Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino
It’s quite sad that they obviously couldn’t raise the same budget for the second season of Gunslinger Girl that was available for the first season. With so many changes (to the worse) it just feels too different from the first season to smoothly connect both. This alone already gives this second season a rather bad start which is, like said, quite sad. After all it’s not that they are doing that ill of a job with Il Teatrino. The (re)introduction of the characters and the world they live in was done well enough and the pacing was most of the time right, too. The animation quality is decent, the girls don’t look bad at all (albeit they sound to much like, uh, girls now) and the soundtrack might be even better than the original one. I especially like the opening song here.
So, if they manage to translate the intriguing story of the manga at least half-decent into anime and somehow recreate it’s atmosphere I’m sure this will still be really entertaining. But I guess it can in any way only fall short compared to it’s precursor which definitely isn’t something that should be so crystal-clear from the start of a second season.
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
With me liking the first season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and this seamless continuation from the first season (there was never something like a story after all, so it’s just madness following madness) I just can’t see what might possible go wrong here.
Anime Afterglow 