(no subject)

[niko]

 Well, my grand scheme to keep up with the new season in Japan is going kinda poorly, but I'm gradually working through the various DL's.  

Tower of Druaga - Eps. 1-3
OK, after that hilarious first episode, the series is taking a much more conventional route, but I'm a fantasy fan, so this show is still right up my alley.  I like the cast of characters they've established, and I'm happy that it seems like Neeba's party will continue to be in the mix.  My only concern right now is that this is only a 13-episode series, which seems too short, given the pacing of the last two eps.  I'm still paying Bost TV to download each ep, and I consider it money well-spent in support of a business model I'd like to see succeed.

Blassreiter - Ep. 1 (Stopped)
I was planning to stick with this for a few more episodes, since it was free, but when it came time for Ep. 2 to be released, I found that I just didn't care.

Nabari no Ou - Eps. 1-2
This wasn't on my original watch-list, but it's gotten good reviews, so I checked it out.  The character designs are ganglier than usual, but I think they make good use of that to give a different feel to the animation.  Storywise, I'd call this a fun cross between Bleach and Ouran High School Host Club.  The plot setup is straight out of a shonen fighting show: main character is a super-special fated child who has potential for awesome powers and must be trained by a group of good guys while avoiding a group of bad guys.  But our super-special fated child is so apathetic and deadpan about the whole thing that it gives that Ouran-ish "fish out of water who really doesn't care whether s/he's in the water or not" sense of humor.  There's also a fun gimmick where, when our apathetic lead gets into a jam, he turns on a "blushing uke" act that turns other guys to putty. (Again, very Ouran-ish in how it uses a yaoi-ish stereotype (a la the Hitachin brothers) for humor without really being one of those blatant-yaoi-bait shows a la Weiss or Saiyuki. 

Kure-nai - Ep. 1-2
OMG, so good!  Absolutely awesome.  One of those shows where the relationships between the characters feel so natural and sweet that I turn to absolute mush.  The root of the plot (so far) is a new take on the "teenage boy as parent to younger child" story that's been done before, but this time around, you have additional layers in that the child in question is a runaway from a very powerful and influential family, and the teenage boy in question works as some sort of freelance enforcer for a mysterious woman who has unknown motivations, as well as (apparently) a tragic past of his own to work through.  The mysterious elements hanging out there, combined with the slice-of-life sweetness as Murasaki experiences life outside of her family's uber-rich compound and Shintaro juggles school, friends, job, and little girl is absolutely enchanting. 

Bus Gamer - Ep. 1-3
Disappointing final episode that did *nothing* toward trying to bring this short thing to any sort of real close.  What the heck was the point?  *sigh*  Too bad, because I really do like the characters.  No real hope of Minekura-sensei getting very far with this series in manga form, either, though.  Bummer.

Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040
Not new, obviously, but I finished up this series on DVD this week.  Verdict = pretty darn good.  The original BGC had more cyberpunk panache, but this version benefited a lot from the chance to tell a single, coherent story.  I do think it sorta fell apart at the very end - it veered too far into Eva-ish metaphysical psychobabble in place of an actual final solution for me, and the whole "OK we won, bye" abrupt ending was frustrating.  But the main arc kept me eager for each new volume, once it got rolling, and I did come to like the new incarnations of the main characters quite a lot.