Just a few more weeks and it’s October: the start of a brand new season. On my old blog I used to compile a short preview of the upcoming series for each new season. Not just to inform my readers on the goodness they could look forward to — there are a lot of preview guides to choose from, and mine didn’t necessarily add any useful insights anyway — but also to see for myself what I wanted to watch. Writing those articles was actually quite time-consuming and perhaps not entirely worth the trouble. They didn’t contain all that much text, but the sheer amount of series and having to translate the summaries did take some time. Writing ramblings for my renewed blog is rather time-consuming as well, so it won’t make much difference if I’ll just revive my previews.
To compile these previews I consult three sites: AniDB, MyAnimeList, and Anime News Network. I don’t watch any available trailers, read up on manga, or read translated versions of light novels an anime might be based on since I like to go into series with a clean slate. Usually I also don’t take a look at the credits beyond the studio which is doing it. The summaries given are in most cases a summary of the summary on other sites with some added thoughts, remarks, or expectations. The list is probably incomplete, there are always titles I somehow overlook.
Let’s start with some sequels. These should need little to no introduction; you probably already know if you’re going to watch them or not. Sequels aren’t necessarily the same quality as their predecessors, though, but usually you know what you can expect. The third season of Bakuman., for instance, will most likely depict two young mangaka aiming for the top. It won’t suddenly be a story about an insanely powerful student council president who likes to listen to student’s wishes. That’ll be Medaka Box: Abnormal.
You can also take a look at these other sequels: Shaft’s Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb. Initial D Fifth Stage, which will air two episodes a month. Ecchi connoisseurs will be delighted by To Love-Ru: Trouble – Darkness. And there’s Hayate no Gotoku! Hayate the Combat Butler: Can`t Take My Eyes Off You, Hiiro no Kakera 2, Busou Shinki, JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken (2012), and Jormungand: Perfect Order.
Time to move on to the new stuff.
This is based on some idol-producing arcade card game.
That’s just about all the information I can[1] find and it’s all I need to know I’m going to skip this series. Yes, it’s a prejudgment, but by now I pretty much know I won’t enjoy watching a series like this.
A 22-year-old guy is very skilled in a combat game with the same title as this anime. One day he wakes up to discover he somehow ended up in a real-life version of that same game.
Sword Art Online-inspired? I can’t help to make that link, although planning to air this anime probably isn’t an ad hoc decision which was made two months ago. But the timing is rather suspicious.
This is based on a card game where people battle using cars that transform into robots.
I’ll refrain from calling this Autobots: The Card Game. It doesn’t sound very appealing in the slightest in the first place, though. Sometimes a title pretty much gives away it won’t satisfy my tastes, and I think that’s pretty much the case here.
Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!
I really have no clue what to make of MAL’s and AniDB’s description. Something about chuunibyou — some sort of syndrome where one has delusions of grandeur during the second year of middle school — a contract, and a battle that’s going to happen.
AniDB’s description is quite frankly utterly useless and according to MAL this series is “adapted from the back of the first novel”, whatever that means. We’ll just have to find out for ourselves what it is really about.
A girl, who is quite skilled in martial arts, is convinced that killing is an unjust thing to do, and sets out to stop an non-existent boy from doing just that. The boy is driven by his own sets of beliefs, but she clearly thinks fighting evil with evil is simply evil.
Non-existent doesn’t mean he’s an illusion, it probably means he’s more like a person nobody knows he exists (just guessing here). They have a term for those kind of people, and unsurprisingly that term is Code Breaker. Could be interesting as long as the producers try to make the girl not too righteous.
A girl not interested in the art of using tanks gets forcibly enrolled in an art-of-using-tanks team with eccentric members that wants to compete in a national tournament for the art of using tanks.
Sounds a bit like Upotte!! with tanks.
A girl, who lives with her two sisters and her soba shop-owning grandmother, sees something fall off a certain tree, freeing three spirits in the process. It doesn’t take long before more spirits start to appear, and the family’s quiet life is about to get a lot more rowdy.
Each season there are a bunch of shows which have a summary you only need to change in a few places to get a description fitting an already existing anime. This one resembles Nekogami Yaoyorozu a bit. That show was okay, so it’s not like I’m writing this one off from the get-go because it doesn’t sound all that original.
Ixion Saga: Dimension Transfer
A boy gets summoned to a different world where he arrives just in time to save the life of some princess. Looking for a way back home, he decides to enter the princess’s entourage.
Sounds a bit like Dog Days, right? Oh, I’m comparing again. I should stop doing that and give it a fair chance.
There wasn’t much information available, but the manga this “original” TV anime is adapted from tells a story about an organization which grants its members extraordinary powers.
Not unlike a summary for a generic shounen, but the manga is tagged as shoujo on MAL. No idea what to expect then, since MAL is hardly a useable source here, calling it both an original TV anime and an adaptation.
After becoming homeless because her dad amassed gambling debts, a girl saves a guy from a dog who promptly offers her his house as compensation for her heroic deed. The house turns out to be a shrine, and she somehow gets elevated to godhood after some things happen.
I like Shinto-inspired stories, but I don’t know if this anime will be based on existing stories or just consists of some random stuff thrown together.
Nine guys, all members of the Hikari Club, strive to build the ultimate A.I., but trouble is lurking under the surface when not everyone is at ease with the way the leader of the club is acting.
This summary doesn’t sound all that interesting, but judging from the art style of above image, it could be a nice quirky series.
This upcoming adaption of Key’s visual novel created quite some buzz in some online “circles”. For all the wrong reasons, though. Most reactions I’ve read can be summarized as “J.C. Staff is going to stink it up.” I haven’t gotten around to playing the visual novel yet, but it should be about a guy who, after his parents died, got saved by a group of evil-fighting kids known as Little Busters. It’s several years later now, and they still hang out.
A guy called Aladdin discovers he’s a Magi, a king-choosing magician. He travels the world in search of righteous would-be kings. During his adventures he meets various characters from “1000 Arabian Nights”.
I’m pretty sure it should be 1001 nights, but I’ll just pretend that was a small typo by the guy who wrote the summary on MAL or something the creator came up with. Anyway, not expecting much from this.
Onii-chan Dakedo Ai Sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne!
A guy is reunited with his brother-loving twin sister. To make things worse, three other girls move in with him as well.
This sure sounds like a generic harem series. I’m actually growing a bit tired of those incest-alluding harem shows. Can’t they, you know, come up with something more original for a change?
A near-future tale about a world where one’s state of mind and personality can be easily perceived and recorded. A dream for crime fighters, right?
This summary somehow reminds me of the science fiction movie Minority Report, which attempted to show that the “truth” can be quite ambiguous at best. Pyscho-Pass sounds interesting. Not just because it’s done by Production I.G and airs during the noitaminA timeslot, but also because the story could be an intriguing one. It could have a completely different narrative than I hope it to be, of course, but I’d love it if they debate about the likeliness to commit a crime coupled to one’s state of mind. Something like how can one see a crime of passion coming?
Some school’s Robot Research Club is on the verge to be disbanded and one of the two remaining members doesn’t seem to give a flying frack. He rather programs some robot fighting game. The other member dreams of completing a giant robot and is actually interested in keeping the club afloat. One them discovers something about someone called Kimijima Kou, and he’s up to no good. He started making trouble in the neighb—
This is the second noitaminA of the season, and has the same setting as both Steins;Gate and Chaos;Head. The title alone made me link it to those two, but it’s good to see it’s actually the case. Chaos;Head wasn’t a series I liked much, but Steins;Gate was one I rather appreciated. The summary on MAL and AniDB is somewhat more extensive than the one I just wrote, but it reads more like a bunch of story fragments than something useful, so you’ll have to make do with this.
An ordinary high school student gets to take care of a rather helpless girl who moves into the same dorm as he’s living in, a dorm for problem children.
Not much I can think of to add to this. In other words, I’m pretty neutral about this.
Five kids find out that the utopian world they think they live in has a few secrets to hide.
Quite the generic summary for a science fiction anime, but it looks promising nonetheless.
A friendless (and thus probably socially awkward) 16-year-old girl who never had a boyfriend accidently injures the school’s most popular boy, after which he takes an interest in her.
I’m not adverse of romantic comedies, but the setup sounds a bit like that extremely slow Kimi ni Todoke show, and I surely hope it doesn’t have that show’s pace.
I love it when it when there’s virtually no information available on the sites I use to compile this list. Other than that the title is a wordplay on the Japanese word for tennis and that it features girls, there’s nothing I can tell about it. Oh, its duration is about three minutes per episode.
A girl who is thinking about her future all day long is instructed to deliver class printouts to an always absent guy who should be seated next to her in class. The guy somehow thinks she is his friend because of her bringing that material.
Yet another romantic comedy. I sometimes wish there was more anime with mature characters , even in this genre.
Wooser is a mascot thingy which looks cuter than it actually is.
Uh, okay… Next.
Zetsuen no Tempest: The Civilization Blaster
Yoshino is your average high school guy who has friendly relations with a mysterious guy. One day that friend, who made a deal with a witch to hunt down his family’s killers, is missing and Yoshino somehow ends up in a lot of shit.
Not something that sounds very likely to make me enthusiastic, but we’ll see.
Without wanting to sound too much like a pessimist, I do have to say there aren’t that much titles in this list that sound all that promising to me. Having said that, I usually give most anime a fair chance and will at least check out the first few episodes. This will probably lead to me watching everything again, but I’m already used to that.
- Read: want to [↩]
Looking forward to watch Sakurasou no pet na kanojo! looks like a fun watch..