Fall 2008 Comments
THAT posted their typically epic Fall 2008 preview yesterday. It’s pretty long, but worth a scan at least. I do wish they’d have included ANN as well as the official website links where appropriate - it would have saved me a few minutes per series checking the production staff - but that’s just me being lazy.
Anyway, I figured I’d chime in with some assorted comments where I felt it was appropriate, but it’s starting to get a little difficult to do so without posting something which, ultimately, just sounds like every other season preview I’ve posted, only with the series names switched. For one thing, about a third of the list consists of sequels - is it really, really worth anything something about the likes of Gundam 00 or Ef? If you liked the previous seasons, than you’ll probably at least want to try the follow ups. If you’ve not seen the originals, then there’s little point in it.
But you didn’t really need me to tell you that.
Then you have those shows that sound, if not exactly like shows we’ve seen before, the at least highly derivative. JC Staffs output this upcoming season seems particularly bad - I realise, based on comments I’ve heard relating to the novels, that I’m probably doing Magical Index a great disservice, and ToraDora doesn’t having anything of the arcane in it, but I’ll be damned if their upcoming titles don’t sound exactly like the same shows they’ve been making for the last four or five years.
Not that I’m saying that this is particularly bad - the prospect of ToraDora has met with some enthusiasm over that THAT, I’ve heard good things about Magical Index in text form, and you’d at least think that JCS would get increasingly competent given that there’s a certain amount of retread. I’m sure that when I actually see the shows I’ll probably enjoy them to at least some degree. Whilst I don’t think that JCS has made anything spectacular outside of their late-night jousei in recent years, I do think that their output tends to at least be floating slightly above the average, and these are likely to at least be “good”.
The fact is, though, it’s just really hard for me to build up any degree of enthusiasm for the shows. If I’d read ToraDora or Magical Index it’d probably be a different matter, but just reading what others have been saying about them, they just don’t sound like anything I should be particularly excited about, nor is there anything particularly interesting to say about them. They’ll just probably be serviceable shows.
The biggest dark horse of the upcoming season is probably Kannagi. From the series details in the THAT post, you’d be forgiven for wondering why I’ve saying that - A1 Pictures, a fairly new studio, haven’t exactly set the world alight with any of their previous works, and the series description, whilst the kind of thing that pretty much automatically gains at least some kind of fanbase, sounds like at least a good half-dozen other shows spanning not just recent years, but decades. The thing that they didn’t really highlight at THAT, however, is the shows senior staff. The series director for this one is Yutaka Yamamoto, who, unfortunately for him, is probably best known as the guy who directed the unfunny episodes of Lucky Star (This is not a discussion on the point - I don’t entirely agree with it, though I do think that first episode of Lucky Star is pretty dire). He’s also the guy who put together the dance-tastic Lucky Star OP and Haruhi ED, as well as scripting and doing episode direction on a number of Haruhis better received episodes. He’s clearly a guy with a keen eye for the kind of meme generation that went a great way towards thrusting Haruhi and Lucky Star to their stratospheric levels of popularity, and after what happened with Lucky Star he probably has a point to prove.
Perhaps more significantly, though, you have Hideyuki Kurata scripting the show. His previous work, sporting the likes of RoD, Kamichu!, N&TH&T and GunXSword, has been pretty spectacular by my tastes, which makes it a really hard show for me to ignore despite what the fact that premise makes it sound like the kind of thing I’d normally give a wide berth.
I played the game version of Tales of the Abyss a couple of months ago. The story was pretty badly paced and not really all that interesting beyond some well-signposted twists, though some of the characters were fun. It’s pretty hard to see it making a particular good anime series without re-writing great chunks of thing, though - the Tales games get away with mediocre writing by having some of the best dungeon design in the genre, and the writing in Abyss frequently felt like nothing more than a long winded excuse to get you into those dungeons. If they really, really strip-down the narrative, they may well be left with a solid core for an adventure series, but I’m not really holding my breath - twenty-six episodes sounds like a stretch.
As for the other shows airing, there’s some interesting titles among them, but there’s little you can really say about those beyond who’s producing them - Linebarrel looks like a Gonzo show, Kurozuka looks like a Madhouse show, Michiko to Hatchin looks like a Mangalobe show in as much as you really can’t tell what it’ll be like until you actually see it, and likewise for Shikabane Hime and Gainax. I don’t think I’ve read the manga for any of the other manga adaptations (I simply don’t have the time or energy to read as much as some people seem to). I’m sure I’m doing all these shows a disservice by being so flippant about it, and that there’ll be at least one great show among them, but I really have absolutely nothing to say about them that you wouldn’t be able to ascertain from looking at the pictures on their websites for a few seconds.
