Ga-Rei Zero: Holy crap, this left me speechless. The episode itself was pretty good, kind of an anime version of ghostbusters, but with more zombie things and less giant marshmallow people. But holy good shit at the last 3-4 minutes. I don’t think I’ve been that taken back by something in any episode of anything in….hell, I don’t even know. That was absolutely insane.

Aside from the ending though, the episode as a whole was pretty action-packed. Stuff didn’t stop exploding pretty much ever, save for a bit at the start of the episode, and a minute or two in the middle. And Natsuki pulled off some bike stunts that would have given Dante some competition. Overall I haven’t enjoyed an episode of an action-focused anime this much since the last episode of Gurren Lagann. Given I haven’t exactly watched much action anime recently either, but still, even if I had, it’d probably still be pretty high up there. Will keep watching.

Toaru Majutsu no Index: I’m not quite sure what I think of this one. The episode itself managed to be entertaining enough, although it didn’t seem to be trying anything that hasn’t been done already. Well, except for the ending. While not anywhere close to as mind blowing as Ga-Rei, it certainly was unexpected. Other then that though, it seemed fairly general enough. Girl appears out of nowhere, she’s got something important, someone is chasing after her, and she ends up in some single guys apartment. While this is done over and over, I’ll give it credit for some things it did that, while not neccissarly important, struck me as unique. Like the teacher being a 12 year old (and a seemingly sadistic one at that). Also, the main character actually having some sort of magical ability among tons of other generic “super-powerful magic user” people is a plus, I guess. I’m trying to think of other stuff to say about this show, but there really isn’t much. It felt like the could have done a lot more in the given timeframe then they did. Not sure on this one for now.

Shikabane Hime – Aka: This was one of the shows that I was really looking forward to this season. After watching the first episode, it could turn out to be pretty awesome. However, based on those same judgements, it could end up being fairly boring. However, I’m doubtful of this, simply because it’s done by Gainax. They’ve pretty much got “awesome” down to a science, so I’ll keep my faith in them. The action just seemed a bit dry in this. Not quite sure what it was about it, but it just didn’t grab me as much as I expected it to.

On another note, however, knowing that this is done by Gainax, and the way our protagonist is dressed, I’m in awe that there wasn’t a single pantyshot in the episode. Not a single one. Seriously, look at that first screenshot. Most pantyshots in anime are usually given a camera angle or bend some law of skirt-physics that allows for them to be there; that shot is bending them so as to purposely NOT let there be one. Although maybe that’s because she’s not wearing anything to begin with.

Casshern Sins: If you’re looking for a show simply for great animation, look no further. The visuals in this really impressed me, especially it’s portrayal of a post-apocalyptic baron wasteland setting. From the landscapes to the fight scenes, to just the simple in-between’s, the animation was truly impressive.

Unfortunately, that’s about all I can really say good about it. From the opening scene alone, you could tell this was going to be really predictable:

“Who…..are you?”

“Luna……I’m going to kill you”

*DUNNNNNN*

I almost laughed at it, I wasn’t sure if I should take it seriously or not. However, this *is* a remake of something out of the 70’s, so maybe that’s an important line symbolically/to fans? If not, they really could have made it a little more unique, or not made it such a DUN DUN DUN DRAMATIC type of thing. You really can tell this is something from the 70’s regardless of that though. The way the protagonist is dressed, the style in which the female character(don’t remember if they said her name. Not Ringo, the other one) is drawn, and the design of the enemies being big, clunky astroboy-looking robots. Everything just screams 70’s, but refurbished and given a shiny new coat. The episode overall though, was just fairly boring. It could have explained a bit more, or made it more of a cliffhanger type thing, but it just kind of went with the “Good guy kills lots of robots, durr” type of thing. I’ll give it 2 more episodes to do something impressive, otherwise I probably won’t spend time/HD space on it.

Overall, this post wasn’t filled with quite as good shows as the first one, save for Ga-Rei, but there could be some promise. They’re not bad, I’m just iffy on what they’ll be doing. The only one I didn’t really enjoy was Casshern Sins. Possibly another post tomorrow on a few other shows I plan on watching. Tales of the Abyss and Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka waiting to be watched, with a few other things possibly to be sampled.