Sequel Season

Of the new seasons animes I’m only watching sequels of former series so far, namely the ones of Minami-ke, Tower of Druaga and Natsume Yuujinchou. All three I enjoyed much at their air-time and I’m hopeful that their sequels won’t disappoint me neither.
The first two episodes of Minami-ke Okaeri were definitely better than (almost) everything Okawari accomplished, but it doesn’t emit the same feeling and atmosphere of the first season so far. None the less, being produced by the same people who made the first season they still look promising and I’m far from being in despair here. hopefully they have learned their lesson from the second season and try to tie in with the first season much better this time.
Sword of Uruk is only one episode old, but I like what I’ve seen in that episode. Jil and Fatina get along quite well now and their interaction is nice to watch. The main crux should be the handling of the reunion of Jil/Kaaya and Neeba/Fatina, thus it might take a while to see if this sequel will succeed.
Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou manages to follow its first season in every aspect, it’s like there wasn’t a break at all. Consequently both new episodes were great entertainment and I’m eager to watch more and more of this series.

So, to sum up my estimation of all three sequels together I’d say ‘Huge Success’. Now I’ll have to see if there are also some new series worth to watch out there.

Tower of Druaga – The Aegis Of Uruk

With Tower of Druaga a highly enjoyable RPG-style fantasy anime has finally been produced again. Not too serious, not too comical, but a healthy mixture of both. A nice set of characters to root for, enough drama between them, nice monster slayings, good music and artwork and a hell of story twists at the end. Of course it isn’t perfect and there are as always some things one can criticize. For example didn’t fit the final boss well into the animation because it was CGI and the world and plot per se felt pretty artificial. But that is because the origin of this anime is a simple Pac-Man styled arcade game where one has to fight through sixty levels of a tower filled with monsters and I think they squeezed a quite good story out of this little material and made good fun of it at times themselves.
All in all a pretty nice watch and I’m surely looking forward for the next seasion in 2009.

Soul Eater & Tower of Druaga

Soul Eater

The world (and especially the people living in it) is constantly in danger to be dragged into chaos and destruction by the Kishin, evil humans who try to gain in power by feasting on the souls of other humans. Fortunately the Academy of Shinigami Weapons Wielder exists to face this threat. This academy teaches its students to fight together with their special companions, humans who can turn into weapons. Of course these teams are also send into the world to assure peace and to collect the souls of the Kishin which are to be devoured by the weapons. At the time a weapon has successfully eaten 99 Kishin souls and one soul of a witch it will turn into a real “Death Scythe” and its meister will become a full-fledged Shinigami.
This is the story of three meisters and their weapons and each team is more nuts and incompetent than the last one, but because the rest of the world seems to be quite the same they get their job done somehow in the end.

First thing I noticed about Soul Eater is its unique artwork and high quality animation. One Piece, Bleach and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are the series that popped up in my mind almost immediately while watching. And although this isn’t the best sign, after all I lost interest in the first two series fairly quick (One Piece) respectively after some time (Bleach), I like what I’ve seen so far. The comedy parts are just hilarious, the action promises to be quite viewy and all together this series emits a nice unique feeling. Hopefully they can keep it fresh for the scheduled 51 episodes.

Tower of Druaga

Once upon a time the great hero Gilgamesh took up the quest to rescue the priestess Ki from the demon Druaga. For this he fought bravely through all sixty floors of Druaga’s tower and the many different kinds of monsters who dwelled within them to finally face and defeat Druaga in the tower’s top floor. This way he saved Ki and the whole country of Babylim from the demon’s undoing and became shortly after the king of Babylim and Ki’s husband.
60 years later the danger of Druaga and his tower has risen anew and many young men and women have gathered at the base of the tower to taken up the duty which the now old king Gilgamesh had taken all by himself in the past. Each of them has his or her own motivation to do so, many just want to make a living out of the treasures and rewards that are to obtain out of slaying the many minor beasts, but some strive to follow the example of the old king and want to slay Druaga to secure Babylim once again. The protagonist of this story, Jil, definitely can be counted among the later section of the so called climbers. But it is surely no easy task he has chosen.

The first episode of Tower of Druaga was just hilarious and played well with lots of RPG clichés. There was no time to get bored in any way because they just fast forwarded a whole (generic) story plot in just one small episode. Well, at the end and with the second episode it gets back to the harsh real (fantasy) world and thus the amount of comedy and fast pace got naturally driven back significant. This surely might be a bummer for some and I don’t know this first episode will of advantage for the whole series, but its still a nice watch especially because I haven’t seen some RPG-styled fantasy anime for a longer time now. So I guess it will be okay for me if the rest of the story gets rather generic, but with the first episode in mind I hope for some surprises of the good kind. Soever, I think this is quite an interesting way to promote one’s MMORPG game.