When one’s premise is a magical fuel present only in breast milk and requires young chil­dren to extract this via the most obvi­ous method avail­able, hav­ing an cen­sored ver­sion avail­able on all but the most lib­eral of tele­vi­sion chan­nels seems counter-productive. The uncensored ver­sion fills in a lot of the gaps that the other egre­giously includes, obtuse close ups of faces and innoc­u­ous body parts only go so far before hard static cuts are made to con­ceal raunchy or reveal­ing motions; unfa­mili­ar­ity with the concept of Seikon no Qwaser would cause sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fi­cultly in under­stand­ing what the altern­at­ing moans of pleas­ure and pain were in ref­er­ence to. The volume and abject lewd­ness of these scenes is quite stag­ger­ing and it is no under­state­ment to call the open­ing epis­odes of the series a panoply of por­no­graphy that don’t attempt to mask their intentions.

“a dis­gust­ing and rep­re­hens­ible atti­tude that is only bolstered by the viol­ence and bor­der­line sadism”

At St. Mikhailov Academy, someone is mur­der­ing local girls; the incid­ents began shortly after the dean of school dis­ap­peared, leav­ing only a cryptic note to his bio­lo­gical daugh­ter Tomo and adopt­ive daugh­ter Mafuyu. Tomo is a sickly girl who is often absent from school which, now with her father miss­ing, causes both her and her self-styled pro­tector Mafuyu to be bul­lied by some of her class­mates. After a chance meet­ing with a silver-haired Rus­sian boy, Mafuyu is attacked by a masked psy­cho­path and is drawn into the world of the Qwaser — alchem­ists with an affin­ity for cer­tain ele­ments and the need for soma, found only in selec­ted girl’s breast milk. The young boy, Alex­an­der, is the Qwaser of iron and after join­ing the school and mov­ing into the local dorm­it­ory, he vows to pro­tect Tomo against all aggressors. Read the rest of this entry

What begins as a creep­ing sense of malevol­ence with Ookami Kak­ushi (lit. Wolfed Away) devel­ops into mute indif­fer­ence as the threat of a mys­ter­i­ous scythe-wielding lun­atic ebbs into frisky sexual encoun­ters. The series starts with the faint hope of a slow burn­ing mys­tery, that is res­ol­utely extin­guished how­ever by sedent­ary pacing and con­tinual non-events. Unsur­pris­ing then that the ori­ginal cre­ator behind Higur­ashi no naku koro ni has sim­ilar duties for this as well as the Peach-Pit duo tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for char­ac­ter designs. The out­come is a taste­less melange of dif­fer­ent inspir­a­tions ran­ging from Night Wiz­ard to Pro­ject Zero to Myself; Your­self and many points in between that still main­tains its own dis­tinct approach but ulti­mately lacks the focus needed to succeed.

“the melodi­ous next epis­ode pre­views which, set to drum beats, are nar­rated by a soft, rasp­ing voice”

Hiroshi, his writerly father and his wheelchair-bound sis­ter have recently moved to the rural town of Jogama­chi. Divided by a river into the old and new areas, rumours abound of man-sized wolves roam­ing the sur­round­ing hills; it isn’t until a friendly acquaint­ance from school dis­ap­pears though that Hiroshi begins to real­ise there may be more to the town than he ini­tially assumed. With a local har­vest fest­ival upcom­ing — focused on the town’s abund­ant Has­saku fruit, a type of fra­grant orange — and strange occur­rences increas­ing, the local populace’s strange affec­tion for Hiroshi may be more a curse than a bless­ing. Read the rest of this entry

With a premise remin­is­cent of My-Otome and cham­pi­on­ing the cur­rent trend of snotty faux-aristocrats, Ladies versus But­lers starts as it intends to con­tinue: copi­ous, point­less fanser­vice. The frantic first epis­ode is chase across pala­tial school grounds which sees girls of an acutely fair dis­pos­i­tion faint at the very sight of a teen­age boy with unkempt hair and a scar, com­poun­ded by a bevy of situ­ations which dis­robe or oth­er­wise strip the numer­ous busty school­girls of their pride and decency. The open­ing epis­odes cater to a wide vari­ety of devi­ances and with many names from Kan­okon on this pro­duc­tion, the series is sure to be replete with many more.

“one the most flag­rant examples of the arrog­ant but ditsy arche­type so favoured by lazy writers”

Aki­haru Hino, for reas­ons not yet dis­closed, recently trans­ferred to the pres­ti­gi­ous Hak­ur­eiryou school which edu­cates both upcom­ing maids and but­lers as well as upper class ladies (and one gen­tle­man) on mat­ters such as etiquette and intense loaf­ing. After his dis­astrous intro­duc­tion to the snooty Sel­nia Flame­heart and a brief expos­ure to a num­ber of the mad­cap stu­dent body of the school, he runs into Tomomi Saikyo, a child­hood friend he had hoped to have left in his past. Remem­ber­ing her only as schem­ing and devi­ous, her pres­ence in the school is bizarre but not as much as Akiharu’s mis­ad­ven­tures dur­ing his ten­ure at the most bizarre of cam­puses. Read the rest of this entry

Within moments of the first epis­ode, Dur­arara!!‘s con­nec­tion to Bac­cano! is obvi­ous: brightly col­oured eye­c­atches punc­tu­at­ing the open­ing and enu­mer­at­ing the size­able cast. Shar­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant por­tion of its predecessor’s pro­duc­tion team, dir­ector and char­ac­ter designer included, it like­wise refuses to be pigeon holed into a single genre instead throw­ing its weight behind its eclectic char­ac­ters and pacing. Unlike its pre­de­cessor how­ever, every­one intro­duced in the first three epis­odes is fas­cin­at­ing in isol­a­tion, but fizz with chem­istry when the ensemble cast collide.

“the deadly ser­i­ous kid­nap­ping of Magenta is in stark con­trast to the blonde bar­tender who punches a gentleman’s clothes off”

Set in Ikebukuro, Mikado Ryugam­ine arrives at the train sta­tion after being invited by his friend to attend the local high school. Eager to be part of the city life, Masaomi Kida shows the some­what naive Mikado around, intro­du­cing him to friends and warn­ing him of the dangers that the enter­tain­ment dis­trict of Tokyo holds. Weav­ing through the busy night time streets, they pass a girl meet­ing up with a man she has sup­posedly spoken to online. Events spiral out of her con­trol and things look bleak until one of Ikebukuro’s urban myths arrives: the Head­less Rider — an enig­matic driver of a jet black motor­cycle. Story threads diverge and coalesce with equal fre­quency as more oddball char­ac­ters are intro­duced includ­ing a Rus­sian giant hawk­ing sushi, a mon­strously strong bar­tender and a whim­sic­ally vicious young man. Read the rest of this entry

The easi­est way to describe Sora no Woto is to identify its most obvi­ous influ­ences. Already well estab­lished is the K-On! style gelat­in­ous char­ac­ter designs how­ever the set up and pacing has more in com­mon with Haibane and its European influ­enced loc­ale. Most prom­in­ent how­ever is the tonal sim­il­ar­it­ies to the Valkyria Chron­icles series which is unsur­pris­ing given Stu­dio A1 Pic­tures’ lead­ing role in its pro­duc­tion, like­wise for the anim­a­tion which shares a great deal with Kan­nagi. The entire pack­age is dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent to all of its pro­gen­it­ors but the open­ing epis­odes can’t fully escape the grav­ity of its derivations.

“this is a cyn­ic­ally con­struc­ted series tar­geted for max­imum mar­ket­ab­il­ity and min­imum friction”

Kanata, who in her infancy wit­nessed a beau­ti­ful woman play­ing a trum­pet to the sky, joined the army in the hope of learn­ing to play her bugle for free. Upon arriv­ing in the town of Seize she is caught up in a local fest­ival and, after dirty­ing her mil­it­ary uni­form, is taken in by the curt Rio. Kanata inad­vert­ently loses Rio’s pendant and for­goes her induc­tion into the local bar­racks to search for it only to be lost her­self and needs to be res­cued by those she was due to meet earlier. What fol­lows is an intro­duc­tion to the slow life of an isol­ated border-town’s army base and the numer­ous incon­sequen­tial adven­tures that res­ult from it. Read the rest of this entry