Current watches

[Arakawa]

Right, but that only happened after

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Madoka started going all Gurren Lagann on the laws of physics.

EDIT: also, having watched it to the end, what was the deal with

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... Anne Frank being a magical girl? I get that she's a sufficiently recognizable historical figure that you can identify her out of a two-second montage clip, but all she did was sit in her cupboard and write a diary. Ignoring the requirements of being montage-worthy, my vote for 'probable magical girls' would go to Soviet partisans who actually killed Nazis. (And also killed any innocent bystanders who refused to shelter Soviet partisans. But that's war for ya. Wikipedia sort of glosses over the gory facts FWIW.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyubov_Shevtsova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Portnova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoya_Kosmodemyanskaya

Very much a real-life '(not)Magical Girls versus Nazis' scenario. Also very very nasty and tragic. That's WWII for you. If these people had Soul Gems, they would have deliberately looked for a place to get turned into Witches that would kill the most Nazis as a result. Anyone fancy writing the Madokafic?

[thepanda]

Obviously,

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 Magical Girl Anne Frank went out killing Natzi witches. Sadly, she wished for something mundane like food or for the allies to win the war or whatever. What she should have wished for was a giant, three-headed dragon. With nuclear breath weapons. That could fly. I'm just sayin'.

[Brian]

Obviously,

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 Magical Girl Anne Frank went out killing Natzi witches. Sadly, she wished for something mundane like food or for the allies to win the war or whatever. What she should have wished for was a giant, three-headed dragon. With nuclear breath weapons. That could fly. I'm just sayin'.

Well, if we were going on should:

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They should have wished for a source of infinite energy.

I think a big part of the show is that

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naive kids don't make well-considered wishes.

[Jason_Miao]

Well, if we were going on should:

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They should have wished for a source of infinite energy.

They HAVE that.

It's called

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killing witches

Also, don't forget that while Kyubei gets to

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grant absurd wishes that change the nature of reality, that's only if you have a badass timetraveler who continually resets the universe solely for your benefit

[thepanda]

Fate/Zero

All I can say is THANK THE GODS UFOTABLE IS DOING THIS!

I don't think the nasuverse could handle another disaster.

[Dracos]

Watching Fate/Zero and Persona 4.

And recently Boku no Tomodachi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W34TqtgI1s

It's kinda cute and deserves a link.  A bunch of misfits make a club about friendship.  Slice of life.

[thepanda]

Anyone else watching Ben-to?

So

Damn

Funny

[Brian]

* Brian beats panda like a pinata until details come out.

[thepanda]

I didn't want to describe it because there is no way to make this show not sound stupid.

Ok, Ben-to is a show about people battling for discount lunches. It has some of the best action scenes I've seen this season. There hasn't been an episode that I haven't laughed out loud watching. The characters are amusing, the Sega-pimping manages to surpass Code Gease in how blatant it is, and everything is 'serious business'.

I probably look forward to this each week as much as, if not more than, Fate/Zero.

I'm also watching working. The second season is more of the same. If you liked the first season watch it; if not, don't.

[Brian]

SUCH DESCRIPTION!  CASTIGATION!

But, no, really--  That's a trope, Panda, so don't worry about it too much.  The way you describe it makes it sound hilarious, not stupid.  Obviously, not something to be taken seriously.

Sounds, actually, rather like the 'game' moments of Higurashi.  I, for one, will be giving this a shot based on your rec.

Also, when in doubt, you can completely get rid of my nagging by simply linking a page on some specific site.

[Dracos]

Seems like a good anime season. =)

[Kt3]

Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon is a mess.  I'll leave it at that.

UN-GO is amazing.  I wish I could put down the reasons why I'm enjoying it so far, but I watched the first episode and I'm hooked.  I'd encourage you guys to give it the same treatment as well.  Supernatural detective-ing.

Boku Ha Tomodachi Ga Sukunai makes my eyes roll, but it's an amusing series and seems to overall focus on a theme of friendship, rather than lolharems.  I hope it'll end that way without encountering a theme shift, it'd be refreshing.

Mashiro Iro Symphony - slow and generic harem animu plagued with what I've dubbed "retard moe", those woeful girls who are afflicted with the closed-eyes-open-mouth syndrome.  Oh, and they're really dumb so they're somehow cute, I guess.  I didn't see anything particularly compelling about it in the first episode.   I'll probably drop it after a second episode just to make sure I'm not being too harsh.

[Dracos]

Boku Ha Tomodachi Ga Sukunai is really, really, really strongely pitched at Otaku.  It's almost embarrassing to watch because of that.  It's still fun, but it would be easier to enjoy if it wasn't so extremely aware in its pitching.  "Yes, I see, opener with one guy and six girls, all of them showing off their figures and underwear as much as possible and all of them being very cute/awkward/desirable fetish girls, and look the busty one is an extreme video game otaku, who would've guessed?"

[Kt3]

Fair to say.

However, with how many anime are being made with otaku as the intended audience... well, I think we'd be better off listing the shows that don't follow that trend.  It'd save us a lot of effort.

[Dracos]

It's weird, but I almost think I'd enjoy it more (and it is enjoyable) if I hadn't watched its opening or ending ever.  The opening particularly pretty much transforms the context of what would be 'Slice of life with awkward people and a bit of harem overtones' into 'Our audience is only otaku.  Seriously, you could not show a non-otaku this without getting really strange looks.'

This is not the case for say Persona or Fate/Zero  or probably even Ben-to.  They're stories about strange things, where Boku communicates awareness that it's 'stories to strange people'.