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As a huge fan of the original 3 series I was excited when a new series of slayers came out, although not too expectant since inevitably it was much more likely to be an amusing expansion to the franchise rather than a hugely epic series. Still I expected I’d get some giggles and nostalgia and that would be fine.

Instead we got this hideous example of how to simultaneously milk your franchise while destroying it instead. It’s difficult to describe how sad this series made me after the ‘plot’ starts to take hold in the 3rd episode, and it only got worse until it finally ... hit rock bottom with the promise of going further downhill in time for the next series. There will be some mild spoilers in my ranting but nothing too serious.

This series did occasionally have some slayers –like moments but the vast majority of it suffered from a seeming disconnect I wasn’t able to always look past. All the spells seem to have been converted from the previous series in bland CG which by itself is nothing to complain about but somehow they all seemed to render ugly and often have effects wildly different then how the pervious series handled them. Somehow I also feel like they somehow managed to derail Linas character but making her less egomaniacal and more homicidal maniac (one episode she apparently seems to be willfully trying to kill Amelia, a person she would probably have taken a bullet for in previous series). I’m not usually a person to notice or care about these things but this seriously bothered me while I was watching.

The worst and most offensive part of this series is how it shamelessly steals it villains and plotlines from the original series, needlessly resurrecting perfectly resolved plot threads from 3 series ago. This is not only makes for heinously lazy story writing but also undermines events that happened way back in the original story. This is the sort of thing I expect from amateur fan fiction not a supposedly serious animated sequel. They even resurrected the rather badass eldritch abomination Zanaffer from the original series, gave him a completely needless origin story, and then reintroduced him as the kind of super villain character I would expect to get beaten up in an episode of captain planet, seriously who wrote this stuff and thought this was a good idea, and we haven’t even started on the new Rezo plotline. As if killing him twice in the original series wasn’t already enough they are apparently so stuck for ideas they felt the need to bring him back AGAIN 3 seasons later to facilitate their pathetic writing.

So in summery this is series is disappointing garbage without much in it to make up for that fact. It’s not funny enough or well presented enough to make up for its atrocious plot which seems bent on destroying its own franchise. I can’t recommend this to anybody.

Having watched the first two episodes of Seikon no Qwaser I have to say it wasn't a very impressive way to start a series, although I think my reasoning will be a little different then that of my fellow reviewers :)

Story - The plot is a fairly average recreation of a lot of other action/ecchi type anime series, the draw-card of course being that the heroes/villains seem to powerup by sucking breast milk. This didn't bother me that much in principle (ANIME OBJECTIFYING WOMEN?! SAY IT ISN'T SO! :P) although it would be amusing in the extreme to find out how this can possibly ... be explained as leading to superpowers. Having only seen the first two epiosdes I can't say much about the overall story except that its otherwise fairly run of the mill for this genre.

Art - The art is fairly nice, my only complaint would be with whoever designed Tomo. I understand breasts are going to play a big part in this series but really that's just ridiculous.

Sound - Not much to say, nothing stood out as particularly good or bad in the sound department.

Character - Initial responses to the characters is that they are decent, except for Tomo who seems designed to annoy me (is there some weird market for giant breasts on woman who act like five year olds?). Alex is a jerk but somehow I doubt he will stay one for the whole series, and a big scythe is always a fun weapon.

Enjoyment - This is where I'll get to air my pet peeve with this series and the main thing which made the whole thing awkward to watch and cause a huge dent to my enjoyment. I understand broadcasting people sucking each others chests is probably over the line in a number of ways - but what on earth was the camera doing during those scenes? I get that it has to look somewhere else but you could at least look at SOMETHING in the actual scene, all of those random shots of the sky and awkwardly framed scenes sapped the enjoyment far more then anything else in the series, even more then Tomo (--stab!)

Overall - aside from the drawcard issue Seikon no Qwaser is just a very average action/ecchi/harem sort of deal. Its perfectly safe to watch it but unless it improves a great deal it's looking like a very mediocre series. I will actually play devils advocate here and suggest that if an uncensored version does come out it might improve things significantly by the removal of all those weird camera positions (of course if the whole thing freaks you right out then that probably will make things worse - up to you guys :) )

Kiba is a fantasy fighting anime that focuses heavily on battles involving summoned spirits and its own brand of magic and hand-to-hand combat. The story revolves mainly around the main protagonist as he moves through each of the series featured 'worlds' - although a fair amount of the series also devotes some time to the other main characters.

If your still with me now then here comes the fun part - this series is totally genocidal. It is amazing how often they introduce characters and then kill them off (and that doesn't even begin to cover all the fodder characters). Despite this the series ... manages to introduce enough characters to maintain a cast and was actually pretty enjoyable despite my intense dislike of the rival character and some pretty hilarious plot holes and dialogue.

Story

The story had some ups and downs which kind of smoothed each other out - its also very fast paced which is welcome in the age of anime which likes to drag on forever with flashfiller. There were a number of times where the story was pushing incredulity even by this series interpretation of physics. My two favorite examples being the number of times the main character gets thrown in jail only to easily break out (often within minutes - and about 5 of those occasions were from the same jail) and the number of times he manages to get right into the heart of heavily armed locations without any trouble between the front gate and wherever he was going. Despite it's faults its was always entertaining to see what was going to happen next and it was almost never boring.

Art

Overall I liked the art for this series - Its not the most fabulous art I've ever seen but it was consistent and pleasant enough to look at. There was a lot of frame recycling used for the spirit animations and lots of corner cutting for fodder fights but they managed to keep it interesting and some of the more high level fights had a surprising level of intricacy (owing a lot to the integration of sword/magic/spirits often being used in combination) which was often maintained in animation.

Sound

Didn't notice the sound very much - which is an indication it did its job without being too invasive but didn't really impress me. I did notice the theme they used for the main characters spirit which was kind of cool the first few times but got old pretty quick. On the other hand I often loitered at the start of a few episodes to watch the second OP cause that was pretty good.

Character

Hilariously bad - particularly the rival character of the series but there is enough to go around here. Most of the core characters were acceptably fleshed out although it often took a long time to get there. Scores of the minor cast were sources of unexpected hilarity as they were so stereotypical and absurd and often foul up and die within a few episodes ( I even nicknamed one of them Hamlet while he lost his mind). My main gripe though is the rival character - I cannot make the leap of faith required to think anybody can as much of a tool as that guy. I don't find him even remotely believable and I want to slap him every time he appears.

Enjoyment

As long as your not expecting (or indeed wanting) a cerebral workout I think this anime is pretty enjoyable. I laughed out loud at some of the ridiculous things that happened but in the end the plot pulled me in and the action kept me there.

Overall

If your looking for a light series that is isn't too deep but has enough ace and action to keep things interesting you could do a lot worse then Kiba. Its probably not going to change your life but it will make it shorter :)