First Impressions: Letter Bee (Tegami Bachi)

Letter BeeJosh - Letter Bee was one of the series pretty high on my expectations list, and after two episodes, it has the potential to be pretty good, though since we suddenly got a a “5 years later” jump at the end of the second episode, it’s hard to say where this series is going to go from here.  All we know is that there are Letter Bees, they carry letters, Lag wants to be one, and his mother was taken to the capital city.  Beyond that, it’s pretty wide open I think.

The first couple of episodes were rather corny with sobbing and all that all over the place, but it wasn’t necessarily anything bad yet.  I’m still hopeful that this series will end up being something worth watching.

Oh yeah, one final sort-of annoying note.  Crunchyroll says this series is 13 episodes long, but it’s actually about an 11 episode series pretending to be 13 episodes long, since episodes are only about 20 minutes long instead of the usual 23 to 24 minutes long.

Polaryzed – Contrary to Josh, this show was actually on my pass list initially (I’m not a big fantasy fan).  I only watched the first 2 episodes since I read other blogs praising it.  So far I kind of regret it.  Personally I found the plot to be fairly generic, and the acting somewhat corny and forced.  Lag annoyed the crap out of me, to be honest.  I’ll probably watch a couple more episodes now that Lag is older to see where the plot goes.  If things don’t get better, then I’m dropping this.

First Impressions: Kimi ni Todoke

Kimi ni TodokeJosh – I know that Polaryzed is already blogging this series, but I thought I’d chime in on it since I’m also watching it.

Kimi ni Todoke was a series which I actually had some serious doubts about going into it, and it was one of the last series to sneak into my watch list.  However, boy am I glad that I ended up picking it because so far it looks like it might just be the series of the season after watching the first two episodes.  So far there isn’t very much to dislike about this series, with good writing and animation, and a nice, but not overbearing, romance element to it.

I was trying to pin down exactly what series this show reminded me of the most, but I’m not sure I can really give a good answer.  It seems like my best answer is His and Her Circumstances, even though the character types for the lead characters are obviously different.  But it just seems to have a particular air to the series that reminds me of it (and as long as it compares to the first 2/3 of Kare Kano, then that’s a good thing).  In any case, I’m really looking forward to see how the rest of this series turns out.

First Impressions: A Certain Scientific Railgun

A Certain Magical RailgunJosh – I was fearing just about the worst going into this series.  I wasn’t particularly fond of A Certain Magical Index, but I hoped that since this series centered around one of the few characters in that series I actually liked (Mikoto), I was also hopeful it would turn out OK.  Unfortunately so far, my worst fears were no where near as bad as what this series has ended up being after two episodes.

I was nice to see some railgun action in the second episode, but so far the series has been nothing but creepy fan service by Kuroko towards Mikoto.  This is quite unfortunate since, with her powers, Kuroko has the potential to be a pretty awesome character, but instead she’s been turned into a dirty old man inhabiting a middle schooler’s body.

This isn’t (so far) the worst series I’ve seen, but if the creators are intent on going the disturbing fan service route in lieu of the cool esper power action route, then I’d be very, very tempted to ditch this show, something which I almost never do.

This was the last show I picked up for viewing this semester, mainly because I didn’t have very much on my list and I was already aware of the characters.  Unfortunately, it shows.

Polaryzed - I really liked the beginning of the first series, but I thought that it fell apart around half way through.  The one highlight was Mikoto and her ‘sisters’, so I was glad that they brought her back for a spin-off.

That being said, there hasn’t really been much substance to this show.  It’s mostly centered around Kuroko’s yuri-tastic antics.  And while this has been entertaining (especially the pantsu discussion), it also hasn’t been great either.  I will continue to watch this the same way I kept watching Index, hoping that something more will come out of it.  But so far, this show gets a ‘meh’ from me.  Maybe if they pick up more with her rail gun ability in more than an obscure Touma scene and put some plot behind it.  Even Index was at least broken into plot arcs.

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