Hayate The Combat Butler
As a concept this sounds gold. Combat Butlers? Sign me up. But look at that artwork. First of all it just looks so 00’s generic. And the fact the director just got done doing that mind unravelling Densh Otoko spin-off makes me think this will be unessential.
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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
Third series of this magical girl anime made for 18-30 year old men. At least they appear to not be primary school age in this series. That’s some improvement, I suppose. I’ve written about this series before here.
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Heroicage
Are XEBEC any good anymore? Tetsuo Sato seems to have fallen out with them if his “no more Stellvia or Nadesico, EVER” statement a couple of years back. And didn’t they upset Akamatsu fans by ineptly animating the start of the first Negima series? Apparantly this show is by the folks who did Fafner, hence the identikit Hisashi Hirai character designs. And hence:
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Seto no Hanayome
Mermaid-based romantic comedy with indistinct 00’s character designs, brought to you by the man who gave you Yugo the Negotiator, Magikano, Ragnarok and Galaxy Angel Rune. Honestly, how does he get work with a resume like that?
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El Cazador
The new anime from Bee Train director Koichi Mashimo, a man responsible for some of the most over-praised, dullest anime of the last 10 years. .hack, Noir, Avenger, Madlax, Tsubasa TV. His work is stilted, slow and coma inducing. And yet people love it. Particularly the girls with guns shows he’s done of late, which is just insane. Compare the action in Noir to the action in Black Lagoon. Hell, compare the action in Noir to the action in Dirty Pair:Project Eden (a film Mashimo directed 20 years ago). The guy appears to have forgotten how to be fun.