A lot of very good series are winding to a close, and so this month was an especially good one for the top 5. Hopefully the season finales will be strong enough to carry me through next month, which will be the typical vacuum period at the start of a new season.
Top Five This Month:
- Mai Hime: Although I don’t get as excited about this series as everyone else, I can’t deny that Mai Hime has been impressive this month. The more I watch, the more amazed I am at the care the writers took in crafting the plot, especially when you consider how different the manga is (this is one of those rare cases where I prefer the anime to the manga, although it’s like comparing apples to oranges). Marathoning the whole series after watching it once will probably result in prodigious amounts of forehead slapping at all the foreshadowing.
- Beck: The storytelling has been very engaging, and I dig the music in spite of the engrish. When I saw the latest Belle Ame live, I wanted to puke, and I have a feeling that Eiji did, too. Watching Yoshito warble with fangirls doing a goofy dance was so awful and yet so true. Eiji has no shame!
- Samurai Champloo: After two bizarre episodes, the plot charged forward and closed out the season with a nice three-parter. I was a bit uncomfortable with the ending, but I don’t know that it could have ended any other way. Still, it was a fun ride, and I hope Jin goes and finds that eel lady while Mugen cashes in the IOU with ninja girl. At least Fuu still has Momo-chan. I think a spinoff following Mugen or Jin would be fun, but the Fuu storyline was really stretched just about as far as it could go. The one unanswered question I have is where did Mugen’s beetle go?!
- School Rumble: Arg, less Tenma, more Harima! Although Tenma is very funny-cute, duwaaaaa~. That sentai movie was really well done… brilliance or misuse of funds?
- Yakitate: I read the manga and spoiled myself rotten, but I’m still excited to see all the reactions. I feel like Tsukino’s VA does a really good job with the role and I look forward to some Suwabara-Monica action.
Rising:
- Naruto: They’ve been doing a good job with this portion of the manga, and I look forward to Naruto’s talk with Sasuke. From the looks of things, it could be the last emotional moment in the story for a looooooong time. I wonder if they will show Kakashi’s backstory or go right to the future Naruto in the anime. That or we will get some trashy filler episodes T_T.
Falling:
- Buzzer Beater: I wonder who came up with this new material. Anyway, if this series wasn’t about basketball (and I will admit the action sequences are very nice), I probably would have dropped it. I can’t stand Hideyoshi and his entourage. And those lips, they haunt me in my dreams!
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
“That sentai movie was really well done… brilliance or misuse of funds?”
LOL, good call on that one. While I thought the CG sentai mech fight was cool, I was hoping for more of the sentais themselves. I did a kick that the characters were parodies of the VAs though
Mugen’s beetle, huh? Did I miss something? Anyway, I think it was pretty lame how they twisted the ending but I like Samurai Champloo so much that I don’t really care.
Ah, I see you meant the beetle from episode 11. While searching for it, I found this pretty nice site about Samurai Champloo:
http://www.spookhouse.net/angelynx/comics/amalgam2.html