Natsume Yuujinchou
My hopes for this season actually relied solely on this series, and right now I’m not sure if it let me down or not. On one hand the main character has much promising personality, on the other hand the “Freckles”* - the creeptastic talking maneki-neko is way to freaking annoying for a comic relief. Which, mind you, is unnecessary to begin with. As many people pointed out it does give off mushishi vibes, both due to the mushi/ayakashi central theme and the somewhat similar personalities of the main characters. But let’s just hope it does not turn out like Tactics. >_< And I do sincerely hope for the return of the cat-like spirit in the purple yakatta. But yea, it all comes down to this one series for the entire season. Not too bad, considering I do have quiet a few on hold, but still, I normally manage to fish out at least two watchable series a season ;_;
*Yea, Madara is a name of the bad guy form Naruto, and that’s all you get if you google it. But if you look up the direct translation it’s actually means “spots” or “speckles”. So I take it whatever his true form is it’s supposed to be pure white, and the red spots is a defect or something? Well, we’ll figure it out later on.
Ryoko`s Case File
Haruhi and Kyon grew up and now work for the police. That actually roughly summarizes the story. The original story is written by Yoshiki Tanaka (LoGH, Arislan Senki) so we can expect a solid plot at the very least. The setting does not leave much space for epicness, but there definitely will be some awesome plot twists. Though, like most of Tanaka’s works, it suffers from somewhat slow pacing. It’s definitly on my “watching” list, but I will consume it in bulk, rather then watching as it comes out.
Blade of the Immortal
Well, to be honest I had the lowest possible expectations for this one. As fine as the manga is, the only way to do it justice in animation is to animate it a-la Hellsing Ultimate or Afro Samurai. The cutesy animation and way too much yapping per square second successfully killed the drive on this one. So unless there will be some drastic changes in animation and/or story pacing I won’t be picking it up.