Since Makoto-kun’s parents are away on a business trip, he moves in with his aunt to a new home and a new school. There he meets his cousin Erio, who to his astonishment lives her life with her upper body wrapped tight into a futon mattress. From his aunt and his new friends at school he finds out Erio has been missing for half a year and has no memories of what happened during that time. After that incident she started behaving weirdly and now believes herself to be an alien visitor. Makoto takes it upon himself to help her regain her senses and ensure her way back into society.
The Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko anime is based on a light novel series. To me it seems this anime’s main appeal comes from Erio’s cute helplessness and moe behaviour. Yet I find it hard to categorize it: On the one hand Makoto’s quest to reveal Erio’s past and help her out of her misery introduces serious and dramatic elements to the show; on the other hand his interaction with the numerous female characters is quite similar to usual lighthearted harem/comedy shows. But as all characters are amazingly appealing and the animation quality is above average and very detailed, I can tell this anime will be very successful within the community (and it deserves to be). Rating: 9/10
Review: The story takes place in a world that is under threat of invasion from giant nova creatures. The only ones who are able to fight them are genetically enhanced girls called Pandoras. When Aoi Kazuya enrolls to an academy where young Pandoras are trained and educated, he instantly develops an affection for Satellizer el Bridget; the strongest but also coldest of all Pandoras in her year. Genetically enhanced boys may also visit this academy to be chosen by Pandoras as their Limiter and assist them during fights with their freezing ability. The distant and seemingly cold hearted Satellizer however doesn’t seem to have any intention of teaming up with anybody.
Freezing is based on a popular manga of the same name. Similar to Sekirei this anime has lots of action and fanservice in decent animation quality. Yet, there is also a solid story that develops slowly, while in the beginning the focus lays within the development of relationships. Let’s hope there will be more than 12 episodes so that the story will actually be going somewhere. Rating: 8/10
Review: For his classmates Katsuragi is only a game obsessed nerd, but on the Internet he is known as the “God of Conquest”; the one man who can conquer all the girls. Or rather all the 2D girls in dating-sim games that is. Yet that is what the demon girl Elci didn’t understand when she formed a contract with him. It’s her mission to catch escaped souls that hide in girls hearts and can only be drawn out when that girl falls in love. Even though Katsuragi has no interest in the real world, he is now forced to conquer the hearts of girl after girl for Elci while using his not always very helpful game knowledge.
The World God Only Knows is based on a long running comedy manga and portrays how an otaku tries to use knowledge from fiction to conquer real girls. The funny and entertaining concept is a little weakened by flashy childish fantasy animations of oversized bottles and magic. However, it is a comedy anime after all and if you don’t try to take it too serious it’s pretty entertaining. Rating: 8/10
Review: Tsukimi Kurashita is 18 years old and lives a drawn back life in Tokyo together with 4 of her otaku friends. Together they form some kind of sisterhood with its own set of standards and rules. Other than small jobs like managing an Internet store or drawing shounen-ai manga, they pretty much live only out of their parents allowance; despite being in their mid twenties that is. Rejecting make-up and trendy hair styles in general and taking no care of their outer appearance whatsoever only underlines the otaku shut-in lifestyle they lead. Even after several years the death of her mother still plagues Tsukimi and the only thing to calm her down is looking at jellyfish, which reminds her of the happy times she spent with her. It was during one of these times when suddenly a stylish young woman came up and helped he save a wrongly held jellyfish inside a shop. After some talking Tsukimi lets her stay over in her room. It is only in the morning that she notices that this woman actually is a cross-dressing man. How will she explain this to the sisterhood?
The Kuragehime anime follows a similar concept like Genshiken or Honey and Clover, yet with the difference of clearly being targeted at women. This becomes clear when the crossdressing man appears as a main character, who will clearly fill the role of transforming the sisterhood into beautiful maidens as a step for them into a brighter future. Yet, if you are able to overlook this, Kuragehime has many outstanding comedy and story elements to offer that make this anime attractive even to male viewership. The funny short-info inputs on the sisterhood and the parody of high ranking politicians are only a few examples. So this is an anime for all anime fan-girls, but also for all open minded anime fans in general. Rating: 8/10
Review: Sanpeita-kun’s mother is always busily working as an artist at home; that’s why his little sister has to take care of the household. Their father might be gone, but they still do their best to get by. However, suddenly Kemeko appears in Sanpeita-kun’s life crashing into his room with a giant rocket, announcing to marry him. Kemeko seems to be a rather weird and ugly fighting android who protects Sanpeita from other fighting robots who attack him for no particular reason. The beautiful girl inside Kemeko reminds him of his childhood sweetheart, but that is little consolidation for all the trouble she causes.
This anime is a rather well done adaptation of the Kemeko-DX manga. The brilliant animation quality enables an adequate presentation of all those funny jokes and ridiculous situations. There obviously is a developing story with questions and secrets to be uncovered, but you shouldn’t hope for a deep and original story too much. Most of all this show is about comedy with a touch of romance, action and maybe harem. Rating: 8,5/10
Review: Takasu lives alone with his beautiful but undependable mother. His father who isn’t around was a weird bad-ass looking yakuza. It’s because of his genes that Takasu-kun always looks evil and is always feared and mistaken for a delinquent, when in reality he is a caring guy who has to take care of his household on his own. On his first day in a new class he bumps into Taiga, a very small but pretty easily aggravated girl, often called palmtop-tiger, and gets punched in the face. At least all the misunderstandings about his personality are cleared now very early. He later finds out she actually lives in a big apartment just beside his small house. He also finds out they both are in love with each other’s best friends, and so they agree to help each other, which turns out to be not as easy as they think.
Toradora is one of the more deep school comedy romances. The protagonists are interesting and there’s lots of character development while the comedy does not fall short in any way. It’s a story about how, unlike their outer appearances and first impressions, people can beautiful once you get to know them better and spend time with them. A show not only about love and comedy, but also about prejudice, misunderstandings, false rumors, psychology and friendship. The animation quality is more than acceptable, and from what I’ve read in the manga, the story is really going somewhere. However, the anime rushed the happenings of the manga (which also rushed the story of the original series of novells already) at a few rather important scenes and failed to convey their meanings fittingly. But someone not familiar with the novell nor manga will maybe not notice anything about that. Rating: 9/10
Review: Yuuto is your usual high-schooler except for the fact he seems to be the private maid for his sister and teacher who seem to do nothing but drink and cause trouble. He would have lost all faith in woman if it wasn’t for Haruka, a model student who is rich, pretty, good at studying, sport, piano and everything she does. By coincidence he finds out she actually is an anime otaku. Now she is afraid that her happy student life will crumble if rumors were to be spread, but surprisingly Yuuto isn’t bothered by it and promises to not tell anyone. This was the day they started to spend more and more time together.
I was pretty hyped when I heard there will be a “guy meets perfect girl with secret anime fetish” anime, but after watching it I have to say this show didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The animation quality is fine and the settings seem interesting, but they pick up too many clichés we’ve seen 1000 times in other anime and manga stories. Further more in this show being an anime fan is presented as something that will make people look at you with more disgust than being a rapist; not quite, but it gets too dramatized. If you don’t expect too much, it’s your usual love comedy and enjoyable to watch, but don’t expect any new groundbreaking concepts, plot constructions or character designs. Rating: 7/10
Review: Years ago on a stormy night, when Yuki still was a little girl, she was attacked by a vampire. However, she was saved by Kaname, who is a rare pureblood noble vampire. She doesn’t have any memories of her life before that fateful day and was adopted by the headmaster of Cross Academy. She now attends this school as a day-class student. This school also has a night-class which consists only of beautiful and talented students. Only Yuki, her adopted brother Zero and the headmaster know that everyone in the night-class actually are vampires, trying to conform to human society. Kaname also attends this class and as a pureblood he tries to keep everyone civilized. However, even he seems to have certain secrets. And what are the secrets behind Yuki’s and Zero’s pasts?
Vampire Knight is based on a popular manga with astonishing artwork. The anime show’s animation quality doesn’t quite live up to that, but at least it by far isn’t as much of a let-down as Special A. It’s a shoujo story about the love triangle between Yuki, Zero and Kaname, which gets more complicated by the fact that they are both vampires. But even plot-wise this show doesn’t fall short with all its mysteries and tragedies that unfold along the way. Even those who do not like shoujo anime should give this show a try. Rating: 8,5/10
