If you haven’t watched season 1 of Kore wa Zombie, you are missing out on of the of funniest zombie anime of all time. The first time you watch a boy turn into a magical girl you can’t help but laugh until it hurts. That is right, A Zombie Magical Girl. Probably the first ever. I wrote a review on it when we did Zombie Week last year, so check it out! Season 2 looks promising since season 1 kind of ended quickly and unsatisfyingly. If anything shows that this season should be funny it would be the name. OF THE DEAD is about the best name I’ve ever seen in terms of a sequel series. Not only does it parody, but it sets a standard of funny that I hope it can keep, which it probably will.

The next Shounen Jump to be put into anime form comes from Akatsuki Akira (art) & NisiOisiN (story). Yup, that second name is that of the writer of the -gatari series, but don’t expect all of the perversion from Nisemono to carry over, though Medaka has a desire to show off her toned body from time to time. The manga is frequently ranked in the bottom of SJ rankings and Gainax isn’t quite what it used to be after key personnel moved on elsewhere. I planned to read the first couple chapters of the manga, and then 10 chapters later, I can see why it would be ranked so low given how OP/Bleach/Naruto are and how popular Toriko and others are in Japan. Medaka Box is more like daily activities and only Shiranui shows some ulterior motive in the early goings, so it comes down to how much you will like Medaka Kurokami as a character; I found her likable. Zenkichi is ok for a lead male, but his character didn’t show me anything to carry the load the way other lead males do in anime.

If you look at the screenshot, I’d pass them off as moe magical girls, but apparently it’s Sengoku Era. I blogged Sengoku Otome last year (which I enjoyed and has no relation to this), but I’m surprised that Brain’s Base is at the center of this anime directed by Keiji Gotoh, whose episodes of Penguindrum I wasn’t too keen on. *cue fans raging about a DRRR!! sequel* *cue Sakuga fans raging at my Gotoh comment* As long as it’s fun and looks pretty, it’ll be fine by me, and Brain’s Base supporters shouldn’t lose their cool that this’ll affect their overall resume.

The best anime last year was one that didn’t end.. It didn’t even try to end, it just stopped. I don’t really know why they split this anime into two parts, but what I do know is that if you aren’t watching Fate/Zero you officially fail as an anime fan. Just stop watching everything and start season 1 of Fate/Zero. Only 13 episodes in season 1, so you can catch up real quick. For those of us who were smart enough to watch season 1 already, I don’t think I can do much but echo how excited I am about season 2. Season 1 ended as things started to pick up. None of the masters are out of the game just yet, so I am expecting a lot of eliminations to come very quickly. That means a lot of action. This is going to be the best anime for this season and I am already ready to nominate it for best anime of the year.

Yuki Kaji as the main hero? While he may have an unusal character design (short and stout), I expect Arita to be a lot like so many Kaji characters like Issei Hyoudou or Ouma Shu from previous seasons. There’s a couple things I see in comparison to Toaru Majutsu no Index: first, it’s based off a long-running Light Novel series, and it’s also going to have a 2-cour 24-episode run. And while Index dealt more with Science vs. Magic, Accel World seems to have a technology slant with downloaded software and the form of communication you see Kuroyukihime and Haruyuki use in the trailer. I’m hopeful that Sunrise will keep up their quality of animation for this series, and if I come to like it so much, that they make more seasons. Masakazu Obara’s previous directorial works include the MY series (Hime & Otome) and Hiroyuki Oshima is doing his first stint as a music director here.

Hey look, yet another 4-koma adaptation! They’re quite upfront in the summary about the relationship the two leads have. I’m not really digging AIC’s animation style here enough to get over the potentially formulaic structure all of these 4-koma series have, which by many accounts isn’t even in the same league as the likes of Lucky Star or anything remotely similar. I fully plan on avoiding this series after episode 1.

I believe this was recommended by Foshizzle and we ended up reading several of the manga chapters for our zombie week podcasts. Our general consensus was that it wasn’t very good… as a manga. I will say that the manga author, Mitsuru Hattori, also wrote Inu Neko Jump, which was a short, but fun series. Now that it is getting an anime adaptation I am more curious in the series. As a manga it was hard to sit through, but as an anime this has a chance to be good. I am not expecting it to blow my mind, but I am curious about how well it will hold up as an anime. Besides Inu Neko Jump, the manga author hasn’t written anything that I know nor has the director of the anime worked on anything else. In other words, there isn’t a lot of talent to expect anything from, so naturally I will have my reservations about the anime. It is being done by Studio Deen, which is going full zombie this season. I will give it a chance, but I don’t know if I will be able to finish it. Although there should be some good ecchi scenes in the anime. Ecchi makes everything better.

Also, is it just me or does the title sound like some kind of sickness? Like, “OMG, I caught Sankarea.” Sounds kind of painful…

Sunrise doing a s’life? I know they have a big catalog, but s’life certainly isn’t something I expect from them. Another key point of the anime is that all four girls are voiced by the musical group Sphere (I remember enjoying their Ichiban Ushiro no Dai Maou OP), but besides the typical character profiles, we’ll have to wait and see what this “wonder” is until we can properly assess the appeal of this anime. That will be up to Urahata Tatsuhiko, who has written for adapted series such as Monster and X, but this is an original work with him and director Mizushima Seiji (Fullmetal Alchemist, Un-Go)