So far I have been consistent in seeing shows that I thought would be terrible but at least keep my interest and shows I keep wanting to be good that don't live up to my expectations.

I am currently following a few more shows than I normally would. Primarily they are as follows:

Nisekoi
Mahou Sensou
Witchcraft Works
D-Frag
Chuunibyou yadda yadda
Z/X Ignition
Kill La Kill
Golden Time
Mikakunen de Shinkokei
Sekai Sekufu bla bla Zvezda
Buddy Complex
Tonari no Seki-kun
To Aru Hikushi e no Koiuta

and I think that might be it.


Many are time killers that are interesting enough to keep me watching, but with time I find I'm less interested than when I started. That is common enough, I guess, as the promise of the idea generally falls victim to the reality of keeping the story moving and engaging at the same time. Rare is the show that can pull this off, but I can tolerate mediocrity as long as it is interspersed with great moments.

Kill La Kill has an interesting theme: Clothing as aliens that are/have been corrupting and controlling us as hosts. The plot is revealed in good pace, but is getting so over the top it has well passed the silly, which I can tolerate, and has instead gone into self - farce. I'll keep watching due to inertia and investment, but I hope they pull off a miracle.

Mahou Sensou, which started off well, and largely kept up the story, but I fear might start descending into paths I don't much like to see.

Z/X Ignition - again with a good and interesting beginning, but is complicated enough to easily fall apart under its own weight of plot.

Witchcraft Works, which has been consistently better than average, but suffers from a main character who is so Kuudere, that so far we have seen little of the "dere" portion.

Sekai Sekufu bla bla Zvezda has an interesting plot, but again could easily fall into disarray. So far so good. We'll see if the writers can keep the creativity up.

Some of the shows surprise me in ways that, for instance Red Data Girl or Uchouten Kozoku, or Shining Hearts did, with plots that tend to develop slow, but are interesting all along the way. Mikakunen de Shinkokei fits this style. A nice story that does not dwell on angsty stuff, neither is it filled with over the top action. It is simply a soft story that is very good on character development.

To Aru Hikushi e no Koiuta, or The Pilot's Love song is still heavily in exposition, but is letting the audience in on the reveals steadily, so we can see the potential conflicts and hope for a peaceful resolve in what could be a train wreck if it is not handled well.

Some shows I watch almost exclusively due to inertia and time investment, that I truly hope will pay off and prove that I have not wasted my time. I may also have watched a previous season and I am genuinely curious to see how they handle a story that seemed to have been resolved. Buddy Complex fits the former. I am losing interest but I think there might be something there they can pull off, and Chuunibyou yadda yadda fits the latter, in that I found the first season good enough to see it through, but they have to revive everything the old plot resolved out of necessity to keep the story going.

I watch other shows because I started the novel or manga and want to see how it differs or develops. Golden Time is an interesting example. It has passed both the translation of the novel on Baka-Tsuki and has long passed the manga. The problem is I don't much like the main female character, and (as is often the case) I wish the main male character would have made choices that would have served him better. I predict this will descend into areas of angst and character regrets so much so that I will drop it and have to write off the time invested. When do you make that decision? After the next episode maybe. Perhaps the one after that, or the one after.

Nisekoi was a fantastic one shot manga, but has turned into such a long running series in the rewrite I have decided to skip through straight to newly released issues, and I don't feel I missed much in the process. Not a good sign for the series when, 110 chapters in, all we have gotten is new characters in the harem with very little plot development, which is a shame, because it is a nice plot.

Last, there are shows that I honestly thought I would have dropped by now, but keep me laughing or intrigued enough that I still revisit. D-Frag is a series where I hated most of the first episode, thought the second episode was okay. Laughed quite a bit at the third episode and it has kept going this way. The sixth episode is a scream, from the first few seconds, not so much in the middle, and had me in stitches at the end. It starts when the main male character sees the main female character running towards him. He turns to face the camera - and the words "feint" appear on the screen, and promptly turns a 180 and runs. It doesn't work, but you know the writers had a laugh when they wrote it. Chuunibyou fits the bill, at least for now, as does Toanari no Seki-kun, which is a 7-8 minute episode series about a girl who keeps getting distracted by the guy who sits next to her in school, while he does nothing but invent things at his rear corner desk. It sounds (and is) silly, but it does hold your interest for those seven minutes.

I have to say that this season is better than it first seemed, but it is not an exemplary season at all, which rarely happens anyway.

Posted by: topmaker at 09:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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