This one can just be considered as both a first impression as a review, since there’s only one episode of Takane no Jitensha anyway. It can easily be considered as the brother-anime of Yume da Maya Kidan: both are only twenty minutes long, both are down-to-earth with supernatural elements, both have produced on a short budget, both are about accepting your younger sibling and both aren’t bad by any means, though they’re not really something special.

Takane no Jitensha offers a small look at the live of a boy called Takane, and the sort of problems that any boy of his age has: getting a new bike (jitensha = bike) because his current one is old and his friends keep beating him. The things here strike especially close at home. The other half of the airtime adds in a bit more excitement. The realism disappears a bit, unfortunately, but it remains an enjoyable story.

This review is short, because there’s hardly anything interesting to say about this series, but if you’ve got twenty minutes to waste, you might as well give this one or Yume da Maya Kidan a try. In terms of slice of life, Takane no Jitensha is better, while Yume da Maya Kidan is better with the supernatural stuff (especially the Tanuki in Takane no Jitensha came from nowhere and delivered one heck of a deus ex machina).

Strike Witches

Short Synopsis: Our lead character becomes a witch that fights against alien forces.
Highlights: Lacks the style of the OVA.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10
It’s a shame that the style of the OVA was abandoned for the tv-series. Still, overall Strike Witches did its job, I guess. Ironically, at the moment this seems to be the perfect series for Gonzo to get some of their funds back, because stuff like this definitely sells. There’s lots of fanservice indeed, but it’s nothing when comparing it to Sekirei. This episode was nothing special at all, but it did serve as a good enough introduction, although I wonder whether trucks can violently explode like that. There are lots of characters, which is going to be either this series’ saving grace or doom, whether or not the creators can develop them sufficiently within 12 episodes. I personally doubt it, but I’ve been surprised by such a series more than once.

Birdy the Mighty Decode

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets killed and ends up sharing his body with a female alien cop.
Highlights: Great style, awesome action, fun characters
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This has been my most anticipated series of the season, and probably the weirdest most anticipated series I’ve ever had for a season. It doesn’t disappoint at all, though. What we have here is a fun action-series, sharing a deep contrast with the other action-series this season (Ultraviolet), which is much darker and melancholic. Birdy the Mighty is sortof like (and it rather disturbed me when I found this out) To Love-Ru done right. We’ve got an alien in a space-ship, but instead of the predictable princess, being chased, she’s a cop, after a bunch of bad guys. When she meets our lead character, she doesn’t instantly fall in love with him without any reason, but instead she accidentally kills him and feels sorry for her own mistake. She also has a dress-up robot, but he dresses up as a strange transsexual. Overall, it feels like much more imagination went into creating this anime, and it’s amazing what a bit of imagination can do to my opinion of a series. And of course, this is being done by the director of Noein, so of course: the fight scenes are bloody amazing. What surprised me the most during the summer previews is the bad reputation this series seemed to be getting, simply because of its name. I mean, what’s so bad about calling your series Birdy the Mighty?

Yakushiju Ryouko no Kaiki Jikenbo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a policewoman, who gets assigned to supernatural cases.
Highlights: Glamorous look at the way of a detective, but at least the characters are interesting; good luck at explaining that plot-hole at the end of the episode, though.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
Well, this one turned out to be different from expected. What I expected was a supernatural mystery-series, but what I got was a thriller: it’s pretty clear what the enemies are, and they need to be stopped. I may not work with the police or anything, but I do think that the depiction of inspector Ryouko could have been more realistic: she spends the entire episode buying bras, swimming and in fancy clothes, while doing her investigation that’s in no way systematic. That’s why her assistant is the interesting character in this series: he has to put up with her eccentric character, while trying to do his own job as well. I’d really wish for the bad guys to get some more depth in the next episode, because they were rather boring in this one. Ah well, at least this series is backed up by nice enough graphics and an interesting soundtrack that combines techno with eerie sounds.