Anime Odd Thoughts Lot (Week of Mar/11/07, bring on spring break!)

There are quite a few series that has made their debut in February and March. Let's look at some of them in this week's OTL: (Warning: The following OTL contains lame content and engrish intended for mature audiences. Viewers discretion is advised.)

獣装機攻ダンクーガ ノヴァ Dancouga Nova (premiered Feb/15) and

REIDEEN(premiered Mar/3)

I put these two together for obvious reason. They are both remake of popular^{(citation needed)} mecha anime from decades ago. You know exactly what to expect from these type of shows: (spoiler warning!)
protagonist(s) meet robot(s), big bad monstor threatens humanity, robot saves the world...

If I recall correctly, REIDEEN is one of those macho good-vs-evil, monstor-of-the-week type of mecha anime from the good old 70's. The new show bear the same name, but I consider it more of a franchise reboot than a remake. Everything has changed in both new series. The characters, plot(Dancouga might be a sequel tho), characters and mecha designs are all new. In fact, the new REIDEEN share a little if at all design clues of the oh-so-colorful singing REIDEEN in that 70's show(no pun intended).

Now Dancouga Nova is a bit of a disapointment for me. I didn't hold high hope for it anyway. The original Dancouga is one of my favorite mecha anime along with the Gundam trilogy, Godmars and Macross in the 80's. I would consider the original to be in the "more realistic" type anime which has spawned after the success of Gundam and Macross. While the robot-action was the focus of the show, that's great character development as the young protagonists get involved in a militant organization. The new show somehow lost the realistic touch and I would consider it as random fan-service madness as seen in the likes of Gravion (you should be glad if you have no idea what Gravion is)

MOONLIGHT MILE ムーンライトマイル 1stシーズン -Lift off- (premiered Mar/3)

This is one ambitious project for Studio HIBARI (スタジオ雲雀). They must have some deep pocket sponsors backing them up for this series. This must have been the first time I see producers put the "1st season"(1stシーズン) moniker within the title before the series even begin. I'm a big sci-fi anime fan, therefore despite some downfall in the very first episode, I'll stick with it as I have read a couple chapters of the manga and find this series intriguing (plot-wise).

The first episode started very slow, and there are sexually explicit scenes that are totally unnecessary. It wouldn't make any impact if they cut those out in my opinion. Also I would like to see changes in the anime adaptation for the major mistakes/misconception of physics in space(gravity in orbits... etc) seen in the manga.

ロケットガール Rocket Girls (premiered Feb/21)

My favorite of all the new 2007 anime so far. The right balance of storytelling, humor, fan-service and visuals. The voice actors did a superb job too (but I wouldn't be a good critic on that, since I could actually tolerate cartoon-network-grade dubs). I would probably put up the opening song "Rise" one of these days. Some fansubbers should pick this one up soon, at least I hope.

This is running long already, I'll talk about new OVA like Genshiken 2, Ichigo Mashimaro 1 and Mai-Zhime Zwei 2 some other time then... Oh, I wish I could do the OTL on Code Geass and Getsumen Toheiki too...