After last week, I have to admit the knee is feeling a bit better. Not well enough to do anything strenuous on it, but I’m no longer like certain immobile Welshmen. Elsewhere, I’ve also been watching that new Netflix remake of House of Cards. Kevin Spacey is a delight to watch when he is playing asshole characters, and a member of the US House of Representatives would definitely fulfill that role. I just wish the writers would have put some thought into having the policy positions of the respective parties make sense unlike the comical mess they seem to be in that series. However, I digress in taking away from the usual Japanese animation that this blog takes up.
If I’m perfectly honest, it was a fairly tedious week, but it wasn’t entirely uneventful. Psycho-Pass finally drove me over the edge in the first minutes this week, so it will no longer merit a place in these recaps. I can only take so much hack writing before it becomes entirely without merit after all.
Currently Airing Top 5
Space Brothers
I have a distinct feeling that this show hit its peak the moment that Hibito hooked himself up to the oxygen tank. Considering the propensity of this show to have cliffhangers, it was surprising to see this episode finish off without one. Otherwise, I think this was a perfect episode up to that point. The moment that Hibito runs out of oxygen had all of the drama and pain that would come with that moment. The flashbacks to Hibito’s time working with Brian Jay were absolutely fitting. I also liked the concern Hibito had that the toy astronaut wasn’t a delusion. The delusion of Brian as that oxygen robot was really perfect too. I only wish it would have left off with Hibito getting back up. Now the series will probably lose all dramatic edge for the final episodes.
Senyuu.
There was one character who stole the show for me in this episode that had me laughing hysterically throughout. That would be the blatantly lolicon old man who was working along with the comically named Foyfoy, who was playing the evil hero character. The running joke was that the old man would lose all motivation when he thought that the Demon King was actually hundreds of years old, but when he found out she was 10 he was unstoppable. Carrying that joke on for three minutes works, but they can’t go back to that well again.
Robotics;Notes
If there’s any show this week that summed up the quality on display, it was Robotics;Notes. It was so memorable that I practically forgot what the episode was about within a day, and yet it is comfortably in my top 3 for the week. This episode was a farewell to Airi, who we learn was cryogenically frozen by Kimijima Kou because she suffered from Chronic Anime Character Wasting Disease (also referred to as Key Disease). On a scale of 1 to 10 on being terribly emotionally manipulative (1 being Golgo 13 and 10 being C****** A**** S****) this is just a 6. Now everyone should get back to fighting off the vast conspiracy again.
Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT
Maoyuu Maou Yuusha
I’m pretty much convinced now that the pacing on this series is getting worse. JoeAnimated over at Anime Audiolog made the point that source material has little to do with the characters in it, but about the world they inhabit. I would have to agree on the face of it. This is a story so devoted to its characters that they aren’t given names at all. I actually think this story was meant to be a history of a developing world through the main actors involved. The anime seems to have taken the step of making it a romantic comedy where Demon King is the only intelligent person. It’s almost as if in the process of adapting this, the producers read only the first chapter and saw a love story in there, then went over a synopsis of the rest of the events.
The Rest of the Week
Ishida to Asakura
The idiot Asakura is told by Ishida that they need 10 million yen to open up the flower shop the latter wants the both of them to run. Asakura then sells off everything he owns for 980 yen including his clothing. Ishida also horribly murders Yamada again. That’s the whole episode, but what the hell the dumb comedy got a couple laughs out of me. The line delivery of Asakura also gets a laugh out of me too. I don’t know what it is about it. The delayed sentence finish, I guess.
Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru
The highlights in this episode were the introduction of two new characters, Masuzu’s younger sister Mana and full-blown chuunibyou character Himeka, the third girl in Eita’s harem. There was also Masuzu’s attempt to swim, the key word there is attempt. Himeka is ultimately just a distraction that they can get a bunch of jokes out of, though she’s much more tolerable than a certain Takanashi. The real story is Mana’s introduction to the story. She will pop in and out to cause problems for her older sister which will just drive Eita close to Masuzu. It’s funny how the one driving the harem is the one least connected to what is happening.
Minami-ke Tadaima
Simply put, Fujioka is nowhere near the comic presence of Hosaka or Makoto. The attempts at comedy come entirely from his own misunderstandings of situations. Plus, they take far too long to develop cause me as the viewer to just want to move on to the next segment. But it keeps going anyway. The scene with him acting as a delinquent though really just trying to sound like he was hot could have been half the length. But it dragged on for minute after minute. Kana’s stealing food from Chiaki then sleeping sequence was about the only real highlight this week.
Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo
The corpse of this series drags along toward Valentine’s Day. Because anime’s least deserving harem lead somehow gets interest from girls on that day. Also, Sorata should have just been rejected after the presentation. Personally, he should have just proposed a standard FPS game with standard weapons and vehicles on standard maps that could be released annually in the West and he would have been heralded as a legendary accountant game designer. Then he wouldn’t have to choose because he would have enough money for both Mashiro and Nanami. Hell, he could probably get Misaki away from Jin as well. Come to think of it, an NTR ending would probably make this show redeemable.
Zetsuen no Tempest
I thought the return of Aika to some scenes would make this episode more interesting, but it just seemed to meander from one scene of Hakaze being cute to the next. So she ultimately exposed the existence of magic to the world? Does that even matter after mysterious trees started sprouting out of the ground all over the world? Megumu as a hero character just isn’t working for me. It seems like Evangeline is carrying the entertainment value on that side. Maybe they should just get back to focusing on Aika again.
Little Busters!
The twin arc continues painfully as the question of who Haruka’s father holds everything up. Despite obviously being twins, that question has some importance because everyone seemingly refuses to realize this. It doesn’t even matter, and that’s the only good point Kanata made at the end before proceeding to try to NTR Riki from Haruka. This arc is just going to end with a stupid Maeda-esque point about how Haruka became a troublemaker because she was labeled as such and Kanata became an asshole because she was labeled as such by the Little Busters themselves. So really, the main characters are the evil villains. Can’t they just get to the Time Traveling Bus and put us out of our misery?
GJ-bu
This series is the celery of anime. There’s no substance in it at all. There’s absolutely nothing offensive or entertaining about it. The only thing it does is serve as texture in soups and that’s about it. I can’t find anything wrong with this series because it just doesn’t do anything. For those keeping track of my taste that means Glorious Failure>Not Attempting to do Anything>Insulting Intelligence of Viewer. Proper good series is left out because I would have dropped it.
Kotoura-san
It’s near the bottom again this week because I think it can do much than this. The grandfather who cared for Haruka was introduced this week in full, and he’s just as much of a pervert as Manabe. Bringing Hiyori back on side as a good character was always going to happen anyway unless one didn’t bother to watch the OP. That’s completely understandable as it’s well worth skipping in my opinion, but I digress. Manabe had thugs sent after him, but he ends up the bad guy in the end. Because romantic comedy. I don’t know if this show can improve since it seems to be firmly on the light side now.
Updated Winter Season Ranking
| Anime | Season Rank | Change | Series Average Rank | Change |
| Uchuu Kyoudai | 1 | – | 3 | – |
| Maoyuu Maou Yuusha | 2 | – | 1 | – |
| Senyuu | 3 | – | 2 | – |
| Robotics;Notes | 4 | ↑1 | 6 | ↑1 |
| Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT | 5 | ↓1 | 4 | – |
| Zetsuen no Tempest | 6 | – | 5 | – |
| Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru | 7 | – | 8 | – |
| Minami-ke Tadaima | 8 | – | 10 | – |
| Kotoura-san | 9 | – | 11 | – |
| Ishida to Asakura | 10 | – | 12 | – |
| Little Busters! | 11 | – | 13 | – |
| Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo | – | – | 7 | ↓1 |
| GJ-bu | – | – | – | – |
I’ve brought this mess of a table back for another season with a few differences. Trying to factor in shows carrying over from last season has hurt Space Bros a lot in terms of average score, but it’s still holding it’s own in the top 3. Since the same series have been dominating my top 5, I don’t see these numbers changing that much barring a total collapse by one of the top series in the coming months.
Terribad
Agent Aika
This was on a watch of the first 3 episodes, and the reason this was terribad became apparent quite quickly. It was just this short of Vividred on the perversion scale. The reason I came to that conclusion is that while it goes out of its way to shove as many shots of women’s crotches on screen, it’s not using children to do so. Also, it’s perfectly honest in the fact that it is an action fan-service romp with no substance behind it.
Through the three episodes watched in the group, the action seemed to alternate between women sitting down in ways they never would wearing shower caps as skirts, low angle shots of women piloting things (surely the inspiration for Code Geass‘s action scene direction), fight sequences where women would be tossed around and land with their panties in front of the viewer, and a powerful imouto character who was evil, but jealous of any woman who got near her onii-chan. So this was probably a series ahead of it’s time. There was also a plot revolving around a device that gave the title character that gave her metal tentacles and made her tanned, but the effects of the stupid had already set in.
Just based on this three episode test, I would say it’s fairly average by terribad standards at worst. At best, it’s on the low end of late-90s perverted action-comedy. It simply isn’t funny enough for me to care.
First Instance of Female Nudity: 23 minutes in episode 1
Lower Mid-Table 
Regarding Agent Aika, all the sequels were better. Just as pandering, but better stories and better animation. But in terms of gratuitous panty shots, “Najica Blitz Tactics” from the same studio and director leaves the others totally behind. (As it were.)
I thought it would be obvious the sequels would be better. Although I don’t know how anything can be more pandering than Aika. Hasn’t Najica come up her before?
This is what you get for not watching Chihayafuru. This week’s episode (4) alone was more full of awesome than the rest of the shows this season have mustered all together.
I’m still just 29 episodes behind on Chihayafuru. I just don’t get the appeal, but I’m not going to be critical of anyone who likes it.