The unambiguously-named chartfag has been kind enough to draw up a visual guide to coming events in the wide world of anime, and to put it bluntly, things look bleak. The Moe Sucks staff today convenes to make our guesses about the season’s hits and misses.

For convenience I’ve divided the shows between those that are doomed before they ever air to be worthless, those whose prognosis is dark but that might still pull through, and those that I’m unsure about or see as having some potential.

THE DAMNED:

Queen’s Blade: Heir to the Throne

Fin: Disgusting demi-porn returns for seconds. If you really want to watch cartoon ladies have sex you should just go for it, why torment yourself with this pervy tantilization wrapped around the barest fighment of a plot?

E Minor: TITS.

Nyoron: The main character is Fin in disguise, watch out for her blade!

Seitokai no Ichizon

Fin: The entire plot is that there’s a guy surrounded by girls in a highschool setting, gee I wonder if it will be a shitty harem.

E Minor: Studio Deen show so it’ll be bad. Over/under on the number of tsunderekkos on the council?! Two, no, three!

Nyoron: Lolilicious~

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu

Fin: The synopsis reads like the definition of pandering, there is no chance that this will be in any way interesting except to dorks lusting for their nerdy anime dream girl.

E Minor: I’ve never heard of Diomedia but the art direction looks terrible just from the tiny little picture. “…centers around the male protagonist Yuto Ayase…. While Yuto is rather ordinary….” Big surprise. And I love how Haruka has poofy French nicknames like “Nuit Etoile” and “Lumiere du Clavier.” Kids in Japan are so talented and sophisticated; we were busy just calling each other bitches and cunt back in high school.

Nyoron: I dunno guys, my high school was pretty normal, we held hands and prayed for Hitler to revive.

InuYasha Final Act

Fin: I got tired of Inuyasha half a decade ago, along with basically everyone else with any taste at all. Even if you have the excuse of being 13 years old you should do yourself a favor and read the books.

E Minor: Don’t care.

Nyoron: Haha, Fin actually liked Inuyasha.

Kampfer

Fin: Anime’s twisted relationship to transsexuality aside this just sounds idiotic.

E Minor: Fighting shoujos, original shit. Bet he’s the best fighter too. Y’know why? Cause he used to have a dong. You need one to win this game. I’ve long come to realize that the words “light novel” don’t mean a damn thing. They’re probably the equivalent of America’s Goosebumps or Animorphs and maybe the top selling ones get to the fame and attention of Twilight. Like Haruhi.

Nyoron: MY SWORD WILL PIERCE THE HEAVENS

Armed Librarians: Book of Bantorra

Fin: I stopped reading after the first two words of the title. Nothing good can come from this.

E Minor: I bet the plot will be convoluted as fuck and full of jargon. “…caught up in the ongoing battle of the library.” Just read that out loud.

Nyoron: My sorceror on Aion uses a book to pwn nubs with her ice hadouken! ITS GONNA BE GOOD

Heaven’s Lost Property

Fin: It’s weird how a 200×200 image can tell you everything you need to know about an anime. Really, go look at the little picture on the chart and try to tell me you don’t know exactly how and why this show will be awful.

E Minor: After a while, anime blurbs all blur into each other so I don’t even know what this one is about but TITS. And uh, Fin, I’ll have you know you just don’t get it. What the picture shows is ample amounts of contrast. Uh, you have the screaming tsundere and uh the quiet, shy loli and the sleepy-eyed older girl with big breasts who will have that generic voice acting that all older girls have (see: Miyuki). If you can’t see the contrast being estab- GAWD I don’t even know why I bother.

Nyoron: Heaven’s Lost Property is the virginity of the boys that the clergy molested. RIP.

THE DYING

A Certain Scientific Railgun

Fin: I could see this going in a few directions, but none of them are very encouraging. A girls with guns show? A Ghost in the Shell ripoff? I will hold off condemning it until I know exactly what I should be condemning it for I guess.

E Minor: I wish TF2 had a railgun. Pew pew. Um, Ghost in the Shell? Are you kidding me?! Turn in your anime badge right now. I’ll have you know, Fin, that it’s a spinoff of To Aru Majutsu no Index. It’s about a girl from the Church of England and she has the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in her and she meets a boy with the Imagine Breaker and they fight magicians and espers in Academy City and there are churches like the Necessarius and the Annihilitus and the Amakusa Catholics and and and-

Nyoron: I LOVE RAIL GUN

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Fin: Dynasty Warriors has sucked for like four or five games now. But seriously, I can’t think of any “historical” anime that hasn’t been both terrible and completely worthless as a history lesson, so I don’t have high hopes here.

E Minor: 52 fucking episodes. Not about Korea’s three kingdoms, obviously the superior Asian nation and thus it’ll obviously suck.

Nyoron: hells yeah korea son

The Sacred Blacksmith

Fin: I don’t have a specific complaint here it just sounds gut-wrenchingly boring and generic. The demon blade! The orphaned girl! The heirloom! Almost certainly rehashed tripe.

E Minor: I love these names. Hannibal Quasar sounds like a winner.

Nyoron: Hm, this blacksmith doesn’t seem very sacred to me.

Fairy Tail

Fin: See the Sacred Blacksmith.

E Minor: Lucy Heartfilia! Sounds like one of those never-ending shounen.

Nyoron: big boobs

Kobato

Fin: Sounds frighteningly like Juuden-chan, which you may remember as “that anime where the girl pees a lot”. Also it’s always stupid when the show’s premise includes the words “must not fall in love” because it makes it an ironclad certainty that that’s exactly what will happen.

E Minor: Wholesome girl who just wants to help everyone. Yawn. I bet she’s also clumsy and… yep, Wiki says she’s clumsy. It’s by Clamp so I doubt she’ll pee on anyone. “…filling up a mysterious bottle called a ‘flask’…” Nice.

11Eyes

Fin: Again, reused adventure tropes. I can’t think of a single way this show could end up being original or interesting, it’s just a matter of knowing the exact specifics of its unoriginality.

E Minor: Sounds like the plot to a video game. Wiki brings up a 11eyes crossover for the Xbox 360 which sounds like a bad fanfiction idea. Who knows, who cares.

Shin Koihime+Musou

Fin: The synopsis makes it sound serious, but then the picture is straight out any lame moe anime. I bumped it up out of the ‘doomed’ category because it has a little cross in the title that made me think of Maria+Holic and smile because that was a good show.

E Minor: A show about bandits… with big-breasted shoujos. Yeah, I sure bet it’s a serious show. “He is a modern day Japanese student who was trained in kendo, military strategies and has pretty good knowledge about Asian History in general.” This is just downright discrimination. Where’s the modern day Japanese NEET who was trained in Idolmaster!, Touhou and has pretty good knowledge about Dragon Quest games in general?

Yumeiro Patissiere

Fin: Well I can’t tell if this was meant to be in the children’s shows section or not but I’m sure some western fans will watch it either way because they are basically children anyway. There’s a 99% chance it will be clumsy girl moe shit but what the hell, we’re due for a good cooking anime, maybe this will be it.

E Minor: Fuck, look at those eyes. Wholesome girl (14!) but aw she’s clumsy. It was (still is?) serialized in a shoujo magazine so probably lame, probably harmless, definitely don’t care.

PURGATORY

Trapeze

Fin: The only series this coming season I have no reason to doubt. I have no reason to anticipate it either, but having no strikes against it makes it technically the most promising show of the season.

E Minor: LOL, Oedipus complex, of course.

Darker than Black: Comet of Gemini

Fin: I haven’t seen the original but a friend endorses it with frightening devotion so I am putting this as a maybe.

E Minor: Didn’t watch the original either, don’t care.

Letter Bee

Fin: Probably just generic ~shounen dream~ stuff, but I’ve never seen anything about the mystique of being a postman before so it’s possible this one will be something different.

E Minor: Don’t like the art direction. Sounds like an anime version of The Postman. A moe Kevin Costner. Uguu, here’s your letter~

Kimi no Todoke

Fin: I cheated and read the first volume of the manga. It’s a little bland but entirely readable, which is weird because Wallflower, which I despise, had basically the same premise (except the girl was an emo NEET and the boy was a trio of Japanese Queer Eye wannabes).

E Minor: Could be a lot worse. And it’s Production I.G. so it’ll probably be nice to look at. From the Wiki description, I love how the boy “fixes” her though.

Sasameki Koto

Fin: After the Aoi Hana fiasco I should know better than to put any kind of faith in yuri anime. This has every indication of being the exact kind of formulaic crap that every godamn anime about lesbians so far has been, but my hope still burns. Pity me.

E Minor: Yuri. No.

Winter Sonata

Fin: This has gotten like a million different adaptations, and it takes a pretty strong story to break the barrier of cultural tension between Japan and Korea, but because it is Korean drama it is basically guaranteed to be a miseryfest where someone gets cancer and dies.

E Minor: It’s gonna be emo as fuck. Love triangles, quadrangles, I LOVE THIS SHIT.

Nyan Koi!

Fin: Well this sounds like an inoffensive little comedy, let’s see how it will get moe’d up and ruined!

E Minor: Yawn.

Natsu no Arashi 2

Fin: From what I’ve watched so far Natsu no Arashi is smart, funny, well-animated and well-directed. Unfortunately the character designs are so fucking ugly that I haven’t been able to work up the interest to finish the first season. They really do just ruin all the nice things the show has going for it.

E Minor: Didn’t care for the first season.

White Album 2

Fin: I didn’t see the original and apparently it’s based off a dating game or something? But anything that isn’t about highschool students for once would be nice.

E Minor: Didn’t watch the first. LOVE TRIANGLES GIVE ME MORE!

Asura Cryin 2

Fin: Didn’t see the original, and it’s fairly popular, so I’ll withold judgement until I know more.

E Minor: Dropped the first season after one episode. Looked ugly, sounded ugly, had mechas.

THE AWESOME

Jungle Emperor Leo

Nyoron: I have to add this section for the kids because I am not a kid-hating person like everyone else on the internet. I believe that these shows will be the best of the season, just you watch. Anyways, I’m predicting that this show will be like an anime Lion King.

Stitch 2!

Nyoron: I think this will be like the Stitch series on Disney, but don’t quote me on that.

LOOK UPON THESE WORKS AND DESPAIR

Quite frankly, fall is going to suck. Almost everything is either a sequel to an already-shitty show or can be predicted to have a very good chance of being shitty itself. I’ve complained about slim pickings this summer but at least then there were two SHAFT shows and a Higurashi sequel to look forward to, and a number of promising newcomers like Taishou Yakyuu and Tokyo Magnitude (none of which have really come to much admittedly, but at least there was hope for a while). In contrast, the coming season is going to be a fucking wasteland, and there’s a fair chance that I will find nothing worth watching on its own merit at all (I’ll still probably check out whatever’s popular so I can write mean things about it and hurt some internet crybabies’ feelings).

After an appropriate interval we’ll revisit these predictions and see how right we were, until then I recommend everyone enjoy Bakemonogatari while they have it and stockpile some Zetsubou Sensei against the coming anime famine.