Summer Premier Season (Part One): Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C3-bu

The Summer anime season has finally gotten underway with a slew of new series premiering this month. To save time I will be switching up my approach this season and only posting reviews of shows that I feel are noteworthy. Going into an anime cold turkey is fun, but writing about the lackluster first episode of a series you don't plan to watch is tedious at best and downright painful at its worst. This will allow me to highlight only the good without wasting page space on the bad. First up is:

Name: Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C3-bu
Release Date: July 4th, 2013
Studio: Gainax
Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life, Girls with Guns
Premise: Timid Yura Yamato has just begun her brand new high school life at Stella Girls' Academy, and is unsure of where she'll fit in. She gets more than she bargained for when she meets her senior roommate's fellow club members: a ragtag group of gun enthusiast misfits who stage mock battles with airsoft weapons!

The Verdict: Not bad, Gainax. I hadn't heard of this one (or the manga upon which it is based) going into the first episode so I wasn't expecting much. Gainax usually does best when they stick to their bread and butter of mecha, a la Gunbuster, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, so this series is a bit off topic for them. I also wasn't thrilled with the episode's abundance of diabetically-sweet moe moments which are all too common in today's school life anime.

Nevertheless, things got rolling once the actual shooting started. The mock battles themselves are smoothly animated and could provide several great action set-pieces down the road. I may hate moe, but I'm a sucker for the girls-with-guns trope that pops up in most anime. Hopefully  they choose to rely on the latter as the 12-episode season continues. Grating, cutesy-wutesy personalities aside, C3 still has potential as a harmless popcorn anime to help take your mind off anime that deals with heavier issues.