- Idol Jihen: Idols running for high political positions in Japan and winning. Also, most of them seem to still be in high school. I'd say the premise is dumb, but is it really? At this point I think in a century people are going to watch this and wonder if this was fictional or a documentary. Is there a particular reason the Heroine Party is a girls club? Boy idols are plenty popular after all. There's a million different directions they could take this, from actual governing attempts (lol) to idol shenanigans with politics as a background flavor (probably this) to a dark look at the world of politics where the leaders have to constantly entertain people and make them feel good in order to keep them from rioting (that might actually be interesting). Probably worth catching the second episode.
- Gabriel Dropout: Where the angels are worthless and the demons are more well-intentioned. Yup, this is the successor to Umaru all right. Should be comfy enough seeing horrible people act like horrible people.
- An angel Umaru
- A devil Goody Two-Shoes
- An angel who is a Manipulative Bitch for the entertainment
- And a Devil with a major case of Chunnibyou
Ok my anime of the season so far.
- Masamune-kun no Revenge: Straightforward adaptation. The opening chapters are as boring as I remember it. This is a story that I feel doesn't capitalize on its gimmick enough. Dropped (but I'm still reading the manga for some reason)
- Chain Chronicle: Interestingly starts with the defeat of the hero Yuri at the hands of the final boss. The alliance of armies then disband to crawl back to their lands, and while Yuri is agonizing over his defeat has chance encounter with this kid, who seems to also possess the makings of a hero. The battle scenes also stood out, with lively camera work and smooth choreography. Aside from those two points, the show screams generic high fantasy; they didn't even bother with proper introductions since you could guess who's who from a cursory glance. Still a pleasant surprise.
- eIDLIVE: MC annoys me. Why the hell does he keep talking to that disembodied voice in his head. It's not like he can't shut his trap. Also has PTSD of some sort but I couldn't care. Ugh. Pile on that the generic tripe of a story, the typical ice queen heroine, etc. On the bright side, there's an MIB-esque charm to it (the alien designs were either awful or amusing), the transitions were colorful and creative and there's a neat shout out to KHR.
- Urara Meirochou: Fluffy and funny just the way people like it. I actually laughed at Nono's introduction. They went full puppy with Chiya and she is adorable. They're already milking her wild child side for all it's worth (midriffs galore). I also like Puu, who wants to be a trendy tarot teller but apparently has no idea how that actually works. The other two are more archetypical, but they're solid as it is, and they have the time and room to grow.
- Schoolgirl Strikers: Budget high-school action-fantasy hybrid right down to the vague alien enemies and appalling costume design. About the only thing of note is the seiyuu, but not even Ishihara Kaori and Kana Hanazawa make me want to continue. Dropped (not that I was planning to watch it in the first place)
- MinaKami: Another show about girls and their bikes, though this is looking better than Long Riders was. Art style isn't my cup of tea but otherwise look good, and the girls have been quite relateable so far. A couple of scenes are off, especially the part where the main character starts worrying about being friendless, even though she was shown to be quite friendly, and in fact has just made friends with a complete stranger just an hour or so before.
- Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: As stellar as I remember it. After spending so much time with Yakumo last time, I thought it would take some time before I could get invested in Yotaro and Konatsu again, and yet here I am already rooting for the goofball and the girl. Yotaro in particular is a darling fresh breath of air that overturns the tragic tone of S1, and the moment when he proposed being a family to Yakumo and Konatsu is just precious.
- Youjou Senki: Not yet sure what to make of this. The grim and grimy aesthetic suits the fantasy WWI backdrop. In fact, there's plenty of fanservice for the WWI aficionados, from pike helmets to Plan 315 to the general excitement of stuff blowing up. Magic also looks neat, with neat-looking mechanical doodads. On the other hand, character design is fugly. The pilot seems more like an appetizer than an indicator of whatever track the plot will follow, so it's hard to comment on the story at this stage. I'm not sold on Tanya yet; I think it would have been better if she wasn't overpowered, and reliant on cynical salaryman schemes, but who knows, maybe we'll see that in the next few episodes. Speaking of salarymen, aside from one line, you could cut out that part of Tanya's backstory and nothing would feel out of place, so I hope there's more to that angle.
edited 10th Jan '17 12:37:34 AM by fillerdude
ACCA Episode 1: This seems to be odd and slow series that is nonetheless quite intriguing with an interesting mystery plot and a very nice op. The animation seems a little low budget but the style definitely seems to suite the series however. There also seems to be a strange focus on food and some glorious moustaches.
edited 10th Jan '17 11:40:09 AM by SebastianGray
Hand Shakers: The animation, both 2d and CG, is god sauce, same with the music and action. The main leads power is quite unique, too, I love the way he uses gears as a shield and sword.
Watch SymphogearHand Shakers is one of the most aggressively terrible looking series I've ever seen. And the studio behind it, Go Hands, had a great looking series in K. It's like they decided that the really dynamic camera from the second season of K would be best served by having bizarre and awful backgrounds, mixed with terrible CG and honest-to-god jittercam.
Wow, opposing viewpoints here.
edited 10th Jan '17 11:51:45 AM by Zendervai
Wow, what contrast.
I think the CG is fine, it makes the 2D animation better since the 2D animators can focus on it more then the backgrounds.
Its a major step up, honestly.
Better Cg then in any TV anime before and that includes Polygon Pictures stuff in recent years, which also just gets better and better.
edited 10th Jan '17 11:54:41 AM by Demongodofchaos2
Watch SymphogearHand Shakers Episode 1: I can see why some people would dislike the animation but I quite like it (although it did make the action sequences seem a little messy at times). I am also liking the main character from what I have seen so far and the system of superpowers definitely seems quite interesting.
eIDLIVE: The main character is whiny and annoying, the thing living in his body is even more annoying, and the heroine is a stuck up bitch. Not a good start. Some of the alien designs are kinda creative (the one living in MC body looks terrible tho) but most character designs are nothing special, the art style seems familiar but I can't put my finger on it. Overall it doesn't look to promising.
Hand Shakers: Sad to say, but it looks like shit. While the art style and character designs aren't bad, the backgrounds and the CG look awful and the animation and camera motions make me nauseous.
Which is a shame because the story and characters caught my attention and I like the ideas behind the powers. I'll see next week if I can power through the visuals to continue watching.
Hand Shakers: There's a few neat visual ideas in here, but they're drowned out by all the bad ones. Production values are high, but not high enough to do what it's attempting. Show can be literally painful to watch at times. Art style is ugly. Underwhelming action. Strikingly sexist. Writing is reminiscient of a c-list LN. Do not watch
ACCA: Kind of dull. Also doesn't know if it wants to be goofy or downbeat
Hand Shakers is kind of fascinatingly bad. Because normally when something's bad, there's a clear lack of effort or money somewhere, or the effort and money isn't quite enough to elevate bad material. But here we have a case where all the effort put into it only serves to make it worse. Not that it would be quite good without that- it's somewhat more sexist than average- but it would seem somewhat unremarkable without it. I'm probably gonna be following it, because I feel like it has the potential to one of those rare series that manages to be bad in an educational way.
For some reason, and I haven't gotten around to watching it quite yet but its on my list, I feel like people who are calling Handshakers bad also called K bad. I've seen K. K was visually breathtaking. If Handshakers is of the same visual quality then, outside of the sexism angle (which after K's BL tones that were not advertised at all) I'm FINE with a little overblown fanservice that was similarly not advertised. So far a bunch of ANN's reviewers have pointed out the camera thing was also in K so unless its been turned up to 11 I don't really see the issue.
Bad CGI will always be bad CGI and everyone that brings it up just needs to simmer down a tad. Unless a show is all CGI like BBKBRNK then calling the CGI bad and blowing a show up over it is like calling a park bad because one of their trash cans isn't uniformly the same color as the rest.
edited 10th Jan '17 10:41:13 PM by Silentedge89
that's a nice philosophy, but that doesn't work when a) the CGI is aggressively bad and b) in your face and in the foreground _all the time_.
Handshakers on its own is mediocre at best, yet another "boy who discovers magic, has to fight others with more experience and protect the girl" series, but the way in which it completely failed to integrate the CGI and 2D animation, not to mention the horribleness of both on their own, makes this not only awful to look at, but actively nauseating. It made me car sick watching it.
Some examples: boobage
, that motion
, those chains
.
Seems likely.
When I get around to watching it (probably on Thursday) and if it doesn't make me hurl I'll probably watch it week by week and let people know if it gets any better (at least as far as the sexism goes). Cause, while I can excuse a lot of things, if that shit remains a constant its kind of inexcusable. Having the first ep over-saturated in fanservice to apologize to any male fans Go Hands might have lost when K started delving deeper into hot guys making eye-sex with each other to an uncomfortable degree at times is fine. 12 eps of nothing but chain girl being the villain's personal sex toy isn't.
Fanservice is fine, uncomfortably rapey fanservice isn't and never will be.
edited 10th Jan '17 11:44:59 PM by Silentedge89
I like K and I really don't like Hand Shakers. Like, with K while there were visual elements that were really overdone, there was a specific aesthetic the creators were clearly going for. This one has like five distinct aesthetics that don't blend at all.
It doesn't help that the "camera" work is just awful. Like if it was in live action...well some of the shots would be flat impossible, but people would be bashing the camera work because it never sits still and sits at bizarre angles and it doesn't help that they keep using weird perspectives...and not quite getting the character perspectives right.

Yea, I forgot to correct myself after the date.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.