A New Season

Hope is said to spring eternal and sometimes it feels that way in regard to seasonal entertainment, or in this case the television variety. Having cut the cord years ago, I have no cable or satellite version of a 150 channels with nothing on worth watching. Broadcast and streaming are all I need given most fare is dreck these days. So it is a bit surprising to be following  a number of live action shows and anime this fall season.

It takes a lot to get me into live action TV since after decades of watching every variation of story has been seen more than once. Even a foray into South Korean dramas didn’t last long once it became apparent they drag things out for far too long at too high an intensity.

UPDATED 20 Nov 2013 to reflect being deeper into the season. New comments are in bold.

UPDATED 10 Dec 2013 with further comments in blue.

Final Thoughts in green.

Right now I’m watching Arrow, Agents of SHIELD, and Sleepy Hollow. Sometimes I even remember they are on and catch them off the antenna. Most of the time, I’m watching them on Hulu Plus a day or two after they air.

Arrow has turned out to be more than just another CW pretty faces drama thanks to a desire to ground it in an aesthetic and attitude close to the Chris Nolan Batman movies. The show got off to a slow start last season and I lost track of it before catching up to it before the new season started. This is despite Green Arrow long being one of my favorite comic book characters from childhood.

A strong supporting cast has made the character interactions interesting, though the quality of acting varies widely. Fortunately, sidekicks Digg and Felicia rose to the fore by the end of season one to become the perfect anchors to keep vigilante bowman Oliver Queen grounded.

Another thing enjoyable is how they have been slowly working most of DC Comics martial arts based characters into the storyline. With the Black Canary making her debut in the story, I finally got to see a classic fight with the two of them taking down thugs like out of the old comics. Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins have been name dropped prominently, so that bodes well for future storylines and I like how Brother Blood has been reinterpreted so far. Later this season the Flash will make his first appearance so that should be fun.

Arrow is maintaining well and seems to be the new nexus for Warner Bros comic book adaptations. An amazing amount of characters and organizations are being worked in without confusion, which is an impressive feat even better than trick arrows.

Barry Allen’s first appearance was better than I hoped for and the season continues to progress. Even the flashback timeline has gotten compelling where it had only been interesting in season one. The series just keeps getting better.

Agents of SHIELD has been a mixed bag at best, but I continue to watch it since it is in continuity with the Marvel movies. Having Coulson back under mysterious circumstances is good, but the cast is a problem. Two dimensional characters form his “elite” team and frankly none of them are likeable. Combine that with the early episodes sounding like Joss Whedon writing a parody of himself and it was painful to watch. The last couple of episodes have been better, but the drama around Sky is irritating. Unless there is a spectacular payoff, this focus has been a waste of time.

It won’t be long until the holiday break and the show is not improving. Acting is mediocre to accompany rather boring writing. So far this is not looking good and I’m struggling to keep motivated in watching it.

Empty and soulless is how I’d describe the show. Not even the mid season finale could generate any genuine emotion. What a huge disappointment the show has become.

Then there is Sleepy Hollow, which has been anything but a waste of time. That’s a surprise, because I only watched the first episode out of a need to kill some time while feeling particularly unwell. Oh great, another supernatural soap opera like all the others flooding the airwaves was my reaction to reading about it.

Good thing I wasn’t feeling well, the show has turned out to be great fun thanks to decent writing and really good acting. The two main characters, Ichabod Crane and Deputy Abbie Mills, are a classic odd couple forced to team up and turn out to have great chemistry. The fact that he’s been in suspended animation since the Revolutionary War thanks to black magic and she’s has repressed psychic abilities make it a little different though.

Take the best parts of The X-Files, Supernatural, and The Night Stalker, then mix in the National Treasure films series attitude, and you get Sleepy Hollow. That mix could have gone terribly wrong, but this series has been highly entertaining. Anything that pulls off an apologetic zombie marking people for future death rates high in my book.

What an amazing first season this is having and it is only getting better with each episode. Unforced comic moments that don’t detract from the suspense or drama make this an unexpectedly likeable series. It also doesn’t hesitate to present material from history or short asides sure to go over the heads of many of the viewers. It has been awhile since something this smartly written has been on the air.

So far the show is maintaining. Something that struck me about it is that despite being a horror based show, it has a very warm and sweet core to it. Orlando Jones has shown a deft touch for drama that impresses as well.

In the anime genre, I’ve found at least a couple of things to follow each season. Sometimes that can be hard, but last season managed to be fairly good. Silver Spoon, Stella Women’s Academy High School Division Class C3, and Servant x Service were all very good to excellent. Since bad seasons invariably follow good ones, I was dreading the new season especially since a couple of manga I liked were being adapted.

So of course with four episodes in, I’m following eleven series counting the long running and brilliant Space Brothers. In alphabetical order, the series and why I’m watching them:

Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova – This was my most eagerly anticipated and dreaded anime due to it being based on a complex manga. Combining science fiction naval warfare with the cute girls as manifestations of the sentient warships, the original material is an odd blend. The author wanted to do a straight naval warfare comic, but the editors wanted cute girls to attract readers.

Despite this, the “mental models” of the hostile warships that have attacked humanity are closer in personality to the replicants of Bladerunner with each trying to explore aspects of human emotion due to a mysterious order called the Admiralty Code.

Anyway, the story has been adapted in a more streamlined form and uses CGI for all animation. Traditionally this has made for bad character movement and appearance, but this series is proving it can be done well. What changes to the story have been made have not hurt anything at all, to my relief. So far it has been great fun and everybody’s favorite tsundere heavy battle cruiser, Takao, is perfectly depicted.

Despite an obligatory fan service episode which actually did advance the plot, Arpeggio is turning out to be the hit of the season if Amazon preorders in Japan are any indication. It has started to diverge from the manga but is maintaining many of the elements that make that so entertaining. Halfway done and consistently fun without sacrificing character development, it shows how to adapt an unadaptable property to create a great end product (Copellion’s adaptation demonstrates the opposite outcome).

I’m thrilled it is doing well and can’t wait for the model kits to come out.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, it did with the tenth episode which is one of the single best episodes of any anime I’ve seen. Incredibly emotional and perfectly executed, it put the audience through an emotional wringer that didn’t feel forced or artificial. Even the villain of the show evoked sympathy during the upsetting events. Arpeggio is now a legitimate contender for best anime of the season.

A superb finale ends a great series that rose to stratospheric heights starting with episode 10. Tied for second best of the season with Non Non Biyori it turned out to be something very special, which I did not expect. It simply had it all: gorgeous animation, great characters, emotional depth, fantastic action, and the theme of free will being important. Well done, Sanzigen, well done.

Beyond the Boundary – Formulaic, nothing original, derivative… Yes, it is all those things. However it is really well executed, beautifully animated, and reminds me a bit of Bleach. A fantasy action romance story, it is about a cursed orphan girl and a half demon boy. Of course they have to get together, but like I wrote, it’s well done so far. Like a lot of current anime, it is an adaptation from a juvenile novel.

While I’m still watching it, there really is nothing of substance to the show and its throwing in a filler episode in before the halfway point puts Beyond on the bubble of my cutoff. It needs to step up its game to keep me interested.

It stepped up its game and then some, with a late season reveal that puts most of the events of the series in a completely different light. The payoff was such that the whole story was elevated by it and I’m glad I stuck through the filler.

Then the final episode blew it. Entertaining as some of the series was, at the end it became incoherent. It wad enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.

Galilei Donna – One of two NoitaminA series I’m following this season, it reminds me a bit of Fractale in style, but not substance. There’s a bit of steampunk to this science fiction series following three sister who are descendants of Galileo being pursued over a family secret. Packed with action, it gets off to a roaring start and hasn’t slowed down since. While the ten year old genius girl is the otaku bait, I’m enjoying the failing law student oldest sister the most. While it started out strong, the last episode stumbled a bit, but I’ll finish it out.

Now I’m not sure I’ll finish it. It has always had dark elements, but the way they’ve been presented as they escalate has been incoherent and ham fisted in execution. There’s an attempt to shoehorn in a blistering critique of human greed that comes off as pretentious, while plot-fu is used to keep characters either alive or under ridiculous threat. One more episode is all I’ll allow this and it had better be a huge improvement.

Such a great start and then it stumbled. Now it is crawling toward the ending and I can’t say I care about any of the characters anymore. Only reason I’m finishing it is to witness the final train wreck.

Biggest train wreck of the season and the phenomenally bad finale made Beyond the Boundary look a lot better in comparison. The ending is a trial that wraps up like something out of an episode of Scooby-Doo. Stupid, lazy, and ultimately creepy thanks to the romance between the ten year old and her ancestor Galileo, this was a horrible series.

Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods – Wow, what a pleasant surprise this has been. It is a slowly unfolding story about a teenage priestess who has inherited the ability to see divine beings. In this case a lazy fox herald with a gruff attitude. Heartfelt and sweet, it has been a great antidote to the nastiness of the world.

Between this and Kyousougiga, I’m learning a lot about the fusion of Buddhism with Japanese old beliefs (later codified into Shinto). None of its charm has been lost and I’m loving this Sunday appropriate story.

Consistently sweet and mellow, I’ve really enjoyed the series. It’s a ray of light amongst a lot of dreck. I’m not sure there is a concrete stopping place for the story if it is only a single course, but it is such a genuinely nice show that I don’t care.

Endearing to the end, but with a lot of unresolved issues it cries out for another season. It certainly deserves another one thanks to its radiant good nature. I’ll miss it.

Golden Time – Another light novel adaptation, this one is aimed at adults with the main characters being law students. Basically it is about the friendship (and probable romance) between a beautiful young woman obsessively stalking an uninterested guy and the amnesiac friend of said guy. The original novel was written by the author of the Toradora series, so a difficult romance was to be expected. So far it has been a character study with a lot of comedy, leavened with moments of seriousness.

So far so good and I like the romance that has begun, though I can see why a lot of fans wouldn’t. Both mains are flawed if not messed up characters out to change themselves, so watching them walk a parallel path together is far more realistic than most romances depicted these days.

Still fun, but treading water since it is a two course series.

Kyousougiga – Biggest surprise of the season and almost impossible to describe. Imagine if FLCL had depth. That’s as close as I can get to describing this unusual series. Mixing ridiculous cartoon violence in a world that can’t be destroyed and nobody can die, it is actually about love, family, and apparently, rebirth.

It all begins with a chaotic and mystifying Episode 0, which is a recap of the Web based original version. With the first real episode, the madness of that is slowly explained. Set in the “Looking Glass” world, it involves three abandoned children grown to adulthood who run the world dealing with an outsider, a feisty girl in a sailor uniform wielding a very big hammer.

Doesn’t sound like the setting for a deeply emotional story, but somehow it gets there by revealing the creation of the world and how they all came to be there. It’s also completely insane. Yeah, can’t describe it, but highly recommend the series.

I don’t think I can adequately convey how much I’ve grown to love this series. It’s become deeply emotional and benefits greatly from a study of theology to understand much of the symbolism being used. Simply extraordinary and I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

My favorite of the season and maintaining in quality, it is the rare story that has me baffled as to what the ending will be. I can’t help but really like both Koto’s in it.

Brilliant, visually beautiful, and incredibly moving, the finale made this one of my all time favorites. It may have knocked one of my top three down to fourth. This is not a show for the slower witted and is actually spiritually very deep. What a wonderful creation, a true piece of art that had me feeling so many emotions simultaneously in great intensity.

I want Blu-rays of it now!

Log Horizon – Yet another adaptation of a novel, this will make any online MMORPG player smile. Smartly written and featuring a protagonist who uses brain rather than brawn, it is about game players suddenly finding themselves in the game world as the characters they play. Familiar storyline, yet it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with virtual reality and there is no sign of an explanation of how it happened.

Instead it is about how people would act under this kind of circumstance, especially when they find out death is impermanent just like in a video game. There is something about the online experience that brings out the worst in a lot of people, so this is fertile ground for a story exploring human behavior. So far it has been very good, though it might confuse people who’ve never played that kind of video game.

This has maintained in quality and economics are coming into play, which is no surprise given the author’s previous work. The animation is nothing to write home about, but the story more than makes up for it by exploring moral and ethical issues.

Only getting better by the episode, this deserves more attention than its getting. Now that it has moved into civilization building, it has proven to be one of the more intelligent animes I’ve seen.

Miss Monochrome – These five minute shorts about an android pop idol should be the kind of thing that would drive me far, far away. Yet it has turned out to be very dark humored as things never go the right way for Miss Monochrome, the android. Cute and kind of sad, but with a vicious edge to it.

I can’t believe I’ve gotten fond of an android would be idol.

I still can’t believe I’ve gotten fond of an android would be idol. Her tragic origin was actually touching rather than sarcastic, to my amazement.

What a darkly sweet gem this turned out to be. Basically nothing ever goes right for the android girl, yet there are little moments of people appreciating her. The last episode was a nice Christmas (Santa style, not true Christian) outing wrapped up the season with a hopeful note. Endearing is the best description for this anime.

Now how to deal with the strange compulsion to find a way to support her career. Yes, I know she isn’t real, but…

Non Non Biyori – Slice of life anime about cute girls doing nothing is my bane. Can’t stand them, though they generally dominate sales and popularity. The only reason I sampled this was because it was set in the countryside. Good thing I did, or I would have missed one of the better shows of the season.

It follows a group of four gals of varying ages attending a one room school in the Japanese countryside. It’s amazing how many childhood memories are brought back watching this and I’ll admit nostalgia partially drive my like of the series. Lovely countryside and an attention to detail make it visually impressive, but the characters are also well written and feel real. Well, except for the newcomer gal from Tokyo and her instant crush on one of the other gals. So far she’s as 2D as it gets.

Thankfully, the first grade student, Renge more than makes up for her. Following this very smart, but also very much her age girl reminds me of so many things from my own past. We’ll see if the series can maintain its high quality.

More than maintaining, this has simply been wonderful. Never been tempted to buy an anime related t-shirt or such, but the forthcoming one of Renge makes me irrationally want to have one.

The fourth and tenth episodes are some of the best things I’ve seen at capturing childhood I’ve seen. Utterly endearing and it had better be released in North America.

Solid throughout, this series deserves to be longer. If I’d had a daughter, I’d want her to have been like Renge. Tied with Arpeggio of Blue Steel for second best of the season, it makes me want to appreciate more what I have out here in the countryside. Simultaneously, it has made me want to rebel against the strictures of modern culture. Truly a lovely series in every way.

Samurai Flamenco – I wasn’t expecting much from this series about a male fashion model trying to be a vigilante by night. Featuring an earnest and hopelessly naïve hero buddied up with a more worldly cop, it has been a great deal of fun and very well written. There are no superheroes, gadgets, or powers, so our weakling main protagonist is in over his head right off the bat.

It’s a breezy affair getting loopier with each episode resulting in a whole lot of fun. If it keeps progressing the way it has it may end up being the best of the season.

It may end up being the most entertaining, but Kyousougiga is much deeper and beautifully animated. Being a two season series rather than one, the story is going at a slower pace and taking full advantage of the length to flesh out the characters. Flamenco Girl and her assistants have added an insane element to the proceedings as has a weapons inventor modifying office supplies into superhero gadgets. Great fun.

And then it changed. Rather violently, in fact. There appears to be a meta commentary shaping up reminiscent of Big Man Japan, I think. Most of what made it charming has gone out the window and I suspect something tragic is coming. Still watching, but the show has been demoted as a contender for best of the season.

It has become a loving homage/satire/deconstruction of the various eras of Japanese super hero genres. At the midpoint, it has transitioned from Kamen Rider territory to Super Sentai (aka Power Rangers). The show has to be accepted as its own thing and I’m very curious to see where it ends up.