Winter Anime Season (Part 4)

Title: D-Frag!
Release Date: January 6, 2014
Studio: Brain's Base
Genre: Comedy, School Life, Slice of Life
Synopsis: Kenji Kazama and his band of delinquents are determined to take over their new school but hit a snag when they stumble upon the weird shenanigans of the school's Game Creation Club and its even weirder president, Roka Shibasaki. Based on the popular manga series by Tomoya Haruno.

Verdict: Don't expect any life-changing revelations or shrewd commentaries on man's complicated nature here, this is pure, wacky, escapist comedy at its finest. Not surprising considering Brain's Base has a penchant for putting out quirky comedies with bizarre characters (e.g. Princess Jellyfish, My Teenage Comedy SNAFU, and Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun). The first episode features a wide range of feats of absurdity, including the most hilariously twisted parody of Pokemon since Egoraptor's PokeAwesome series.

"Defeated now, bitch?!" indeed.

D-Frag isn't here to make you think, it's here to make you laugh, and it's doing a bang-up job so far.

Summer Premier Season (Part Seven): Blood Lad

Title: Blood Lad
Release Date: July 7, 2013
Studio: Brain's Base
Genre: Supernatural, Comedy, Action/Adventure
Premise: An otaku vampire promises to return a human girl to life after she wanders into the demon world and dies during a skirmish over his territory.

Verdict: Ah, yes, another anime adaptation of a popular manga. This is the bread and butter of the anime industry, along with visual novel and video game adaptations, and the success of such work usually depends on the quality of the resources and staff being thrown at the project.

So far, so good. Studio Brain's Base has been responsible for some pretty stellar shows over the past few years. The seiyuu for main character Staz, Ryota Osaka, is also having a breakout year so far with lead roles in two other anime I've enjoyed: The Devil is a Part-Timer and Valvrave the Liberator. The series is currently listed as scheduled for 12 episodes, so I doubt they'll be able to adapt all nine volumes of the source material, but judging from the animation quality this is a going to be a solid piece of work.

Vampires have undergone a sort of renaissance over the past decade. Once dismissed as soulless monsters, they have been recast as everything from reluctant allies to (most popularly) love interests. This has been pulled off with varying degrees of success, both good (thank you Joss Whedon) and very, very bad. Staz and co. seem poised to end up in the first group, but if not, it'll still be better than at least one story about vampires...