Anime [Anime Blog Muyo!] Fall 2003 Season Wrap-Up

Well, now that several of the Fall series have wrapped up, here are some of my impressions. This can be compared with my earlier picks. My final grade is listed first in bold, my early season grade follows in parentheses.

Ai Yori Aoshi ~Enishi~: DNF (N/A)
Looked a lot like the first one. Decided not to get involved early on in the series (since it was licensed before the series began).

Avenger: DNF (C+)
I gave up. I was just too bored with the lazy pace of the series. This season was interesting because it marked the first time I bailed out on so many series. Of course, this was partly due to the fact that I started watching way too many in the beginning.

Battle Programmer Shirase: DNF (but probably C-) (B-)
Again, I just gave up. The effectively-10-minute format just was not conducive to the show. Interesting in concept but mostly poor in execution.

Bottle Fairy: A- (A)
Still cute through the end. The twist at the end with "Halorin" was cute, if a little bizarre. There were certainly some very amusing highlights throughout the show and Bottle Fairy has become a show I may come back to in a few months and marathon on a Saturday afternoon. A lot of fun, a good investment.

Full Metal Alchemist: Ongoing (but B-) (B+)
Only one-quarter of the way through with Full Metal Alchemist, but it's been a decent shonen show to watch. I've been marathoning Naruto to catch up with everyone else these past few months and I find that shonen show more entertaining, but FMA is interesting in its own right. Not a perfect show and several jokes are wearing very thin (even in Slayers, the "Lina's boobs" jokes were far more infrequent that Ed's "short" jokes), but enough intriguing story lines have been given to make this an interesting diversion.

Gilgamesh: DNF (C- at least) (B-)
Another one I bailed on. Ugh. Ugly character designs, drab palette, boring and confusing plot. It's like Wolf's Rain but without the star power.

Godannar: DNF (B) (N/A)
Never really came back to this one. Not sure why, it was reasonably entertaining - probably more so if you watched the older, cheesy mecha shows.

Gungrave: DNF (probably D or D-) (D-)
I swore I was going to fight through this one until the end but I just couldn't. Maybe I'll come back to this one this coming season to look for improvement. Laughably bad.

Gunslinger Girl: INC (B+) (B+)
The subbers seem to have slowed to a crawl with this series and I can't figure out why, because it's a good one. With interesting and moderately deep characters (without being forced), it's far better than Noir. The pacing is slower for this show (about equal with Noir), but it feels right this time. I don't really have any complaints: it's been a good show.

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien: B (A-)
This show's grade has been as wild as the show itself. By around episode eight or nine, I would have given Kiminozo an A+, but (and, admittedly, I'm firmly in the minority here) I didn't like the ending. I didn't mind how they wrapped it up, I minded who it wrapped up with (which, I'm trying to mind the spoilers, but if you saw it, hopefully you're catching my drift). I didn't buy it and I wasn't buying it for the last three or four episodes. If they'd left it more open-ended, this was an easy A.

Mermaid's Forest: DNF (B)
I just let it slip, but so did the subbers apparently, who seem to have left off at episode nine. Nothing spectacular, this one is for the Takahashi fans.

Peace Maker Kurogane: DNF (D) (B)
The more I watched this show, the less I liked it. It felt insulting to the history of the Shinsengumi, which I might even be willing to overlook if it was at least funny or entertaining or had an interesting storyline, but it was not. The exact moment this show lost me permanently: "Abacus rollerblades." And I'll leave it at that.

Planetes: INC (A) (A)
Were it not for a weak episode or two in the middle, this is an easy choice for an A+. Some of the episodes have been so wonderful, so splendid that I actually felt my heart jump a few times. Funny when it should be, serious when it should be, the balance and characterizations of the show make this my pick of the season.

Read or Die: The TV: INC (A-) (A-)
I've been somewhat mournful for the apparent, slow death of the 26-episode TV series format, but Read or Die: The TV shows just how well it can still be used. Whereas the original OAV was mostly entertaining and creative action, the TV series has fleshed out the world of Read or Die nicely (albeit, completely unexpectedly). The story hasn't been anything like what I expected (frankly, I expected to hate the show), but I look forward to each new episode.

Tsukihime: C- (C)
Almost didn't finish. To give you an idea about what I thought about Tsukihime, I was writing articles for Wikipedia while marathoning the final five episodes. It just never held my interest. Nothing of import really happened. Arc was great but mostly did nothing. Tsukihime was pretty to look at but if I really wanted to spend hours looking at pretty things, I'd watch my screen saver with rapt attention until the monitor clicked off.

Of course, I'm still watching Twin Spica and Chrno Crusade, neither of which are half over, so I can't really review them just yet. All in all, it's been a very good season of anime, more so than I was expecting before the season began. Be sure to look here for reviews of the new Winter season series as they're released in Japan. Or talk about them now on the message boards.

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