That is entirely too many ribbons, Lilicia.

As I expected, this season is basically all Noto Mamiko all the time. Among the shows I am currently watching, she stars in Kimi ni Todoke and Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza, and has roles in Seitokai no Ichizon and Queen's Blade: Gyokuza no Tsugumono. Additionally, she played a late addition to the fifth season of Major, which I recently finished watching. Technically, Major ended a couple seasons ago, but it wasn't fully subbed until now.

Miho learns about the cruelty of baseball.

Thus far, Kimi ni Todoke is as good as I hoped. I am glad they established early on that Sawako is aware of how people view her. I was afraid the show was going to be about wall-to-wall misunderstandings. While there are a lot of misunderstandings, most of them are driven by Sawako's social awkwardness and inability to communicate her feelings.

Despite this innocuous screenshot, Haruka II is downright dirty.

The second season of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu is not very good, which should not surprise me since the first season wasn't that great either. I'd much rather have a second season of Narue no Sekai, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. I am not as put-off by the addition of Kugimiya Rie as some people, but I am tired of her particular brand of tsundere. The trope wasn't so bad when it was associated with the Naru and Chidori varieties.

Tomoe is the most serious character in Queen's Blade.

I don't know why Mamiko isn't just phoning in her Queen's Blade role like some of the other voice actresses, but she deserves an award for it. I'm not sure if I've enjoyed her work this much since her completely anti-typecast scenery chewing in Dai Mahou Touge (Magical Witch Punie-chan).

Punie leg locks the shit out of Elise.

In fact, I nominated Noto Mamiko for her work as Tomoe in Queen's Blade in the 4th Annual Seiyuu Awards. No, I'm dead serious. Queen's Blade is a ridiculous show, but Mamiko plays Tomoe in a completely serious and eminently professional manner. That in itself is somewhat absurd, but it significantly contributes to my enjoyment of this terrible show. I don't know what I'm going to do if, as episode five suggests, Queen's Blade II actually develops a coherent plot and incorporates character development.

Kusada finally breaks. Better hang on, kid.

With a few exceptions, most of the shows I watched last season bear one thing in common: very few anime fans from my corner of the Internet (the best and worst of whom can be found at #raspberryheaven) would give them a chance. Even Hatsukoi Limited, which I previously mentioned is the best show from the spring 2009 season, attracted relatively few followers. (Most were too busy watching K-On! and searching for Mio fan art.) Those that actually watched Hatsukoi Limited instead of merely asking, "What's so great about another school romance show?" found a combination of light comedy and whimsical tales of first love so deftly executed I have no reservations naming it the top show of the season ahead of the initial (and already controversial) episodes of the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu.

Yuki looks bored, even for Yuki.

Haruhi II still secures second, and will presumably do well during the summer 2009 season, even if (or in my view, especially if) there really are eight episodes of "Endless Eight." That would be awesome, particularly if it drives conventional-thinking fans into sending Kyoto Animation furious letters with death threats which they can include in a The End of Haruhi movie that makes little sense but includes a bitchin' fight scene. (I secretly hope there are 15,514 episodes of "Endless Eight," and that the entire ordeal is somehow Yuki's fault and not Haruhi's at all.) I bet all the people who can't stand "Endless Eight" are the same people who skip OPs and EDs.

Natalie Portman from Leon joins the Phantom cast.

Nobody ever believes me, but Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom is actually really good—good enough to finish third for spring 2009 (and currently lead summer 2009). Bee Train influences are obvious, but this is not El Cazador de la Bruja or Madlax. For one thing, there's a male lead. Moreover, none of the female leads have displayed any signs of lesbianism. In fact, Ein apparently really likes getting oil massages from creepy old guys. Bio Concerto is worth its weight in gold, people. I'm telling you.

Aoba, you're not even trying.

A lot of people won't watch sports anime in general or baseball anime in particular. Cross Game is at its best when it's not about baseball, to tell you the truth. I enjoy it a great deal more than Touch and what I've read of H2, but the actual baseball games in Cross Game are not as compelling as the slice-of-life stories about Kou and Aoba.

You're not exactly facing the Taisho Yakyuu Musume team now, Goro.

Major season five takes the fifth spot. I'm still watching it as there are still unsubbed episodes, but I won't be including it with the summer 2009 lineup. [Update: Advanced to fifth place after episode 120.] Assuming the fifth season is the final season of Major, I have to say this was an excellent series and I really appreciate the epic nature of the show, following Goro from childhood to adulthood. Were I to include all five seasons of Major as one work, it would easily take the top spot. Incidentally, Shimizu Kaoru still leads in the Girl of the Year rankings for 2009. This one is going to be a boat race.

Takako contemplates the future of Kannagi.

The Kannagi episode 14 OVA is every bit as good as the series. That it only places sixth should tell you just how good the competition is this time around. I hope Kannagi gets a second season.

There's a storm brewing, Peach-han.

Fresh Pretty Cure ranks seventh, but has moved up quite a bit in the summer 2009 rankings due to the fully awesome Cure Passion arc, currently underway. This is another show nobody but Precure fans seem willing to watch, but the Setsuna/Love friendship really is compelling. Every episode recently has had the kind of OH SHIT moments typically attributed to shounen jive or cheesy Gundam switcheroos. Speaking of shounen jive, Fresh Pretty Cure is very light on the "standing around talking instead of fighting" bits, and when Love cuts loose, she starts out in a normal voice but gets exponentially louder and faster (it's awesome, trust me) until you think she's about to ace someone square in the face. There is too much beam spamming, though, but episode 23 is expected to include brutal fisticuffs, so we're back to the basics. Kickass.

Needs more Ana Coppola, Black Custom.

Eighth goes to the second OVA episode of Ichigo Mashimaro Encore. This series also really could use another season. It remains entertaining and funny, and definitely does not deserve the extra baggage that keeps many people from watching it.

If Alice isn't happy, no one's happy.

Pandora Hearts is good, but weird, so anyone that might watch it probably is watching it already, and no amount of cajoling will convince anyone else to give it a try, alas. I can understand why it doesn't have broader appeal.

Ed doesn't seem to obsess about his height as much this time.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood would have fared better if it hadn't felt like watching a really long clip show. It should also do better in the rankings this summer as it diverges more from the first anime. Curiously, I'll watch countless episodes of "Endless Eight" but the deja vu sensation of the early Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood episodes really turned me off. Or maybe it's because Brotherhood halved Winry's cup size. Could be.

Asahina's daily life.

The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan got a lot better as the season went on, but it's still not as good as Petit Eva or the various Marimite specials, for example.

No! Keep your damn dirty hands off Kotori's hat!

The second episode of Da Capo: If came out during spring 2009. Pity it wasn't as good as the first installment. Then again, no Kotori arc is ever going to seem satisfying as long as Junichi remains such a putz.

I'm still amazed Mamiko Noto voiced Tomoe as a straight-up serious character.

Queen's Blade is what it is. I think it would have been infinitely better if Tomoe (the miko character) had—for no discernible reason—gone the entire series without getting naked.

Say "cheese."

Asura Cryin' faded a bit, or at least my interest did. I like all the colors, though. [Update: The end of Asura Cryin' got really shounen and kinda stopped being fun at all. Why can't it just be about humping your ghost girlfriend and every once in a while robot fights? I guess I won't be watching the second season, alas.]

Say "cheese."

Nyoron Churuya-san started out funny, but got a little tiresome towards the end, whereas its Haruhi-chan counterpart managed to improve and keep me looking forward to Haruhi II.

"Chi's!"

Good Lord, there were a lot of shows spring season. And I'm not just saying that because I watched a hundred-some episodes of Chi's Sweet Home so I could start Chi's New Address. Even with three-minute episodes, that is a lot of Chi. I could be burned out on all the kittenness, but Chi's New Address doesn't seem as good as Chi's Sweet Home. Needs more bear cat, for one thing. I also keep waiting for Chi to finally age, but for the time being she remains Yotsuba in kitten form.

Needs more Tamaki.

The first episode of To Heart 2 ad plus wasn't very good. It's pretty forgettable, alas.

I would have kept watching K-On! had it replaced Mio with Yomi.

I didn't drop any shows aside from the following series I previously mentioned: Eden of the East (8) > Shin Mazinger Z (3) > Saki (2) > Valkyria Chronicles (3) > K-On! (4) > Higepiyo (3) > Shangri-La (1).

Needs more Perrine-H. Clostermann.

I should probably exclude OVAs from future such lists. I already leave off movies. Besides, it's not possible to "drop" a movie or a one-episode OVA. Well, I guess unless one abandons it midway. I probably should have done that with The Sky Crawlers. That movie should have had a Strike Witches crossover wherein the 501st Joint Fighter Wing wipes them all out in five minutes and the movie ends. Sheesh. The damn thing felt like it was 15,513 fortnights long. (Yes, I know. Yes, I know that too.)

This worked out a lot better in Honey and Clover.

The best show of Spring 2009 is Hatsukoi Limited. A mostly wistful look at first love, Hatsukoi Limited is a textbook example of how J.C. Staff can succeed wildly when it plays to its strengths. It helps that the source material is good, as the anime remained mostly faithful to the manga, and diverged mostly for the better on the rare occasions when there were changes.

It is entirely too early in the morning for relationship traumarama.
Go back to bed.

One sure sign of a successful show is an ending that leaves viewers wanting more. That is certainly the case with Hatsukoi Limited, as 12 episodes are not nearly enough to fully explore the myriad interwoven relationships of the ensemble cast. Even for the characters given the most attention (Kusada and Kei), the viewer only sees a tiny portion of what must be a fairly rich story. Alas, the manga ended early as well, so all the reader gets to know about the various new couples and remaining victims of unrequited love is that (a) some of these characters hit the jackpot and (b) others got completely screwed.

First Love, Best Case Scenario (depending on your point of view).

I'd like to see the anime continue for another season by producing new material. Unfortunately, these kinds of scenarios appear to be rather uncommon. There are plenty of instances where a manga begins, grows popular, and gets an anime adaptation that fudges its ending because it outstrips the source material (often diverging dramatically and culminating in unsatisfying conclusions almost universally decried as being vastly inferior to the eventual manga endings), but manga-based anime that keep going after exhausting the source material appear to be rare at best. Since the chances of seeing new, original episodes of Hatsukoi Limited waver between slim to none, I suppose the best I can hope for is the anime's popularity inspiring new chapters continuing where the manga left off. It could happen—if Hatsukoi Limited preaches anything, it's optimism.

Reina is always back-to-back with Death.

Queen's Blade is awesome. No, wait. It's horrible. Actually, it's awesome because it's horrible. Or is it horrible because it's awesome? You kinda have to see it for yourself. On the one hand, it is wall-to-wall fan service. And I don't mean soft core Hatsukoi Limited fan service, I mean hard service of the "Look at all the tits! There must be...57 tits!" variety. And also the snake-rape and acid-lactation variety. No, really. And it goes on like that.

I wonder if Tomoe even knows what kind of show she's in.

But it also has A-List seiyuu in nearly every role. Kawasumi Ayako plays the lead girl, an inept middle-child named Reina who manages to lose nearly every single fight. (Really, a victory for Reina is a loss during which she doesn't piss herself.) Ayako isn't in Lafiel mode by any means, but she's taking it a lot more seriously than her He Is My Master role, for example. And it has Noto Mamiko playing an absurd miko character, also dead seriously. I guess it's a chance to get away from her Shimako typecast.

Of course there's a maid character.

And it has Hirano Aya yammering at a thousand words per minute about all sorts of insane crap related to this "Queen's Blade" reality television show she's trying to promote, albeit with only dubious success. That's what Queen's Blade is technically about: a ridiculous contest, but none of the characters seem especially motivated. I can't really blame 'em. Nanael is crazy.

I still think Nanael is making it up as she goes along.

On a whole, Queen's Blade isn't a show you watch for its merits—you watch because it's a curiosity. Still, it's a freak show, not a train wreck. If it were a better show, Queen's Blade would be boring and pointless. If it were any worse it probably wouldn't be any fun. As it is, it's brilliant slack-jawed entertainment and I can't stop watching.

Easy is the best Precure villain of all time—even better than David Bowie.

My favorite part of Fresh Precure is the primary villain, Easy. Ostensibly, Easy (or Eas, as some insist) is just one of Moebius' hoodlums along with Wester and Souler (East, West, South...har har) working to fill this gigantic container with Unhappiness Juice that drips in whenever the three of them manage to ruin someone's day. However, Easy is clearly the lead villain just as Love is the lead Cure and presumptive main character of the series.

Mark my words: This four-leaf clover pendant is going to
represent unity far more than the One Ring ever did.

But Easy goes about her task so half-assed. After episode 15, that Unhappiness Juice container is still about 95% empty. (5% full if you're an evil optimist!) She's figured out that things would go a lot quicker if Legendary Warriors Pretty Cure didn't thwart their evil plans every time. She's figured out the three Cures' secret identities. She's even figured out all she need to do is keep them from transforming by stealing their magic cell phones. Nevertheless, Easy can't be bothered to do more than make token attempts at doing so. Maybe she's union. She's protecting their job security at least.

It's five o'clock somewhere, Setsuna.

And considering her co-workers, I can't really blame her for not trying very hard. The occasionally overeager Wester means well, I suppose, but he needs to learn to stay in his lane. It's only a matter of time before Easy punches him in the mouth. And Souler with his My Little Pony hair is just a complete tool. I'd be filled with despair too if my job performance in any way depended on the contributions of a guy like that. No wonder Easy would rather go bowling with the Cures than carry these two douchebags.

Easy could checkmate Pretty Cure in three moves if she gave a damn.

Oh, that's the thing. Easy has a street-clothes, secret-identity alter ego also that goes by the name Higashi Setsuna. (Higashi means east, eh.) As Setsuna, Easy met Love in the first Fresh episode and has periodically approached her (while the two were in their respective civilian forms) to supposedly attempt to eliminate the turbo-genki Pretty Cure obstacle to her boss' evil plan...but really it just looks like an excuse to hang out and eat doughnuts.

Setsuna wonders how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Five will get you 10 that Easy switches sides and becomes the missing fourth Cure before the end of the season. There were definitely four color-coded Cure dongles during the opening bit of the first episode. So far, the pink (Peach), blue (Berry), and yellow (Pine) dongles are accounted for, leaving the red one still in the wild. Initially, it seemed Miyuki from Trinity would inherit the fourth Cure role, but episode 15 suggests it could be Setsuna/Easy. During the bowling scene, each Cure picks a bowling ball matching her outfit (and mahou shoujo battle costume). Setsuna (wearing red) hesitates when choosing between the red ball and the black one before ultimately settling on black, matching her Easy outfit, which is mostly black, although it does have red accents.

Love does the moe, moe...kyun! bit, sort of.

Speaking of which, episode 15 was amazing. It had a lot of really good sight gags and some genuine plot advancement—which is pretty damn important in a genre that tends to consist of 90 percent filler, even when said filler consistently benefits from numerous shots to the face. With episode 15, 10, and all the ones with Setsuna slumming with Love instead of doing her job, I'm elevating Fresh Precure to the third non-baseball, non-OVA slot of the season.

Kouji instinctively goes for the ROCKET PUNCH.

I dropped Shin Mazinger Z after three episodes. I want to watch this out of general principle, and it seems pretty good based on what I saw, but I guess I just don't get super robot shows.

Saki plays mahjong like nobody's business.

I dropped Saki after two episodes because I don't know crap about mahjong so it confused the Bejeesus out of me. Also, too much pandering to fans of lesbianism. I'm okay with pandering under proper circumstances (see Hatsukoi Limited, for example), but I'm really tired of lesbians. I never did figure out what the deal was with the skirts, either.

Alicia meets Isara the hard way.

I dropped Valkyria Chronicles after three episodes because every aspect of warfare, strategy, and tactics depicted is completely laughable. Seriously, it's horrible. It doesn't help that I don't like any of the characters except Isara. Someone commented this show was designed to get you to root for the Nazis, but they're idiots too. It's a pity they can't both lose this war.

Isara is easily worth a hundred Alicias.

I'll keep reading the Sea Slug Team's summaries, though, if Kabitzin doesn't drop it.

So far Isara is my favorite character because she can melee, aimbot, and drive a tank. I don’t know what Alicia is going to do if it turns out Isara is an awesome baker as well...

That is some good smack.

Apparently the Edelweiss has phase shift armor.

In a way, Valkyria Chronicles is almost worth watching just because it's so absurd. Think of Gundam set in 1939 with the Edelweiss standing in for the hero suit. Pity it's not enough.

Hime Cut v. Headband, FIGHT.

I already explained why I can't stand K-On! and its saccharine moe blob filling. Understandably, it seems to be a polarizing show. I gave up after four episodes.

To tell you the truth, even the boomerang fights weren't that good.

Shangri-La is offensively terrible. I dropped it after one episode and only finished that one out of general principle. The only things I like about it are the boomerangs. Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to make a show this bad on purpose. It falls below the Cosprayers Line. Really, it's only offensive because it attempts to push a socio-political agenda in such a juvenile manner. Maybe it's meant to be satirical, but I'm not sticking around to find out.