FIRST LOOK: Eureka Seven AO, Jormungand, Sankarea, Tsuritama

 Eureka Seven AO

I'm under the impression that Eureka Seven is a popular franchise. Be that as it may, I haven't really seen a single episode of the original series so I come into this show practically a virgin. lolz The series is basically about this foreigner boy, Ao, who lives on an island in a future world where Japan and China seem to be united in one government and Okinawa Island is a united state for some reason. The plot gets a jump-start when the aforesaid Ao gets mixed up with a group of smuggler types. Somehow the encounter results in a phenomenon involving huge pillars of light and "secrets" coming out from the sky. I fucking don't know what is going on, actually. I wonder, is this mecha? I don't have a very good relationship with mecha anime. I'm not fond of the genre TBH. And from what I've seen of the first episode of Eureka Seven AO, things are mind-boggling and not in an interesting way. The only thing going for this anime is the art style, which I find pleasing, but we'll see. With so many far more interesting shows this season (what is it with Spring seasons? ^_^), I'm afraid this one may take the back seat.

 Jormungand

This the story of a hyper-energetic, sleep-walking arms dealer, Koko, and her newest recruit, a child soldier by the name of -- crap, I forgot his name. Anyway, for some reason, Koko has white hair and so does the kid. The whole episode consists of Koko and her crew shooting up the streets as they transport their weapons of mass destruction to their client. Lots of action but the story line is thin. Don't know how this is going to hold up in the long run, although I do sense some yuri devotion from one of Koko's crew, the eye-patch-wearing token female, which makes this somewhat interesting.

 Sankarea

This is the series that deals with necrophilia. Yes, that's exactly what I mean. The main character likes everything zombie -- even zombie girlfriends -- and spends the entire first two episodes attempting to make one. A zombie girlfriend, I mean. Although, he initially experiments with his dead pet cat. I mean zombify the dead cat, not make it into his girlfriend. Anyhoo, the title of the show actually refers to the other main character, Sanka Rea, the aforesaid zombie girlfriend, although as of the time of blogging this, there's no saying she'd become either one (a zombie or his girlfriend). Suffice to say she's the love interest and the last we see of her is that she drank the zombification potion out of despair, which leads me to the other bothersome aspect of this anime: incest. Or something equally icky. It turns out that Rea, who comes from a rich family, is being subjected to some kind of abuse by her father, who has a penchant for taking naked pictures of her on the pretext that he wants to record her growth. Uhhh.... Sick, much? Anyway, it's sufficiently sick enough to pique my interests for the morbid so I might watch more episodes of this series just to see how far it will go with these dark themes.

Tsuritama

This show is, for lack of a better adjective, weird. You have this guy, Yuki, who is so scared of drawing people's attention to him that he imagines himself drowning whenever anyone so much as stares at him to the extent that he makes an angry, constipated face, which of course puts people off. So he doesn't make many friends. Then there's Haru who can't be explained without using sparkles and rainbows and goldfish in the same sentence. And finally, there's this dude who is a prince when it comes to fishing. Anyway, the whole episode is insane. The colors are insane. The music, too. Seems fun. Will watch more episodes.