Kannagi 1: Shrine Maiden 「神籬の娘」

The episode covers most of the first chapter in the manga, with some extras. The airing time in Japan is actually different from most other anime. It's neither in the morning, night prime time, nor past midnight. While there doesn't seem to be anything unique about the series, I wonder what's the target age for it.


A child meets a shrine maiden. As a strong wind blows, the next thing he knows the girl has disappeared. After the opening scene with the dancing Nagi, the scene switches to a boy carving a statue from wood.

When he is about to go to school, the statue disintegrates, and a girl appears! No school today it seems! While the boy, Jin, wants to ask mountain loads of questions to the girl, the reverse is also true. When Jin ask whether the mysterious girl is a spirit, she punches him for his ignorance. She goes to a long winded explanation, which basically means she is a kind of goddess protector of the tree. Which makes her wonder what happens to the tree where she came from.

At the area where the tree is, the tree is gone! That means the wood that was used for carving by Jin originated from the tree that is now no more.

When the girl is still shocked by this, a centipede crawls onto her leg. I think she said it's not a normal centipede, and forbids Jin to touch it. Of course Jin then picks it up and throws it away. The centipede disintegrates, and he received a kick from our goddess.:)

Back at home, Jin wonders what to do now since it seems he now has to live with a girl for a while. He tries to divide house work, but as he explains the days of throwing the correct garbage (He should move away from Japan to make this simpler:b), he realize he would have to do everything initially.

As they watches a magic girl show on TV, the girl is inspired, and goes back to the stump of the tree where she used to live. Armed with a self-made magic stick, she does the transformation dance and exterminates some (spirit/impurity?) spiders. Happy on how things go, she revealed that her name is Nagi.

Next is some bath scenes (mandatory for these genre, I guess), which is quite funny too. And no, they didn't take a bath together:b Jun warns Nagi not to take the phone when he is taking a bath, but while he is enjoying her bath, he heard the phone rings twice and then stopped. Freaking out, he sprints to the phone with only a towel covering him. Thankfully, he managed to speak to his classmate before Nagi speaks. His classmate is wondering if he caught a cold or something since he missed school today. After the conversation, due to standing with no clothes, he sneezes:b

And finally, the long day ends. During the night, Jin awoke due to some noise. When he wonders what it is, he realize that goddesses needs to go to the bathroom too:)

Impression:
Nothing that has done been done before numerous times, but for some reason I like the first episode. Probably having a likable main male and female characters has got to do with a lot of it. Also the jokes are simple, and not overdone.


Kannagi 「かんなぎ」　official site
Opening theme song: motto☆hade ni ne! 「もっと☆派手にね！」　by Tomatsu Haruka　「戸松遥」
Ending theme: Musuhi no toki　「産巣日の時」 by Tomatsu Haruka 「戸松遥」

Note: screen shots to follow

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Kuro Shitsuji 1:That butler, has skills 「その執事、有能」

Based on a highly popular manga of the same name, the anime follows the story of a boy, Ciel, and his highly skillful butler, Sebastian.


From the start, Ciel seems like quite a brat, randomly throwing darts to people around him. His demeanor doesn't seem to affect Sebastian, who can handle his master quite easily.

Next, the other servants in the household are introduced, and they all look grossly incompetent:b. Thankfully there is always Sebastian that can save the day.
When there is a guest who comes to discuss a business deal with Ciel, Sebastian quickly makes a plan to cover up the messy state of the mansion.





It turns out the guest is actually trying to take advantage of Ciel, as he thinks the boy is just a kid. Sebastian, who has some powers, is making the guest stumble through the mansion which now appears haunted. The guest leaves in a hurry, and Ciel is saved from his trickery.


Highlight: the cute animation that accompanies the ending theme

Impression:
The animation looks very good and the story looks intriguing so far. Probably the series will be mostly episodic, with the progress of the story introduced bit by bit.

Kuroshitsuji 「黒執事」official site
Opening theme: Kiss of Monochrome 「モノクロのキス」　by SID　「シド」
Ending theme: I'm ALIVE! by BECCA

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Clannad After Story 1:Goodbye at the end of summer 「夏の終わりのサヨナラ」

The long awaited After Story has arrived! Great new opening and ending songs.


The whole episode is about a baseball game that is played between the Tomoyo team and some unknown team.
At the start, Nagisa's father ask Tomoyo to gather players as he has a match to play against a neighboring team that he desperately wants to beat. The other team has experienced players who used to play in Koushien, the final of the Japanese high school baseball tournament, so it would be a tough match.





Tomoyo didn't agree at first, but he is reminded he can just recruit all the member of the drama club. In the end, he managed to recruit pretty much all the club member, plus three more. In recruiting Yoshino, who refused at first, he tells some sob story (fabricated) about creating memories during youth in this town:b

Come game time, Nagisa's father became pitcher, and pitches well. He managed to shut down the opponent in the first inning, and his team scored 4.

It soon goes downhill though, when he got injured because one of the opponent threw the bat by accident and hit his leg. He appoints his daughter, Nagisa herself, to take over the pitching, to the surprise of everyone.





Long story short, Nagisa is not as good as her father, but only concedes 5 until the end of the game. Sunohara also made a bunch of mistakes to share the blame:b

Last inning. 4-5 trailing. Step up Tomoyo, who hasn't been doing too well with his strikes. Result: homerun and win for the team.



They celebrated the win by having a dinner together, and then it's time for The Big Dango family to make another appearance in the ending theme:)

Funniest moment: Yoshino repeating his feel good speech after he struck the ball magnificently, which contributes to the win.

Impression:
As expected, CLANNAD remains enjoyable after a half a year break, no surprises there. No plot progression in this first episode though. As someone who doesn't know what will happen from now, I am extremely curious on what kind of main story will be told in After Story. Well, I have to wait for a few more episodes for more clues.

Clannad　「クラナド」 official site
Opening theme: Song that engraves time (Toki wo Kizamu Uta) 「時を刻む歌」 by Lia
Ending theme:TORCH by Lia

Next episode: Searching for fabricated love. Everyone is close to graduating it seems, as Sunohara is questioned on what he wants to do.

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Casshern Sins 1: End of the world 「終末のせかいで」

As Casshern has been made into an anime series a long time ago and a live action movie recently, the series must have quite a following to have a new installment. I haven't seen the older series nor the movie, so I wonder if the story will be different here.


The episode opens with Casshern claiming he's going to kill a girl, Luna. After the opening song, which consists of mostly still shots, Casshern is shown to fight with a bunch of robots. The world is rotting, and it seems there aren't many humans left in the world. The robots all want to kill Casshern, since there is rumor saying that the rotting will end if Casshern is exterminated. The robots don't really believe the rumor, but they don't want to die without doing anything. As expected of our main protagonist, he easily disposed of the robots.



Later on, Casshern meets a girl who is collecting shell on the shore,named Ringo, who is not afraid of him. She wonders if Casshern is a robot or human. Casshern himself doesn't know though. After some talk, the girl is leaving to find her grandpa as he might be worried if she leaves too long. As a final thought, Casshern said that he doesn't think (the world?) is crumbling. Ringo is happy to hear it, so she gave the best shell to Casshern. Before far though, a robot attacks her thinking a little girl like her should just be eliminated. While the girl claims she's a robot too, the robot doesn't care. Casshern managed to save Ringo and shreds the robot into pieces, but this makes the girl afraid.




Thankfully for Ringo, her grandpa came by and pick her up. After they left, a new girl is making an appearance and said that Casshern is the cause of all the rotting in the world because of what he did in the past. Casshern is happy to find someone who knows about his past, but before he can ask to many questions, he has to fight the girl...



Impression
The character design has an 80s feel to it, which may throw some people off. While the action sequences itself is quick, the pace feels slow, probably to emphasize the dark theme. In fact, most of the episodes has gloomy colors, apt for a world that is nearing an end. You might like this if you want an action series that feels different to what is the norm recently. But if you want a Geass-like breakneck speed on plot progression and action, probably better see something else.

Casshern SINS 「キャシャーん　SINS」　official website
Opening theme:Blue flower (Aoi Hana) 「青い花」 by Color Bottle
Ending theme:reason by KANA

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Hyakko 1:An audience with Torako 「虎子相まみえる」

The first episode covers exactly the first chapter from the manga, with some extra scenes to make up for the short content. The extra scenes definitely improves the story, and makes it funnier, so it's a good thing. The character design in the anime feels much better than the manga too.


Ayumi is lost at her new, big school when she is changing class. As she's completely clueless on where to go, she's afraid she will be famous as the "lost child" if she couldn't find the location of the next class soon. Suddenly she sees someone so she is happy to see another student that she can ask direction too. It turns out they are in the same class. After a while, it turns out the second girl, Tatsuki, is lost too:b

After teasing Ayumi on false scary legends on the school, they discuss what to do next since they are no closer in finding their next class. Suddenly, a window on the second floor opens, and a girl jumps down. The girl is in pain as her landing position is not ideal.

Before they can call an ambulance, another girl jumps down right in front of them. The two new girls, Torako and Suzume, is apparently lost too. However, when they were lost on the second floor, they saw the building that they want to go to from the window. Since they would lost sense of direction if they go out the building the normal way, they decide to jump out of the window since they can just walk straight to the destination building after wards.

Here, there is a significant addition compared to the manga.
It turns out the way to the next class its not that simple. After wandering through flower gardens, bread shop, a different class, and various other rooms, they are still lost.

When they stop to wonder what to do next, it turns out they are in front of the building where the next class is. However, there is a small problem. The door is locked! Suzume tries to open it, but only result in tearing of the door handle. The impatient Torako wants to hit the door with a brick to open it, but after a struggle with Tatsuki who is trying to prevent her, the brick flies and break the window.

The girls are shocked, and freezes in spot. To make it worse, there is a teacher that sees them. With her quick thinking, Torako makes the next move to hit the teacher. She thinks because she is fast, the teacher won't recognize who they are. Problem solved!

In the end the teacher is in charge of their next class, and he remembers who they are. The episode ends with the teacher giving them a "fast forward" lecture:b

Impression
Even with knowing the story beforehand, the episode is still funny. The added materials really improved the story and the background song is quite apt too. Looking forward to see subsequent episodes. Hopefully they will add significant materials that are not in the manga for coming episodes too.


Hyakko 「ヒャッコ」　official page
Opening theme: Rock with no make-up (Suppin Rock) 「スッピンロック」
by Ogawa Mana　「小川真奈」
Ending theme: Tears TEARS tears (Namida NAMIDA namida)　「涙　NAMIDA　ナミダ」 by Hirano　Aya 「平野綾」

Screencaps to follow....

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Toradora! 1:Tiger and Dragon 「虎と竜」

Based on a light novel series, Toradora is a story that centers around "Tora" and "Dora". The first episode mainly introduces these two.


The story starts as Ryuuji is preparing to enter the second year of high school. His hangover mother, who does not seem able to take care of the house by herself, told him that he looks just like his father. For some reason, Ryuuji is not happy about this. They also talked about the building next to their house, which looks extremely expensive.

On the way to school, he got bumped by another student from his school. Because of his look, he has quite a reputation, apparently. Without prompting, he got some wallets as an apology. As he is not actually a delinquent, he hands out the wallets as lost items when he arrives at school.
At school, he is glad to find out he is on the same class as a good friend of his, Yuusaku and his crush, Minori. Everyone else seems to be afraid of him though!


On the way to class, he bumps into another girl who has quite a reputation also, Taiga. Different from him, this girl seems to fully deserve her reputation. Even though she is the one who bumps into Ryuuji, she punches him without hesitation.
It turns out that Taiga is actually Minori's best friend.

Later on after class, when Ryuuji went back to retrieve his bag, he is surprised to find Taiga making a mess of the class. For some reason, she is unwilling to let Ryuuji retrieve his bag too. However, Ryuuji managed to retrieve it after some tug of war. He even tidies up the classroom that was messed up by Taiga.

At home, Ryuuji is surprised to find a letter from Taiga to his best friend, Yuusaku.
Intending to give the letter tomorrow, he goes to sleep. In the middle of the night though, there is an intruder into his house! Taiga has sneaked in to retrieve the letter. After a lot of fight and argument, Ryuuji said to Taiga that he found out that the letter is empty, so she is worrying about nothing.

There seems to be some kind of deal struck afterwards, with Ryuuji agreeing to do anything Taiga wants, even to be her dog:b That's after Taiga meets Ryuuji's pet, a parrot which looks weird...

In the morning, Ryuuji got a phone from Taiga. It turns out she lives right next door in the expensive building! When Ryuuji went to her house to deliver breakfast, he is shocked to find out the inside of the elegant building stinks! Looks like Taiga is living alone, and the house if in a mess and garbage is piling up on the kitchen sink. Ryuuji finds out Taiga went back to sleep, and comment that she looks like a doll when she's sleeping.


When Taiga wakes up she is surprised to find her house to be a lot cleaner and organized than before. She finds hot breakfast ready for her too. But when she sees Ryuuji she got mad because he enters without permission....

It can't be helped that Taiga has all the Louise vibe here, as they have the same seiyuu, and similar character too, it seems so far. I am sure it's intended that way too.

If you are wondering where dragon and tiger comes from, Ryuuji's name has the dragon character, while Taiga is one of the word for tiger in Japanese. The title of the anime is the combination of the word for tiger and dragon too.

Impression
The first episode looks good, and there is hope of some kind of balance between Ryuuji and Taiga. Ryuuji looks like he can stand on his own despite the abuse from Taiga. While it's part of the joke, I hope Taiga has something that differentiate herself from Louise of Zero no Tsukaima. Otherwise, this will feel like the 4th season of Tsukaima....

Toradora! 「とらドラ！」 official page

Ending theme:Vanilla Salt　「バニラソルト」　by Horie Yui　「堀江由衣」

Note:screen shots to follow later

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