I tried watching the raws for Bartender, though after only seconds I knew that I’d be better off with the subs. Seriously, that narrator had one strange voice. It sounded like a butler who likes to speak as polite and soft as possible with way too much enthusiasm. I’m hoping for subs to arrive soon, as I’ve heard lots of good things about this anime. I’m also still waiting for Jigoku Shoujo.

Ghost Hunt

It’s strange. On the surface, this revolves around another one of those arrogant boys who teams up with some kind of high school girl. Most of the times, this is a recipe for failure, but in Ghost Hunt, this premises actually works out pretty fine. We’ve got this guy who works as a ghost hunter who blackmails an ordinary high school girl who likes telling ghost stories into becoming his assistant. Their first case is solving ghost rumours which revolve around an abandoned building right next to the school. The side characters also were a pretty nice additions to the cast. It seems that more people have been put on the same case, which makes sure for a large amount of theories coming from different persons. But won’t they just disappear again once this case is over?

Hataraki Man

Okay, so this is a slice-of-life series about a rather enthusiastic workaholic. She works for a local magazine, and takes her work rather seriously, up to the point where she doesn’t really have an outside life. At times, she also changes into “Hataraki Man”, in which her work speed increases even more. Of course, this does lead to huge amounts of stress, and she indeed starts to hear things that don’t exist. Her co-workers are also interesting. Overall, it’s a nice series, though the fact remains that this is a slice-of-life. That isn’t really my genre, so I doubt that I’ll follow this to the end unless this turns out to be really good.

Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion

Okay, and here we have our big-budgetted action-mecha anime of the year. It’s promising to be epic, with a world empire as the enemy. The character designs are done by Clamp, which means that each of the characters looks very appealing. I’m not too sure yet of the main character. The way the creators depicted him as a chess champion was rather bad. We’ve got this impossible setting and he manages to win without any trouble at all. If you’re going to use chess, at least try to explain a bit more. Also, by looking at the OP, the cast of characters seems to be huge. This can be a good think, if they’re used well. I’m not saying anything yet. You need to see more than just one of two episodes for shows of this kind to really tell their quality. Still, my initial verdict is good. It’s got great music, the terrorists seem interesting, and the way the Britannia officials are treating their subordinates just screams potential.

Utawarerumono is a fantasy war anime. It basically follows one man, who claims the throne of one country and uses his forces to defend his people, combined with your occasional cute characters and slice of life when the battles have stopped for a bit.

First of all, this show is based on a hentai game, so yes, it’s got a lot of cute girls: a couple of busty angels, some sexy warrior females and a couple of cute girls who don’t belong in a battlefield. Furthermore, most characters, with one or two exceptions, look like they’re either in their tens or twenties. The anime seems to have never heard of the concept of “war veterans”. Oh, and yes. The main character is your typical harem lead, apart from the fact that he wears a mask and seems to be an actual adult, instead of a 14-year-old brat.

Like expected, things just go too easy for our main character in the beginning. We do get to see some war tactics, but this anime does not attempt to move away from the basics. Also, especially near the beginning, characters join the main character’s army for no apparent reason. To simulate battles, the creators also decided to use CGI for animating the different soldiers fighting. Let’s just say that that doesn’t work.

Still, that doesn’t mean that this anime doesn’t have good point. Starting from episode 11, the battles actually get very exciting. The creators actually decide to try out a few more things, with very interesting results. The plot actually gets a bit of substance, and this anime really goes into the right direction. Aside from a few humps and bumps, these scenes were pretty interesting to watch.

But then suddenly, inside the pure fantasy world, this anime starts to introduce mechas and zombies. Something that so doesn’t fit in the atmosphere, and it’s indeed not surprising that this atmosphere gets ruined because of this. The anime then finishes with some interesting final episodes, but it never really managed to fix the damage done by the sudden introduction of science-fiction elements. That’s a real pity, as this anime really was heading in the right direction of a good fantasy anime.

Oh, and one final remark. The main focus of this anime is the good guys. Don’t expect the bad guys to have any substance at all. They’re either evil because they’re manipulated, or their reasons for being evil is simply never explained. The good guys, however, do get healthy doses of character development at times. I also liked the way that at a few times, this anime takes a break in the middle of one storyline in order to focus on yet another, totally different storyline. When that story is finished, the first story reappears, and also gets its conclusion. It’s a nice way to keep people interested.

Overall, if there ever was a series with its ups and downs, it’s Utawarerumono. It’s got so many good point, but for every good point, it seems to have a bad point.

Kamisama Kazoku is another one of those generic harem-anime, but with a twist: the main character is just not any ordinary main character, he’s the son of god. He has to live in the human world to get accustomed to the human culture, so that he can do his future job in a better way. Concept with potential, no? Well, unfortunately, this anime starts out horribly.

Our main character, Samatarou does remain a 14-year old brat. God himself turned out to be a horny bastard, eager to fulfil all of Samatarou’s wishes and his mother and two sisters are eager to help him in this. They’re the reason that the first few episodes are just chockfull of useless, unfunny fanservice jokes. Still, luckily as the episodes progress, this problem gets solved when God returns to heaven and leaves his family behind, so that they can get some actual personalities.

The biggest problem with this anime is that it focuses on the love relationship between Samatarou, and an angel who was sent down from heaven in order to take care of him. This relationship does have one or two good moments, but most of the times it either milks on tried concepts or it’s just horribly boring, predictable and doesn’t contain any substance, even though a major part of the anime focuses on it.

The series consists out of thirteen episodes, divided in three arcs. I have to admit, each of these arcs contained one actually good episode. But then again, the other ones were mostly boring. I must also warn you that the creators like to push the reset-button at random times. Another annoying element is that at times, the creators throw in some convenient plot elements, which don’t make any sense at all. More than once, a character falls in love with another character at first sight, and then later this character conveniently turns out to be important to the plot.

I don’t really have anything to say on the music and graphics. They’re mediocre. Not outstanding, but not bad either. Overall, Kamisama Kazoku remains an average anime with some enjoyable moments. Not really something to recommend.

Mushishi is one of those rare series you can only run into once in a long while. it consists out of 26 episodes, and each of these episodes tells a story about ordinary people, living in the quiet areas of medieval Japan and their encounters with the creatures called Mushi. Only a select few can see them, they’re living beings, just like any other animal or plant, though at times, their lifestyles clash with humans, making them sick, or giving them strange abilities.

The story centres around a Mushishi: Ginko. A Mushishi is an expert about Mushi. He knows a lot about them, and how to cure people who are bothered by the Mushi. The message of this anime is that everyone, both humans and Mushi, isn’t really evil. They’re only trying to live their daily lives.

I am happy to say that each and every one of the stories, told in Mushishi turned out to be simply awesome. It’s just one huge chunk of non-stop atmosphere. Each episode takes its time to tell its unique story. The beauty of this is that not every one of the cases can be solved. At times, people are fated to die, or people have to live with a horrible burden for the rest of their lives. At other times, however, only after years and years the problem can be solved.

Another great aspect of Mushishi is that at times, it likes to make time leaps of a number of years, in order to show how characters gradually evolve, along with their problems and issues. Almost each of the stories told in the 26 episodes left me with such a satisfied feeling. And especially the better stories were just one big adventure.

The creators made an excellent use of the music and background tunes in this anime. While standalone, they’re not really special, but when they’re added in stories with such a huge atmosphere, the two only strengthen each other. The character art style used is unique, and really fits, and not to mention that the background art of each of the different landscapes presented is just absolutely gorgeous.

This anime doesn’t have a lot of bad points. Some of the episodes around the end of the anime were not as good as usual, though the final episode is one of the best again. And there are indeed more episodes which are better than others. Still, overall, this is an amazing anime. Definitely worth to be recommended.

Seriously. Mushishi managed to pick an AWESOME story for the final episode. It’s sad to see this anime finally go, one year after it started airing. Hoping for a second season would be rather false hope. Still, this show has been awesome. Definitely something to recommend to anyone.

The story mostly takes place during Ginko’s youth. He’s spending his time living in a certain village, while the main character of this story lives a few mountains further. He’s the son of the owner of the mountain. his father has been protecting the mountain for his entire life, as it, accompanied by a strange, coloured living fog, is full of life. If people were to mess with it, this balance would be disturbed.

That’s what happens when the episode progresses. The boy also gets befriended with the child-version of a certain traveller, which I could swear I’ve seen before. The boy is rather arrogant, being the son of an important person, though this young traveller seems to change his mind. They travel, based on the coloured fog. It’s some kind of way for the mountain to tell how it’s feeling. Then, at one point, the boy’s father dies. Even though his will said that the boy would inherit the entire mountain, his relatives all snatched it away, and made plans to destroy the mountain, for the sake of their village.

Because of this, the fog disappears, and so the young traveller has to top visiting the mountain. His grandfather, whom he travels with, also picked up a suspicious white-haired boy. This white-haired boy also gets abandoned, along with the mountain, and he join another Mushishi as a novice. Before he leaves, he explains a few things to the boy. That the group of travellers consists out of people who were kicked out of their villages because of the Mushi.

Then, we turn to the present. The buy has grown up, and the mountain didn’t do too well after the fog disappeared. Five months after what happened, a volcano erupted, destroying the mountain. The main character has tried to restore the mountain, but things aren’t going too well due to the absence of the fog. Children also are born weakly, because of the Mushi. The episode ends with Ginko and the main character meeting each other again.

I really loved this episode of Mushishi. It definitely was one of the better ones, and that has to say something. Ginko’s role in this also was a great one. He’s really just a bystander, not related to the main story at all. It also takes a time for him to remember the main character of this story, which was a very interesting detail.

Okay, and I managed to catch up. And this show really has set such an incredibly good atmosphere for the final half of the series. Seriously, Sasami and Ani-chan are still dancing in my mind.

Episodes 9-13 continued to develop the girls. While they weren’t as emotional as the four episodes before, they still were great to watch. Washuu, Tsukasa, Misao and Sasami all got an episode dedicated. A few important things happened. First of all, when Washuu was threatened to leave the Mahou Shoujo Club, everyone started yelling. But for some reason, Sasami started glowing. Then, a few episodes later, Sasami mentions, half-asleep, Ani-chan in front of her father. It seems that her father also knows Ani-chan, and this made him go to the magical world. Then, in episode 12 Sasami and Misao actually reveal to Monta that they can use magic when Misao tries to confess to him. The first series ends with a rather scary image of Ani-chan being captured in thorns. Just what exactly was he doing?

Still, most of the first season revolved around developing the girls. With the second season, an actual plot came forward. First of all, Itaki took Sasami and the others with her to the magical world for a certain reason. If I understood things correctly, the people from the magical world are planning to separate all connections to the human world. I think they feel that the human world is evil, so it has to be separated. This can promise to be very interesting.

And seriously, why does Misao and Sasami’s relationship remind me so much of Narutaru? Cheerful girl becomes friends with shy girl, the two become best friends, and now it even seems that Misao’s going to cut her hair at one point (see: OP and ED).

In episode 15, it also became clear that Ani-chan actually is a good acquaintance of Sasami’s father. It also seems that he, Washuu and Daimon will be trying to stop the complot. I’m not sure exactly what, but I do suspect that that tree which sealed away some kind of evil has something to do with it.

I really like the direction this anime went: 13 episodes of introducing and fleshing out characters so that afterwards, the plot can really be introduced. I’m also hoping for Himawari to take the same path. But still, there’s one huge disadvantage of this, as this series has been so incredibly ignored. Someone sub this. Seriously.