was the lowest anime I was watching.

 

D Grade: I’ve lost interest in this anime. If it’s a D then I’ve probably dropped it

D+Shangri-La

It’s no where near as bad as many people were making it out to be but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve just lost interest in Shangri-La. The plot was all a bit nonsensical and the characters ranged from the dull to..well, to Ryoko. She is possibly the worst anime character ever. I felt like throwing things at the screen every time she appeared. Heck what am I saying, I did throw things at the screen. There’s a mark on the wall from when I missed.

 

E Grade: Unlike D grades where I drop out of disinterest, E grades are dropped in Disgust.

E8 The Melanchly of Haruhi Suzimiya

I must say I’m enjoying the spin-off material Haruhi generates. Everything from frustrated forums to bored bloggers, this has been the most enjoyable I’ve ever had the pleasure not to watch, the otaku Hitler video being probably the cream of the crop. Plus I want to say this. Has it actually taken longer to finish this arc than it took Goku to summon a spirit bomb? Apparently that only took 6 episodes.

 

F Grade: Any F standard anime I would only watch 1 or 2 episodes of so god only know how an anime could last to the end of the month and still get an F but I’m sure it will happen some day