Beginning Winter Sonata without knowing its lineage is opening oneself up for confusion. While superficially Japanese, the series originates in South Korea, adapted from a non-animated drama series of which Winter Sonata is the second of four which are collectively known as "Endless Love". The original television cast are brought on in voice acting roles and not re-dubbed which means that when broadcast in Japan, subtitles are included. Past the initial puzzlement as to the difference in language, the first episodes of the series turn out to be little more than a straight-faced romance story, albeit with a nostalgic twist.
a show that resolutely belongs on daytime television, aimed squarely at the unemployed and housebound
The first episode - commonly termed Episode 0 - is billed as a prelude to the main series and wastes no time pouring on the floaty piano music and longing gazes out onto cityscapes ravished by the weather. Joon Sang Kang is in New York suffering from a hematoma behind his eye which makes him permanently introspective and liable to fall over at inopportune moments; meanwhile Yujin Jung writes about the past in cosy Parisian coffee shops while thinking of Joon. With some stunning backgrounds and a genuine eye for emotional detail, the series gets off to a slow but determined start.
Kuchu Buranko (Trapeze, lit. Sky Swing) is like a late night bevy of cocktails: all bright colours and mind altering effects. The first three episodes are an all out assault on aesthetics, everything is awash with luminous colours and textured with polka dots or garish swathes of clashing patterns. Sometimes barely discernible from the backdrops, the characters are animated haphazardly when they are at all, often devolving into poorly filtered live-action or blatant rotoscoping and other times jerking between poses with little warning. Like its closet meretricious sibling, Gankutsuou, the visuals are only meant to allure and the real meat of the episodes is worth risking sensory overload.
Beyond the scratchy, haphazard style it often feels like a technicolour slideshow
The mostly standalone stories are about individuals who have some sort of mental affliction which is examined by the whimsical psychiatrist Ichiro Irabu who changes form between an obnoxious green rabbit with permanent facial stubble, a precocious young boy whose lab coat is several sizes too large for him and an androgynous bespectacled boy in his late teens or early twenties. Even the patients are not immune to switching states, often depicted as animals which suit their condition; topping all of this madness off is a supposedly real life psychiatrist Fukuicchi who sporadically pops out of a scene for an aside on the current disorder being explored. The series so far is raucous, visually boggling and brilliant fun to watch.
How many eyes? 11eyes. Certainly more than 3×3 Eyes and The Girl with the Blue Eye, numerically at least. A fascination with eyes and in particular eyepatches (see also Rental Magica, Tenjou Tenge et. al.), this series has the standard outfitting of an enigmatic past and hidden powers connected with said eye as well as a natty patch to keep it all under wraps. Even though it exists as a blatant amalgam of many other ideas and series that have gone before it, 11eyes: Tsumi to Batsu to Aganai no Shoujo (Sin, Damnation and the Atonement Girl) cracks the barrier of dense nomenclature and proves moderately watchable.
it wouldn't be surprising to see a frivolous and inconsequential beach or hot spring storyline in succeeding episodes
A lot of this is down to its refusal to wholly mollycoddle the viewer. By the middle of the second episode the cycloptic protagonist has already worked out it is him that draws those around him into the monster-infested "Red Night" and by the end of the third episode the most recently introduced cast member is given a serviceable raison dêtre. The slow reveal of new party members is still present, again robbed of any interest by the revelatory opening, and the typical standby of the desire to grow stronger and protect those close is bolted to the lead male. By keep the most interesting mysteries close and trivialising the more mundane aspects, the series' introductory episodes maintain interest but demand little further thought.
Around the ending credits of the second episode one realises that they've just watched a flock of women's underwear take flight, some with mock jet-streams behind them. That the key element of Sora no Otoshimono's story - a busty, docile angel that fell from a hole in the sky - is the most tame concept of the series demonstrates how abjectly bizarre it is. The opening episode starts out tritely enough but then plunges into bizarre areas as a mostly naked teen runs rampant around his school which is frozen in time, until the penultimate closing scene where everyone in the world apart from the protagonist and fallen angel have evaporated. Were it not borderline misogynistic towards the female cast, this would be a surreal but enjoyable show.
they can alter reality on a whim but not manufacture some more discreet clothing
The sparsely dressed angel that is ground-zero for the ensuing bedlam is completely obedient and accommodating towards the reprehensibly crude lead, Sakurai; the master-slave situation is instantly repulsive, more so that the master of the pair pays little to no attention to her beyond barking orders. The obscenity continues when an order goes awry and causes the other lead female, Mitsuki, to be sans underwear and handcuffed for a large portion of the episode. The first three episodes are intermittently funny but an undercurrent of repugnance sours the otherwise competent show.
Seiken no Blacksmith is about as close to sword porn as anime is likely to get - gratuitous close-ups of everything from katanas to two-handed broadswords, even a sword that turns into a scantily clothed female - there is no doubt that someone on the production team has a borderline fetish for the weapons. It is not surprising given the focus on blacksmithing, however this is the more glamorous face which has a skinny youth forging works of art rather than leathery old men shoeing horses.
enigmatic portents are scattered liberally throughout the opening episodes
Kicking off with one girl's battle against a beast of indeterminate origins made entirely of ice, she is promptly saved by a katana wielding strip of a lad called Luke. Rewinding several hours, the protagonist Cecily is the typical spunky do-gooder: a freshly sired knight who sees off rapscallions in the market place before getting resolutely trounced by a derelict wielding a sword. Her heirloom sword broken, she seeks out her saviour and sporadic blacksmith Luke who bunks with an elf-eared child with a breast fetish. While the plot of the first three episodes isn't entirely predictable, there is a comfortable altruism to the proceedings that prevents anything too dynamic from occurring.
