Spring/Summer 2011 Wrap-Up

Out with the old, in with the new. This weekend RABUJOI said goodbye to the last of the Summer series and Spring carryovers, with one exception, Mawaru Penguindrum, which will continue into the Fall. In all, it was a decent season, with lots of variety. We love the sense of completeness that comes with wrapping up a season – two in this case. Here’s a list of who won what:

• Best Overall Anime: Mawaru Penguindrum. Every episode has been excellent, in our humble opinion.

• Most Gore-tastic Series: Blood-C…the censors were awfully busy.

• Best Series Dealing With Sudden Parenthood: Usagi Drop. Really down-to-earth, heartwarming stuff.

• Best NEET Detective Series: Kami-sama no Memo-cho.

• Best Life-At-An-Inn Series: Hanasaku Iroha, which finished very strong.

• Best Telepathically-Controlled Mecha Action: Kamisama Dolls.

• Best Period Mystery/Action Series: Dantalian no Shoka.

• Best Goofy Superhero Series: Tiger & Bunny.

• Best Series Set in Paris at the Turn of the Century: Ikoku Meiro no Croisée.

• Best High School Club Series: Sket Dance.

• Best Post-Apocalyptic Series with a Number for a Name: No. 6.

• Best Shounen Series Where the Characters Were More Fun to Watch Than the Action: Ao no Exorcist.

• Best Score: (tie) Kamisama Dolls and Mawaru Penguindrum.

• Best Female Seiyu, Spring 2011: Chiaki Omigawa as Minko Tsurugi/Minchi (Hanasaku Iroha)

• Best Male Seiyu, Spring 2011: Hiroaki Hirata as Kotetsu T. Kaburagi/Wild Tiger (Tiger & Bunny)

• Best Female Seiyu, Summer 2011: Marie Miyake as Ringo Oginome (Mawaru Penguindrum)

• Best Male Seiyu, Summer 2011: Hiroshi Tsuchida as Daikichi Kawachi (Usagi Drop)

5 down, 7 to go: Current Anime Rankings as of Today

With four series completed (Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, No. 6, Tiger & Bunny, and Usagi Drop) and one dropped (Morita-san wa Mukuchi), we felt like now was a good time to put up part of the new RABUJOI Big Board and see where things stand with seven series left to wrap up for Spring/Summer 2011:

Summer 2011

Episode # :	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	AVG
Mawaru Penguindrum	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4				4.000
Kamisama Dolls	4	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	4	3.5	4	4	3			3.636
Usagi Drop	3.5	4	3.5	3.5	4	3.5	3.5	3.5	4	3.5	3.5			3.636
Blood-C	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	4	4	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5				3.600
Kami-sama no Memo-cho	4	4	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3	4	3.5			3.591
Dantalian no Shoka	4	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	2.5	4	3.5				3.500
Ikoku Meiro no Croisée	3.5	3	3.5	3.5	3.5	3	3.5	3.5	3	3	3	3.5		3.292
No. 6	3.5	3.5	3.5	3	2.5	2.5	3.5	3	3	3.5	3			3.136
Morita-san wa Mukuchi	2.5	2	2	2	2.5	2	2	2						2.125
Weekly Average	3.6	3.4	3.4	3.3	3.4	3.3	3.3	3.2	3.6	3.6	3.2	3.5	0.0	3.391

Spring 2011 Carryovers

Episode # :	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	AVG
Hanasaku Iroha (second half)	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	3	3.5	3.5	4	3.5	4	4		3.583
Tiger & Bunny (second half)	3.5	3.5	3.5	4	3.5	3	3.5	3.5	3	3	3	3.5		3.375
Ao no Exorcist (second half)	3	3.5	4	3.5	3.5	3	3	3	3	2.5				3.200
Sket Dance (second half)	3	3	3.5	3.5	3	3	3.5	3	3	3	3.5			3.182
Weekly Average	3.3	3.4	3.6	3.6	3.4	3	3.5	3.3	3.3	3.2	4.0	0.0	0.0	3.335

Stray Observations (many with baseball references): 

• Cliff Lee is a good pitcher. Mawaru Penguindrum is a good anime. These are facts. Depending on how the first half ends, we may be compelled elevate it to Favorites.

• Currently tied with the completed Usagi Drop, Kamisama Dolls will need to rally in the twelfth inning to order to claim second place.

• With some new twists that open the series wide open, Blood-C also has a chance to take second, but it will have to score 4s in its final two innings; not an easy feat.

• Memo-cho and Dantalian no Shoka are following similar paths: excellent starts, consistent standout-ness from weeks 3-7/8, and lost a little command towards the end.

• Ikoku Meiro no Croisee was a pleasant enough series, but never moving enough to score a 4. Lack of hussle?

• No. 6 suffered the same fate as Fractale, only worse: it looked good on paper: a big world, big ideas, great concepts; but not nearly enough time to realize any of it to our satisfaction. Should have been at least a 26-episode season.

• Thanks to the brief firtation with the mediocrity of the three-minute Morita-san, we have our most colorful scoreboard yet! If we remove it from the Summer watchlist, the overall season rating jumps from 3.391 to 3.549 –  a 15% rise. FYI, our average of all anime since we started rating them hovers around 3.5, ’cause if it ain’t standout, we usually won’t watch it.

• Just like its first half began, Hanasaku Iroha looks to finish strong. Just gotta wrap up the Ohana+Ko arc and a few other things.

• Ao no Exorcist…doesn’t. Apparently the anime story deviates greatly from the source manga. We don’t read source manga, so we didn’t notice, but if the manga story was better, it might have been better if they’d used that. As it is, Ao is whiffing at the off-speed stuff and late with the heat.

• We’ve stuck with Sket Dance for 26 games, but we don’t know if we’ll stay with it for all 39. Fall 2011 is a big season coming up, there may not be time. And one can’t rush a gentleman’s game. Unless you limit the amount of time a pitcher takes to come to the plate.

2011 So Far – in chart form

We like charts here on RABUJOI. This one plots the ratings of all the anime series we’ve reviewed so far in 2011. We’ve included Summer 2011 series, even though we’ve got 5-6 more weeks of episodes in those seasons. When the Summer season does conclude, we’ll update this chart.

So what do we see? Well, while we deem a 2.5 rating to be “Average”, our actual average is closer to 3.5, which we deem “Standout”. This is because there’s a lot of anime out there, but we try to only watch the best. There are exceptions, of course: the main outlier here is Morita-san wa Mukuchi, which rates just above 2 or “Mediocre” (UPDATE: As of episode 7, we’ve dropped Morita-san :P). There are a lot more series out there we’d probably rank this low or lower, but we don’t have the time or the stomachs to sit through them.

So why do we watch Morita-san wa Mukuchi? Well, it’s only three minutes long; hardly a major investment. So it isn’t that we rate high. We just watch series that regularly deserve above-average ratings. Thus when a truly brillant series comes around – like AnoHana or Mawaru Penguindrum, you’ll see a lot of 4s. At the end of the day, it’s all subjective. We also just like charts. Did we say that already?

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 7

One pretty standard anime trope is that when a character becomes possessed or otherwise under the influence of a demon of some other baddie, that character’s usually bright, shiny eyes become dull and lifeless; their pupils disappear. Morita’s eyes have been like this throughout this show’s run…but so far, no possession.

At any rate, of all the anime series this season…Morita-san wa Mukuchi is definitely…one of them.

Rating: 2 (dropped)

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 6

Everyone wants to encounter love and live with it to the fullest. But isn’t it a wonderful thing? It can’t be helped if we get hurt. There are loads of things that won’t change. I want to be by your side.

Great, but wtf does that have to do with sniffing armpits and blowing a chance to lend a girl an umbrella? Sigh…

Rating: 2

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 5

Japanese high school girls don’t so much eat square meals as they just eat…whatever pops into their head at the moment. Sometimes it’s pan (bread of some kind), or ice cream. Or a parfait. The point is, on the whole, they like sweets. But they are also concerned with caloric intake. This segment just drives that point home. That, and Mayu seems to know what Morita-san is trying to say without actually having to hear the words.

Rating: 2

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 4

Mayu still hasn’t talked, but she made me want to eat grilled eel. That’s good for a 2.5, right? Also, a chain of sorts was broken; the four girls do something that seems oddly suggestive from a distance, but this time, there are no guys to comment on it. Also, I don’t believe this was in the OVA, so we must be in original material territory now! Unless I just forgot…

Rating: 2.5

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 3

Hana, who is shy, is initially weary of Morita, who is taciturn. But once Morita straightens Hana’s curly hair, Hana warms up to her more. And that’s pretty much it. Hopefully soon the series will expand beyond the content of the OVA, because I’m still getting Déjà vu from this.

Rating: 2

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 2

Ridiculously short…ridiculously inconsequential. Seriously, I’ve had yawns longer than this episode. The jist: Miki is talkative, Morita is still taciturn – and apparently okay with groping Miki. Rating: 2

Morita-san wa Mukuchi 1 – First Impressions

Because the title is pretty much the premise, I was wondering how the producers would fill twenty-odd minutes per week. Now I know: they won’t. The new anime version of Morita-san wa Mukuchi runs a scant three minutes – a veritable tic-tac of entertainment. It took longer to write this review.

But I can live with this show if all it asks for is three measly minutes of my attention. It even got me wishing there were a few more anime as brief this summer. Of course, Seitokai Yakuindomo followed a similar formula, but it was a string of three or four minute bits spanning a normal episode length.

So it looks like we’lll only be getting the tiniest tastes of Morita-san wa Mukuchi from time to time. This first episode was merely a rehash of the beginning of the OVA released back in February. This is anime superleggera! Rating: 2.5

Morita-san wa Mukuchi OVA

This OVA is kind of a preview of an upcoming series of the same name airing this Summer. The formula is quite simple: this is a high school slice-of-life comedy with a quartet of girls at its core, one of which seemingly never says anything at all. Interesting, this very ‘taciturn’ character, the titular Mayu Morita, is voiced by Kana Hanazawa, who also voiced a similarly silent though more bookish character in The World God Only Knows. Obviously, everything she says is in Mayu’s head, not aloud. I don’t think she utters a single word to another character.

There’s nothing tremendously deep here, just nice, charming, lightweight slice-of-life. This OVA, and the forthcoming series, is almost a challenge to see how little a heroine can say and still be a functioning character. So far, so good; Mayu’s friends all seem to see something likable about her that’s beyond words (obvious, since she has none)…though as Mayu’s eyes are drawn very blankly (in Bleach this would mean she’s possessed, or an evil clone), so while in deep thought she can appear a little creepy. What I find refreshing is that Mayu isn’t shy or socially inept; she just takes too long to speak, and thus always misses her opportunity to do so.

One of the reasons I gave this a try is that Kana Hanazawa is one of my favorite seiyus,and even though she’s basically playing to type here (unlike, say, her Kuroneko in Oreimo), that type is tried-and-true earnest/cute/reflective. Saori Hayami (Eden of the East, Oreimo) and Haruka Tomatsu (Shiki, AnoHana) provide the voices of friends Chihiro and Miki. It’ll take a couple more episodes to fully tell their personalities apart, but basically, they talk a lot more than she does, but each have their own quirks too.

The supporting cast, including Yamamoto, who is irritated by Mayu’s silence; Mayu’s pink-haired admirer/stalker; and two male students who are always observing and commenting on the many affectionate embraces Mayu’s friends put her in, all add flavor to a an already colorful cast. The pace is a little leisurely, but that’s okay. Odder is the source of Mayu’s silence – her domineering mother, who warns both Mayu (and Mayu’s father) to never open their mouth unless they know exactly what to say, to avoid misunderstandings. Unfortunatly for Mayu, she never knows what to say – which can also cause misunderstandings.
Rating: 3.5