Taiga, tsun-tsun mode.

In the weeks leading up to the start of the current autumn season, the corner of the Internet I frequent was positively abuzz in anticipation of Toradora!, mostly due to its tsundere Kugimiya Rie content. I like tsundere well enough, but I was looking forward to Hyakko quite a bit more, mostly for its slice-of-life wackiness.

Taiga, not quite dere-dere yet.

Through the first three episodes of Toradora!, I like the show well enough. I'm glad Kugimiya Rie exercises some restraint in voicing Taiga; that was one of my reservations. I'm also pleased J.C. Staff leans heavily on two of its strengths: characters and tone. The character development is far more rapid than I expected. After three episodes, the Toradora! anime has already churned through several chapters of the manga. (I haven't read any of the original light novels, so I can't comment on their pacing.) This is not to say that the Toradora! characters are particularly complex, but their development is moving along quickly—getting them to where they need to be in a short series yet without seeming rushed.

Minori, Top Fuel Genki.

The big surprise for me is Minori. Reading the Toradora! manga, I didn't think much of Minori; she was just there as Ryuuji's temporary love interest before he and Taiga inevitably get together. Anime Minori, on the other hand, is TOP FUEL GENKI. Horie Yui cranks up her trademark sweetness voicing Minori about as high as I can stand. You could bake a cake. This is a very anime-type voice, but it works here and gives Minori the kind of charisma she really needs to be a credible love interest. It's no wonder Ryuuji has a crush on her. There's even potential here for Minori to usurp Best Girl status from Female Protagonist if she continues to one-up Taiga, much as Kotori overshadowed Nemu in Da Capo.

Gotta love a girl who likes baseball enough to bat left-handed.

So how is the Hyakko and Toradora! war shaping up? Well, I've only seen two episodes of Hyakko, but I do like it better than Toradora! so far. I know a lot of people had concerns about Hirano Aya as Ayumi. As far as I'm concerned, this is Torako's show. I.e., it's all Orikasa Fumiko all the time, as Torako and her freakishly-strong sidekick steal scene after scene. (Seriously. Fumiko? She's out of control.) Neya Michiko plays a nice straight man to Orikasa's neo-Miu. I'm confident Hyakko will continue to entertain in a teenage Ichigo Mashimaro sort of way.

Iizuka also bats left, but she's a natural southpaw.

But the war is over. Both the Hyakko Army and the Toradora! Army got outflanked by Kannagi and Nodame Cantabile: Paris (which had a GREAT first episode—especially all the parts with Nodame trying to learn French—sacrebleu). More on that later.

I fully approve of Yanagi's triple-monitor workstation.

I swear by multi-monitor setups. Three monitors is pretty good if your budget and/or desk can't support six monitors. So Yanagi is at least on the right track here.

Yanagi uses a trackball instead of a mouse.

But why would anyone use a mouse pad with a trackball? (You don't move the mouse at all—only the ball.) Also, using a thumb-based trackball with triple monitors would be agonizing. I hope this dude has some sort of turbo acceleration for his pointer, because navigating from one side to the other with that tiny trackball would drive me insane.

Nodame is more than a little imperfect, but
she makes up for it by being a sweetheart

Autumn 2008 did not produce any stellar shows¹, meaning there wasn't a Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, Honey & Clover, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, or the like. There wasn't even a Lovely Complex. However, it did have some very solid titles and a few shows that demonstrated mid-series potential as they resume during the Winter 2009 season.

Not fully pictured: Saki's ridiculously enormous hammer.

Final rankings for shows I watched this season follow:

Kannagi > Nodame Cantabile: Paris Chapter > Hyakko > Toradora! > Shikabane Hime: Aka > Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight OVA > One Outs | Dropped: Kemeko DX (4) > Kurozuka (4) > Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka (?) > Casshern Sins (1) > Mouryou no Hako (1) > Toaru Majutsu no Index (4) > Michiko to Hatchin (1) | Worse Than Cosprayers: Kiss x Sis (1) > Macademi Wasshoi (1).

Torako is more than a little imperfect, but
she makes up for it by tormenting people.

Two big surprises this season. First, I had dismissed Kannagi based on its pre-season description, but it proved to be the cream of the crop. Second, I wasn't expecting to still be watching Shikabane Hime at this stage. Thankfully, it has kept shounen jive (e.g., too much standing around talking about powers instead of fighting) to a minimum. By the way, I totally called that Yui Horie twist even before I finished watching episode one, just so you know.

I went 10 episodes before noticing Makina's bare ass in the OP.
Now I can't not see it. It's Shikabane Hime's FEDEX arrow.

To give you an understanding as to how much I loathe shounen jive, bear in mind I dropped To Aru Majutsu no Index after episode four despite fully supporting the Shizuka Itou character's decision to wear half a pair of jeans with her kid sister's t-shirt. I just couldn't take any more speeches about Not Thinking About Other People's Feelings or any more boasting about fine nuances of Special Techniques and Powers. Criminy.

I think I've actually seen people in L.A. dressed like this.

Many of the shows I dropped early on (for example, Casshern Sins) might actually be very good, but just didn't capture my interest. This is the same reason why I dropped Kaiba a couple seasons ago after watching no more than two episodes despite almost universal acclaim, for example.

Note 01: I'm not counting any of the Kara no Kyoukai movies as belonging to the Autumn 2008 season. Any of the films in this series would certainly qualify as stellar.

Torako torments Amagasa again.

I'm so relieved Hyakko focused on Torako instead of Ayumi. With all the pre-season Hirano Aya buzz and the first-episode focus, I was afraid Hyakko was going to turn out to be All Ayumi All the Time. Not that this would have been a disaster, but Ayumi is the least-interesting of the characters. Thankfully, pretty much every episode is about Torako fucking with people.

Suzume, Nene, and Ushio.

I especially like the sub-plot about the guy who has a soul-consuming crush on Torako. The intensity of his obsession is especially amusing since the Hyakko character designs are somewhat non-specific regarding pulchritude. That is, there's no good indication as to which characters are supposed to be the attractive ones; they are all uniformly non-distinct.

Don't fall for it, guy.

I say "sub-plot," but this implies Hyakko has a main plot. It does not. It is entirely slice-of-life with minor recurring diversions. The closest thing Hyakko has to a unified plot is the bit at the end about Torako's family. In my view, that was rather unnecessary, although I can understand the desire to at least pretend to wrap things up before the end of the series.

Hitsugi's studies are a little advanced for a kid in grammar school.

It turns out Hyakko doesn't need a plot because it can get by just fine with episode after episode of Torako fucking with people. It has a charming cast of characters, and while I'm probably a little overzealous in how much I enjoyed the series, I suspect most people who gave the series a chance after a few initial slow episodes wound up as I did—wishing there would be another season and more escapades to enjoy. At least there's the manga.

Kaoru is the Best Girl in Major. Ryoko has more game, but Kaoru is a peach.

Kasumi from Hand Maid May is one of anime's All Time Babes,
and only partly because she's a natural right-hander
who takes baseball seriously enough to bat left.

Minori also deserves special mention for batting left and throwing right...

...and for being kinda broken inside.

Chidori vents some aggression.

It's Narue's World. We're just living in it.

Mamini is this post's Mendoza Line.

Sakaki is pretty athletic, but I'm scoring that at bat E-9.

Iizuka also bats left, but she's a natural southpaw.
I doubt she can hit, but her on-base percentage is pretty good.

I guess Daniel isn't technically a bat, but it's kinda academic, since
you can't really let Momo from Shinigami no Ballad play ball.
People would die.

I wish someone would make a Rebuild of Kiddy Grade movie
based on the awesome original promo for the series.

I first noticed Hirano Aya when she dropped her normal voice an octave and gave Lumiere in Kiddy Grade an unexpectedly mature voice. After that, I don't think I noticed her again until Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. That's pretty much when everyone else noticed her, too.

Ayu from the Hyakko OP.

Hirano Aya became so popular after voicing Haruhi that the considerable backlash and stalkerish scrutiny to which she's consistently subjected now was inevitable. Her popularity also led to a lot of miscast roles as she became the new hot seiyuu. She was seeming crammed into every show possible whether she was appropriate for the role or not. (See, for example, Ayu in Hyakko.)

Misa from the second Death Note ED.

But when she's right for it, Hirano Aya is dead on. In the first season of Queen's Blade, it appears they gave her a case of Red Bull energy drinks and just told her to ad lib all her lines as fast as she could. It was magic. Kismet, you could say. Likewise, she was perfectly cast as the Kira-fanboy flibbertigibbet Misa in Death Note. It's largely thanks to Hirano Aya that Misa is basically the only character I actually like in the entire show.