The fall anime season kicked off, and for once it started when I have a week off of school! If I leave some out, they’ll be covered within the next few days since it’s quite a bit and I have no set dates for any of them.
Btooom! – Ahh yes…I’ve been waiting for this adaptation for a while ever since the manga was dropped by scan groups… Think of this series similar to the concepts of Battle Royale or the Hunger Games; it’s a fight to the death. Let’s backtrack a bit so it makes more sense. Ryuuta, our main male, wakes up on a tropical island. He has no memory of being there; the last thing he remembers is playing Btooom!, an online
combat game in which he was top ranked. He’s a NEET and was constantly nagged by his mom to get a job; he only wanted to work for the company who created Btooom! but never got the job. Now that you know a bit about him, lets jump back to the island. No one is in sight, and Ryuuta cannot remember a thing, but he finds he has a case with cubes in it, and there’s some sort of plastic chip on his hand that he cannot remove. He walks around a bit yelling for help, but instead gets attacked by a person who taunts him for not knowing what’s going on. Ryuuta learns those cubes are bombs, much like those in his beloved online game, and he uses his ingame strategies offline in order to survive. Obviously, it’s a survival/action series, but there’s more to the story (which I can’t spoil just yet), so check it out!
Busou Shinki – Talk about disappointment…I watched the OVAs a few months back (did I write about them? I feel like I did…) and if you’ve seen Angelic Layer (I never finished buuuuut) it’s the same concept of battling dolls. The OVAs were essentially 
about taking out one who was said to be defective and would cause chaos if she got out of hand. Welp. That’s not the anime at all. It’s so…moe. Like these Shinkis we see in ep 1 mostly all serve a teenager, and refer to him as “master” and the first episode was too corny and comedic for me and especially in comparison to the OVAs. So the story of ep 1 is that the boy and one of his shinkis moved and his stuff was to be delivered in the mail; he goes to school and the boxes arrive, and 2 other shinkis burst out of the box: a tsundere and generic klutzy maid-like character. They do stupid things, like damage a box that is apparently important and inside of it they find a letter with a heart sticker on it with nothing else written on it. Well then they fight over the letter claiming it’s for them, then it gets blown away. They get it, fight with someone else’s shinki over it for about 5 minutes, and go back home with the “damaged” letter (like the tip of the corner was burned…). “Master” gets home and shows them what’s in it and end of episode. I’m honestly hoping there’s more to this anime as it was just awful to me (I don’t like moe animes), but it’s supposed to be “slice of life”. It also looks like all their budget went into animating the shinkis as the humans are drawn fairly poorly…But hey if you’re into that stuff, go for it!
Litchi De Hikari Club – this wasn’t what I expected at all…Well this short is like most other shorts:comedic. From what I understand, the manga was fairly dark and junk (I 
haven’t read it though, but I’ve heard about it). It reminded me of Gakkatsu in terms of the humour, somehow. I guess it had to do with the idea that the first episode involved someone being punished, the “leader” declared this and went around to hear what everyone else had to say about what to do. It takes place in an all boy’s school, but there is one girl involved, I guess because she’s “evil” enough for them. Or something. I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. I won’t let 3 minutes dictate how I feel though, I’ll check out another few shorts before I deem it out of my interest.
Sukitte Ii Na Yo – ( Say I Love You) Another anime I was looking forward to! 
Anyways, so this is another shoujo (if the title hasn’t given that away yet) and it kinda follows the stereotype about the girl with no friends who finally finds a love interest. Well I just think this one is absolutely adorable. Mei is a teenage girl who never really had friends; her last encounters with “friends” was in elementary/preschool and they made her feel horrible about herself. Ever since then she decided she didn’t need to rely on others, but only herself. Skip back to high school, and we see girls teasing her about never having a boyfriend, but she’s just aloof and quiet. Next up, we meet Yamoto and his friend, Takanishi. Not much happens other than Takanishi bumping into Mei and Takanishi makes a fuss, but then we see that Yamoto has taken an interest in Mei. Mei however has no interest in Yamoto, and even kicks him due to something that Takanishi does. Yamoto doesn’t give up; he gives her his number, and tries to talk to her all the time until she finally has a need to call him as she gets stalked and doesn’t know who to call. In the process of helping her, Yamoto steals a kiss from Mei and confesses. I absolutely love this series, it’s one of the few shoujos I still read, and the adaptation definitely does not disappoint (at least yet), so I definitely recommend this!
Shin Sekai Yori– This was the first one I picked up this season, and I loved it. It was fairly dark and tribal (more of the sense of priest, summoners, and stuff like that). The setting is in a post apocalyptic world; it was hinted in the first few scenes that young boys with psychic powers were wreaking havoc by killing civilians, and you just end up piecing together that that was the probable cause of the new world. In this new world, everyone has discovered their telekinesis but are taught, at a young age, to control them. They aren’t necessarily born with the powers, as it’s a coming of age thing, but they then must go through a 
ritual in order to “rid themselves of the cursed power” and are then given back the power, in a “cleansed state”. Our main cast is made up of a group of friends, and the main character is one of them; she’s a late bloomer and is the last to discover her powers. They all go to school to control their powers, but myths start going around, about children who cannot control their powers disappearing, or so on and our main character fears she is one of them. Some other things happen but I won’t spoil the rest of the episode, however episode 1 doesn’t cover the baseline of the story (the synopsis hints at much more), it’s just the beginning and eventually a war will break out once again, once these kids discover the truth about their civilization, past and present. I would highly recommend looking into this anime if you enjoy psychological, fantasy, and eventually action. So far I really like how the anime has started, I just hope it doesn’t drag on before getting to the plot.
Tonari no Kaibutsu-Kun – Need more shoujo? Well here you go! I started reading the manga when it was picked up by a scanlator, and I thought it was adorable (even more when I found the title means “My little monster”). The story is a bit generic with the “misunderstood delinquent” but I assure you there’s 
more to that. Shizuku is the main female of the series; she’s a smart girl who usually always gets top scores, but she also always isolates herself to study, so she lacks friends. Haru is the main male; he’s the misunderstood delinquent. He hasn’t shown up to school since the first day, and their teacher has been trying to beg him to go back, but he refuses. Somehow Shizuku gets sucked into dropping off handouts to him, and things take a turn. Haru misunderstands what she’s doing and interprets it like a manga: “Only friends bring handouts to their friends for missing school, so you’re now my friend!” She brushes him off, but ends up helping him from “friends” (bullies) and he admits he loves her and starts tagging along with her and finally goes to school. It’s a cute comedy with some lovey-dovey scenes thrown in, but it’s primarily comedic, and I’d highly recommend this to you shoujo/comedy fans.
Zetsuen no Tempest – this anime is really flashbacky so I got a little lost, but the basis is simple. For one there are a lot of Shakespeare references (ahem, TEMPEST), and it is centered around magic/fae/etc. If your family was brutally murdered without a trace, how far would you go to seek revenge? Mahiro lost his family for unknown reasons, and he vowed to avenge them (primarily his sister); he disappeared without a trace as well, and everyone eventually just forgot about him, except for his friend Yoshino. Skip forward about a year, and the two meet again, only something odd has happened with Mahiro. He has 
met a witch who was banished to an island, and he made a contract with her to track down his family’s killer, only now the two have been sucked into a large mess which has to do with the witch’s past, and unfortunately might destroy the world. It’s a little hard to understand after the first episode, but I assure you things will start adding up and clearing up after a bit. I’m a big fan of fairy tales and stories that have to do with the fae, so I’m keeping an eye on this to see how well it develops, and so far it’s a little messy since it’s only just begun, but it’s definitely one to check out for fantasy/action fans.