Even though the only series I’m doing episode reviews on is Nagasarete Airantou, I’m also watching three other anime series this spring: Seto no Hanayome, Idolmaster Xenoglossia, and Lucky Star.
Now that we’re to the episode 7 mark - a quarter of the way through the season -it’s time for a report card.
I’d say, out of the four series I’m watching, the best one so far is easily Lucky Star. Lucky star definitely has it’s issues - it’s essentially an Azumanga Daioh wanna-be, but I think it fails at being quite as witty as AD. It’s pretty humorous, yes, but I don’t find myself rolling in my chair laughing as much as I did with Azumanga. Nevertheless, Lucky Star is still the best series I’m watching.
Next on the list is probably Idolmaster Xenoglossia. Perhaps because I haven’t seen all that many mecha series, this series still seems interesting to me. I don’t think it’s fallen into any real holes yet, despite chances to do so. One interesting thing about this series: it’s based off of an X-Box 360 Game called Idolmasters, which apparently helped boost 360 sales in Japan quite a bit. The game itself is what it sounds like - you’re a manger of a prospect idol. The anime throws a twist in, however, making the idol competition a cover for a secret government program that uses young girls to pilot mechas which help intercept meteors (the remnants of a destroyed moon) before they strike earth.
Well, ok, so we’re seven episodes in and we still don’t know either why or how the moon was destroyed or why the project has to be secret, but hopefully that’s coming.
Third on the list is probably Nagasarete Airantou. As you can see from my reviews, I find this series fairly mediocre. It can’t decide what it wants to be or where it is going, but it is at least keeping itself from falling in too deep of a hole.
Finally there is Seto no Hanayome. If I get tired of writing reviews for Nagasarete every week because I find it boring, I’m glad I dropped Seto no Hanayome as a project due to no one fansubbing it initially. This series has made me want to claw my eyes out several times while watching it, both because of it’s near substance-less plot and radical shifts in animation style, apparently just for the heck of it.
