I originally envisoned this blog as a platform for dialogue about ongoing anime – basically me deciding for everyone else what currently airing series are good and what currently airing series are bad. This was perhaps a little ill-conceived, since I have no plans to watch any bad anime to warn you about them, but I hope to get some mileage from the idea anyway.
First of all, let's look over some of the stuff I'm not even going to try out. There's your standard crap to pad out the time slots – more than one "cute girls doing cute things" show, a series involving cross-dressing, and something about breasts – but also quite a bit of what seems to be more solid stuff. There's sequels to Natsume Yuujinchou, Baka to Test and Blood coming out, all of which I'm foregoing since I haven't seen any of the original series. There's also yet another adaptation of Appleseed, this time a TV series, but they've had 2-3 chances to get it right already, so I think I'm just not going to bother. The Idolmaster, based on a popular game about grooming pop idols, looks to be one of the bigger shows this season, but I fear my eyes would roll uncontrollably if I tried to watch it and I wouldn't be able to tell what's going on. Another thing of note is Blade, presumably the last of Marvel's superhero anime, but even if the previous three hadn't turned out so disappointing, I'm not much of a Blade-fan, so I'm passing on that as well.
Honourable mention goes to R-15, an ecchi high school comedy about a guy who's secretly a talented pornographic novelist. The premise is so stupid it might just work, but alas, I have better things to do with my time.
So, what did I watch? What should you watch?
Mawaru Penguindrum
Mawaru Penguindrum has managed to draw a fair bit more attention you would have expected for something that doesn't have a plot synopsis beyond "it has something to do with penguins." The reason for this is the show's director, Kunihiko Ikuhara, who's known for his work on Sailor Moon and especially for directing Revolutionary Girl Utena. Penguindrum is Ikuhara's first new project in a while, so hopes are high.
Based on the first episode, it seems that the show is about two orphan (?) brothers that take care of their terminally ill sister. Once the girl dies and penguins get involved, things get weird, and that's literally about all I can say. If you've ever seen Utena, you know that there's two things Ikuhara really likes: incest and lesbians. As soon as I realized this series featured sibling main characters, I (correctly) suspected we'd be seeing some of the former. Indeed, the ending credits ominously imply that there might be some gender-bending to come, so I'm prepared for the latter as well. Penguindrum is reminiscent of Utena in other ways as well; two schoolkids have a bizarre conversation about apples that evokes the recurring shadow players that served as Utena's Greek chorus, for instance.
At first glance, Penguindrum's first episode seems very compelling. It's certainly stylish and interesting, but my first impression faltered a bit when the episode ended and I had time to think about it and catch on to its imperfections. The entire episode is largely based on throwing a lot of random wackiness on the screen in the hopes that we'd tune in again to find out what the hell is going on. The series doesn't doesn't even seem to have a concrete genre, and the viewer doesn't know much more about it after seeing the first episode than before. On top of that, we're given a major dramatic beat before we'd have any reason to really care. Nonetheless, there are suggestions of substance to be found and I am genuinely curious where this is going. The production values are high, and there is one notably FABULOUS scene. I recommend you give it a shot.
Next: No. 6 and Bunny Drop.
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