Apathy seems to have been a trendy topic for anime the past few years, culminating in 2012 with Hyouka’s Oreki whose, if you’ll forgive the pun, entire driving force was to pursue a languorous existence, free of exertion. Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko (Electrowave Girl and Youthful Boy / Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl) may have preceded Hyouka by a year but nevertheless rails against this trend of laziness, ironically doing so in the most languid and nonchalant way possible.

It doesn’t start as such. The first episode is, for the lack of a better phrase, very SHAFT, by which I mean very Shinbo. It’s sparkling, protractedly verbose and cut together with just enough self-assured rough edges to be purposeful.

It’s pretty terrible.

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A lot can be said for a good story well told. Ano Natsu de Matteru rockets into the romance genre with a concept that by all rights should be weary from overuse, but is instead energised by likeable characters and a story that is impassioned and dramatic with little triteness.

Not surprising really given the talent behind almost every facet: the director has past triumphs with Toradora!, Ano Hi Mita Hana and A Certain Scientific Railgun, the writer is the same person responsible for Please! Teacher and music is provided by the imitable I'VE SOUND group including opening lyrics penned by none other than alumni KOTOKO - it's like getting the band back together. The creators indelible fingerprints are everywhere, whether it's the cerulean skies and over-saturated greenery encapsulating a youthful summer or the skilful manipulation of character affections and steady meting out of drama; to say it was well produced would be doing it a disservice.

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Spring 2012 is coming, attempting to wrap up Winter 2011.

Aquarion EVOL

This is not the Age of Aquarius. The first series of Aquarion was mediocre at best - surprising really given Yoko Kanno's duties on the soundtrack and the birth of what should have been a decent pop-star in the form of AKINO. EVOL comes after an ill-advised OVA and reboots the premise by retaining the giant robot consisting of separately piloted craft - think Getter Robo except with squeals of orgasmic delight from the female aviators - but amps up the ridiculous factor to eleven. The opening episodes are pleasing in how seriously the show doesn't take itself with a a male protagonist who floats on wings growing from his ankles when he has any naughty thoughts.

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It would be easy to be confused as to just where exactly Blue Drop sits in terms of genre if one went by the first three episodes: perhaps the all-girl school histrionics would give some indication, but juxtaposed with operatic science fiction it would seem that maybe the series is trying to tell a different, as yet, hidden story touching on old Gundam favourites such as the horrors of war or its effect on children. Blue Drop actually occupies the secret third option and the hint lies in the source manga's genre: yuri.

This divulgence is able to put a lot of the introductory material into context, and while it certainly doesn't contain anything near the raunchy material of the manga, Blue Drop still seems uncertain as to who the series is aimed at. The character design is less than stellar, it seems that clichés are born and bred in the school the central characters attend and the animation does nothing to compensate for this, instead the aesthetics feel washed out and less than enticing. Development is restricted to the protagonist only, and the revelation that her nemesis is captain of a futuristic underwater craft comes across as more underwhelming than it was perhaps meant to. So with the interpersonal relationships and sexual content that series should have inherited from its parent missing, and the other typical trappings of the yuri genre absent, the question of what exactly the series offers becomes difficult to answer.

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Dragonaut's first episode is full of breasts. The second episode is full of dragons. The third episode has breasts and dragons. This is of course entirely unsurprising given the character designer's previous works: Love Hina, Gravion and recently Witchblade; the seminal Stellvia of the Universe seemingly an exception to Makoto Uno's otherwise top-heavy résumé. Abnormally buoyant female appendages aside, Dragonaut's opening episodes are filled with confusing events, terrible CG wyrms and a slow-but-steady introduction to the cold-clinical world the series inhabits.

"Competent" is the best way to describe the series. It bears all the hallmarks of a two season show that isn't prepared to tip its hand at the outset. The hook centres on a trio of creatures that came to earth from outer-space, destroying the protagonist's spacecraft and family along the way. Modi operandi set, time jumps several years into the future when Earth is threatened, people actualise/synchronise/ride mechanical dragons and the once young protagonist now has a barrel full of angst to carry around. Terminology such as "Album", "Dragonaut", "D-Project" and "ISDA" are scattered liberally throughout the dialogue to inject a kind of faux mysticism to the proceedings but fundamentally, nothing is meritorious.

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