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愛してるぜ (Aishiteruze)

Ping Pong the Animation is certainly an underdog-style show. I went into this anime not expecting much. It had a bizarre art style and was adapted from a manga that's around twenty years old now. Yet this show quickly became one of my favorites this season and proved that it was probably this season's biggest underdog next to some of the more hyped shows. That actually fits this show perfectly since it's the story of an underdog. However, being an underdog in most people's eyes doesn't mean you're not the hero in someone else's.

It's pretty much impossible to talk about the story in this ... heavily character-driven sports anime without talking about the characters instead. The show begins with a couple of disorderly ping pong players at a high school with no reputation in the sport. Smile and Peco seem like the strangest pair of friends you'll ever meet. Smile never smiles and Peco's a ball of energy with no off-switch. They're pretty much exact opposites no matter how you look at them. While I didn't find either of them to be very likable right off the bat, the show develops both of them incredibly through many flashbacks to their childhood as well as displaying their motivations in the present. The rest of the side characters are also well developed throughout the show. My favorite is the Chinese player Kong Wenge. This is one of the only shows I've ever seen actually use non-Japanese voice actors for foreign characters and it was a pleasure to hear. Kazama Ryuuichi is the favored player throughout the show and has garnered fame through his playing and his family. Despite his determination to get better at the sport and be the best, he doesn't really enjoy playing ping pong. The development everyone in this series experiences whether they are high school players, a coach, or other side characters is incredible. They do have faults especially in the beginning, but this character cast definitely shined bright at the end.

Now for the most controversial part of the show: the animation. This show uses a very experimental style which ranges from working perfectly with the feel of the story to just being awkward at times. For the most part it works excellently, but, especially during the ping pong matches early in the show, the animation is just distracting and poorly done. As the show goes on and the matches become more important, the animation improves, however some of the earlier matches consist of one repeated rally with nothing else shown. As for the many flashbacks, the show utilizes it's animation very well to give them an emotional feeling and to build up why you should care for these characters. While some of the flashbacks are used a little too much, they still have an amazing impact on the show and build the foundation for the characters. Especially for Smile and Peco, these flashbacks are really well executed.

The soundtrack for the most part is just there to set the mood and not much else. At first it mainly consists of background sounds and some instrumental tracks to go along with the more emotional and dramatic moments. Towards the end with some of the final ping pong matches, the soundtrack really stands out, especially in the second to last match played in the show. The ED theme is also something I'll mention since it is one of my favorite songs from any anime this season.

Ping Pong the Animation is the underdog anime of the season and with this exceptional character cast of heroes, underdogs, and fallen heroes, it really fits the show unintentionally well. I'm not really a big fan of sports anime, and if you are, you may not actually like how this show is done. That's not fact of course, I'm just mentioning it since this is more of a character-driven psychological friendship story than your typical sports anime. If you're looking for a show that focuses on the sport and the special techniques of it that most shows in this genre use, then you'll probably be dissatisfied. However, if you're just looking for something that gets inside of the characters' heads and analyzes their reasons for playing a sport and their motivations that drive them to continue, then this is something you'll probably enjoy.

Boredom. It usually occurs from repetitive and seemingly uneventful occurrences in someone's life. In the case of Aku no Hana, that boredom is caused by living in a bland town full of normal people. So what happens when you finally get a glimpse of someone or something that isn't normal for the first time in a long time? You would probably do whatever it takes to keep that thing close to you and prevent it from being tainted by the boring pieces of shit that exist everywhere else.

As you can probably assume from that brief introduction, Aku no Hana is a dark psychological story. It ... follows several middle school students in a backwater town in Japan as they grow closer and farther apart from each other throughout the story. Kasuga Takao is your typical middle school male protagonist. His only remarkable feature is his intense love of reading. His favorite book is "The Flowers of Evil" ("Aku no Hana" in Japanese) by Charles Baudelaire. One day, he forgets this book at school and returns to get it. After picking it up from his desk, he sees a gym bag lying on the floor in the back of the room. It happens to be the bag of the girl, Saeki, that Kasuga has a crush on. Kasuga hesitantly decides to pick it up, and, suddenly discovering his perverted nature, decides to sniff her gym clothes. Upon hearing a noise, he panics and ends up taking the gym bag home with as he runs off. He thinks everything will be fine, but soon enough he finds out that a strange girl in his class named Nakamura saw him with Saeki's bag. The situation soon escalates after the bag isn't returned and a pervert is supposedly spotted on the campus grounds. Now Kasuga has to decide whether he should return the gym bag or not as he gets caught up in a bizarre relationship with both Saeki and Nakamura.

The story of Aku no Hana is extremely character driven. It's puts the reader into the mindsets of each character and shows you the psychological stress and development they are going through. This is especially the case for Kasuga as most of the story is told from his point of view. Kasuga starts off as a very generic and annoying protagonist. He's wimpy, gets pushed around by Nakamura, has trouble speaking his mind, and ends up making his life worse with his poor and delayed decisions. I say he "starts off" that way because as the story progresses he develops tremendously. There is a distinct point in the story where everything changes in a matter of just one chapter, and Kasuga suddenly stops being annoying (at least in my opinion). Not to mention the character designs improve around that point as well. Saeki, Kasuga's love interest from the start, is a popular girl in their middle school. She's a good student, kind, and friendly. She's basically the exact opposite of Nakamura. Nakamura is antisocial, mean, and doesn't try at all in school. She sees the world in an entirely different way than everyone else, leading her to isolate herself from all of the boring "shitheads" around her. The final female protagonist is Tokiwa Aya who is introduced over halfway into the story, however she has just as large of an impact on the story as either Saeki or Nakamura.

Let me take a moment to mention this in particular for anyone who has seen anything about the anime of Aku no Hana. The art in Aku no Hana is great and is absolutely nothing like the rotoscoped animation in the show that lacks emotion as well as many other things. It also only adapts the very beginning of the story before it even gets great. The art in the manga develops over time and grows along with the characters. It's really incredible looking at the early and later chapters and seeing the leaps and bounds the art has taken throughout the manga.

One thing this manga executes especially well is it's occasional lack of talking. Some chapters have absolutely no words at all for around thirty pages. Instead, they emphasize the emotions of the characters perfectly through nothing but facial expressions, scenery, and physical character interactions (this is also one of the things that fails most in the anime adaptation). They are usually placed after important parts of the story and emphasize just how emotional and life-changing those moments were.

Aku no Hana is a thrilling psychological and romantic drama. It is enjoyable from start to finish and only increases in intensity as the story progresses. The character development, art and character design changes, and multiple climaxes throughout the story all keep the reader's attention glued to the manga. I personally enjoyed both the first and second half for different reasons. The story may have more climactic and thrilling moments in the first half, but the second half has greatly improved characters and art. I highly recommend this manga (certainly more than the anime) and especially if you enjoy psychological and/or coming of age stories.

Sekai Seifuku tells the story of an eternally young girl attempting to conquer the world with her group called Zvesda, and a boy named Asuta who gets caught up in it all. Hoshimiya Kate, for reasons that are never explained, is a girl who seems to never age while everyone around her does. She, though a reason is never really given, wants to conquer the world and fights against other organziations who try to foil her plan. As you may have already guessed, my main issue with this anime is that they don't explain hardly anything. Characters are given quick backstories that don't make much ... sense and the plot is full of filler and doesn't really go anywhere until the last three or so episodes.

The show begins with a high school boy named Jimon Asuta who ran away from home. He is struggling to get food to eat but is determined to make a living on his own and avoid anyone knowing that he has run away. Though, the only person he ever talks to and cares about hiding his situation from is his crush, Renge. Renge is also hiding a secret. She is a member of the group called "White Light" who fights against evil, which is mainly Zvesda. The members of White Light wear masks and uniforms that hide their identity from each other even though it should be blatantly obvious who they all are considering their unique hairstyles still show..... But moving on, Asuta ends up running into a conflict between Zvesda and White Light, is recruited into Zvesda against his will, and now has a place to stay even if it might cause him to lose his life in the process. All of the other members are "quirky" to say the least, and White Light is out to kill all of the members of Zvesda, and Asuta has to adjust to this new lifestyle whether he wants to or not.

The story is very generic for the most part and uninteresting. The characters are all generic except for Kate, and none of them get enough time to develop very much. Asuta is about as unoriginal as a main protagonist can get. He's good at cooking and randomly saving the day but nothing else. Kate is a bit unique, but the anime does a horrible job of explaining anything about her mission or why she's been 7 years old in both mind and body since many of the older characters were kids. The rest of the main characters consist of a scientist, a tsuntsun swordswoman, an ex-gang member and his underling (who is just a terrible comedic relief character with absolutely no redeeming qualities), and a female robot.

The one part of the story I did really enjoy was the anti-smoking (cigarattes, not marijuana) aspect. The one episode completely about anti-smoking is the best one by far, even if it does show how Yasubee is a horrible character which no one should ever trust (seriously, he switches sides out of nowhere and it's just plain stupid how everyone forgives him anyway, especially Gorou). Though it was never explained at all how the villain's smoke powers were even possible in the show's universe.

The animation is good, but some of the character designs are very.... fanservicy. Mainly Kate's (give a 7 year old a revealing outfit, why not?) and Natalia. Aside from that, the character designs still aren't great, but they're not terrible. The scenery in the show is also average, and the action scenes aren't anything too interesting with only decent choreography. The use of CG for larger monsters and weapons also becomes a bit annoying and clashes with the regular animation. The soundtrack is mostly unmemorable with the OP being the only good song.

While I did enjoy some parts of Sekai Seifuku, nothing much really happened. It's just going from point A to point B with a lot of filler in the middle and a few mediocre flashbacks to try and make you feel more attached to the characters that never have anything too bad happen to them anyway. The drama in this show just falls flat and the comedy is only occasionally funny. If not for the anti-smoking episode and some of the few good character interactions, the story would have had nothing unique or good about it. I just never even began to like any of the characters in this show or care if anything bad happened to them. Because of that and all of the other problems, I just could not come to like Sekai Seifuku.

Hamatora is an anime that showed plenty of promise at first. It could have been excellent if not for one major setback: most of the anime is filler. The story is actually great when it gets down to it, but having one of the most thrilling scenes of any show this season followed up by a beach episode before returning to the actual plot just destroys the mood and momentum this show could have built up much more. That's not the only problem, but it certainly is the biggest and most noticeable one.

Hamatora is an anime with a similar style to things like Persona 4 ... or Danganronpa which are based on video games (though Hamatora's game has yet to actually be made...). It centers around a group of crime fighting, mystery solving "superhumans" called "Hamatora" and the other similar groups of people that they know. Most of the main characters have abilities called "Minimums" which allow them to use some power when they fulfill a certain requirement (ex. gain super-strength when they take off their glasses). The main characters and members of Hamatora are Nice and Murasaki who are both Minimum Holders (people who have minimums). The story begins with them just doing their usual crime solving and being dirt poor because they don't get enough jobs and a girl named Hajime spends a lot of Nice's money on food. They soon start getting job requests that interconnect and begin to reveal a much larger scale crime.

But before that all happens, the show has filler. Lots of filler. Most episodes have some small connection to the plot, but that will only be just about a minute out of an otherwise filler-filled episode. Whether it's a beach episode, spa episode with sit-ups (and I mean LOTS of sit-ups), or just some random event involving the minor characters, this show just has too much filler. However, the actual story is brilliant. The show overall resembles something like Psycho-Pass and Darker Than Black in the way the world and the minimum powers work and eventually crumble into chaos. The end of the show is excellent and leaves a possibility for a second season, which I would love to happen.

As for the characters, they are all interesting but none develop very much or at least get enough screen time to develop. As much as I like Nice and Murasaki, they really don't develop as much as characters in similar shows, and the show only gave small glimpses into their pasts which needed much more elaboration as they seemed very interesting. A detective named Art is also interesting and his relationship with Nice is one of the higher points in the character aspect. Hajime, a girl who hangs out with Hamatora, appears to have the potential to be the main female protagonist at first with her intense hunger driving Nice into poverty, but she ends up only having a minor role with just two big appearances (one being the intense sit-up filler episode; you'll know which one I mean when you see it). The rest of the important supporting characters (who all have random English words for names) are just as interesting as the main cast. They were also given some short backstories, but not enough screen-time either. Hopefully a second season will bring about more of the characters' pasts.

However, the best character in this show is actually the villain, Moral. He's just psychotic and and the show does an excellent job of building him up. His scenes with Art and Nice are never bad and are the best scenes in the entire anime. He just wants everyone in the world in to be equal, but that means eliminating those who think differently than him. He's an understandable villain whose goals are similar to those of real life people, but he actually puts his plans into action.

The animation is generally very good despite the show's obviously low budget. The psychedelic look of when minimum holders use their powers make the action scenes very stimulating to the viewer, and all of the characters designs are great (Honey is especially cute). Moral, Nice, and everyone else look cool and their designs fit their parts well. The emotions the characters show really work well especially for showing how insane Moral is (at least compared to what society considers sanity). The urban scenery and everything else looks good as well. Really all that holds the animation back is just the low budget which is especially apparent in some of the filler episodes in the middle of the show, but the creators at least did a good job of saving the budget for more important scenes.

The soundtrack is also one of the better parts. It uses a lot of piano tracks with unique rhythms that speed up and down a lot depending on the mood. During the action scenes, rock songs are used. Nice's signature song that plays whenever he puts his headphones on stands out in particular. The OP is also one of my favorites of this winter season.

Hamatora may have issues with fillers that throw off the pace of the story and a noticeably low animation budget, but it's still very enjoyable. Even with a poor budget, they make it count when it needs to. The characters just needed a little more development to be really good, but the soundtrack is consistently great and sets a great mood to help fix all of the other problems. Some scenes are amazing and some are just frustrating, but Hamatora is still a fun and emotional anime that better get a second season.

Recently, magical school anime seem to be very popular. Witch Craft Works is not much different, except it has magicians attending school alongside non-magical people. Our main protagonist, Takamiya, at first doesn't know about any of this. He just keeps to himself and avoids getting involved with people until the most popular girl, Kagari also known as Hime (princess), forcefully gets involved in his high school life. It turns out that Takamiya actually has vast magical potential hidden inside of him that evil witches want and would kill him to obtain, so Kagari (who is a witch) must protect him. And she does an excellent ... job of protecting him considering she's an extremely overpowered magician with fire magic that can instantly obliterate half a city. Too bad her personality isn't as interesting as her magic, but oh well, it's still fun to watch her destroy stuff emotionlessly.

The story in Witch Craft Works jumps around a lot. Each episode is very fast paced and the story is always moving in one way or another (whether it has any effect on the plot or not). This results in certain parts of the story being very entertaining, while others are just annoying and bizarre.

The thing I dislike most about this series, though, is the first episode. I thought this series was going to be absolutely terrible after I watched it. It takes every high school anime cliche (popular girl, guy getting beaten up for being around her, transfer students, etc) to the annoying extreme. The bullying part was especially stupid (and why is one bully named Obama?) because it was portrayed in a humorous way, but it just made you feel bad for Takamiya. However, after the first episode, most of these aspects are forgotten and don't affect the story at all, so it's not too much of a problem overall.

The character cast is a little too large for it's own good and tends to introduce unimportant characters as if they will be important. Takamiya and Kagari are really the only characters given proper introductions. These two are decent protagonists, but they don't bring anything new to plate. Kagari I found to be very boring both in every aspect aside from her overpowered magic abilities, and Takamiya is a generic protagonist who doesn't want anyone to get hurt. It also does a poor job of introducing some of the more important villains. The five initial comedic relief villains are just there for the hell of it since they do nothing except be funny and be in the ED. Another villain, Medusa (I'm sure you can easily guess what her powers are), is also just kind of there and doesn't do anything except make Takamiya develop more. Takamiya's younger sister who fights over him with Kagari is the only other memorable character. The rest are mostly unimportant or are introduced towards the end.

The animation for this anime is actually it's best aspect. The action and aerial scenes are stunning and the CG really isn't too bad, and at times it's meant to look funny anyway. The character designs aren't the best, and I didn't care for Kagari's design, but they're certainly not bad. Some of the more magical scenes also look splendid with vivid colors and crazy designs. And the magic itself looks great, especially Kagari's overpowered fire magic. If you like fire a lot, you'll at least like one part of this show. The music is good with an excellent OP and a strange yet catchy ED. The soundtrack during the action sequences fits them very well but other than that not much stands out.

Witch Craft Works is pretty average in my opinion. It looks great, but some of the story is just random and strange and the characters needed more time to develop with a smaller cast of actually relevant characters. Too many characters are introduced quickly late in the show and too many are introduced for too long in the beginning only to fade out of importance by the end. The final villain was especially terribly introduced, and the show made it seem like the villain was just a precursor villain for the real one except that that wasn't the case. Takamiya's power could have also used a better explanation, but I'm not sure even he knows exactly what his power is either. But even with all those problems, it's not a bad show and it was fairly entertaining.

"Recently, My Younger Sister Is a Little Strange" is what you get when people try too hard to make an ecchi show. First of all, why would you even make a show revolving around a high school girl wearing a chastity belt if the chastity belt has to be blatantly censored almost every time?

This is one of those shows that you know is going to be horrible right from the premise. An extremely generic and oblivious guy, Yuuya, gets a new sister, Mitsuki, after his father remarries. Mitsuki soon runs into a ghost, Hiyori, who has amnesia and can only remember that she loves Yuuya. ... In order for Hiyori to go to heaven, she has to get Mitsuki and Yuuya to fall in love (or at least have Mitsuki get turned on by him enough times to fill up the "special" meter in the chastity belt). I have no idea what bizarre religion only lets spirits into heaven after making step-siblings fall in love... To top it all off, Mitsuki can only "open" up the chastity belt for three minutes at a time every hour. Hiyori's final goal is for Mitsuki and Yuuya to have sex so that she can go to heaven..... considering the chastity belt only opens for three minutes, they better make it fast. So the premise is absolutely stupid and I only watched it for the laughs. The plot is actually hilariously bad at times, but most times it'll just leave you shaking your head at how dumb everything is.

Speaking of dumb, the characters are horrible and stupid on top of that. Yuuya is oblivious to everything, Mitsuki is your generic tsundere, and Hiyori just causes trouble every episode. The minor characters are completely forgettable and only help to cause friction between Mitsuki and Yuuya and be even more generic than the main characters. There's not much to say about the characters other than that.

Well, except that the character designs are also terrible. The area in between the characters' foreheads and cheekbones is depressed so much it just looks strange, kind of like if they all slept with their heads on their hands when they were babies and caused a permanent skull deformation around their eyes. The backgrounds and the rest of the characters are cheaply designed, but the worst part is when it comes to the fanservice.

There are two things that are both problematic with this:

1. The censorship is over-the-top as I already mentioned (and it's not just bright light covering things, it's a giant lock).
2. Those weird eroge-style text boxes whenever Hiyori sexually assaults Mitsuki off-screen. That is the worst part of the show. It seems like they just decided to throw in a little yuri fanservice, but then told the audience to just imagine it themselves like they were reading a book and not watching a show.
The soundtrack is also boring and forgettable, and the opening and ending are typical j-pop songs for an ecchi show.

My recommendation is to not watch this show. The characters are generic and helpless, the animation is just bad especially for the character designs and fanservice, I have no idea why anyone would come up with such a bizarre story that defies any existing religious belief to create it's own stupid one, and it's really only enjoyable if you're going in expecting to laugh at it or if you really, really enjoy ecchi shows for the fanservice alone.

Log Horizon is the newest "stuck in a video game world" anime. Many people claimed before it began that it would be just like the extremely popular and hyped up "Sword Art Online." However, the first episode is enough to dispel any kind of belief that these two shows have anything in common. Take away the video-game-style fantasy setting, and comparing these two shows is like comparing an action/romance anime to a slice of life anime.

Log Horizon follows more of the slice of life route taking a laid-back and slower pace than many other fantasy anime where people are fighting for survival. In the beginning, ... the players of a video game called "Elder Tale" are transported into the game world when a new expansion is released. While surprised and worried at first, they cope with this major problem and decide to adjust to their world rather than try to find the exit immediately. Since people do not actually die when they are killed, there's really not much to worry about. The only main problem is that food and water have no taste, that fighting in the actual world is vastly different from fighting from behind a computer screen, and that some guilds are now taking advantage of new players caught up in the confusion.

Our main protagonist, Shiroe, is a genius strategist and is at the highest possible level in Elder Tale (as are many elite players). Along with the perverted tank (a person in an RPG who takes hits and protects his allies) Naotsugu and the female assassin Akatsuki, they begin to unravel the mysteries of this world and discover what has changed now in Elder Tale. From saving friends to making hamburgers to protecting entire villages from being pillaged, they are experiencing a whole new world than the one they became so accustomed to playing.

But, in my opinion, it's just kind of boring. The story's slow pacing drags on parts I wish had not lasted so long, the characters hardly develop at all aside from a group of novice players, and the show ends announcing a season 2 after an anticlimactic finale.

Before I say any more negatives, I should highlight on one aspect this show does well: the NPCs (non-playable characters). This refers to the people known as "People of the Land" in the Elder Tales game. The anime does an excellent job of showing the differences between the "adventurers" (people transported into the game world) and the NPCs and how the NPCs are really an entirely different species than the adventurers. This becomes a major plot point in the second half of the series, which was very nice even though that part did drag a little. It's just something I've never seen done before, nor have I ever really considered before (aside from wondering why people in Pokemon and other games never do anything but say one line and stand still their entire lives occasionally giving you random stuff).

The character cast is very large, but hardly anyone gets much screen time. Shiroe is about the only character you can expect to see in even two-thirds of the total episodes doing anything remotely important to the plot. Naotsugu is just kind of there doing nothing, Akatsuki occasionally has some cute moments and does a little spying, and Nyanta's just that guy who ends every sentence the same annoying way. I actually found myself enjoying watching the group of novice players learning to fight together better than I enjoyed watching the main characters and other experienced supporting characters. Aside from Shiroe's planning, the main cast offers hardly anything of interest.

The animation is noticeably cheap. Some scenes look great while others are just a mess. The character designs are especially poorly animated most of the time as the animators seemed to prefer to save their budget for the scenes that emphasize the beauty of the fantasy game world instead. Even without the poor animation, I did not care much for the character designs. The facial designs were too sharp with shadows sharply defining the boundaries between different parts of the face. Some of the outfits were interesting, like Akatsuki's and Shiroe's, but most seemed very boring considering the wide variety that should be offered in an MMORPG.

The sound is one of the better aspects of the show. It may not be done by Yuki Kajiura like in SAO, but it still fits the fantasy world very well and especially fits the moments when Shiroe is scheming. It mostly consists of different string instruments and a few rock tracks during the action scenes (though there's not too many of those).

I did not enjoy Log Horizon as much as I was expecting. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I still stand by it. It's just an average show in almost every way (except the way it portrays NPCs) and is fairly forgettable. Not as much happens over the course of 25 episodes as you might think would happen and the characters really needed some better development (and no, forcing a small amount of romance with 3 episodes to go is not development).

Note: I've read the manga of Assassination Classroom prior to watching this special. Reading the manga is not necessary at all before watching this and if anything, this may just make you want to read it as well. This does skip a little ahead to the Kyoto school trip but it's not that far into the story.

That said, this is a good 30 minute special episode that's main purpose is just to promote the manga. It begins with an initial setup of the story to clear a few things up for people who have not read the manga. For anyone reading this review who hasn't ... read the manga, just read the summary on MAL first, it'll take less time than me explaining it (and again, it's explained in the episode). This episode includes three stories from Class E's field trip to Kyoto: an issue that Nagisa and his group run into, an assassin that is working together with Class E to try and snipe Korosensei, and some antics back at the inn they are staying at.

The animation is pretty good for a stand-alone episode, though seeing Nagisa, Karma, and Kaede's vividly colored hair alongside everyone else's brown/black hair was strange. Korosensei is well animated in all his weird, gelatinous, tentacular, alien-ness. His emotion color-changes are well done, and the only small problem I had with him was his voice actor. It's just my personal issue and not something that applies to everyone, but I always imagined his voice being higher pitched than that. The rest of the characters' voices (especially Nagisa's) fit them well.

Whether you've read Assassination Classroom or not, I recommend watching this special. If you enjoy the manga, I'm sure you'll enjoy this. If you haven't read it yet, maybe this will help you find a new manga you enjoy.

As soon as I saw the first season of Little Busters! end announcing a second season, I couldn't help but think that it would be similar to Clannad After Story (I'm assuming almost everyone planning on watching Little Busters has already seen Clannad in this review but I won't spoil anything from it). Having not played the visual novel and only knowing how other Key anime have done so far, I knew Refrain would bring tons of drama that the first season only a small amount of. Since Little Busters! is basically the friendship version of the family-focused Clannad, it's easy to imagine that Refrain ... would follow in it's footsteps of being much better (to me) than it's prequel. And Refrain did just that.

Refrain is a bit of an odd sequel as far as sequels go. For most shows, it is a requirement that you watch the first season for whatever reason before moving on to the second. I would only recommend watching the first season of Little Busters in order to get acquainted with the characters a little better, but otherwise (since almost nothing happens in the story overall aside from the original group of five members doubling in size) you could just skip it and go right to Refrain. The characters acquired in the Little Busters group during the first season become minor characters and the focus shifts to the original quintet who had less development during the first season.

So what makes Refrain so much better than the first season? Everything. A moving, dramatic plot; plenty of character development for the main characters; an improved soundtrack and better animation. And, of course, it's much more enjoyable.

The story of Refrain begins not long after the Little Busters! baseball team won their first (and only) game. The show moves away from baseball now and starts focusing specifically on Riki and Rin. But the first arc of the story focuses on Kurugaya, the mature genius girl who was the only one of the new recruits who didn't get an arc in the first season. This arc leads the way into the real story similar to how Clannad After Story's first few arcs did.

The story of Refrain is the biggest improvement from the first season. Rather than just the typical "go around and help all the girls solve their problems" plot which you can find in basically every harem anime ever, the story focuses only on Rin and not the other girls. Rin has always been shy and slower to grow attached to the other characters than everyone else, however her shyness starts to become an even bigger problem and neither her older brother Kyousuke nor Riki seem to be able to solve it completely. To make matters more difficult, Kyousuke and Riki are both going about trying to help her in different ways.

Aside from Kurugaya during her arc, the only important characters for the most part are Riki, Rin, Kyousuke, Masato, and Kengo. Along with many flashbacks to their childhoods, the show also develops them incredibly well in the present time. This was one of the main problems I had with the first season. With all the attention given to the other girls who were joining the Little Busters, the original five had very little development. Even Riki did not have very much development despite being the main character. Refrain does a great job of giving enough screen-time to each of the five and building their characters separately and developing the group as a whole. The only real problem with the characters is that they start off so weak that it takes a while before their development makes them really likable. The group of minor characters now gets even less development than the main quintet did in the first season and are only really important for their impact on the main characters.

Refrain's soundtrack uses many of the same songs from the first season, but it focuses much more on the dramatic tracks and (with the decreased amount of comedic scenes) has much less of the forgettable, lighthearted music that was used plentifully throughout the first season. The OP theme also changes to fit the mood whereas the OP and ED from the first season were much more upbeat and cheerful (that's not to say I didn't love the ones from the first season, and it was very nice to hear the first OP return once).

The animation improves just like everything else, though not quite as much. The animation of the first season, though it had spots where the quality fell, was good. The quality of this season's animation was improved in part due to the story requiring it to be much better. The scenery moves away from almost primarily the high school setting and incorporates many other places as well as some more surreal moments. The character designs (though the majority of the colorful hairstyles disappeared with the minor characters) improved as well. The actions of the characters are detailed much better than before and the dramatic mood the animation sets is astounding. There were still some problems especially early on where the animation was more similar to how it was in the first season, but for the most part it improved very well.

But as much as I've been saying positive things about Little Busters, it still only gets an 8/10 overall. So where does the anime have problems? Going back to the how it's similar to Clannad After Story, Refrain has problems in both the beginning and end mainly in the story, but also with the characters in the beginning. With the beginning being similar to the first season, the story then is more of a setup for the real story which begins about a third of the way through the season. As for the ending... well it's a Key anime and what Key anime doesn't suffer from it's ending a little? The strongest part of Refrain is the middle once the anime begins to shed some light on the real story and what is actually happening. All I'll say about it is that it really is one of Key's best works.

Story -- 8/10
Animation -- 8/10
Soundtrack -- 9/10
Character -- 8/10
Enjoyment -- 9/10

If you've watched and enjoyed any of Key's other anime (especially Clannad), then I highly recommend you watch Refrain. If you want to build up more of a connection to the characters, then also watch the first season. If you know that the end of Refrain will probably not make you cry no matter how much of a connection you have to the characters, then you could probably just skip to this season. Refrain is (in my opinion at least) Key's second best anime adaptation (second only to After Story). It is a vast improvement over the first season in every way and I believe it is something you should not miss if you enjoy high school romance and/or slice of life anime.

Coppelion follows a group of high school age girls, known by the same name as the title, as they wander around the abandoned and contaminated former capital of Japan, Tokyo. After an accident several decades ago caused the entire city to be filled with radiation and become unfit for human life, a project was started to create genetically enhanced humans who could survive in the toxic conditions.

The story of the anime follows about a handful of arcs ranging from around one to five episodes each. The arcs all involve the protagonists meeting some stranded people they have to save them by protecting them until a ... helicopter can arrive (which always seems to come as late as possible). The people who manage to survive have special hazmat suits that can keep out radiation to a certain extent, but there is always some other complication that makes saving the people more difficult.

I was expecting to enjoy Coppelion when I first read about it and saw a preview video. The animation is similar to K Project (meaning that every scene contains at least four or five colors of the rainbow and everything else on the spectrum in between) except set in world that looks like it was taken out of Call of Duty. The show started off well enough but eventually collapsed in on itself as the characters failed to develop, the story became repetitive, and the animation budget apparently ran low towards the end.

The main characters are three girls named Ibara, Aoi, and Taeko. Ibara is the brave leader who does all the action and keeps the other two in line. She was the class president back at their school while they were in training as Coppelion and is one of those characters that decides she has to save everyone even if they are constantly trying to kill her and everyone else. Aoi ends up being just an annoying damsel-in-distress who only does about two useful things throughout the anime as well as becoming an even less useful recluse for a while. Taeko is hardly even noticeable and performs most of her big acts of helping non-Coppelion humans off-screen. There are also a few minor characters in each arc. Most of them are humans who need rescuing (which is what the girls' job is) as well as three other Coppelion who have most of their traits spoiled by the OP's animation. The villains in the show are only there for the purpose of making things more difficult for the protagonists and are very generic with poor motivations.

The animation is interesting to say the least. While some scenes have way more colors than necessary, many are just astonishingly vivid and make the city filled with radiation look like you would expect (especially when there are sunsets). However, the show gets carried away with using too much blue/green in some shots even where there isn't any radiation and it just gets overused and honestly looks kind of gross. The action scenes later on also get very lazy. Many times you'll see someone start to punch and then see its conclusion with the actual action not being shown (this applies to many more things than just punches of course) as well as many shots that look like nothing more than a gif. All of the Coppelion have almost the exact same face as well as the same school uniform with some minor adjustments to them. A few of the minors characters also look similar. The soundtrack has some issues with being played a little too loud in comparison to the speaking at times, but it still manages to fit with the action at other times. Otherwise though, the soundtrack is hardly noticeable.

Story -- 3/10 (I really dislike the overused "Save the pregnant woman" plot point)
Animation -- 4/10
Soundtrack -- 3/10
Character -- 2/10
Enjoyment -- 3/10

Coppelion really had a chance to be good, but it just utterly failed in every way. The few aspects that initially seemed good disappeared as the budget disappeared. The characters which started off bad, stayed bad and Aoi just got worse. Most of the minor characters had too short of screen times for the viewer to connect with them the same way the protagonists did and in the final arc, where there was enough time, the villains were horrible and ruined any chance it had of picking itself up. The story just goes nowhere with little development in between the arcs and ends in an unsatisfying way.