New Season! New season!

Ureshii!! I was all out of anime series to watch, so I'm delighted to be starting some new ones. Even Bleach tied up their 310-episode Aizen arc. Well, come to think of it, there were several filler arcs in there so not all 310 episodes were the Aizen arc. Still. That arc has been running since the series began, so that's a pretty significant arc to tie up. Bleach is still on-going also, so we'll see where it goes from here. They started a new arc this month.

Anyway, today I wanted to talk about new series. I've began watching a bunch of the ones that are starting this month, and it looks like I'll be following several of them which have sparked my interest. I've only seen two episodes of all the series I'm going to mention, so my opinion of them may change, but the ones I like so far include:

C - The Money of Soul and Possibility Control: Believe it or not, this isn't the longest title of this season, but it's certainly the one with the most obscure meaning. Which is fitting because so far it also has the most obscure plot. Which is my way of saying I don't really know what's going on. Which is no doubt why I'm attracted to this series. I love a mystery, and of course, I love a unique plot. On top of that the character style and voice actors are good. What I've gotten of the plot so far is this: by some mysterious lottery means, poor people are selected and given a magic ATM card. When they use it, it takes them to an alternate/computer-based existence where they are required to play a life-or-death game with the help of an 'asset'. If they win, they get money which they can use any way they want to in the real world. If they lose everything, they lose their lives as well. I suspect the plot is considerably deeper than that, but I'm only two episodes in, so I only know what the main character has manged to figure out so far after being dumped into the game. The main character, Kimimaro Yoga, is dropped into the game, meets his asset Msyu and they fight for their lives in the first episodes. Well Msyu fights, Kimimaro is busy doing the 'this can't be real what's going on' thing. Yoga and Msyu are back to back in the picture to the left. The other interesting character in the series so far is Mikuni Souichirou, who is top of the heap in the alternate financial world. It should be an interesting series to follow.

Hanasaku Iroha: This is a slice of life series. Hana is a junior high kid who has a flaky, writer mother who Hana essentially takes care of. At the start of the series, Hana's mother and current boyfriend run off to escape bad debts, and send Hana to stay with her mother's mother. Grandmother owns a hot spring, bears a grudge against Hana's mother, and takes Hana in, but only as an employee. Hana has to earn her keep, as well as deal with Grandmother and all the other personalities at the Inn. This one could turn out to be fairly derivative, but so far I like the characters personalities and it's been interesting enough to keep me watching for a little while more. Plus it's pretty, with a character style I like. Hana is the character in the bottom center of the picture.

Ao no Exorcist: The Devil's Son wants to become an exorcist. That's the basic premise of this one, so you can see that things will be interesting. Rin is a 15 year old with a twin brother named Yukio. The two of them were raised by an exorcist priest Rin believed was their father. The series starts as his twin is leaving to go to high school and Rin is struggling to find a job. He has been a child who always has bad things happen around him, and school has not been his strong suit. Turns out that while his fraternal twin brother is completely human, Rin is half a demon, with Satan himself for a father. Events cause him to discover this, and his exorcist father dies trying to protect him from the Devil. Yes, they kill a character in the second episode. Rin decides he doesn't want to be a demon, and he's not really demon or human, so he'll become an exorcist like his human father. It may be interesting to see where this one goes, with Rin using his demon powers to fight demons. Rin is the blue-horned kid with the sword, and Yukio is the megane-kid behind him to the left.

Steins;Gate: Take a mad scientist-type inventor with a less-than-strong grip on reality, and place him under circumstances where the reality shifts, and you've got Steins;Gate. This series is going to be about both time travel and alternate universes, so it will definitely be interesting. Our mad scientist's name is Okabe Rintarou but he calls himself Hououin Kyouma (don't know why - he's really a whacked personality - wearing the lab coat in the picture). He starts his day being confronted by a girl (Makise Kurisu - red hair) he's never met who is demanding to know why he called her. An hour later he finds her murdered, sends a text message to a friend about it and when he presses "send", manages to transport himself into an alternate universe in which she's still alive and doesn't know him. And the series is off and running. *laughing* At least that's my interpretation of what's happened so far. It's a little confusing, even for me and I think I have a pretty decent grip on reality mostly. This is another one I'm looking forward to watching. I just hope I can keep up with, or track of, what's going on.

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai: This series wins the award for longest title of the season. This is another slice of life series. It is about 6 kids who are friends in elementary school. One of them dies in an accident of some kind, and the rest try to go on. The story actually starts several years later when the five remaining kids are in high school. The child who died, Menma, returns as a ghost to try to repair the lives that were shattered by her death. She is only visible to the kid who was most affected by her death, Jinta, but she is real to him. He can touch her, as well as hear and see her. The other members of the gang cannot see or hear her. She asks him to grant her a wish, but what she really wants is to repair their lives and their friendship with each other which was all lost the day she died. I suspect the series will eventually tell how she died. Right now it's just introducing characters and giving basic background. And the beginning was clever. Since she can touch and interact with Jinta, you don't realize she's a ghost and wonder why he's ignoring her.

There are also a few other series I'm trying out, but they haven't interested me as much, so I may drop them after another couple episodes. They include: Season 2 of World God Only Knows, Hidan no Aria, which is about a high school which trains mercenaries; Deadman Wonderland, which is a bloody series about a 14 year old condemned to death row for the wholesale massacre of his entire class, only death row is an amusement park where people pay to come to see the convicts kill each other off in games; and Dog Days, which is about a kid pulled from the real world into a fantasy world to become their hero and save the kingdom.

So those are the series I'm currently trying out from the new season. Quite a variety, ne. Some of them seem like they'll be pretty good, so I'm looking forward to watching.