Let me give you a small overview of the anime that I’m watching this season, starting this month:
Kimi ni Todoke
Kobato
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza
Nyan Koi
Toaru Kagaku no Railgun

Allow me to review the first episodes of these series! Warning for minor spoilers.

Kimi ni Todoke - Reaching you

I got the first volume of the manga a month ago and I couldn’t stop reading. Kimi ni Todoke is the cute story of Kuronuma Sawako, who is nicknamed Sadako. She looks like the girl from The Ring and that’s why nobody tried to talk to her. However, Sawako has a interest in one of the popular boys at school, Kazehaya. Obstacles need to be cleared and so does Sawako start to grow bit by bit.

So, there’s an event coming up and Sawako wants to join. Her classmates, Yano and Yoshino, think that it’s better if she’d play a ghost and Sawako wants to play the role. The two girls tell her that they would feel guilty if they’d let her play the ghost. Sawako still wants it and she apologises. For the fact that she can’t summon ghosts. Chizu and the other girl will keep it a secret, so she can still scare the hell out of her classmates. Night of the test of courage and Sawako is up to it. She’s dressed in a white dress and just by turning around she scares them. She feels as she’s finally useful and thus she feels happy. Then Kazehaya shows up and sticks with Sawako.Yano and Yoshino show up and bring her something to drink and Kazehaya notes that Sawako’s opening up. It’s time for the results of the the previous day and as Kazehaya lost, they decided that he should be dating Sawako for a whole week. He’s standing up for her and thinks it’s wrong for a joke. It’s time for the summer vacation to start. She bumps into Kazehaya when it’s summer vacation and he gives her a small presents of all her classmates, saying that all her classmates apologized. Kazehaya asks if it would be fine to also see her in the vacation.

The seiyu are quite fitting. Noto Mamiko as the shy girl, Namikawa Daisuku as the always friendly Kazehaya. Perhaps that makes it a bit plain. The story of a blooming love, or something like it. The animation… I don’t know what to say. A lot of patterns and perhaps a bit too much comedy-like deformed faces, but the colouring is really nice, so I guess it’s fine. The overall music section is fine as well. The opening is short and the ending isn’t my taste, but the background music is okay. If you need a true-love story or something like it, check this out.

Kobato

I always wanted to read the manga of Kobato. I wondered why I didn’t after watching the first episode of Kobato. I laughed, laughed and laughed and I was like ‘awww’.

Kobato is a cute girl who somewhat looks like an older Sakura. Anyhow, Kobato is new to our planet called Earth. She has an animal side-kick called Ioryogi in the shape of an pluche. Ioryogi isn’t really what you call sweet. He has a bad temper, criticizes and hits Kobato when she does something wrong, but he is good downstairs in his heart. If he has one. Back to Kobato. As she’s new to our world, Ioryogi is giving her a test: she has to act as a human for a whole day. If she’s able to do that, she passes and she can stay.

Naive as Kobato is, she joins some juvenile boys for some ‘fun’. Then Ioryogi warns Kobato that she shouldn’t be doing that and Ioryogi attacks the boys with fire. They can’t appreciate it and they want to hit Kobato, but then there’s a sudden hero who saves the day: Fujimoto. Just a quick appearance and he’s off. Kobato ends up at some kind of a festival and she meets an kind obaa-chan that has a baby that just won’t quit crying. The grandma says that his mother usually sings a song when he’s crying and isn’t really expecting that he’ll ever shut up, but Kobato decides to sing. Quite a nice song and that already for the first episode. Okay, it isn’t top notch, but it draws your attention. With this, Kobato earns some healed hearts, as that’s her goal: heal enough broken hearts to fill a bottle to grant her wish.

Kobato is fluffy, warm and funny. I don’t know if it’s either good or bad compared to the manga, but I like it. The art is nice, Fujimoto is cool (sorry, fangirlism), but the animation is a bit less. A bit blurry. Perhaps that will be solved with the DVD-releases. Sound: nice. The opening and ending are sung by Sakamoto Maaya and Nakajima Megumi, known to me for their performances in Macross Frontier. Hanazawa Kana does a fine job as the ditzy Kobato and the seiyu of Kurogane, Inada Tetsu, fits for Ioryogi.

Now that the Tsubasa manga has come to an end and soon also xxxHolic, perhaps now is the time for Kobato to make a break through with this anime. Or not. We’ll see.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza

Haruka still has to hide the fact that she’s an otaku and it doesn’t matter to Yuuto if what he has with Haruka isn’t rabu-rabu.

Don’t be surprised if you think that you downloaded the wrong episode. It’s just some show that Haruka is watching. When they’re in the classroom, Shiina starts a conversation about going on a trip. Haruka wants to join and ofcourse also the boys including Yuuto, so they go on their trip to a… well guessed, an onsen. They go by the Shinkansen and oh my, a complete new character is introduced! It seems that Haruka’s maids were secretly tagging along and they brought a new maid with them: Alice-chan. She’s a lolita and doesn’t speak much, but she sure can hit. I mean, hello, she has brass knuckles.

So, new character introduced. Second half: the onsen. Do not download any version that comes from Crunchyroll: they are over-censored. Really: half of the screen is freaking white. I wouldn’t call that animation anymore. Well, lots of stuff going on in the onsen. Yuuto actually goes in the womens bath, because he didn’t know that the baths switch. Shiina actually helps him hiding and what a surprise, seems that she’s falling for Yuuto as well. The other girls enter the bath and they want to know what kind of relationship Haruka has with Yuuto. Just before she tells the answer, Yuuto leaves the bath. They are visiting some town the next day and Yuuto manages to elope with Haruka to some event of the show that was shown in the beginning. Haruka grabs his hand and thanks him for making a nice memory.

So, nothing really new. The animation sucks and the voices are all moe-moe-moe. Not to mention the Crunchyroll-censoring. It should be a whole new word: CR-censor. It’s obviously that it will be Yuuto and Haruka together, so why should I even bother to watch the other episodes? I’ll give it one or two more episodes before I drop it.

Nyan Koi

A boy named Junpei likes Kaede, who in turn loves cats. Unfortunately for Junpei: he’s allergic to cats. Now that isn’t a real problem if you don’t have anything to do with cats. It’s just that Junpei can understand cats after a small accident and he now has to complete 100 good deeds, otherwise he’d get killed by himself by turning into a cat.

One of his first jobs is to help the neighbour cats. Their problem? Some crazy monster is traumatising young little cats. When Junpei meets up with Kaede after some grocery shopping, they go to a park and ofcourse, there are those cute little cats that got traumatised. It seems that Kaede is the monster: she treats them some food and then pick them up and hugs them to death. Junpei solves the problem of the traumatised cats by telling her that she shouldn’t cuddle them to death. Ofcourse, he was being threatened by cats at the time. Junpei and Kaede meet each other again at school and that’s the start of a kitty cat love.

The animation is pretty smooth and I had a lot of huge laughs. If you don’t like cats, don’t watch this. They’re all around the place. The voice acting is fine, even if there are some less known seiyuu, or at least to me they are. There’s not a real new dimension in Nyan Koi: just watch it for fun, not to see something new.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun

Biribiri is back and now with a whole story around her and not the plain Touma. Mikoto, Kuroko and her friends are all living in Academy City, a city that’s all about science and education. Mikoto is one out of the seven level 5 ESP-ers. Her powers? Electrocution. Kuroko is being ms. shoujo-ai and she has the ability to teleport. Kuroko works for Judgement, a crime-prevention-like group. Then there are some new characters, some other girls from the same school as Mikoto and Kuroko go to, named Uiharu and Ruiko.

Nothing really new if you’ve watched Toaru Majutsu no Index. This is most-likely going to have some nice action scenes, as there already were some in the first episode and hm-m, let’s see… let’s hope there’ll be character development as well. I’m looking forward to see Accelerator…

So, sound and animation are okay: story needs to get started yet.

This would be it for this time. Feel free to ask me to start watching another anime from the new season: I just might if you give some nice reasons or if I simply feel like it.