The past three days have been so hectic. I'm so utterly exhausted! With two essays due, an info session to attend to (in Auckland city, no less) and several English classes to teach, it felt as if I wasn't going to survive past the weekend. Well, I did. There's still a bit of work left in the semester, but they are a few weeks away so I get to relax for a bit. For now. Without further ado, I'm going to talk about some of the seasonal anime I've been watching.

This post will probably be updated as my list increases, so watch out for that.

Amagi Brilliant Park

This is the latest show by KyoAni that everyone is (or should be) watching. Adapted from a LN by Shoji Gatoh, Amagi Brilliant Park is nothing like Full Metal Panic. Featuring a cast whose names subtly emulate Shoji Gatoh's favourite rappers, Amagi Brilliant Park features the adventures of 50 cent, Kanye and Queen Latifah in a bid to stop a fairy-owned theme park from going under. 

Okay, so the show isn't really about rappers. Actually, the show is about a handsome loner (a mix between Chuu2's Yuuta and Hyouka's Oreki) who befriends Sento Isuzu, a ridiculously beautiful Belldandy look-alike and quite possibly a whole escort of cute girls with a variety of hair colours. So it's like a harem, but as we all know KyoAni MCs post-Clannad aren't usually that sensitive towards women, so the romance will probably remain as a subtle subtext than becoming a full-blown melodrama. Seiya is a bit more talkative than his predecessors, however, which also makes him somewhat more annoying, and his personality a bit more unlikeable. 

From a technical view, the show is superb. KyoAni has been like that since Haruhi, and will remain as one of the most technically accomplished studios for years to come. In my opinion, however, KyoAni has not produced a single decent show since Keion, and it looks like Amagi Brilliant Park will be remembered more for its cast of beautiful girls than its substance. Perhaps the writing of Shoji Gatoh will save this show from becoming just another seasonal eye candy.

Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso 

While its quality have taken a dip in recent years, shows that have aired in the noitaminA time slot have usually been fairly good. Honey and Clover and the Tatami Galaxy are some of the best shows in the past decade, and both were from the noitaminA block. More recently, shows like Usagi Drop and Thermae Romae have shown that despite the inclusion of Guilty Crown and Psycho-Pass, noitaminA still represents the higher end of the quality spectrum.

KimiUso is the latest show to air in that block. Adapted from a shonen (that's what Wikipedia claims, but it's more like a shoujo) manga, it tells the story (soon to be 'love story') of two child musicians. The guy is a music prodigy who gave up playing piano after the death of his mother, while the girl is a violinist with beautiful blonde hair. As in Nodame Cantabile, we know that the show isn't really going to be about music at all. It's going to be about the drama. And the romance. And the misunderstandings.

In terms of production quality, A-1 Picture has delivered once again. Maybe they could've used less cherry blossom leaves because half of the first episode is covered in a pink mist of sakura petals. I was also pleasantly surprised that they actually correctly animated the piano scenes, and the fingers were all on the right keys. Very impressive. Still, they could've balanced out the drama with the comedy just a bit more. The transitions from drama to blatant comedy seemed a bit too rushed.

Other than that, the show holds a lot of promise. There's like twenty more episodes to go, so I expect the amount of comedy to go down with time, while the amount of drama will go up in a straight line. If they pull this off, KimiUso may very well be the anime of the season. That is, if they keep the music within the show so it doesn't degrade into another generic high school romance.

Girlfriend BETA

Adapted from a cellphone game (which partly went famous due to a notorious NicoNico meme earlier this year), Girlfriend BETA is everything that you'd expect from an adaptation of this sort: low budget, cute girls, lots of subversive advertising for the source material. The most surprising thing, however, is that this show is actually watch-able, if not just barely.

The original game was a dating sim. Having perhaps recognized the difficulty of introducing a male cast into a group of cute girls without making it into a harem, Silver Link binned that idea completely. Instead, Girlfriend BETA has become a low-budget version of a generic, cute-girls-doing-cute-things high school slice-of-life, with a subtle lesbian undertone. Which may in retrospect be the best decision Silver Link ever made, considering that the kind of people who spend money on a cellphone dating sim are probably the same people who watch high school slice-of-life with cute girls. Which means that I'm part of its target audience.

Chloe is single-handedly carrying the show right now. Honestly, it's her quirky accent. Her accent is actually kind of funny, and her antics have been mildly entertaining. Everyone else is pretty average, but if they decided to add in more yuri scenes, Girlfriend BETA might be worth watching. I know it's only episode one, but seeing how this show is going, the only viewers left remaining after the 13  or so episodes will be the diehard fans of the original game. Which is somewhat ironic, considering the show has such a huge playerbase that if they are obsessive enough, Girlfriend BETA might actually cross the Manabi line.