Before beginning this post, I was having a bit of an internal conflict. I was unsure whether to talk a little about some of the new anime series I’ve been watching, and since last writing about them, what my impressions are, based on the first couple of episodes, or spend some time finely detailing the immense pleasure I derived from playing and completing Assassin’s Creed II. I think by this point, everyone has been able to perceive the magnitude and raw voltage of enjoyment AC2 is able to generate. So, in lieu of geek ejaculating over Ezio Auditoire de Firenze, I’ll otaku ejaculate (or maybe more appropriately, bukkake) over anime.

As seems to be my undeniable compulsion when it comes to anime, I can’t control myself in terms of volume. This season, more so than any other, afforded me the opportunity to keep it light. The pressure to stock up on all the delicious morsels on offer was minimal. If this winter season of anime were a chinese buffet, I’d be the guy scraping the bottom of the silver heat tray for the last of the szechuan assholes. With that said, I won’t penetrate too deeply into the miasma and just focus on the egregious offenders.

Easily at the top of the list so far is Seikon no Qwaser. This series is basically bullshit, and this is coming from the guy who watches just about everything. In a single episode, it was pretty easy to determine that the characters are insubstantial; conforming stereotypically to established archetypes. The plot itself is theoretically cool, but might be an idea better left unexecuted. To really top it all off, the first episode – which already made little sense – made almost no sense at all with a decent amount of scenes cropped in visually strange ways or whole sequences removed entirely. This was done for censoring purposes. So basically, they took a series that will in all likelihood suck and stripped it of the violence, blood, and nudity. Awesome.

That’s funny; this is the face I made during the episode

Luckily – and I use that term pretty loosely – there was a webcast of the director’s cut of the first episode, reinserting all the juicier tidbits and restoring a small fraction of purpose. Even with the blood and sexual situations added back in, it makes the series only marginally easier to tolerate. I mean the driving force behind the plot is about legitimate nipple sucking as a means to power one’s magical abilities. Yeah, I know.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, probably the only new series I’m even remotely interested in seeing more of is Durarara!!. Based on what I’ve seen so far, Durarara!! will hopefully prove to be this season’s desperately needed guiding light. I still have absolutely no idea what the series is really about or what direction it might take. On one hand the main characters, if you can even call them that as the series is more of an ensemble cast, seem like perfectly normal high schoolers. On the other, Ikebukuro, the city the series takes place in, is filled with unique and in some cases strange personalities. Most notably, a headless biker who wears a helmet shaped like a cat head.

“I’m confident I’m better than Seikon no Qwaser”

Ultimately, Durarara!! at first glance looks stylized enough to be unique in what is otherwise a doldrum of cookie cutter shows. I’m not saying that it’ll turn out to be the next Cowboy Bebop, but it’s gotta be better than Chu-Bra!!. Peace.