“Look ma, yokais — again!”

Natsume Yuujinchou is already in its third season and I’ve only seen three or four episodes of the entire series.

What’s wrong with it — why don’t I want to watch it? Nothing, per se. The animation is solid, the soundtrack’s relaxing, and the plot is rather inoffensive. I wish I could like Natsume Yuujinchou, but I just don’t. The anime is so placid, and while ‘placid’ doesn’t normally carry a negative connotation, I’m afraid this series moves too slowly to resonate with me.

Natsume Yuujinchou could be worse. It could be an ugly series where the shounen hero powers up and grunts his way through life’s problems. Natsume Yuujinchou at least does one thing well and that’s Shinto propaganda. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s pretty much how the show comes across to me. Unfortunately, this anime just isn’t my cup of tea.

Nurarihyon no Mago: Sennen Makyou, on the other hand, is ugly and brutish, from the animation down to the voice acting.

Nekogami Yaoyorozu doesn’t really belong here besides the fact that it also has yokais. It’s the cute comedy type like Shinryaku! Ika Musume, i.e. it works if it’s funny, white noise if it’s not. For me, it’s white noise — inoffensive, but white noise nonetheless.

Shoujo-face

For just a tiny second, THE iDOLM@STER had a sliver of potential. The potential was miniscule, perhaps microscopic even — I dunno if it could’ve gotten any smaller. But first things first…

Why do half of these poor girls have the same mouth-gaping, toothless smile? Better yet, why do we homogenize and pasteurize raw talent so that any real personality is stamped out? We reduce female personalities down to a set of measurements and likes-dislikes, fetishizing shallow, superfluous differences between them that ultimately mean fuck all when the idols are all onstage, singing and dancing in such lock-step unison that it simply boggles the mind as to how this assembly line process of music could even be considered appealing to anyone who claims to have a heart–

So, THE iDOLM@STER had some potential and that was in the first episode’s faux documentary format. The same gimmick has been employed to some success in the West, most notably The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family. Unfortunately, by the end of the first episode, the unseen cameraman steps out from behind the camera and completely destroys any shred of interest I could possibly have in this series.

The same criticism (minus the faux documentary bit) applies to YuriYuri, but instead of doing a song and dance number, this minstrelsy opts instead for a bunch of inane jokes and yuri pandering. Slap on the shoujo-face and let the vaudeville begin!

I just don’t get it

I thought the whole point of Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu was the energetic, silly battling in a school setting. Why, then, does the second season start with a boring beach episode with no battling whatsoever? Have I suddenly cared enough about these characters to watch them outside of school? The answer would be no. Hopefully, the second episode will return things to normal.

Camp or satire?

But even if Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel: Kyun Kyun Tokimeki Paradise!! is satire, it’s still wholly unwatchable like that Milky Holmes anime people tried to recommend. I get the feeling the audience isn’t laughing with this anime nor are they laughing at it either. Some animators are getting pennies out of this project and I guess I hope they don’t starve to death.

Quite possibly the worst first episode I’ve seen in a long time

Someone actually praised this exact moment. Yeah, I dunno either…

Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi’s first episode was so bad, I had to watch it three times to fully comprehend the “plot.” My attention just kept wandering every  single time I clicked “Play.” Hell, this will quite possibly be the worst anime of the season, but I’m not going to make that call just yet.

(I mean, yeah, Manyuu Hikenchou is bad, but I don’t even consider it a legitimate candidate, y’know? It just feels like an ecchi vehicle and nothing more — in my opinion, it doesn’t even belong in this conversation.)

It doesn’t really help that the narrative flow of the first episode is a mess. It’s like reading a paper where the author is constantly jumping from point to point and it isn’t until the conclusion that a coherent, cogent argument actually emerges. To bring this back to anime, you’re supposed to build toward the conclusion, not just vomit a bunch of scenes onto the floor and hope the ending manages to tie everything together.

We first have a dude with crazy hair making boring small talk with a friend at school. All of a sudden, he gets run over by a truck. We then get two members of the student council sitting in an enclosed space that requires magic of some sort to enter and leave. No explanation whatsoever as to why this is necessary. The girl keeps begging for the guy to kiss her (why?) when something suddenly pops out from between her legs and forces the guy to do something about it (again, why?). Finally, there’s a naked loli frozen in rainbow carbonite, whining about her lover only to be shocked every now and then by cheap lightning effects.

Somehow, the first guy “dying” is necessary for frozen loli to regain her strength and (thankfully) age herself nine years. Rainbow carbonite apparently keeps you from aging. Her lover finally remembers her and a running montage begins; seeing this, I wish I was watching Run Lola Run instead. Her lover finally finds her and they embrace each other in the moonlight until…

Whoops, your princess is in another castle murdered before your very eyes! Somehow, the student council president is involved, I think, but who knows because all these anime characters look the same. I am anime racist — deal with it.

So yeah, after three attempts, I finally finished the first episode of this terrible anime. I then went onto a few anime forums just to see what the peanut gallery thinks of this show and, of course, there are people praising this shit.