Weekly anime I’m planning to follow this spring:
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Medaka Box (April 5). I’ve been hearing mixed reception from manga readers, based on the current previews, but I figure it can’t hurt to give more Nisio Isin a shot.
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Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (or Tasogare Otome × Amnesia; April 9). How this hit my radar in the first place, I can’t really remember, but apparently the source material is pretty solid. A lot of people were apparently expecting this to be a SHAFT adaptation – Shinbou’s old partner Shin Oonuma, now at Silver Link, is in fact taking the director’s chair on this one. Here’s to hoping that he can pull out of the long slide into mediocrity that he’s taken since his amazing work on the ef anime. Well, okay, BakaTest was all right.
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Boys on the Slope (or Sakamichi no Apollon; April 12). The first of this season’s noitaminA shows, and boy, does it look to be a doozy. We’re talking Shinichirou Watanabe as director and Yoko Kanno as composer, a combination you might remember from Cowboy Bebop (and, if you were really paying attention, the wonderful Genius Party short “Baby Blue”). Unsurprisingly given the staff, it’s an anime about jazz in the sixties. I can’t see this being bad.
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Tsuritama (April 12). Kenji Nakamura’s back in noitaminA, and this time it looks like he’s turning the surrealism dial down a bit. As I’ve mentioned, I suspect this may be his way of bouncing back from last year’s C, which was by all accounts a mess, with something a bit less ambitious and more relaxed. Atsuya Uki’s character designs do help with the latter.