When the perfect high school student – looks, athletic ability, intelligence – meets a new transfer student who carries a flintlock, it’s a memorable meeting. But when she takes him to an old, decrepit amusement park on Sunday, he learns that if the park doesn’t get 100,000 visitors in the next 2 weeks, it’ll be closed for good. Can Seiya’s brilliant mind help save this old park? KyoAni’s going to show us in this business and romantic comedy. With Yasuhiro Takemoto, the director for Hyouka, at the helm, this one shoots way up in the likely quality meter, and will hopefully go a long way to dispelling a bit of the sequelitis that KyoAni has been stuck in lately.

I think my main hook into the series is how much the narcissist the main character is made to be. It’s quite fun to see someone with that sort of personality get either shown up, or to have been right all along. Hilarity and drama can ensue. Other than that, I will expect the usual KyoAni devotion to fantastic character design, and lovely full framed animation.

Kyoutarou Kakei is a member of the Library club who likes reading by himself. But while at his school’s daitoshokan, a literal “great library” which rivals the national library, he meets Tsugumi Shirosaki, who has been sent there by a “shepherd” who fulfills people’s wishes. And she’s just the first of the girls who are sent to the club by the shepherd. This one intrigues me because Tsugumi is going to be voiced by Madoka Yonezawa, who I really liked as Setsuna in White Album 2. The thing that would be even better is if she sings a bunch of songs, because I absolutely love her singing voice.

I find it really amusing that the animation studio behind this did Doraemon and Crayon Shin-chan. Mostly because these are insanely popular shows and the studio probably makes enough money sticking their guns. But branching out a bit can’t hurt! Still, I’m not sure how this studio will handle things or how the director (who hasn’t had much work directing and has a wild variety of other side jobs on his resume with titles ranging from Pokemon to something called Sex Demon Queen….) will adapt this. I mean, it’s hard to screw up a generic comedy about a buncha nerds, but this just cements it in my mind that the show will end up being mediocre.

At the very least, the trailer seems to promise that the jokes will be aimed very acutely at otaku and gamers with the setting being a manga store and its weird employees. That has it’s own kind of appeal in a way, because you can feel special for watching enough anime to get all the references. Plus, watching a bunch of weirdo otaku is oddly comforting when you’re a semi-weirdo otaku yourself. I predict this will be an average comedy that will be fun to kill time with, but I’m keeping my expectations quite low for everything aside from HOW DAMN THE CHARACTERS ARE.

Kosei was a piano prodigy, but after his piano teacher, who happens to also be his mother, passes away, he suffers a breakdown and is no longer able to hear his own piano playing. Moving on in his life, he’s resigned to live without flair or color, but with some good friends, he has a surprise meeting with Kaori, a freewheeling violinist who would rekindle his interests in music and life.

This is kind of surprising to see: a 22-episode noitaminA series, after they said they weren’t going to do any more 22-episode series just a couple seasons ago (after the debacle of Galilei Donna and Samurai Flamenco). But this offering from A-1 Pictures looks to be pretty interesting, and is certainly a much more traditional kind of anime. With Natsuki Hanae in another leading role (Aldnoah Zero, Nagi no Asukara, Sekai Seifuku, Tokyo Ghoul) and Risa Taneda as Kaori, as well as my favorite Saori Hayami supporting, this looks to be a favorite of mine for the next two seasons.

Happy to see noitaminA going back to its romance feels. I’m a Nodame Cantabile fan and those were the noitaminA days really. From the dumps of Donna, recently this slot has been doing really good with Silver Spoon, Ping Pong the Animation, Nanana and Zankyou no Terror. In Fall with Psycho-Pass 2, Shigatsu is its second offering and from the plot to execution, I’m really liking it. The staff looks quite solid and I already like the music as I’m a Goosehouse fan and they are performing the opening theme “Hikaru Nara” featured in the second PV. I’m sure the ending theme “Kirameki” by wacci should be sweet too. On male seiyuu side, I’m pretty sure that the Yuuki Kaji character will not get his arm dismembered but he’s voicing enough roles this season (Seven Deadly Sins, World Trigger, Donten ni warau), for the possibility of it happening again. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, shall we? And look at Ryota Ohsaka, voicing four main roles this season (Gundam G no Reconguista, Log Horizon S2, Denki-Gai no Honya-san), his career sure is flying. Anyways, it’s been a while that I felt Honey and Clover nostalgia, so I’m really looking forward to this one.

You can call skylion a sucker for these types of shows. A lush background that looks like you could walk into it, with that mysterious disc floating above. It sets my imagination up. I want to know what is going on there just from visuals alone. But add to that the Up to 11 moe character design, and the writer of one of Key’s principal VNs, Kanon, to the mix, and we should be forecasting #delicioustears on the horizon. At it’s heart, the show looks to be about the fulfilment of a wish, and the LOLi Noel looks to be at it’s center. The PV alone seems to suggest the possibility of separation. Friends growing apart? I’m anxious to find out…

This one is all about the visuals so far. Not a lot of other information about it that I’ve seen (not that it’s any secret that I don’t really look ). The character design seems a little confusing to me. Is the show about grade schoolers? Or middle schoolers and they just look like grade schoolers? It has a nice look otherwise, tho, and I’ll be interested to see it.

Grisaia no Kajitsu (lit. Fruits of Grisaia) is based on a prestigious visual novel about a guy who transfers to a mysterious academy named Mihama Academy and proceeds to woo the troubled girls he finds there. Or something along those lines. I’ve heard only good things about the VN, so we can be sure to expect lots of juicy, dramatic moments to go with the romance. Also, there’s this botany theme going on with fruits and orchards supposedly holding symbolic importance to the various characters. That’s cute, and I’m interested to see how far they take it. I just hope there won’t be any lemon stealing whores around to ruin the show though.

To commemorate the last school festival at the old building at fast-growing Uchihama Academy, the student body is going all out to make it quite the bash. But inside the school, there’s an uneasiness as unsettling and supernatural events are happening around the old building. So since the Astronomy Club has the school’s heavy hitters, they’re asked to help calm the students down.

This one’s listed as a romance, and it’s directed by Naoto Hosoda, who also directed the surprisingly good Hataraku Maou-sama, so it might have that same kind of feel where the romance kind of sneaks up on you through all the action and story. Not that I expect as much action in this as in that other show, but this does seem like it’ll have a good mix of things happening and romantic development. “Yurimonogatari” as much as I am!

When you’ve been bragging about your romantic exploits as a high schooler, you probably should have a boyfriend. But Erika doesn’t have a boyfriend, so she has to come up with one, or at least a picture of one. But the picture she picks actually is a picture of a boy at her school, and now she’s stuck with him as her fake boyfriend. And what’s worse, Kyouya, while a handsome and nice-seeming boy, is actually a black-hearted sadist, and he takes advantage of Erika’s weak position for his own gain. I’ll probably end up disappointed in this show because of the usual “He treats me like dirt, but he’s got some nice qualities that I see glimpses of so I’ll fall in love with him” crummy message, but I’ll definitely give it a try.

I’ve read a number of chapters for this series, and Kyouya is kind of a jerk (“with a heart of gold” of course). …But really, that’s not really anything new for shoujo. Plot aside though, it will be nice to hear from Itou Kanae as a lead again (…I don’t think Yui from SAO really counts as a “lead”) and Sakurai seems like he’ll be busy this season. Also, the director is the same guy who did the first season of Nodame Cantabile, so that probably counts for something, right?

Foreveralone.jpg? Wish you had a loving girlfriend to dote on you at every moment of the day? Well, now we have an anime that enables us to live the dream. That’s right, the aptly named Girlfriend is based on a mobile game (of all things), where the only objective is to get a girlfriend. And from what I understand, there is a very, very large selection of potential girlfriends to choose from. I have no idea what kind of format the show will take to pull this off as it is probably impossible to dedicate a mini-arc to each girl even with a two-cour. And choosing only one girlfriend candidate for the spotlight is sure to earn the ire of all the other rabid fans who are upset that their own waifus aren’t taking the stage. So Girlfriend has its work cut out for it to even formulate a successful adaptation.

I don’t know what to really make of this series other than it seems to be focused on gods from the year three hundred? What? So I guess this is obviously going to be somewhat supernatural sounding. Then again it is labeled as a slice of life so I kind of expect it to be more like a Jinsei like series from the previous season instead of an anime about fighting off monsters and what are the Vertex? Are they real or is this just a case of Chuunibyou? Whatever the case may be I think this will be another club themed anime. Besides all of that the one thing that stood out from the trailer was the cute character designs for the girls and for some strange reason one of the girls is in a wheelchair? I don’t mind that since most people know that I use one to get around in my daily life, but does that mean she will have some kind of tragic background? Probably or will Yuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru focus on more lighthearted fun? I certainly hope so and I can’t wait to check this one out.