Best Shows This Season Begin With Maria

As I have mentioned before, I wasn’t initially too terribly impressed with this season’s lineup so I have given the few shows I do follow some time to pick up before trying to write something. It’s been a month a so far but the season still as a whole seems rather underwhelming. Although there are decent amount of shows I am enjoying, it’s nothing compared to the number of shows I went crazy over last season. Anyways, onto the impressions:

Maria-Sama ga Miteru 4th
This is the series I have been looking forward to the most and I am not disappointed in the slightest. The fourth series follows up well on the drama that developed over the course of the OVAs, namely Yumi’s petite soeur dilemma. The OVA did well to establish both Kanako and Touko’s characters and relationship with Yumi but now 4th takes it a step further by having Sachiko explicitly tell Yumi at the end of the second episode to pick a petite soeur. I wasn’t so much shocked that Yumi would have to find a petite soeur since everything was building up to that but rather by the fact that Sachiko did exactly what Youko did before to her and of all possible times on the anniversary of becoming sisters. Since I haven’t read the novels yet, I have no clue who Yumi is going to pick (even though many of the illustrations suggest Touko). I like both Touko and Kanako but I’m sort of leaning in favor of Touko if nothing but my love of Kugimiya Rie.

Maria+Holic
The other television series I am excited about. I was promised Yuri and a trap and that’s exactly what I got. As expected of SHAFT the situations are so random at times but it is always hilarious when Kanako goes into her bishoujo nosebleed mode. Between Ryuuken’s vow to protect Kanako and Nanami’s confession of dating Kanako, in addition to Mariya’s masochistic antics of course, I don’t expect it to get any easier for Kanako. The part about the rosary revealed quite a bit about Mariya and possibly even Kanako herself and I hope we get to see more character development as the series goes on.

Kodomo no Jikan Second Term Special
I won’t lie—I love KoJika! I think it strikes a nice balance between precocious comedy and plot so that I really get into the story without feeling like it’s all just fanservice. I found it really cute how Kuro-chan tries to become friends with Shiro-chan AKA Shirai-Sensei. Even though Kuro-chan initially looked up to Shirai-Sensei as a parental figure in place of her busy mother, Shiro-chan also ended looking up to Kuro-chan and how she stands up to people. I’m looking forward to more from the other KoJika OVAs.

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai
Not really much to say about this since the first episodes are essentially the OVAs with updated animation in some places. What I noticed is that the arrangement is noticeably different between the OVAs and TV episodes which I think makes the story easier to follow. Obviously if you want to watch Munto, just stick with the television version.

Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo
Everything from the character designs to the strange circumstances is just plain weird so I’m still undecided so far. I’ll keep watching but I really don’t have a clue as to what to expect. Oddly enough I don’t even expect something Mai-Otome-like.

Minami-ke Okaeri
So far Okaeri is starting to feel more like the original Minami-ke than Okawari (In the end, I actually did end up enjoying Okawari). Okaeri for one actually has theme songs that match the mood of the story which bothered me relentlessly about Okawari. The opening to Okawari by itself was absolutely fine but it didn’t feel like it was Minami-ke. Okaeri has a good deal of genuinely funny jokes like the pen searching trick and Hosaka’s Curry Song. I love Coharu Sakuraba’s works so much that no matter what I’ll continue to watch this.

White Album
Even though White Album is only supposed to be 13 episodes long, it is still moving at an amazingly slow rate. It doesn’t bother me as much as many others but I see all this potential drama starting to build up but the story hasn’t hit that point yet. For the time being until I get hooked on the plot, I just pretend its a story about Mizuki Nana being so much better than Hirano Aya in every way possible. There I said it. Aya is vastly overrated and no one would actually know her if it weren’t for Haruhi and Lucky Star.

I’ve been thinking about picking up a few more series but that probably won’t happen since nothing else really strikes me that hard and I am busy with other stuff already.