Kyonko Hizara wrote:

Now brought to you by people with too much time on their hands: The Summer 2014 Anime Season First Impressions Chart! Featuring: Kyonko Hizara and deadbeat!

Glasslip:Glasslip is finally here! The fireworks scene in the beginning was really nice. P.A. Works' animation and OSTs are always beautiful.
I like the characters in this series, especially Touko. I can already feel some drama starting. The ED is cute. Can’t wait for more!


Tokyo Ghoul: Bravo. I love the dark atmosphere... and damn, Kaneki is battling a boss character right at the start!
Kana Hanazawa's voice like this, haven't heard it in a while since her character as Shiro in Deadman Wonderland. Really good.
I haven't read the manga, but I am guessing the soul of Rize will stay inside Kaneki and consume his sanity/soul on the inside.
Can't wait to see how this develops, keeping his humanity or becoming a full blown ghoul in the end.

Glasslip has incredible animation, I'll honestly stick with it just for that, if the plot doesn't pan out well. The first episode was kind of retarded in my opinion, this new tranfer seems pretentious and somewhat annoying. I like Touko and the girl with glasses though, cute character models.

Bakamatsu Rock is kind of dumb, but it's not terrible, I'll stick with it for now at least.

Tokyo Ghoul was pretty interesting, it looks like it will turn out fairly well.

Man, if I weren't so lazy/burned out from work I'd set up a giant Google Doc for this. :c Maybe Bliss will set one up post-AX.

Anyway, let's get to the two shows I've seen so far.

Free! Eternal Summer - Free! recognizes the audience it's pandering to, and pander it does; a lot of butts and abs in this episode. It balances it out with some lighthearted but genuine character interaction, and that's still what really sells the show for me in addition to the gorgeous animation. please also keep in mind that I am a gay man, okay?okay This episode pretty much just served as a reintroduction and a change in status quo, and I have good vibes coming from this season.

Tokyo Ghoul - Had zero expectations going into this, came out insanely impressed. Decent shot composition, gory without feeling disgusting about its gore usage, genuinely tense at points, and pretty well-animated. It's got the makings of a good action-horror, and this first episode was compelling enough to warrant further viewing.

Free! Eternal Summer: I love this show, even tho I'm fucking watching it ironically. It stays pretty genuine to how the first season was, and smells freshly of men in tight swimsuits. I really like how this season picked up from the last, and I feel it's gonna be a bit more lighthearted than last season was.

Tokyo Ghoul: aaand the first scene is already violent! I'm liking this! That whole thing was dark as shit. I was going in expecting it to be just like Another, but this wasn't anything what I expected. The animation was nice, and the gore was also quite enjoyable.

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Mogsworth wrote:

Man, if I weren't so lazy/burned out from work I'd set up a giant Google Doc for this. :c Maybe Bliss will set one up post-AX.

To be honest, I don't really want to setup a gdoc this time around since it took way too much time for me to keep it constantly updated (and fighting with gdocs was just annoying). I'll see if my mood changes, but I really doubt I will. Feel free to use the old sheets as reference though.

Free! Eternal Summer: Pretty much what Mogs said was spot on. They pander to their fans in a way similar to how DxD panders to its fans, except remember this is kyoani, which can still pull out solid all around work. Still, for people that don't care to stare at guys, the show is a bit awkward at times.... those charm points... but you can still laugh and enjoy the general plot.

Bakamatsu Rock: If you think some low budget stripping scenes and some okay singing can save this budget animation with horrible plot and lackluster humor, you can try this show, but I couldn't stand watching it.

I am a bit behind on watching, so I'll have to add more stuff later.

Edit:
Locodol: A happy and optimistic but low budget show trying to capitalize on the idol surge. Like love live (and even girls and panzer), it is about girls trying to save their town by being idols, but the problem is that their songs were so boring that clicking on characters on the long love live School idol festival update (2.0.5 does have some nice additions) for more fun than hearing/watching that song/performance. Besides that, the only source of comedy is a clumsy girl, which gets old quite fast. I'll give it another ep, but I have very little hope for it.

Glasslip: As stated by basically everyone before, PAWorks is once again showing that they have the best artist you can find in anime.The story keeps jumping around that for the most part, you can treat this as a 23min technical showcase (with the exception of the ugly fireworks)

Argevollen: Combine awful cg animation with a super generic mecha plotline. Top it off with a battle where mc only seems to be aiming his gun into empty space, and ends up beating mechs with physical combat. Is there anything to redeem this show?

Glasslip - PA Works and their ever beautiful art. Great soundtrack too. Despite those, I still feel like there's something missing that's why it's in blue.

Tokyo Ghouls - Well, wow, what can I say? This has far succeeded my expectations. Usually horror anime are very boring and slow, but this hits you with action and blood right away. Great first episode, can't wait to see how it will turn out.

man, Tokyo Ghoul it's so good. I read the manga and woah, they do it perfect. Also, so much gore lol. And that animation <3 10/10

Glasslip: P.A. Works, is this nagi no asukara? But it can be a good anime, also the animation and the bgm are great.

and i watched Free! and i liked it, but the ED...

blissfulyoshi wrote:

Mogsworth wrote:

Man, if I weren't so lazy/burned out from work I'd set up a giant Google Doc for this. :c Maybe Bliss will set one up post-AX.

To be honest, I don't really want to setup a gdoc this time around since it took way too much time for me to keep it constantly updated (and fighting with gdocs was just annoying). I'll see if my mood changes, but I really doubt I will. Feel free to use the old sheets as reference though.

I'll probably set it up after this weekend, then!

For now, more impressions:

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal - Expectations were met; this was pretty much the first episode of the original with a fresh coat of paint. That all looks fine enough, even with a CG transformation scene. Usagi is annoying, but she's always been at the start of the show. I honestly can't wait for the rest of this adaptation, though, so hey.

Glasslip - The most PA Works thing to ever PA Works. Doll-like character designs and lovingly-detailed backgrounds, slice-of-life that has just a cursory focus on the main selling point, and standard character interactions hinting at later potential drama. Overuse of still shots with shaded lighting were prevalent, and the CG for fireworks was laggy and cheap. Characters are all pretty one-note so far and this has two more episodes to actually get on my good side. It's not really bad, so far, just the same old thing we see over and over from this studio.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal: Holy shit, that was a lot better than what I was expecting. With all of the hype, I thought it was just gonna be pretty previews than a not as good show. The animation stayed close enough to the original style to keep it authentic, while adding a more modern animation style to keep it fresh.

Sword Art Online II - ahahahahano. This show basically opens up with nothing but justification for getting Kirito to play another MMO. The pacing drags as it goes into an overly long build in its intro, featuring a villain whose name is so nonthreatening that it's hilarious (Death Gun, really?), followed up by a date between Kirito and Asuna that just basically shouts "DON'T YOU JUST WANNA BE THIS COUPLE THEY'RE SO HAPPY AND PERFECT AND SHE JUST WANTS TO BE WITH HIM, THAT'S HER ONLY FUTURE PLAN". Ugh. Then he basically gets asked to play another MMO as a detective, and it's because he's apparently just so awesome at MMOs that he's their go-to guy blah blah blah blah. We all knew this was escapist, power fantasy garbage from the beginning and this show's setup episode serves to highlight that even more.

Sword Art Online II - Pretty much the same as first season. Nothing really special. I'm still amazed that they are not traumatized in the slightest bit despite what happened on SAO.

Sword Art Online II - Exactly what I expected. It's pretty bad, but I'll watch it anyways, because I hear the LN has some good arcs later on, and want to watch those when they come around.

Sword Art Online II - My impression is only the first time the direct release said "WOW this cool anime" then I will wait for further episodes ..
now release
This Screenshot

Rail Wars: Boring cast + ridiculous amount of facts about trains + a terrible ZAQ song (ZAQ can't rap). The only thing I liked was the animation during the fight scene (which was short as is)

Now I have to board the SAO hate train.

Sword Art Online II: I am not sure what Gunnaka means by better arcs later on because Absolute Blade was so bad that it made me drop the series, but besides that time to start one of the worse 2 volume arcs SAO has to offer. To top it off, we have slews of pseudoscience, lack of humor, and some pretty awful animation/cg. To my memory, the animation is worse than s1

Sword Art Online II - Meh, Manga doesn't say anything special for this season / arc sadly, typical ol'

over hyp-- I mean, anime that is known for a large audience because of the amazingly huge amounts of win,

and then Romance, just why..... all and all, just a re-run of the first season, with some guns.

Tokyo ghoul- They did a pretty good job with the first episode though they introduced Yamori a lil early. I expect great things from this cause I really liked the manga.
Sword Art Online II- Dunno what I expected seeing as the light novel was pretty meh. Sinon is great though probably my favorite behind Yuuki
Aldnoah Zero-That staff though...They got big names working on this and it's real freaking good. Expecting this to be great

Futsuu no Joshikousei ga [Locodol] Yatte Mita - Anime with clumsy half-hearted protagonist is not my cup of tea. Second half of first episode is just disaster.

Shounen Hollywood: Holly Stage for 49 - It was so bad it made me drop it after 7 minutes. This was created just for the sole purpose of fanservice for females. Nothing to see here.

Rail Wars! - Almost red. It is decent and has potential. I just hope the fanservice will not ruin the show any further.
Apparently, the guards in the background at the station didn't give a fuck about the snatchers. Unreal jumps too. I find it awkward that their classroom looks like a normal one.

Bakumatsu Rock - I'm really getting tired with all of the present-in-past anime like this and Nobunaga the Fool. It just doesn't work no matter how hard they try. Another show for females, it seems. meh.

Shirogane no Ishi: Argevollen - The only mecha so far in this series that doesn't look bad is the main one. MC already knew how to pilot the mecha even though it's his first time riding that one. Some parts were okay, some were bad. Watching a few more I guess.

Space Dandy 2: It picked up strong and didn't leave me disappointed. This episode really had all of the random and nonsense happenings that Space Dandy is about. And especially since this one was so out there and wild, there's no way it left me bored with the episode.