5 Reasons to Look Forward to the Fall Season

1. Tytania

 

Yakk! Deculture! Tytania’s staff list makes me wet myself.

For starters, the director is Noboru Ishiguro which would be enough for me to watch this no matter what. His name is pratically synonymous with sci fi and his impressive resume speaks for itself (SDF Macross, Macross Do you Remember Love? Megazone 23, Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVA and movie, and Orguss just to name a few).

The story is based on novels written by Yoshiki Tanaka who also wrote the Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Although I’ve yet to see LotGH everybody talks about it like it’s the second coming so I’ll take their word for it.

Character designer Noboru Sugimitsu is unkown to me however his work is based on original designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto. Mikimoto did a whole bunch of awesome 80s character designs, e.g. Macross, Gunbuster and Megazone 23. Judging from the website I think Sugimitsu’s designs turned out fine.

Tytania has two mecha designers, Koji Ito (Cybuster, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, Full Metal Panic! design director) and Kazutaka Miyatake. Miyatake is definitely someone to get excited about since he’s been the mecha designer (along with Shoji Kawamori) for every single Macross except Macross II, Plus, Frontier and Zero although he’s credited in some way for all of them. He also worked on other shows such as Gunbuster, Dirty Pair Flash and Flag.

The 3D CG is being done by Sanzigen who worked on Gurren Lagann so hopefully it’ll be pretty nice.

Finally, the studio is Artland  who have worked on some not so great stuff (all I hear about Gunslinger Girl II is how much it sucks) but they were also behind Mushishi. They did animation for some shows that Noboru Ishiguro was involved in, most notably SDF Macross, so they seem well suited for Tytania.

Long story short, I’m really excited for this. I expect it will be a political drama that will, with any luck, be a throwback to the epic space opera of the 70s and 80s. 

2. Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter

On the completely opposite end of the spectrum is Nodame Cantabile which is about a haphazard girl named Nodame and talented pianist/wanna-be composer Chiaki. It’s just a great mix of comedy and drama with characters that gradually grew on me more and more. Classical music is to Nodame what sports are to a sport anime. I wouldn’t normally listen to something like Beethoven but in the context of the show it’s highly enjoyable. I recommend checking out the first season before this airs.

3. One Outs

Hiromichi Kojima, star batter of the fictional Lycaons in Japan’s Pacific League, meets Toua Tokuchi who is a pitcher and the king of a gambling form of baseball called “One Out.” Tokuchi decides to sign a contract under which he gets 5,000,000 yen for every out he pitches but loses 50,000,000 yen for every point he gives up.

I don’t know a single thing about baseball and that doesn’t matter because this Madhouse show is by the same staff that did Akagi and Kaiji. I haven’t seen Akagi yet but I love Kaiji. Every single episode had me on the edge of my seat. Kaiji is the type of show that could turn a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos into the most awesome thing you’ve ever seen as well as an apt metaphor for class stratification or some other observation about this brutal world we live in.

Some people are turned off by Kaiji’s art which I don’t really understand but since it was based on Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s manga I don’t think that’ll be a problem with One Outs. Okay, so these characters aren’t exactly pretty either but I rather like it:

4. Shikabane Hime

A Gainax show based on a manga in which the Shikabane Hime (Corpse Princess) makes a deal with a Buddhist monk that involves “killing” 108 corpses in order to get to heaven.

They already had me at Gainax but they really had me with that picture of a girl holding a gun. What can I say, I like strong female leads. Skimming through volume 1 it seemed to be a (somewhat mild, nothing really disgusted me) splatter manga in which she takes out a corpse each chapter. Frankly the manga didn’t strike me as being that interesting but I’m still eager to see how this will turn out. 

5. Michiko to Hatchin

After escaping a maximum-security prison, “sexy diva” Michiko meets a young girl named Hatchin who is fleeing her legal guardian. The story follows their journey to freedom.

This seems to be a road trip story, like Samurai Champloo but with even more style and wackiness. Of course I’m making that comparison because it’s coming from the same studio, Manglobe, and director Sayo Yamamoto was an episode director and did storyboards for Champloo. Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop director) is the music producer so I’m betting the soundtrack will be great.

The trailer is giving me strong blaxploitation vibes (check out that afro at 1:20) and I really can’t wait to see how this turns out.

These are not the only shows I’ll be checking out this season but they are the ones I’m most interested in and hopeful about. The rest of the shows I will probably check out are: Casshern Sins, Hakushaku to Yousei, Yozakura Quartet, Ride Back, Kurozuka, Mouryou no Hako (schoolgirls stuffed into boxes + CLAMP? Brilliant), Skip Beat!, Kurogane no Linebarrel, Bihada Ichizoku (a show about a beautiful skin competition? What the hell), Ga-Rei Zero and Hyakko. 

However I fully expect some of those to suck. At least, I surely hope so because there’s no way I could watch that many. Even trying to watch 5 is going to be difficult.