From episode 8 of Nisekoi: (That is, the second series, or Nisekolon, if you will. Or maybe won’t), the magical girl episode. I would have said token magical girl episode, but, honestly, idols are feeling way more token than the magical girl fare these days.

Anyway, token post, I guess – I’m not dead, I’ve just been somewhat busy recently. I really should probably get around to writing about the rest of Cinderella Girls before the show starts back up in a few weeks, even if only in brief. Although “really should” doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to find time to do so – there’s an awful lot of E3 to be watching this week…

From episode 4 of Kantai Collection, we have Naka-chan standing ontop of a Mikan box, challenging Kongou to an idol throwdown. This is it – anime has clearly peaked. I may as well stop watching cartoons, like, right this minute.

*ahem*

The rest of the episode is maybe something to write about another time, but the vaguely interesting thing about the actual box here is that it’s a little vintage – aside from the fact that it’s wooden, the more astute may notice that it’s actually upside. Of course, if you rotate it the correct way upwards, you’ll also note that the katakana are written right-to-left, instead of the usual left-to-right – the Japanese manner of writing was reformed post-World War 2, so this is another one of those peculiar vintage details the show occasionally likes to adhere to.

The first spot of the new anime season, it’s the Mikan box so orangey they deemed to label it twice – that is, they’re Mikan Mikan boxes. They’re all over the boys club room, too.

There’s not really a ton to say about Cute High Earth Defense Force LOVE, aside from the fact that the shows title is a wee bit of a mouthful. This is largely because it’s very much the kind of show that you’d expect the folks involved in it’s production to produce – the shows director, Takamatsu Shinji, made an awful lot of Gintama. The shows lead writer, Yokote Michiko, made an awful lot of Gintama. The episode director working on this opener, Miyawaki Chizuru, worked on Wandering Son. Also, made an awful lot of Gintama.

This probably all sounds like me being awfully reductive here, but in CHEDFL, it’s a little difficult not to stress that they’ve made a show that very much sports the same kind of sardonic tone, and the same kind of dialogue and directorial cadence, as what is arguably the most significant of their previous works. Right from the opening, it just noticeably has that feeling to it.

Which is, you know, fine – Gintama is a good show, but they’ve, well, made an awful lot of it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking the lessons learned whilst adapting such a long running manga and applying them to an original show with new characters and a completely different setting.

(Not that this is the first time these folks have done such a thing – also see Ixion Saga DT, though what I watched of that one was a wee bit hit-or-miss. Will be curious to see if CHEDFL is more consistent, though I’ll probably forget to watch it from the second episode onward anyway…)

First spot of the season, from Gugure! Kokkuri-san, the gag-comedy about a fox spirit who elects to haunt an incredibly dead-pan little girl. It’s where we first meet the more-than-a-little-skeezy dog spirit Inugami.

The show is OK, I guess. I hadn’t intended to watch it until I caught wind of a tangerine-tinged lead, but given I like a spot of dry humour every now and again, the relatively flat delivery the show presents quite often isn’t far from my cup of tea. It could probably do with something of a higher gag concentration, though. Maybe I’ll keep up with it, and maybe I won’t – I’m feeling a little time-strapped as of late.
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Submitted by Author over the twittersphere, from an episode of Barakamon. All potential jokes about Digivolving Presidents are too overplayed to repeat here.

Well, at least I assume it’s from Barakamon – I’m taking his word for it, because at this point in the season, it’s increasingly apparent that I’m absolutely not going to find time to watch even a single episode of the show. I feel kind of bad about it, because it’s apparently pretty good, even if many comments to that effect are often couched in terms of “well, we’re never getting a Yotsubato cartoon”.

In reality, though, it’s pretty much the victim of being not on Crunchyroll and not being an idol show – I’m behind on my anime as it is at the moment (having taken on a little more than I usually endeavour to chew this last season despite taking a two-week trip to the US in the middle), so if it’s something which doesn’t just appear somewhere on the frontpage of Crunchy when I check the site, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll either just forget about it, or simply won’t bother to jump through the additional hoops to watch it. In the case of Barakamon, it’s also one of the increasingly few shows which isn’t streaming anywhere in the UK, which isn’t to say that I couldn’t, say, watch it on Hulu using one of those handy region spoofing plugins, but who wants to deal with Hulu?

Call me spoilt, I guess, but it does mean I have nothing to say about the actual show.

(Also, I should probably actually watch K before going to see Missing Kings at SLA in a few weeks).