Rolling rolling rolling, keep those animu rolling…got some really fun shit in this watch segment.

Chiruran – Nibun no Ichi – Some mini-show about chibi versions of the classic romanticized gay fest subject matter; the shinsengumi. For women by women, crappier. Just goes everywhere and is supposed to be funny I think but it’s just shit. Bad everything. Whatever.

Gabriel DropOut – I think one of the more anticipated shows of the season, Gabriel DropOut lives up to the hype as a really good fun slice of life comedy with great moe characters. So we have Gabriel here; she is a top class honors angel student graduating from angel school in heaven and all that; to finish graduating she needs to spend some time in the human world helping others and shit. So ya, she comes to the human world and things are good for awhile but one day she accidentally stumbles upon a computer and an online game. Fast forward a bit and Gabriel has now been shown to be corrupted, she’s pretty much a lazy cynical hikkamori now that doesn’t give a shit about being an full angel anymore, just wants to stay on earth forever and play games. lol. Yea, that’s the basic premise of the show and the setup for the cast of other characters, namely other angels and demon girls who end up going to her school/class as well. You would think that the angel and demon students wouldn’t get along but at least from the first episode they seem to get along quite fine as friends, even more funny still is that the demon girls are actually way more “good” than any of the angels and try so hard to be “evil” that it’s hilarious. Excellent animation, character designs, cute moe girls that are funny; especially the demon girls and a interesting premise that while not original, is done right. Good shit, watch for sure.

Masamune-kun no Revenge – Alright, let’s do this quickly. This is a romance comedy harem of sorts with the primary objective of the main guy is that he wants to get revenge on the girl he liked in elementary school because while he confessed to her, she utterly rejected him; calling him “Pig Foot” or something because he was a fat ass. So basically in the many number of years since that rejection, our boy, Masamune has been working out, loosing weight, getting buff and swole as hell for that faithful day where he would keep his identity secret; get his childhood love to fall for him then wait for the perfect moment to reject her just like she did all so many years ago when they were kids. Hello revenge? Wow. What a motherfucker and talk about stalker level points of obsession. The girl is rich and has the full ojou-sama thing going on with servants and all that; all the boys in school try to confess and get burned hard by her because she’s the best girl, so ya it’s gonna be hard. The plan begins moving forward as our boy Masamune ends up finding out a secret about her; she eats like a whale and is trying to cover that fact from everybody; add to the fact that our boy ends up saving her from a rejected former admirer, Masamune is all like; aww yea, just as planned. So yea, basically the end result of this show is that despite his revenge plan, our boy Masamune will probably end up falling for miss ojou-sama again and still get burned, all the while after some reflection and shit from both sides they will come to realize that they do actually like each other or something. The show also has a cast of other potential girls for our boy to interact with but probably play second fiddle to the main girl and shit. Not bad concept and premise but I can’t help but feel it will be very predictable. Girls are decent and shit maybe watch more well see.

Chain Chronicle – Haecceitas no Hikari (TV) – I am not sure if this is a real show or something of an on air OVA that is a cut-up version of a movie? Not sure. Either way this is based off a mobile game of the same name, I actually played this for a little bit as part of a collaboration promotion with Brave Frontier, something like if you install Chain Chronicle and play a bit you get gems and special characters and shit in BF. The anime starts off with the final battle between main character and what I can assume is the final boss. You see all the characters and shit you can get in the game for full cameo effect. Basically main dude gets defeated and shit happens, ends up meeting a new successor hero or additional protagonist? Not sure. It’s assumed that you played the game’s story and are up to date if you watch this thing. For what it is, it’s pretty good; good animation, good character designs, concept is whatever but yea, mobile game what do you expect? It’s a shame that the english version of Chain Chronicle ended up closing shop sometime last year due to low money and player numbers; if this anime had aired sooner it might have saved the game. Ahwell, dead is dead, not watching.

Hand Shakers – Do you remember…those times in Madoka where it would get all acid-trippy with newspaper and magazine cut-outs and textures and patterns pasted on top of everything? This entire show is like that with the color palette borrowed straight out of No Game No Life that was used on it’s characters with multi-colored gradient hair and colored lines. Add a bit of spontaneous camera shaking and unnecessary panning with a huge gob of far too realistic and smooth looking 3dcg gears and chains and you get Hand Shakers. I’m fucking SHAKING just remembering it now. What the fuck is wrong with this show? What the hell? Wow. I haven’t seen such an amazing display of pretentious anime effects until this show aired. Wow. I can’t. Aside from it’s cluster-fuck level convoluted visual “style” that this show goes for, it’s basically on the lines of fag boy, is fag, meets girl in hospital, they touch hands, and they both a pair or something and have powers, main fag can manipulate gears and shit; in today’s episode he fights a pair that can control chains, they fight, the end. Wow. The character designs aren’t even good with everyone clearly having a lack of emotion in their facial and head movements, looks so stiff. They try REALLY hard to put some kind of fan service with girls jiggling boobs and such but because of it’s visual style is so distracting is totally incomprehensible. Did I mention there are frame rate issues and whenever the camera angles pan it’s jaggy as fuck? Yea, add that to the list as well. This show just seems to be one big technical demo of what can be done in anime, and apparently all the things also that you SHOULDN’T be doing as well. One of the worst so far.

Seiren – For a show that literally means “Honesty” in Japanese, you can kind of derive already what this show is going to be about and it’s tone. Well, shit’s a romantic slice of life drama with largely sentimental overtones and a bit of comedy. Ok. We we have main dude, let’s call him Kim Soo-hyun, because his haircut is so Korean drama it’s scary. Anyways, Kim is just a standard wussy boy with no dreams for the future and has a best friend who is pretty much better than him in every way. Yea whatever. Kim is fucking scared of the future and his upcoming university entrance exams, boy just can’t relax and basically indirectly says he just wants to have fun times with girls and shit in the summer. Well Kim, your in the right place and that’s pretty much what you will be getting in this anime, times 3 in fact as the introduction showcases at least 3 main girls that Kim will no doubt befriend and have romantic moments with and shit. Yea, this show is not bad but not really my thing. The visual style of the show is down to earth and neutral tones for colors with character designs that are simple yet still unique. The girls themselves are good looking and pretty attractive and work well with the muted style that I think they are going for, think Love Plus character designs. Yea, base concept and premise and points for the fact that this is original anime but not my thing. Pass.

Kemono Friends – This is a 3dcg show about anthropomorphized girl animals living in a very large African lion safari theme park that involves a girl meeting animal girls, befriending them and ultimately having them join her on her adventure to get out of this place and I think go home. So I don’t understand what the main girl is doing anyways, doesn’t she know that in order to catch the pokemon, she needs to have safari balls and maybe a couple of rocks and mud to distract them? Silly girl, it’s a lot harder to try talking to them and getting them to come with you but yea, that’s what’s happening, ASH KETCUM style 2017. Pokemon with feels. Main animal girl is a leopard I think and Ash also meets a hippo pokemon, they look alright as girls but still shit since it’s 3dcg. The pacing and direction is questionable but then you realize it’s based off a video game then it doesn’t matter anymore with their “objectives” and non-descript magical monsters they beat up for EXP. Yea, nope, very zoo friendly with animal explanations and behavior shit thrown in for good measure. Ugly design, nice concept but bad execution cause 3d. Looks like I’m gonna have to pass on this pokemon adventure.

More to come…