Bite size Anime (in the 5 to 10 minute long range) is fun when you don’t feel like giving up half an hour but still want to watch a little something, and this season we have several. Miss Monochrome is an android (the humanoid robot, not the operating system) who wants to be a Pop Idol, in a show that pokes fun at the entire Idol business model. About half of each 7 minute episode is Vocaloid-sounding music performed by singer and voice actress Yui Horie, so you don’t end up needing to burn too many brain cells to follow the story line. They are calling this the 3rd series, but only if you count the singer’s Secret Mission Tour in 2012 where the character was first introduced as a series. I do find it somewhat amusing that the android’s house pet is a Roomba. The other short story series this season I am watching is Hackadoll the Animation, about three personal entertainment AIs who don’t have a clue. Their assigned goal is to to improve the efficiency of their clients by filtering the sea of information into the bits important to their human, but these three have no idea how to go about the task. I am sure it will be no surprise that this one is a comedy. So far I only have a single episode of either to base an opinion on, but they both have the potential to entertain if they are done right.
The first interesting Anime I found now that the new season has started is Heavy Object over on Funimation. It is based on a light novel by the author of A Certain Magical Index and takes place in the medium future, where warfare has been transformed by the development of weapons systems called Objects. I liked the characters in the first episode, the story telling was interesting, and there seems to be something of a mystery to be solved. I haven’t read the book yet, but I think I am going to enjoy following this show, and it has become the first one of the new season to be added to my Que.
The latest chapter in the groundbreaking Cyberpunk Anime series is Ghost in the Shell: Arise, the story of how the various members of Public Security Section 9 got together and became a team. If you have signed up with Funimation you can stream it from their site, if you don’t have an account with them you can pick up the discs at your favorite Anime supply store. This first showed in theaters in Japan as four feature length films, when they reformatted it into a television series they called it Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Alternative Architecture and added two additional episodes to transition it into the 2015 version of Ghost in the Shell: The Movie.
The summer Anime season is winding to an end, and three clear winners have caught my attention. Gate remains my favorite, with the action and international espionage in the Special Zone and Japan torquing up with every episode. I really hope they are planning a second season of that one, there is a lot of story yet to tell in that universe. Charlotte kicked into high gear in episode 9, when the introduction of a new power completely changed the nature of the story. And while it still reminds me a lot of Attack On Titan, God Eater is very definitely its own story, and quite an exciting one. At this point those are the shows I am watching as soon as they become available, often checking several times during the day to see if they are ready yet.
One of the new Anime shows streaming this season is Sky Wizard’s Academy, being hosted on the Funimation service. The story is straightforward enough according to the official site: Forced to retreat to floating cities due to an invasion of magical armored insects, humanity must now depend on Sky Wizards to battle the menace. The primary characters are almost that simple and straightforward, except for the collection of misunderstandings surrounding the protagonist as he meets his team for the first time.
I have to admit, this show did not attract my attention right away, so I only watched the first episode a few days back. I found it quite enjoyable as an introduction to a new series goes, and it does look to have a great deal of potential. If reviewing these kind of things was my day job I would have no doubt binge watched my way up to this week’s offering, episode 8, but sadly I have to work for a living. But I did enjoy the first one enough to make it worth mentioning in this post, complete with the link to its streaming home page and the trailer from there, so you could watch it and come to your own conclusions.
My favorite Anime series this season was GATE, and it pretty much still is. But now Daisuki has an exclusive on a new truly kick ass show that has caught my attention: God Eater is an amazing project, using edits and camera work normally reserved for the better live action programs, and almost never seen in animations. The animation quality itself is also far better than normal, with a lot more attention to detail. I should mention that by “Exclusive” I don’t mean they are the only service that has it, but it looks like they do have any given episode a good 4 weeks ahead of the competition. So if you find this one as worthy of attention as I do, that is an excellent reason to sign up for a Free Daisuke Membership, and maybe even consider getting a premium/paid membership, if you like what you see there well enough.
The core story line is also grittier than the other offerings, but seems to be extracted/stolen directly from Attack On Titan; giant god-like creatures are breaking through the protective walls humanity is hiding behind, and eating everybody they can catch. While they are doing all the parts of it so much better than we have seen before, it is sad that they didn’t come up with their own plot line, but only swiped someone else’s story. Of course, the people that read the original Manga might argue with that interpretation, but that is how it appears to me.