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Lucky Star. So popular has this show proven that the real-life locale in which it's set has been besieged by tourists. A 24-episode slice-of-life high school anime crammed full of inconsequential and self-referential ramblings on food, online gaming, why dentistry is like a Gainax production*, the art of copying your friends' homework, more food, otaku culture, manly heroic DVD store clerks, how to deal with your father's lolicon tendencies, the relationships of twins and yet more food. Like Azumanga Daioh, adapted from a four-panel newspaper strip, but considerably more sly and adult in tone; the show also derives great mileage from the casting of breakout star Aya Hirano, best known as Haruhi Suzumiya. The best and funniest feature is 'Lucky Channel', the host section at the end of each episode, wherein embittered idol star Akira Kogami terrorizes her male co-presenter, bit-part actor Minoru Shiraishi (played by bit-part actor Minoru Shiraishi) with her wild mood swings and relentless, fruitless campaigning to appear on the actual show.
Darker Than Black. A transdimensional rift wipes out the heart of Tokyo, causing the stars to disappear from the sky and the advent of the Contractors - affectless mutants who 'pay' for their superhuman abilities with bizarre OCD-like acts, and who are used as weapons by the various criminal, corporate and government concerns investigating the mysteries of the gate. A 25-episode supernatural thriller with high production values typical of Studio BONES (Cowboy Bebop, Eureka Seven, Fullmetal Alchemist), DtB suffers from a tendency to adolescent badassery and over-knowing use of anime stereotypes - a sarcastic talking cat, a Rei Ayanami-esque psychic girl, boneheaded comedy characters. The main character, though, is intriguing in the contrast between his kindly, gauche cover identity and the sociopathic mercenary beneath, and the policewoman with whom he crosses paths throughout the series is interestingly portrayed. The anime series that comes closest to matching the blend of horror, character development and action achieved by American TV shows such as Angel.
Dragonaut: the Resonance. This new show from workmanlike but sometimes surprising Studio Gonzo (Gantz, Speed Grapher, Burst Angel, uh, quite a lot of shows involving visceral violence and overly endowed women) looks like it's going to be in their usual vein, with an abundance of sci-fi and fantasy plot threads involving flying mutants, spaceborn dragons and a great many people with extravagant clothes, hair and names (I give you Howling Star, Garnet McLane and Liner Cromwell). So far the big draw is the cast which is even more top-heavy than the female characters, including as it does almost the entire Haruhi Suzumiya roster (including yep-her-again Aya Hirano) as well as Gurren-Lagann's Tomokazu Sugita and Yukari Fukui (Simon and Nia). May prove awful, but I'm going to give it a shot.
Kaiji (aka Ultimate Survivor Kaiji). An unemployed loser is persuaded to take on an acquaintance's debts and finds himself drawn into a loan shark's bizarre scheme to make money by confining gamblers aboard a ship at sea and making them play fabricated card games for absurdly high financial stakes (first up: Restricted Rock Paper Scissors). By way of contrast, this is a show with no special powers, moments of triumph or strangely underdressed girls: instead it has a distinctive art style inherited from its predecessor, mahjongg-based anime thriller Akagi, and a dislikeable underdog central character who may never free himself of his crippling financial burden. A hard sell to be sure, but it's strangely compelling; and any show that features the guttural tones of Fumihiko Tachiki automatically earns some sort of seal of approval.
If any of these shows catch your interest, please start threads about them and cross-post my introductions from here - or write your own according to taste - rather than posting further in this thread. Lucky Star is probably the pick of the bunch simply because many people here can probably identify rather well with main character Konata, who'd rather play World of Warcraft than do homework but is handicapped by the fact that her teacher is in her raiding party. And the hot-blooded anime store clerk scenes are some of the funniest things I've seen this year.
*Because it involves drills and pretty girls in uniforms, of course. |
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