Fall 2011 Anime Preview

Tier 3

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Guilty Crown [Premiere: 10/13]
On the flip side of the Noitamina block is a show that, if you read the description carefully, sounds an awful lot like a reimagining of Code Geass. Japan is under the control of foreign powers, a young boy with a special power is drawn into the inevitable rebellion…yeah, we’ve seen this setup before. OK, the special power is different – our protagonist, Shu, can extract weapons from people, and it’ll be cool to see how that works. What this show does have going for it is a good director: Tetsuro Araki, who did Death Note. Plus, I generally give a bump to a show if it’s part of the Noitamina program. I hope they go in a really unexpected direction with this. The danger here would be if they made it the same old same-old.

C3: Cube×Cursed×Curious [Premiere: 10/1]
Yes, this looks like yet another strange-girl-drops-out-of-the-sky formula piece. But from what I’m hearing, the combat scenes alone may make this stand out. I might be giving this one too much credit, but I’m at least going to give it a try. The plot in a nutshell: Protagonist Yachi receives a super-heavy black cube from his father, who is overseas. The next day, a cursed girl named Fear appears. Who doesn’t love a good Hellraiser parody?

Ben-To [Premiere: 10/8]
Bento is a Japanese word that you may have heard. It means box lunch, and you can find them for sale all over Japan. This comedy pits powerful but poor students in fierce battles for a limited number of

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half-price bento at the local grocery store. I kind of had to shake my head after reading the description. I mean, really? After letting the idea marinate in my head for a few days, though, I got the feeling that it’s so stupid, it just might work. Either that, or the half-price bento that I’ve been eating are a bit further beyond the sell-by date than the vendor is letting on. Eat at your own risk, I suppose.

 
The Tier That I’m Making Up As I Go Along

Ad Lib Anime Kenkyuusho [Premiere: 10/15]
Highly regarded voice actresses Emiri Katou and Kaori Fukuhara do just about whatever they want. In what could be the most unique anime project we’ve ever seen, these two stars of the anime world are going to bring in a special guest every week and record the voice track for an entire unscripted episode of fun, going completely off the dome. Then, they get to challenge their animation studio to draw and animate the episode around their original voice recording – in less than a week! It’s like putting the work of Chuck Jones into a blender with Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and then turbo-charging it with a blast of nitrous oxide. Now, the art is going to be very simple by comparison to other shows you’ve watched. It has to be, if they’re going to meet the deadline. But, assuming they pull this off, it could be hi-larious. There’s a lot of risk here, though. Improv is hard to do well, and when it goes bad, it’s wretched. Cross your fingers, mina-san.

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