Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova ep11 (sororicide)

I am consistently impressed by this show’s ability to make ship to ship combat engaging and emotional.  I’m more impressed at this show’s ability to not waste emotion.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova ep10 (selfless self sacrifice)

What an outstanding, yet subdued episode. With the 401 all but dead, and Chihaya figuratively and literally in the same boat. What we get is the eventual countdown to Chihaya’s death. With Iona being an alien machine of the highest order, it’s easy to see that her survival and escape would be easy enough without her captain, but that obviously isn’t an easy choice to make. It’s the hardest choice. And admirably she doesn’t ever accept it.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova ep9 (a triumph and failure of emotions)

This is crazy!  This show just keeps getting better and better.  I’m clearly looking at one of the best shows of the season, and possibly a contender for one of the best mecha shows of the year. Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova is showing that it’s more than pretty girls and firepower.  It’s a smart well rounded show that’s asking all the right questions.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova eps7 & 8: I’m sorry, you have a bad case of humanity

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve mistakenly dipped my toe into harem waters with this oceanic anime.  But more importantly, I think I’m starting to grasp the “point” of this anime.  It’s an old and tested one for any fan of scifi.  But it’s not like this anime’s universe has anime, nor have the Fog scene any scifi.  So it will be interesting to see how these “mental models” handle being more human.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova ep6 (children and emotions do NOT belong on the battlefield!)

Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova

Episode 6

Well this episode was a little frustrating. And to say it was slow would be very accurate. Despite all the soldiers and tanks and gunfire, this episode added up to some bad decisions and wasted time.  What a way to start for this series when I’d finally given it the spotlight.

Check-in Station: Attack on Titan ep1 (attack of the pessimistic children)

Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) is THE anime that I’m excited for this season. That and Railgun S. So I’m going to be honest and let you guys know that I’m not exactly impartial to this series. But I can still definitely be fair and avoid being a fanboy. I came across this series after someone tweeted some very kind words about it. I read the first dozen or so chapters and was hooked. It was one of those manga that was just relentlessly brutal, fiendishly goring and swam in a river of hopelessness. It also has a very nice twist not too long after you get past the prologue. The only reason I stopped reading was because I needed a break from the intensity. And before I felt like going back, I got word that it had been greenlit for an anime adaptation. Since animation is pretty much my favorite form of entertainment that doesn’t require me to be 21 or older, I decided to give the manga a break and wait to see how the anime turns out. I can always return to the manga, plus I personally believe that like movie adaptation to books, it’s hard to be impartial when watching an anime that has been adapted from a manga you’re intimately familiar with. So past a certain part of this story, I’ll be as ignorant as most anyone who hasn’t touched the manga. Now that I got all that out of the way, it’s time to see how I liked the first episode of this series, minus the manga snobbery.

Check-in Station: Flowers of Evil ep1

I have heard A LOT about this show. Even before the episode released the Internet was swimming with debate and impressions of the series. I’m just glad it’s finally started so we can see if this series is capable of being a legend or a dud. And honestly, this show is off to a slow, but interesting start.

Check-out Station: OreShura eps12 & 13 (Love is a battlefield – and so is your face!)

Episode 11

There are many things I’ve said I will never do again.  Things like putting soy sauce on rice; watch a Neon Genesis Evangelion dub; renting from a black landlord (I don’t give a sh*t if you call me racist or not); becoming a born again Christian; joining the ****; mixing light and dark rums (GEEZUS, that was a terrible experience); and being friends with females.

Some of these are easy. Don’t put the soy sauce on the rice. You can only join the **** once, kinda. Unless the people who made the DVD/Blu-ray are complete a-holes then the disc for EVA should always be set to subs first.

While others are not so easy to keep, especially the not being friends with females thing.  It’s like a curse.  Some guys have shallow, sex filled relationships with women by the dozens.  I have rich fulfilling relationships with women that involve lots of talking and confiding and giving advice.  But NO sex.  I repeat, NONE.  Not an ounce.  Now if I was in anime like OreShura, I suppose that wouldn’t be a problem.  Because someone as lame as me would have women falling all over him.  This show…  Wow.  This show is a lesson in how it is IMPOSSIBLE to be casual friends with females.  The love is too deep.

Screw you Oreshura.  Screw.  You.

Check-out Station: Maoyuu Maou Yuusha ep12 (Knowledge versus Tradition)

So here I’ve come to the end of another season of anime, with another series I hardly expected to finish.  And a wonderful, and increasingly rare chance for me to tell someone whether I’m more enriched for the experience, or embittered by it.  And despite the sometimes vexing experience of trying to write about characters named so literally that it made me feel lazy for typing them onto a page, I think I’ve seen this series in a mostly positive light.  And no, for any that have followed me as I followed this show.  There will not be a single Light Spirit joke.  They weren’t funny in my head, so I know they’ll never be funny in yours.  Now, let’s put this series to rest, at least until they green light the second season.

Maoyuu Maou Yuusha ep11: the fruits of labor

The Demon King has been away for quite a while at this point. And the series is moving on with or without her. But despite that the fact that she’s very nearly tucked away at the center of the Earth, her presence shines on in the show in many aspects. Still, despite claims that this may not be one, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha is still a love story to me. And we can’t expect the love interest to just fade away can we?