Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Still rolling.
FMA continues the roll, and there were some notable developments since my last mid-season post. There was the nice sequence of action episodes leading up to the big party in at Father's chamber, and of course Greed was reborn within Ling. Production quality is still as good as ever, and the story is turning to another direction. I don't really have too much to say for this series, since most of my attention on FMA is focused on the manga and how that's going to end. If the manga delivers a knockout ending, then chances are so will Brotherhood, so I'm hoping for the best.
Queen's Blade: Heir to the Throne
The battles are heating up.
The second season of Queen's Blade is actually not as terrible as I thought it would be. Instead of a bunch of random stuff happening, there is actually something that resembles a plot, and the action has been pretty decent. There's still some instances of outrageous fan service (Nyx's relations with her staff, Echidna's relations with Irma) there's nothing prolonged like the first season (oil wrestling, the first episode etc.). I'm not sure if I'm suppose to be happy or disappointed.
Anyways, the plot has been moving pretty quickly given that Queen's Blade is a singles elimination tournament, and it's now down to about half a dozen participants. There were actually some character deaths, and unfortunately my favorite character Shizuka bit the dust for no apparent reason (she wasn't even in the tournament). The important battles will be coming up soon including the showdown between Reina and Tomoe. Reina will probably win just because she's the main character, but I'm rooting for Tomoe.
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra
Interesting, but I don't remember their names.
Tatakau Shisho has been an intriguing series, intriguing being the keyword since I'm still not sure what's really going on. I also don't remember most of the character names save Harmutz's. The production quality is decent (if we ignore the terrible CGI), and the character designs are nice. The stories are pretty interesting too, but it's unclear how they fit into the grand scheme of things, or if there is even "a grand scheme". The point is there is still a lot of unexplained stuff in this series, and this makes the series slightly confusing. Maybe it's just me though.
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun
Not enough of this.
Railgun was probably the series that I looked forward to the most at the start of the fall season, but thus far it has been kind of mediocre. I was expecting a version of To Aru Majutsu no Index without Touma's annoying speeches and with Mikoto and Kuroko kicking all kinds of butt, but what I got was a bunch of episode that can classified as "fillers" and/or "slice-of-life". Seven episodes into the series, we are creeping closer to the main plot, but still not quite there. Basically, there is too much dawdling around, too much crazy lesbian Kuroko, and not enough Biri-biri beating people up. I think it's time for me to rewrite my expectations of this series. The one genuinely good thing that Railgun has produced so far is Touma, who is actually a pretty likable guy when he doesn't have the screen time to ramble. And that he causes Mikoto to act tsundere, and that's always great fun. Hopefully this series will get better once it moves on to the main portion of its first story arc, but then again I've been saying this for the past seven weeks...
Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Proving that magic doesn't exist? Don't be ridiculous.
After watching 20+ episode, I finally understand what Umineko is about. So basically we have a bunch of powerful witches who are bored out of their minds and literally have all the time in the world. To alleviate the boredom, one of the witches (Beato) initiates a game with the human Battler to see if he can show that the murders of his family can be explained without mentioning magic. The game will keep going until either Battler wins or he gives up. And so this anime is about Battler trying to prove that a given scenario can happen without magic, and not about how Battler can prove that witches don't exist (even though Battler keeps saying that). Saying that "the murders can happen without magic and therefore magic cannot exist" makes as much sense as saying that "you can cook macaroni without cheese and therefore cheese cannot exist". Once I got my head around that, Umineko seems less ridiculous and easier to watch than before.
Anyways, thus far Battler hasn't done much except for the Phoenix Wright finger-pointing and saying that he'll "flip the chessboard". At least you have to give some credit to Battler for not giving up, but otherwise he has done next to nothing. As for Beato, she did pull a nice one during the third game by faking moeness and almost getting Battler to sign his soul away. At the beginning of that game, I thought Beato's personality change was the dumbest thing ever, but it paid off nicely at the end. She's definitely my favorite character, and she's only character thus far who actually has an interesting personality. I don't have much else to say on this series. I'm just looking forward to the episode where someone actually makes some real progress on solving the scenarios unlike Battler.
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