The Japanese title for this is…(take a deep breath…) “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai”, which means “I Have Few Friends”, but we know it better as “Haganai”. Look, it’s another school-based anime! How original! And we have a new transfer student! Doubly original! And he’s having troulbes fitting it! We hit the trifecta!

OK, let’s put the snarkiness aside. Kodaka Hasegawa (the guy in the middle) is a recent transfer student to St. Chronica’s Academy, a Catholic high school. As with every other school he has ever attended, he finds it difficult to make friends there because of his naturally-blond hair (inherited from his deceased English mother) and fierce-looking eyes, which make him look threatening.

While doing something on campus, Kodaka comes across the equally solitary and highly abrasive Yozora Mikazuki (the one to his right) while she converses with her imaginary friend, Tomo. Realizing that neither of them have any friends or social skills, they decide that the best way to improve their situation is to form a club, The Neighbor’s Club, intended to make friends and learn social skills.

They slowly start to acquire members, as these folks are also social misfits for one reason or another:

Sena Kashiwazaki, that busty blonde up there. She has a double whammy: she is rich and her mother is the school’s head teacher, so there is a seething arrogance about her and no one wants to be her friend.
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Finally doing a review again. I really need to stop rambling so that I can get to more of these.
I love myanimelist.net. I really do. It’s the best place to figure out where to begin when you’re trying to diverge from “mainstream” anime. Being that the site aims to catalogue every anime in existence, I’m bound to come across a lot of junk. But then there are those anime I find that are real gems. Yosuga no Sora is one of those gems.

Twins Sora and Haru have just lost both their parents. The first scene of the show opens with the two of them sitting across from each other on a train. Sora and Haru quickly move into a quaint little town and get to know all of the other young teenagers who live there. The short series, concluding at 12 episodes, follows 4 story arcs each at 3 episodes. Each arc involves Haru befriending and later developing a sexual relationship with a different girl.

Obviously, this show is famous for its incest content, which does not even happen until the final story arc. I always hear “Oh it’s not as taboo in Japan but still considered wrong”. Granted, it is only anime but at the time I was watching this I’d only seen around 10 anime and of these 4 of them (the other 3 being Elfen Lied, Kaze no Stigma, and Fruits Basket) had paired off family members! That’s nearly half! Clearly this is a popular issue in Japan.

I really didn’t know what to expect upon watching the first episode but by the end of it I was not only entertained but very interested in seeing what happened next. At first glance, Yosuga no Sora can be written off as an ecchi, sometimes labeled as “soft hentai”, but with eye catching visuals, an enchanting, mystical setting, and surprisingly well-developed characters those terms just wouldn’t do the show any justice. (more…)

Sometimes you follow a show and you have no reason as to why you did, but you did. This show did that for me. Maybe I was lazy or maybe I was between stuff. Maybe it was the cat (that odd basketball in the lower left box). But I will assure you that I found out much later that it was actually a dating game, and I will bet you that Keima Katsuragi from “The World God Only Knows” probably blitzed through the thing in a couple of hours. Or potentially the title drew me in: “Mashiro-Iro: Symphony: The Color or Lovers” (also known as “Love is Pure White”).

The traditional girls-only Yuihime Private Academy is considering the possibility of starting to accept both genders and has thus made an agreement with a neighboring school (Kagamidai Academy) to receive some of its students as an experiment to see the reaction to this adaptation. Shingo Iryu (the brown-haired guy, lower center and to the left) is one of the many students transferred for a ten month experimental phase at Yuihime Academy. He, his sister, and his fellow relocated colleagues are impressed by the sophisticated campus, but even more by the resistance of many students who don’t want the boys over there.

The resistance is lead by Airi Sena (that loud-mouthed number in the lower right) who just happens to be the principal’s daughter. Well, you can bet the friction is going to be long and loud on this one. Adding to the consternation is that Shingo has this amazing knack of walking in on the girls while they are in various stages of undress, furthering the assumption that all men are perverts (Psst! All men ARE perverts. That’s a given). But he is able to marshall the guys to be courteous and act well-mannered and be gentlemen, which starts to soften opposition to the merger. (more…)

I was afraid of this. It may be the new trends to deliver up pure fan service. Now, I may be jumping the gun with this one, as there has only been one episode, but it is a fan service delight of perversity and voyeurism.

It starts off with Haruko Amaya in her school uniform, which is too tight in the blouse and too short in the skirt, so it shows off her interesting assets (no, she does not look like what’s above, but you shan’t be disappointed.) She gives some song and dance about how it is best to remain in shape and proceeds to do sit-ups in her school uniform, so you can watch her Balcony shimmy and shudder with every hoist. We eventually change angle, so it could be gynecological review, as we can see that she wears coffee-colored pantyhose, which is still not dark enough to disguise that she wears blue-and-white striped underwear.

Then, she has the temerity to chide us for not paying attention to what she is doing. Oh, honey, I am paying FULL attention.

With sit-up done, we now shift to push ups, as they help build your upper…..arms! Wait, how can she do that with those two zeppelins in docking mode? No problem, she just goes all the way down and squashing them right against the floor. Now, I can’t do a decent push up, as I have something in the way! (more…)

This is what I consider to be part of the ‘new wave’ of anime. Now, I haven’t been watching anime as long or as intently as others, but I can still spot a trend and I do not really like things as they are going down. I gave a kind of partial comment of this show a while back, but I wanted to give this series a full opportunity to prove itself. It did, but not how I wanted it to go down.

The full title is “Maken-Ki – Battling Venus” (Pronounce that word ‘mockin’, as you feel that that you are being mocked).

Takeru Ohyama (the dweeb in the lower right corner) has been accepted into TenbiAcademy, which recently went co-ed. He knows absolutely nothing of the school, save that it would accept him. He meets Haruko Amaya (the one with the kendo staff in the center), who is an old childhood friend, but circumstances have kept them apart for at least three years. When he meets her, he is surprised that she has a massive pair of breasts on her…grown into a beautiful and mature woman. (more…)

I am always pulled in by clever or interesting titles. “Ladies vs.Butlers” certainly scored high on the list, but you kind of knew what was going to happen halfway through the first episode. I mean, there were really no major plot surprises….almost, but that’s something else

Akiharu Hino has transferred intoHakureiryōAcademy, a school that not only gives an education, but also trains students to be butlers and maids for the snoots of high society. Because Akiharu looks like a delinquent and has the worst spate of bad luck since Joe Btfsplk from “Li’l Abner”, the ladies of the school (of which there is an overwhelming majority) fear the worst of him. Of course, it does not help his cause to knock them over accidently, then grasp upon their prodigious bazooms. And what is it about an anime guy who runs into a lady, knocks her down and finds something soft and squishy amid his hand and when he sees it is some terrified lady’s headlights he is squishing, continues to squish them?

Akiharu, bad enough he is fleeing the female portion of the school, then runs afoul of Selnia Iori Flameheart (whom he calls Drill, owing to that ridiculous hairstyle) and proceeds to humiliate her by….squishing her breasts. A woman of her status and money should not have to suffer these indignities! Yet, it is a constant battle between these two. Aiding things along is Tomomi Saikyō. Theoretically a childhood friend of Akiharu, she spends a lot of time manipulating events and pulling pranks on them, although things start to turn rather mean and vicious. (more…)

I resisted this one for a while, as the title initially put me off. “The World God Only Knows” sounded like one of those megalomaniac shows, where some power-hungry fiend wants to take over the world. No, it is a delightful romantic comedy that isn’t really all that romantic, but is quite funny, and a rarity that the second season is better than the first.

It tells the story of Keima Katsuragi. He is a caliber of NEET, in that he shuns all human interaction. Oh, he goes to school and gets amazing grades, but his entire focus is on conquering the hearts of ladies. He has, in fact, conquered 10,000 of them……..too bad they are all VIDEO GAME girls. He is so good, that he has a title, The God of Conquest. Everyone comes to him to ask for help in how to beat the latest dating Sims games. He has played them all, on all platforms and has almost every copy of them. (His room could be a caliber of museum, as he has every gaming system. I am sure there is an Atari 2600 in there).

One day, while going through his e-mail, he gets an oddly worded challenge, daring him to take on the task on wooing girls who have a void in their hearts. He takes the challenge, not knowing what it all means. The letter has come from the Demon World. It seems, owing to some bureaucratic bungle, souls have escaped from Hell and they need his help to recapture them. Demons, however, are not the sharpest bowling balls on the rack and they somehow thought he has conquered 10,000 REAL GIRLS. Also, he has to take on an assistant, the rather ditzy and clueless Elucia de Lute Ima, better known as Elsie (who has spent at least the last 300 years as a maid). (more…)

Now, I know that this particular series veered over into a sub-genre I am tired of…vampires. It’s not that there aren’t good or interesting vampire animes out there, like “Black Blood Brothers” or “Hellsing”, but it is the sheer amount of them that gets overwhelming to the point where I run away. The other genre I am tired of is Giant Fighting Robots, so if they have a Giant Vampire Fighting Robot show, I can avoid it. (And if it is voiced by Chris Ayres, it’s everything I hate in one spot!)

The one under the microscope is “Rosario + Vampire”, which got a lot of positive spin in things I saw. Many girls liked it, as it was sooooooooooo romantic. Well, I was between shows and it came up, so I gave it a test run. I didn’t crash and burn, but it got really old really fast.

This is a shame, as it started out so good. Our hero, Tsukune Aono, is a ronin. This is a term used for a student who has left one school, but is not attached to another one. (It is a samurai term for a swordsman who has no master, but roams the countryside). He is a bit of a brick and is having a most difficult time getting accepted anywhere. His father magically finds an errant admission packet (dropped in an alley, after dark, by a strange hooded figure. Man, things have got to be rather weird and desperate if you are willing to grab an admission packet, dropped in an alley, after dark, by a strange hooded figure) and gloms it, scampering away. Hooray! Their son is not a total dweeb dork dingleberry dognice! Now, get to school! (more…)