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I said in my review of season one that I was hoping for some, even a single dunk out of SS, and I'm sorry of this counts as a spoiler but in this I was very disappointed. No dunks at all, not even from Subaru in his showdown with his aggressively blonde rival.

I was, however, greeted with a variety of no-look passes, floaters, jab steps, and all sorts of other advanced techniques. The team really stepped up their game in this one, and so too did the show creators, riding on the success of season 1 to create a show with just as much heart ... and much tighter animation and writing to boot.

If you liked season one, SS delivers. It's a different beast, for sure, focusing more on plot and introducing a hoard of new characters on top of our established cast. I liked most of the new characters a lot, but with the growing cast some of the older characters are sidelined into supporting roles that make them feel even flatter than before. Not that there's necessarily a problem with that, but it's a matter of flavor - S1 was distinctly a harem show, S2 is more of a drama with some of the more goofy ecchi aspects of the first season ironed out or collected into a few episodes rather than throughout. I liked this better, in a way, although the stress upon adding more characters for more conflicts instead of exploring the existing cast felt a little thin.

The animation's also been stepped up, I assume through the success of the first season. There are still some rough points, of course, but overall it's a much better-looking show.

If you enjoy the subject matter, r-k-b! is a simple but satisfying show that's pretty good at what it does. I came to it with very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised to find a show that was both cute and endearing. I'd be surprised to find another show with such an odd mix of elements that works as well as this one, and I'm happy I followed through with the second season.

When I finished ro-kyu-bu!, I was left with one question: where were the dunks?! I realize everyone but Airi is pretty short, but man, I was pretty excited for some dunks.

In any case, ro-kyu-bu! is a serviceable ecchi-loli-harem-sports show. The novelty of that combination, combined with a really catchy opening and ending theme, was what hooked me, and I wasn't disappointed. It's cute enough, the characters are endearing if typical, and though I haven't watched any other sports animes (although you could call this a harem show that uses sports as a motif, I guess) the show makes watching basketball interesting enough. Watching the girls ... and their initially-reluctant coach bond though the medium of sport was touching, and woven though all the shower and beach scenes there's a sort of nice story about friends overcoming trials together and fighting for each other.

The characters were very cute, which is a big selling point. This is harem on easy-mode, so there's no real tension between the characters (besides the tsundere, of course) and everyone gets at least an episode or two of 'me' time. My favorite was probably Hinata, as the loli-est loli she's pretty weird, and Maho's pretty great as the genki girl. Tomoko as the lead girl and sweet basketball prodigy is very cute, and really, there's enough here for everyone who likes basketball playing loli harems.

What dragged this down to a six for me was the sense that, even with the novelty, there was a lot here making this show an uphill battle. The art is pretty rough on the eyes and the animators sometimes have trouble understanding proportions beyond the general huge-eyes-small-mouth character design. Some of the humor was pretty good, but a lot of the ecchi jokes were pretty tired - by the end we've been treated to enough 'you pervert!' high-kick-panty-shots that it felt like they were just phoning it in. Except with basketballs.

Big ups for all the basketball-related innuendo, though? There's also a bit of self-awareness of all this when a character asks, before an intense game of poolside bikini basketball, 'why are we all in swimsuits?'. Why indeed.

The dramatic elements, too, were pretty thin - I didn't mind the breakneck cycle of crisis-resolution-crisis-resolution-beach episode-etc. - trying to juggle five sort of main characters plus one in a twelve-episode harem show is, I'm sure, difficult. But what this results in is a sort of stubbornly shallow show without too much room to explore the space.

Anyway fingers crossed for the second season!

I came to AB! expecting a tearjerker, but too often I felt that what I was being asked to feel was too shallow or cheap. I don't like the feeling of being 'worked' by an author, whether it's anime or something else. One of the things that I think AB! really suffers from is the demand for immediate empathy, handing you tragic backstory after tragic backstory. At its best, I think this show does well bordering the line between a baseline sense of tragedy and the sort of sweet, silly or absurd situations that could arise with a bunch of pissed-off young people living in ... an eternal high school. At worst, it's messy and confusing as it sidelines worldbuilding and character depth for one-off action episodes and overwrought emotional conflicts.

The basic premise - the unsure do-gooder caught in a conflict and world he doesn't understand - has a lot of potential. The eerie shots of empty classrooms and the endless repetition of this sort of nether-world are enigmatic and may delight the curious - but to claim, as the summary on this site does, that this is a story unraveling 'the mystery of the afterlife' misses the mark a bit. For the bulk of the show, and where it's at its best, it's primarily an episodic, slice-of-life story about unhappy characters rebelling against meaningless suffering and a faceless higher power through simple antics. It's the bonds that form between these characters, and their growth as characters, that form the strongest element of the show and the one that may have you in the tears you've been promised by the end.

Unfortunately, these characters are skating on the rather thin ice of the world they find themselves in - it also doesn't help that for all the stronger, interesting characters, they're also loaded down with the predictable cast of tropes that add a few laughs but exist by and large to shoot a gun, drop a quip or two, and then disappear. By the end, the 'unraveling' that we've done leads to more questions than answers about the world in which they exist.

While the show has a tendency of taking itself too seriously, I enjoyed watching these characters interact most of the time, and they'll be what sticks with you after you've wrapped up your time in this very strange world. When they're being playful there are some very funny moments, giving rise to situations with just the right mix of sweetness and sadness that I felt most deeply in watching this show.

Don't come to this expecting a masterpiece, but if you take it for what it is, it's probably worth the 6.5 hours.

One of the most admirable things about this show as a whole, to me, is its refusal to take anything seriously. The characters, the situations they find themselves in, the script, down to the very plot - everything is chopped, screwed, and stretched to the extreme. If you're looking for something serious, or with a basic level of consistency, you should look elsewhere.

And yet, because of its fast-and-loose approach, it's managed to pull a fiercely loyal fanbase and maintained its place among the pantheon of in/famous shows since its release. It's incredibly crude, very silly to the point of being obnoxious, and features characters who ... have continued to exist beyond the show. It's often cute, pretty funny, and features strong female characters. I didn't walk away from this with any major investment in it, nor am I one of the many left pining for a second season, but I do think there's something more interesting than the basic gross-out humor and ridiculousness of the show, and that something might be worth your attention for 13 episodes.

The first part of that something is its playfulness. My introduction to the show was as an extremely crude take on the Powerpuff Girls, where cute, benevolent heroes are replaced by selfish, stupid angels who defeat evil incidentally or only after being prodded enough. Many people will pant over their 'sexy' transformation scenes, but no sooner will you see them naked than they will be submerged in literal waves of shit, piss and vomit. Sexuality isn't sexy here - it's cheap, silly, and over-the-top, tempting fanboys looking for naked chicks while offering an ironic or humorous edge that gives it more substance.

Their selfishness, their hard individualism, makes Panty and Stocking stand out as characters - Panty may often wield her sexuality like her eponymous weapon, but the show makes it clear she's her own person no matter how many men she hooks up with. While Stocking is the more responsible of the two, she's hardly self-sacrificing and would rather be eating sweets than saving the world. They may not be nice, but their antisocial behavior has what I'd call a subversive sheen to it, something that rebels against what we're supposed to be, regardless or perhaps because of how stupid an nonsensical it all is.

I will point out that, despite these interesting elements, this show receives a rather modest 7 from me. There are some episodes that dragged, or humor that missed the mark. The ghost of a metaplot regarding the two demon sisters was light on content while also managing to take up space that could have been used other ways. I'm more than happy to go with plot elements that seem confusing or contradictory, but there are a few times when I think it hurt how the episodes played out. Outside of Panty and Stocking the characters are pretty bland. The soundtrack was pretty good outside of a few acerbic pieces (Fly Away will be forever scratched into my memory), and the English voice-acting was flat and uninteresting - my suggestion would be to stick with the Japanese original.

I'm rather new to the anime 'game', but I like to think I know when I've found something good. After a disappointing attempt at Attack on Titan I'd found Kill la Kill, and I was hooked. Both AoT and KLK were easy - the amount of talk they got on tumblr, and the resulting fandoms, provided enough peer pressure and 'buzz' to make entering those series almost mandatory for understanding what was going on on my dash.

Zvezda, however, was not one of those series. I've yet to come across any casual reblogs or fan-art of the series on my dash from people I'm currently following. ... The screencaps I've posted have received attention, usually in the form of 'what series is this' if it's not stated outright, but even so, the attention's been relegated to a handful of notes. The attention the series has gotten, as far as I can tell, has been mostly from people who've fallen in love with the girl whose dreams will always be bigger than her body, the semi-dressed-to-kill Kate Hoshimiya.

Does this make Zvezda a sleeper hit? Or just another fluffy show with a fair amount of fanservice to round out last season? It may be hard to tell right now, but I'd say, at 12 episodes, it's worth your time if you're in the mood for something silly and exciting with a heart, you probably won't be disappointed. Full disclosure: I say this as someone who's fallen for the aforementioned half-dressed girl.

I found Zvezda on Daisuke from an ad showing a crew of characters dressed in eccentric outfits. A skeleton, a robot, a girl with a skull-and-crossbones kitten eyepatch, and a couple of masked-up, mostly-naked women - as bizarre as this sounds, you'll see how accurately this sums up the series. It's funny, weird, and intriguing, featuring a cast of bizarre outsiders engaged in a struggle over the fate of the world. It will have you laughing, and maybe a bit touched by the stories of struggle against oppression and the bonds of friendship in the face of danger. Over the course of the show you'll get glimpses of a secret world beneath our own, watch intrigue play out between warring factions in the past and present, and discover why smoking is really much worse for you than you might originally think.

That said, if that sounds like a lot to work out over the course of twelve episodes, you're right.

Like Kate, the vision that Zvezda puts forward might be a little bigger than it's capable of handling on its own. The show devotes a fair amount of time to its ensemble cast, each of which has a strange backstory that you're treated to glimpses of without seeing the whole thing. There's a lot going on, both with the characters and the world around them, and none of it's explained too clearly. What you get is impressions - sadness, fear, excitement, joy - without much depth or elaboration. While this isn't bad, a few times during my initial viewing, and more in retrospect, I found myself asking, 'if they have so little time for the series, why did they put x into it?'.

But that being said, I didn't walk away from it disappointed - on the contrary, I wanted more! The OVA, another season, an English translation of the manga - there's plenty of story here to tell, and part of what Zvezda does best is lends itself to the imagination where (much like Kate's outfit) it only teases instead of showing outright. You're mostly along for a very fun. fast-paced and somewhat confusing ride, much like the unlikely protagonist Jimon Asuta himself, and if you're willing to put up with a fair bit of nonsense and a few half-baked ideas this is probably worth your time.