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Dated 18 February 2009: Mid-Season Rejects, Winter 2009

Tokuchi
Tokuchi doesn't get sent to the showers, so he never bathes.

Last season, I started keeping track of the shows I watched and the shows I dropped. Current rankings of shows I've abandoned so far this season follow, with the last episode I watched in parentheses:

One Outs (14) > Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo (2) > Ride Back (4) > Kurokami The Animation (3) > Maria+Holic (2) > White Album (1) | Worse than Cosprayers: Akikan! (3) > Hetalia Axis Powers (3)

I dropped One Outs after episode 14 because it stopped being about steely-eyed gambling and started being about people overreacting to unremarkable events and commonplace baseball strategies. To pick up the slack, I started watching Major instead which turned out to be an excellent show about baseball and sometimes a good show about gambling, too. One Outs is still pretty entertaining, but you may have the same reaction I did depending on how much you know about baseball.

Nina and Itsuki
I kinda like Nina because of her hair. And because
she smokes in a high-oxygen environment.

I dropped Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo after episode two, but I'm willing to start it back up if it turns out to have a My-HiME mid-point switch or if something otherwise extravagant happens. I'm still waiting.

Rin
At least Ride Back has been better than Genesis Climber Mospeada so far.
Then again, Genesis Climber Mospeada isn't all that good, alas.

I wanted to like Ride Back. I like ballet. I like motorcycles. And I thought I'd like ballerinas racing around on motorcycles, but Ride Back is just too stupid for a show that takes itself this seriously. It would be fine if it were more over the top or Gundamesque in its science/mecha balance, but because it tries to be mature or otherwise respectable, I can't stomach it anymore. I let it go when the narrator casually mentioned a band of terrorists took over the entire world, but the cop-out conclusion to the race in episode two soured the racing aspects for me and the positively ridiculous episode four aspects (e.g., the rescue attempt, the escape attempt, the being mistaken for terrorists, the shockingly poor marksmanship of the anti-terrorist terrorists—basically the entire episode, really) turned me away completely. I'm okay with people jumping through plate glass without getting cut. It's television. But I'm not okay with pandering when it is dishonest.

Pretty much every character is an idiot
How about, I dunno, TRYING TO HELP instead of just standing there, genius?

I thought the doppelganger stuff in Kurokami: The Animation was pretty interesting, and some of the fights looked good. I was also intrigued by the show's apparent willingness to kill off characters unexpectedly. However, all the characters appear to be idiots and/or useless. You could trade the lead guy for a sack of expired luncheon meat and come out ahead in the deal.

Matsurika guitar
A transvestite air guitars his maid.

Maria+Holic just isn't very good. Maybe that doesn't matter if you have a thing for transvestites and lesbians, but I found it dull.

Yuki
Wake me when Aya Hirano and Banana Mizuki have their Power of Song catfight.

White Album has a very boring first episode (this coming from a guy who has re-watched the first episode of To Heart too many times to remember, mind you), and none of the characters seemed to have any charisma. I was ready to punch Male Protagonist in the face when bamboozled by his confusion between live television and pre-taped broadcasts for the second time in 20 minutes. Choke yourself, guy.

Melon
I bought a melon soda because of Melon.
I played it safe and got a bottle, though.

Akikan! is terrible, but I probably would have continued watching it as a goof were it not for that odious Grape character. See, this kind of pandering is okay because it's honest. But Grape's voice just sounds so bad.

Germany
This is Germany. That's the joke.

Hetalia Axis Powers is offensive, but not for the reasons those Koreans sending death threats give. It is offensive because it fails so hard at being funny. When a five-minute show feels four-minutes too long, you've got problems. And how.

Dated 5 September 2023: Akikan! really is WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS

Budoko
Maybe Budoko gets more pleasant as the show progresses.

I started watched Akikan! (Empty Can!) as it aired during the Winter 2009 anime season, but I quit because I thought it was WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS. However, the irritating voice of a character introduced in the third episode did influence my decision to drop it then. As it turns out, this character's seiyuu was Yuuki Aoi, who has since gone on to have a successful career. She's rather popular, and I enjoy her work too, so I started second-guessing my 2009 self's opinions. Could it have really been that bad?

Najimi and Budoko
I admit Budoko's character design is amusing when she doesn't talk.

As it turns out, yes, it really was that bad. Budoko is a bratty, child-sized grape soda who speaks in a deliberately annoying voice. I think Yuuki Aoi was only 16 years old herself when she recorded the role, but I don't think being less experienced necessarily impaired her voice acting ability. If anything, she was probably too good at bringing a loathsome soda can to, err, life.

Melon and Kakeru
This scene is about erections.

I did actually try to watch further this time around, but I still only made it to episode four. Noto Mamiko voices a new can (a sports drink), but it's just not worth it. I don't know if the type of humor and tropes that saturate Akikan! are especially dated now. It's not as if I enjoyed humor of this variety in 2009 either. However, it also doesn't seem like the comedy styles found here are common in anime anymore. Possibly this is because I simply don't watch as many shows like this now, or maybe they're less common in general now that anime lineups are all isekai all the time. In any case, I suspect nobody besides boys discovering anime for the first time ever found the jokes in Akikan! funny either.