Downloaded Tiger & Bunny this past week...so far it's pretty entertaining. I figured I'd better watch that, as I'm pulling Double Decker! this season, which is apparently based in the same universe.
Now that the summer season is done (mostly), this is the time I crap on the shows I chose to watch:
Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san (Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs) - this was the hallmark ecchi harem show of the season. However it wasn't very smutty aside from the predictably random (contradiction in terms? perhaps) boob flashes. However, the MC was a virtuous person who actually had it together for the most part, but he was pretty milquetoast. The girls were cute but vapid and undeveloped in general (well, some were but only in certain ways...). As for the show itself, if this was a romcom they frankly forgot the rom part in favor of the com which itself wasn't exemplary, and the production values were nothing to write home about. In other words, it's the latest rendition of a genre we've seen a million times already.
Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu (How Not to Summon a Demon Lord) - I already went into this one above...
[It] turned out to be far better than I expected. Sure, there's a bunch of ecchi harem hijinks, but it was paced really nicely, had some real characterization work (particularly the titular demon lord/neet), had a well-realized storyline, and was animated consistently. It's not going to go down as a watershed moment in anime history, but I enjoyed it over and above what I expected. It's next to Hanebado (which tapered off significantly...I hope the finale delivers) as the only two shows I watched that were worthwhile this season.
And, yes, the finale delivered. Hopefully it'll deliver another season, as well. This was a fun show.
Island (just Island) - a dude goes back in time to save a girl on an island that has some special significance: basically that everyone seems to reincarnate somehow. There are 3 to choose from, and it feels like an adaptation of a dating sim because they spend time developing two of them to a degree before focusing on the third. It really takes a turn into left field about half- to 2/3rds of the way through, where it seems like they realized they spent a lot of time goofing off and finally jumped/flashed back to the predicating events of the series which have jack squat to do with the titular island. It looked decent to good, but the story never really coalesced until the very end, so it felt like a waste of time, particularly in how it panned out.
Hyakuren no Haou to Seiyaku no Valkyria (The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar) - guy gets magically teleported to a parallel world/the past in the middle of the Norse epics. With his solar-powered iPhone he keeps up with his girlfriend/cousin/whatever and picks the mind of Sun Tsu to become a great general of his adoptive clan and his crew of primitive babes with magic powers. The show looked like crap, the premise was ridiculous, the story didn't make much sense, and it was a slog to watch.
Grand Blue (Grand Blue Dreaming) - guy goes to college expecting to enjoy a life of light study, parties, and female companionship. But when he moves into his uncle's dive shop what he gets is forcible induction into a dive club populated by habitually naked jocks who force him to become a barely functional alcoholic. Here's his story of being introduced to the world of diving (which is honestly very little of this show) along with his hot cousin, otaku friend/rival/enemy, and a former makeup freak who just wants to belong. It's funny, but not as much as the manga, and the art slips between being great in the sea scenes to middling elsetime. I figure this is a single-season show, which is kind of sad because the book is still ongoing and much funnier, but this wasn't bad.
Hanebado! (The Badminton play of Ayano Hanesaki!) - I never realized badminton had an "n" in it until I started typing this. I always pronounce it, "bad-mitton", and don't remember ever actually writing or typing the actual word before. Weird. Anyway, the badminton scenes generally looked great, but the rest not so much. Hanesaki is the titular star, but she turns out to be a brain-damaged jerk despite being portrayed as a poor, maladjusted cutie pie in the early parts. As such, I was hoping for everyone to beat her out of the matches, even if she was pushed into becoming that way by her crappy mom who I wish would have been hit by a bullet train. The real stars in the show are the individual members of the club, from her friend who made her join to the captain who she crushed in the previous year's competition, who really was to me the real star of the show. I like how it panned out, and I enjoyed most of it, except the parts involving Hanesaki and the unhappy wenches who orbited her (primarily her external rivals). So I'm of two minds with this one; I still recommend it, but with the caveat that the main protagonist becomes a nearly unlikable jerk.
Satsuriku no Tenshi (Angels of Death) - this sucked, and I don't even know why I'm still watching it. I say "still" because there are four more episodes coming out after the season because they couldn't stink it up enough with just 12 eps. I'm not even going to bother synopsizing it...so you shouldn't bother with it, either. But I'll finish it, because I want to see how they explain why they're in the building, why they're being pursued, how they got there, how they're getting out, and who the heck they are to start with, which they didn't bother to do any of in the preceding 12.