Summer Anime Season 2013 Round-Up Part 1

The autumn anime are about to start in a fortnight’s time so now is a good chance to give my thoughts about some of the summer season titles I watched.

How was the summer season this year?

Nothing spectacular. The spring season featured a lot more better titles that I liked a lot more. Danganronpa was quickly dropped when I purchased the PSP game it is based upon (I want to own more visual novels!).

Dog and Dominatrix, or Dog and Scissors as everyone else calls it, had a scatter-shot and surreal approach to comedy similar to Excel Saga and it was entertaining enough. The relationship between Harumi and Natsuno (who I fell in love with) was endearing without being pervy, the voice acting was good and the way all of the gags were linked to literature and blown way out of proportion really made the show. SHINING!  3.5/5

 

The Sunday Without God (Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi) First Impression

The Sunday Without God (Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi)       

Director: Yuuji Kumazawa, Series Composition: Tomoko Konparu,Character Designer: Shinichi Miyamae

Voice Actors: Aki Toyosaki (Ai), Daisuke Namikawa (Humpnie Humbert), Akeno Watanabe (Anna), Eiji Maruyama (Yuto) Eri Kitamura (Dee Enjy Stratmis) Rina Satou (Hana)

Studio: Madhouse

 It started 15 years ago when God forsook the world.

 “Heaven and hell are too crowded. It won’t be long before this world is too.”

Those were the last words heard from him and people stopped dying. The dead now walk the earth regardless of injuries even as their flesh rots. In order to save those people God sent one final miracle, Gravekeepers. Only burials by Gravekeeper grants permadeath.

 Cut to a European landscape that could be from Kino’s Journey. Green fields stretch into a mountain range, forests spring up intermittently and an aqueduct towers over a village which is where our protagonist lives. The place is beautiful but violence is about to tear everything apart as a mysterious stranger walks into the village and men grab rifles and prepare for a gun battle.

 Cut to a girl wiping her brow after digging graves. Her name is Ai and she is the lead character.

 

She inherited the position from her mother Lady Alfa who died when was seven. On the day of the funeral, Ai discovered that as the last of her mother’s bloodline she must take over the role of village Gravekeeper.

 Ai is finished digging graves and heads back to town where she encounters the mysterious man from earlier. The two talk and Ai discovers that he is Humpnie Humbert a.k.a the Man-eating Toy. Humpny Humbert is the name of her father and she starts to follow him but when she gets to the town square she sees the scene of a massacre.

Genkina Hito Summer 2013 Anime Preview Picks

Summer. Time to go out and enjoy the sun and drool over the beautiful university girls who float by my place of work in summer clothes. Actually, I think I’ll watch anime instead because I’m not lecherous even though I make plenty of jokes and comments that suggest I am.

I finished putting together the Anime UK News Summer 2013 Anime Preview yesterday after what felt like an eternity of writing (it was most of a rainy weekend). It’ll probably go live later today or tomorrow or whenever the editor of the week validates it. Again I used one of those guides that came out a few months ago charting the different shows and then I raided Anime News Network and My Anime List for info. I also had lots of music playing – a great Touhou track is a life-saver when you spend hours writing.

To be quite frank I’m going to feel a little sad to see the end of the Spring Season titles Hataraku Maou-Sama, My Youth Rom-Com, Aku no Hana and Red Data Girl. Each of these titles provided me with a lot to write about and, most importantly, great entertainment. If they were to get UK DVD releases I would definitely purchase them! Attack on Titan is the one show continuing and I am tempted to start Gargantia on the Verduous Planet because it looks gorgeous and has some sort of epic twist at episode 9.

What of the summer season? We see a lot of sequels to past shows, reboots of treasured franchises and a huge influx of shounen ai titles with a lot of bishounen running around and acting all kawaii as hell and causing fujoshi to create slash fiction on tumblr. The genre where anime have huge unwieldly titles about being unpopular and have sad hyper-self protagonists continues and there are more titles about high school clubs which don’t do anything in particular and the cute girls who are members. In my opinion there is nothing too spectacular but here’s what I fished out of all the writing I did.

If you want an entire season overview then head on over to Anime UK News! This post is all about me and my strange tastes…