So, cuz I’ve seen (nearly) every show this season, I figured I’d fill ya in on what I think are some good choices.

Shows are listed in order of good to bad. tl;dr at the bottom.

Featured Anime: Ano Hana

Ano Hana is about a group of childhood friends that drifted apart after one of them died.

Are you out of high school? If so, this show is going to be extremely relevant to you. People drifting apart after a while? Oh yeah, I’m sure you can relate. I’m pretty sure that’s why the college student-infested IRCs are abuzz about this show.

Beyond that, it’s a smart take on how the death of a childhood friend has affected five young adults, years into the future. I don’t wanna throw around pretentious terms like “human condition” or any of that bullshit, but it’s a refreshingly mature anime in a sea of “high school girls in funny situations”.

Give this show a try, it’s my favorite anime this season, and it may just become yours too.

 

Yeah, I’ll Follow These

 

Hanasaku Iroha

Great show. A high school girl gets sent to live with her abusive grandmother who owns an inn.

There, she grows as a person and interacts with other interesting people. Definitely top-tier in terms of character interactions this season. If you can only watch two shows this season and are fine with missing out on high school comedies/bro-’em-up shounens, try Ano Hana and Hanasaku Iroha.

Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai

Fucking hilarious.

Take this scene, where this little girl justifies flashing her crotchless panties at a bum on the street.

Point proven. Watch this shit.

It’s got some absurdly hilarious moments and genuinely interesting characters.

Steins;Gate

This is a pretty interesting show. We’ve got a plot with time travel and a main character who may or may not be sane.

The semicolon probably rings bells for you, though. That’s right.  This is made by the same dipshits who made Chaos;Head (which is a terribly shitty show). I don’t wanna jinx it, but this show could end up quite bad.

Anyway, it’s a cool take on time travel, but with a crazy middle-aged man as the protagonist. Fingers crossed that they pull it off right.

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko

This is what Arakawa Under the Bridge would be with a higher budget and with less “tee-hee random is funny” ‘comedy’

It’s okay, but let’s be honest. You’re gonna watch this for the visuals. There’s nothing especially amazing about it beyond clever camera tilts and a girl who thinks it’s awesome to be rolled up in a futon.

And yes, the visuals are quite nice.

Deadman Wonderland

I wish I didn’t read the manga, because this show isn’t even close to being that good.

Anyway, you’ve got a kid who gets framed for the murder of his classmates. He gets sent to a prison where he will eventually participate in mysterious battles fueled by a newfound power of his and he fights other people with similar abilities.

This isn’t your regular shounen. Get ready for lots of blood and death.

C – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control

People fight one another in order to gain money (using their future as collateral – e.g. if you lose, you die). It’s pretty interesting, but the main character is a dumbass, so this show could go either way.

Let’s hope it ends up as intelligent as the trailers implied it was going to be.

Maria+Holic Alive

I liked the first season, so I figured I’d watch the sequel. This is what you’d expect of a sequel from Maria+Holic. Good stuffs.

Hidan no Aria

This show is all about a tsundere and her interactions with the main character.

Unlike most Japanese protagonists, the main character is at times badass (instead of being a sniveling wimp all the time), but he’s still 90% a prissy little bitch.

This is a show in which you may find the 10% where he’s a smooth-talking motherfucking badass to outweigh all the problems.

Basically, turn your brain off and have some fun with this.

Ao no Exorcist

The son of Satan decides to become a demon slayer. He ends up going to a special high school to get taught proper demon-slaying techniques.

The manga’s better. Much better pacing there. But this could get okay when it goes all shounen in our faces.

Softenni/Soft Tennis

A sexually-tinged take on a high school girl comedy. But it’s got some parodies that don’t suck, so give it a shot, at least until episode 3. It’s worth it for this (click to enlarge (hee hee, that’s what she said)):

Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san

Yeah, this is decently entertaining. A college girl and a detective go around solving people’s problems with disrespectful demons. But it’s pretty funny at least.

Dog Days

Middle school kid gets transported to a mystical wonderland where he fights in battles that are for fun and where no one gets hurt, no matter what.

Fear not, for you will masturbate in spite of the kiddy premise. There are some very sexy ladies in this (for my female readers, there are also some guys you can get off to).

Yeah, besides fap material, I can’t see why anyone would watch this show.

Battle Girls – Time Paradox/Sengoku Otome

Young girl goes to feudal Japan and discovers that everyone is a woman, including the famous warlords from the Warring States Period. Because they’re all women, they settle their differences through low-stakes games and friendly conversation. Thus, Japan is conquered through friendshp and quilting contests.

Also, there is not nearly enough masturbation material for this concept. But y’know what? I can still masturbate to it. And really, isn’t that what the spirit of anime’s all about?

 

MEH@These

 

A-Channel

High school girls interact with one another. That’s all this anime has. The one “unique” idea this show had was to make one of the main characters look exactly like Yuki Nagato.

Good job, guys.

Sket Dance

Am I missing the point of this show? A three-person team goes around their campus, doing favors for people. Then they meet funny characters with weird problems and solve said problems. Rinse and repeat. Neither unique nor interesting. PASS

Astarotte no Omocha

Awkward. This show wants to Zero no Tsukaima, but it will never even come close. Why? Well, you have a 30-year-old man with an elementary school kid who gets summoned to another realm to have sex with an elementary school kid who needs cum to survive.

If you can get over this concept, you may enjoy this show. I ain’t a goddamn prude, but fuck this show’s plot.

Nichijou

Do you like watching high school girls doing funny things? Do you want a shitty rip-off of Azumanga Daioh? Welcome to Nichijou! It makes up for lacking any interesting characters with preposterous situations. “Haha! That girl’s a robot! That’s ridiculous! I am going to laugh and put up videos about this on Youtube! AHAHAHA”

These jokes are consistently recycled (a better man than I would put a comparison video of the jump rope scene in Azumanga Daioh (episode 12) and the jump rope scene in Nichijou. Haha, the Tomo character fell down!)

You know what? Fuck this. I’m gonna be straight. Just rewatch Azumanga Daioh. If you haven’t seen Azumanga Daioh, go watch it. This show is a fucking blatant ripoff and not worthy of your time.

Tiger & Bunny

It’s a buddy-cop like show with a lot of advertising. It’s not too bad, but I didn’t find the “Superheroes go around taking care of bad guys so a television program can make money off them” concept all that interesting.

Kaiji Season 2

It’s season 2 of Kaiji. Did you like season 1? If so, you’ll like this season. I’m not fond of either season, but that’s just me~

Dororon Enma-kun Meramera

Eh, I dunno. It’s okay, I guess. Not really my style. Juvenile comedy based around a kid who looks like he’s in elementary school, but is actually a fire-wielding demon! Oh my! :/

Honto ni Atta! Reibai Sensei

I dunno, it’s 5 minutes. You’ll get your time’s worth, but it’s not exactly something you’re gonna remember.

Morita-san wa Mukuchi

What do you call a comedy anime that’s boring? Not worth your time. Skip this.

The premise is that the main character doesn’t talk to people because she overthinks things, but all that leaves us with is a character that doesn’t really interact with others and shows no emotion. If you really think that’s awesome, I’m going to introduce to you to Pumpkin-kun! the Animation. It’s a show where there’s a pumpkin named Pumpkin-kun. He sits in his pumpkin patch and doesn’t do anything.

Fuck, I’d make millions in Japan.

Pretty Rhythm – Aurora Dream

If you’re not a 5-year-old girl, then don’t watch this. You’re not the target audience. They’re not trying with this show because they know they don’t have to. Think of it as a really stripped-down Pretty Cure where all they do is dance and they don’t fight monsters. Enjoy.

FUCK THESE SHOWS

 

Moshidora

It’s baseball + management. But mostly it’s about a girl who manages a baseball team. Do you like baseball animes? You’ll like this. I hate baseball animes, thus I hate this.

30-Sai no Hoken Taiiku

The fuck did I just watch? This is literally a terrible 4-koma thrust into an anime. I’m sorry, but you can’t base an anime around gag-based sex jokes and expect it to stand just on that. There’s one word for this show: annoying.

Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL

My name is from a Yu-Gi-Oh! card and even I think this sucks. The main characters are little kids and they’re super fucking irritating. I’m going to pretend I never watched this, and you should too.

X-Men

This is Japan’s take on what the “West” wants in an anime. So yeah, enjoy your muscly, super-serious anime. It’s awkward and boring. Skip this and pretend that Japan never heard of Marvel.

Hoshizora e Kakeru Hoshi

Boring. Boring. Boring. Do you want to watch a romance anime? Watch anything but this. It’s low-budget, generic shit.

Hen Zemi

Damn, do I hate this show. I want my goddamn bandwidth back. Words cannot describe my hatred.

Nana to Kaoru

You know, one of the main reasons I watch shows these days is for fap material, but I didn’t like this show even though it’s all about S&M.

Now, I’m not saying I didn’t fap to this. I did, once or twice. But let’s work some economics into this shit. How much utility do you get from this? Could you get better faps from a different anime? A manga perhaps? See, that’s important. Us men only have a certain amount of faps in us per day. We’ve got to spend them wisely.

Quite frankly, I’d get more mileage from fapping to a brick wall than watching an ugly frog-faced bastard do extremely softcore S&M on some boring slut. Just read a doujin; it’d be more entertaining.

But… all the girls I’ve asked about this show (sample size = 2) say it’s the best thing they’ve ever watched. So, YMMV if you’re a girl.

Toriko

Who the fuck thought this show would be a good idea? Here’s the plot: Muscular dude goes around and eats things. Sometimes he punches things and then eats them. Also, the art is shit. Do not torture yourself with this show. Avoid it like you avoid black people on the street.

I haven’t seen these yet:
Hyouge Mono
The World God Only Knows II
Seikon no Qwaser II
Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi
Showa Monogatari

 

Overall grade for this season: D+

Try harder, Japan. Most of these shows suck.

BTW, want some numbers on this season? Of the 32 shows I’ve watched…

25 (78%) feature at least one middle school or high school girl as a main character

7 (22%) are straight-up high school comedies

Enjoy your cookie cutter shows.

Oh, and someone needs to make an AMV of this season using this song. For great justice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wtorkqoa58

 

tl;dr:

Watch the fuck out of these:

• Ano Hana
• Hanasaku Iroha

These are good enough:

• Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai
• Steins;Gate
• Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko
• C – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control
• Deadman Wonderland
• Maria+Holic Alive
• Hidan no Aria
• Ao no Exorcist
• Softenni/Soft Tennis
• Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san
• Dog Days
• Battle Girls – Time Paradox/Sengoku Otome

Don’t bother with these:

• A-Channel
• Sket Dance
• Astarotte no Omocha
• Nichijou
• Tiger & Bunny
• Kaiji Season 2
• Dororon Enma-kun Meramera
• Honto ni Atta! Reibai Sensei
• Morita-san wa Mukuchi
• Pretty Rhythm – Aurora Dream

DO NOT watch these:

• Moshidora
• 30-Sai no Hoken Taiiku
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL
• X-Men
• Hoshizora e Kakeru Hoshi
• Hen Zemi
• Nana to Kaoru
• Toriko