Anime Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun S

Season 2 of Railgun is a worthy follow-up to Railgun season 1, a combination of some of the strongest and weakest material in the franchise to date.

Those who watched season 1 (which aired in fall 2009- wow, over four years ago) may remember that Railgun takes place in Academy City, a city thirty years more technologically advanced than the rest of the world, built for the newly emergent espers who attend school there. Espers rank from Level 1 (weakest) to Level 5 (strongest), with non-psychics at Level 0.

There are seven Level 5 psychics, with Railgun's protagonist Mikoto as the third-highest ranked Level 5. Mikoto has the ability to create and manipulate electricity and is known as the Electromaster. Her roommate and best friend is Kuroko, a Level 4 teleporter who is part of Academy City's law enforcement agency, Judgement. Kuroko provides 95% of the yuri in this series by being in one-sided love with Mikoto. (The other 5% is a minor character who had feelings for Saten in season 1 and Saten's perving over Uiharu.) You also have their friend Uiharu, a computer whiz who is Kuroko's partner in Judgement and a Level 1 with the ability to keep things at a fixed temperature. Uiharu's roommate Saten rounds out the group as the one who doesn't have any special abilities or skills, but still does stuff- like getting key character's trust in the Silent Party arc.

Railgun's two biggest selling points are its thorough world-building and good characters who do cool things. This season further explores the seedy aspects of Academy City that season 1 touched on.

Its first episode is a relatively light transition between the Poltergeist arc of season 1 and the Sisters arc of this season, once again showing how well the characters gel and showcasing some cool teamwork between Mikoto and Kuroko when some terrorists take their friend Banri hostage.

The showcase of this series, though, is the Sisters arc, which spans episodes 2 through 16 and is the material this season adapted from the manga.

In the Sisters arc, Mikoto finds out about some government-sanctioned experiments involving clones of her that are so horrific- and in her view, so much her fault- that she doesn't tell her friends about them and tries to stop them on her own. This arc lessens the focus on Mikoto and her friends as a group, which was one of the charming things about season 1, but I still enjoyed it plenty because I like Mikoto and plot was briskly paced and intelligently-written- until its climactic episodes- with some of the slickest fights of the franchise.

As with the first season, this season's fights rely as much- if not more- on brains as brawn. Mikoto may be the third-highest Level 5, but she doesn't give herself any rest in her mission to shut down the experiments- because every day the experiments continue equals another girl/clone of her getting killed- so she's running on fumes for most of it, unlike her opponents- which include two other Level 5s. This results in her having to find ways to counter them without expending as much power as usual.

The anime version of this arc also improves on the manga's version of it by showing us her friends'- especially Kuroko's- perspective of what is happening. And like the first season with Kiyama, this season does a better job with Nunotaba- the prominent gray area morality scientist of the season. It resolves her character arc's loose ends later in the series instead of letting her fall off the face of the earth after she serves her purpose for the main story arc.

This season's biggest weakness is the Sisters arc's climactic episodes being hijacked by Touma, the utterly boring protagonist of A Certain Magical Index, the series Railgun is a spin-off of. I know the Sisters arc was originally part of Index, albeit entirely from Touma's point of view, but it didn't stop me from yearning for this arc's end after he became a major driving force in it- a 180 degree turn from my looking forward to each new episode. I knew what was coming because I've read the first six or so volumes of the Railgun manga, but it was still annoying and I couldn't help being like, "Shoo, go back to your own series." Touma's special ability has some underdog appeal, but the story uses it as a deus ex machina. I wish the original creator of this arc had come up with a better solution against Accelerator's near-invulnerability.

I really liked seeing how Mikoto applied what she learned in the Sisters arc (that you shouldn't shoulder hardships alone) to the Silent Party arc later, though. The Silent Party arc, in which Mikoto must save another kid created by science, starts a bit slow, unlike the Sisters arc, which took off sprinting. It is good once it picks up speed, though, and has a really strong ending. It made good use of the Railgun regulars and I liked how it showed Saten and Academy City's other Level 0s pitching in to save the day, not just the esper characters.

Despite the Sisters arc's resolution, the fact that Saten's signature gag hasn't died yet, and some of Kuroko's behavior (she's a mix of girl-who-is-very-cool-and-competent-and-earnest and caricaturishly-perverted-one-sided-service-crush; I commend this season for, like the first season, doing better with her than the manga, though), I enjoyed this season and appreciate how much work the team producing on it did to improve on the original.

Story: B+, aside from the irritating Touma-heavy episodes
Visuals: B+ Like the first season, some of J.C. Staff's best work.
Overall: B

What I've Watched From the Current Season

Sorry about the long lack of posting here- blame it mostly on getting sick. Now that I've caught up on the new season, I'll comment on what I stuck with from the winter anime season and what I've seen from this season.

From the winter season, I stuck with Tamako Market and Doki Doki! Precure. I'm close to finishing Tamako Market and wish I liked it more than I do. But I'll see how it ends.

I went from hating Doki Doki! Precure to liking it to cursing whoever decided it needs a magic baby (I knew the magic baby was coming, but didn't think much about it until she was introduced. Guess Japanese parents are going to start being bugged into buying Precure baby dolls, in addition to Precure lunch boxes, coloring books, plushies, backpacks, bed sets, action figures, compacts, etc), to liking it again (although I would love to sit down with Mana and tell her that the explosive device set to go off inside her if she says no to doing anything anyone asks of her doesn't really exist), and then being like, "...Do I want to watch this for three more cours?"

I'm not a fan of Precure as a franchise. I really liked Heartcatch and have given the other seasons a shot. To Doki Doki's credit, at least, this is the farthest I've gotten in a Precure season after Heartcatch.

HJHGTYUGCLKHYUIFVK Shion and Yayoi's hands.

(Thanks to @angelx03 for pointing out this splendiferous example of official art.)

I continued to follow Psycho-Pass each week, and am happy with how it ended. (That said, if it ever gets a second season, I will watch the hell out of it.) I think it's very much worth watching, although I know that it isn't for everyone. Not just because some people will disagree with me about its quality, but because, as Erica noted, certain difficult-to-watch scenes may be triggering for some people. Again, I thought it was a great story all-around, and I got a canon lesbian couple I like* out of two of its side characters. 

*Bit of an understatement. Anyone following my tweets on this show knows that I set on Yayoi and Shion like a pack of wolves on a deer carcass.

Translation: 

Otsukaresama deshita. (Phrase used to laud someone for their hard work.)

Thank you very much ❀

Source: Hana's Pixiv.

*resisting the urge to dump more fan art*

I have also put Zetsuen no Tempest on my to watch list since a number of the people I follow on Twitter really got into it, and word is that it ended strongly.

As for what I've tried from the new season:

Aiura (2 episodes watched):
Aiura is, like this season's Yuyushiki, an adaptation of a 4-koma manga about three high school girls who are friends. In episode 1, Ayuko runs into Kanaka and Saki after buying an ice cream cone the day before her first day of high school. In episode 2, they meet each other again at school and become friends. Kanaka is the boke to Saki's tsukkomi, and the usual 4-koma pun-based humor ensues. This didn't leave any impression on me. I didn't particularly like its first two episodes or find them funny, but didn't really dislike them either. Since they're 2-3 minutes each (not counting their surprisingly long opening and ending themes), they didn't grate on me like episode 1 of Yuyushiki did.

Aiura is streaming on Crunchyroll. Available everywhere except in Japan for premium members, and everywhere except "East Asia, Southeast Asia, Indian Subcontinent, Iran & Afghanistan, and Southern Pacific" for free members.

I know Aku no Hana (Flowers of Evil) is the big controversy of the season because of its rotoscoping, but it's a moot argument to me because I tried the first volume of the Aku no Hana manga and didn't like it. Don't see the point of trying it to opine on its visuals when I know its story isn't my cup of tea.

Arata Kangatari (Arata The Legend; 2 episodes watched):
My friends and I got hooked on the Fushigi Yuugi anime (and Ayashi no Ceres, to a lesser extent) in ye olde days of middle school. (The one friend I'm still close to from that group still owns the second half of Fushigi Yuugi while I own its first half, even though neither of us is into it anymore.) This is the first animated adaptation of a Watase Yuu series since Ceres in 2000. Watase became a shoujo juggernaut after Fushigi Yuugi, and Arata is her first shounen series, 17 volumes and still running in Weekly Shounen Sunday.

Arata is a high school boy whose former friend bullies him at school. Another friend throws him under the bus when some boys (including Arata's former friend) threaten to bully him for being friends with Arata. This series' depiction of bullying interests me because some other people and I had a discussion on Twitter a while ago about how rarely shounen deals with bullying- let alone realistically- compared to shoujo.

Apparently this animated adaptation abridges a LOT, including the bullying that informs how Arata reacts to much of what happens later. I plan on reading at least volume 1 of the manga, to see how different it is. Never gave it a chance before because I read a review some time ago ripping Arata as worse than Fushigi Yuugi's protagonist. Going from the anime, I don't see what's so bad about him. Unlike Miaka, he is an introvert and has some trust issues because of his two former friends, but he isn't whiny or immature or bumblingly incompetent or anything.

Arata's wish to disappear is granted when he switches places with a boy from another world, also named Arata. They each take on the other's appearance to the people around them- confusing for all involved because the two boys have very different personalities.

Protagonist-Arata finds that he is not only in a magic fantasy world, the boy he switched places with has been falsely accused of trying to kill that world's ruler, Princess Kikuri, by her twelve guardians. Watase being Watase, the Twelve Guardians are bishounen and probably have tragic backstories. It is one of the guardians, Kannagi, who attacked Kikuri while the other guardians looked on, before her magical defenses went up and she went into a self-preserving comatose state.

In episode 2, protagonist-Arata turns out to be capable of wielding a Hayagami (a relic weapon inhabited by a god) that was being kept by the clan the other Arata comes from. The Twelve Guardians are the only other people shown capable of using Hayagami. Protagonist-Arata (I'll just follow the other Arata's lead by calling him Hinohara from now on) manages to communicate with Arata because... it's a long story, but they get on the same page about what happened. Hinohara is put on trial for what happened to Kikuri. Kannagi has him sentenced to exile to some horrible place instead of execution because he wants to learn more about why Hinohara can use a Hayagami.

It's a solid show so far. Again, I'm curious about how much was left out by the manga, and how much of a difference that makes. It's easy to see the similarities to Fushigi Yuugi: the feudal China-influenced alternate world (although unlike in FY, Arata's alternate world isn't directly modeled on feudal China), the teen being spirited there, the betrayal of friendship, the magical fighting bishounen, and the communication between worlds using personal objects. This show isn't too much of a Fushigi Yuugi clone to stand on its own- Watase has tweaked the elements she's re-using enough to avoid that, and it helps that none of Arata's personalities have equivalents in Fushigi Yuugi so far- but watching it did feel like a blast from the past.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. US and Canada.

Glass no Kamen desu ga (It's Glass Mask, but; 2 episodes watched):

A series of shorts parodying the characters of Glass Mask. The first episode reimagines Maya and Ayumi as "yankee" girls, Tsukikage-sensei as the leader of the Scarlet Angel gang, and Hayami as a cop. The second episode features the characters in an office setting, adding Hayami's fiancee to the mix.

This series kind of works as a one-time inside joke. Its first episode was weird more than anything, and made me want to try the next episode just to see how far the writers could take this series as a parody. While its first episode is no masterpiece, its second episode made me cry a little on the inside at how bad it was. Just watch or read Glass Mask.

Glass Mask is about a working class teenaged girl named Maya working her way towards being an actress worthy of the ultimate role- the Scarlet Angel. (Or Crimson Goddess, depending on the translation.) She meets a retired actress, Tsukikage-sensei, who sees the potential in her and helps her train. Hayami, a rich guy with a tragic past who initially gives Maya the impression of being a complete dick, secretly supports her as a fan, sending her roses and messages of encouragement.

Maya's biggest competition for the role of the Scarlet Angel is Ayumi, a girl of the same age whose parents are a famous actress and director. Ayumi wants to prove her worth outside her parents' shadow and is often, ironically, one of Maya's few pillars of support because she sees Maya as the only person who understands her, as the only person whose acting skills rival her own. In short, Glass Mask is excellent and you should watch or read it if you can- especially if you're looking for shoujo that isn't romance-centric, for a change of pace.

The 2005 Glass Mask anime adaptation (a.k.a. the good Glass Mask anime adaptation) is completely available on Crunchyroll. Can't find information on region restrictions, sorry. : \

Devil Survivor 2 the Animation (1 episode watched): 

I had to consciously try to remember what happened in this one.

A website that can show how other people would look dying gruesomely becomes popular. Devil Survivor 2's protagonist and his best friend sign up for it and see pictures of each other being crushed by a train. Specifically, the train that's about the arrive where they are. This makes them nervous, but they aren't able to leave before the train arrives. As they lie on the brink of dying, the mascot from that website asks if they're willing to make a contract to survive. They agree and download a demon-summoning app, surviving unscathed. The only other survivor is a girl from their class. The demon summoned by the app she downloaded saves them from the other demons that appeared there. Somehow, they make it outside the train station, where people are panicking about what happened. Everyone's cellphone reception goes dead and aliens attack. The protagonist fights the aliens off with the magic tiger his app summons, and the government people watching are amazed that he summoned it because it's an extra-special demon.

Eh. A lot happened- it just didn't leave much of an impression.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. US, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Scandinavia.

Hataraku Maou-sama! (The Devil is a Part-Timer!; 2 episodes watched):
The only funny comedy this season.

In a fantasy world where demons and humans are at war, the human side overtakes the demons, causing the demon king Satan and his henchman Alciel to retreat to our world. They wind up in Japan, where they have human bodies. A couple police officers mistake them as cosplayers. Satan and Alciel (now going by Maou Sadao and Ashiya Shirou, respectively) register as Japanese residents and settle into an apartment. Satan takes a part-time job at "MgRonald's" to help them get by, and they start acting like a bickering old married couple. At the end of this episode, Satan realizes that the woman he gave his umbrella to on the way to work is Emilia, the knight who led the human side of the war and drove him out of his world.

In episode 2, Emilia threatens to stab Satan but doesn't because, as he notes, she only has a flimsy one hundred yen knife. She stalks him for an opportunity to kill him, and instead realizes he's completely domesticated. She lives in a nicer apartment, but alone, and doesn't seem to be eating much better than Satan and Alciel. She works in customer service at Docodemo, a company modeled on Docomo, and goes by the name Yusa Emi. Just as Satan's Japanese surname plays off the Japanese word for "demon king", Emilia's plays off the word for "hero."

Emilia visits Satan at his workplace to challenge him to meet her after his shift, which he responds to by treating her like any other customer ordering a burger (which she ends up buying.) Satan's co-worker Chi gets jealous of Emilia, but he doesn't get it. (Thankfully, this plot point is miniscule, at least for now.) When Satan meets Emilia after work, an unseen assassin shoots magic bullets at them. Emilia winds up crashing at Satan and Alciel's apartment because she dropped her wallet running from the assassin. (Small handwave- she had to spend the night because she lost her wallet- presumably because she couldn't take the train without it- so if Satan could lend her a thousand yen to take the first bus home in the morning, couldn't he have just lent her the money to take the train home before it stopped for the night?)

Fun show so far. If you want a comedy that doesn't suck, you should check it out. I also find it refreshing that, fantasy trappings aside, it's about working young adults instead of, I don't know, more high schoolers. I'm not sure how seriously to take the assassination plot point right now. How will it affect this show's direction? Guess we'll see in the next episode.

Streaming on Funimation. US and Canada. Episode 3, which should have come out yesterday, is being delayed until Wednesday. Episode 4 is still scheduled to stream next Friday.

Kakumei Valvrave (Valvrave the Liberator; 1 episode watched):
The best show about mech-piloting this season- meaning that while it isn't good, it didn't bore and annoy me the way Majestic Prince did. (And unlike Majestic Prince, it doesn't have horrible character designs.) Valvrave is bad in a cheesy way- complete with a "wtf" moment after its ending credits. Valrave takes place in the far future, with humanity living in space. Some terrorists who fail at reading as threatening, despite this series' best efforts, attack Haruto's school. Haruto's crush is like, "Wait! I see someone knocked out in that car. I'll save them, nothing bad will happen to me!" right before being killed. Haruto winds up piloting a mech, causing Valvrave's equivalent of Twitter to explode (best part of the entire episode), and saves everyone.

So yup, pretty stupid, but entertaining in its own way. Not sticking with it, though.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. US, Canada, UK, and Ireland.

Ketsuekigata-kun! (Blood type-kun!; 2 episodes watched):
As a lot of you know, blood types in Japan are associated with certain personality traits, like horoscopes.

This series, which runs at two to three minutes an episode, anthropomorphizes the different blood types to poke fun at their stereotypical behaviors- how they date in episode 1, and how they respond to societal expectations in episode 2. It is kind of interesting from the point of view of learning more about what the blood types are associated with- more specifically, since I'm narcissistic, seeing what my own blood type's supposed to be like, even though I know blood type personality traits don't hold any more water than horoscope personality traits.

I am amused that whoever's producing this show felt the need to include disclaimers telling viewers not to make fun of other people based on the blood type stereotypes riffed on in this show, and that the blood types' personalities are incidental and don't actually have anything to do with their blood types, even though that's the point of this show? I guess I fail at having type A blood, since I'm not shy about asking someone out, don't see social norms as a gospel of the only right way to live, and like trying new things. lol

Majestic Prince (1 episode watched):

Some teenagers are chosen to pilot ships in a special mission for a space war. I don't remember much else, except that there was a slickly animated space fight and the girl on the far right in the screencap above was really annoying. I think the lead was like, "No, I won't give up!" at some point. I can't say the same about continuing this series.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. US, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Otona Joshi no Anime Time (Adult Women's Anime Time; 4 episodes watched):
In January 2011, NHK aired a one episode adaptation of a prize-winning work of fiction by a female author, under the name Otona Joshi no Anime Time. That episode is about a woman named Noriko who returns to her hometown five years after marrying and living abroad, now with a four year-old son and intending to divorce her husband.

She doesn't tell her family what she wants to do as far as we see because she doesn't want to spoil the enjoyment of being with them for the first time in years. She remembers Hisao, the man she fell in love with before she met her husband, and meets him to get closure on what happened between them. I thought this was an excellent character study of someone dealing with how her life played out versus how she wanted it to play out- and still taking action to move forward. (i.e. Divorcing her husband instead of stewing in misery "for the sake of the kid"- like kids can't pick up on their parents being unhappy- or some other reason.)

I've watched all three episodes of the Otona Joshi no Anime Time continuation that aired this past March, each based on a different prize-winning work of fiction by a woman. Each OJnAT episode was animated by a different studio- the 2011 one by The Answer Studio, the first 2013 one by Production Reed, the second 2013 one by BONES, and the third 2013 one by Wao World.

OJnAT's second episode is the most wish fulfillment-y of the bunch. It is also the one that anyone who reads this blog would have the easiest time predicting my response to.

This episode is about a woman named Mimi who leaves her cold, unappreciative husband for a man who has actual affection her and appreciates her cooking- albeit in a way that made me want to elbow him in the gut at points. I would side-eye any guy who calls any single woman who is younger than him an "onna no ko" ("girl"), and his analogy comparing Mimi to a pet was icky even though, I know, it was meant to parallel her feeling like the abandoned kittens he saved from dying. I couldn't get as irritated as I might have by Mimi having no life at all beyond cooking for, cleaning for, and having sex with her boyfriend because she had such a god-awful life before meeting him. Her boyfriend telling her that she's good at cooking is the first time anyone has told her she's good at anything, so, in a way, I can understand where she's coming from in making cooking for him her life's purpose. Kind of hard to begrudge someone starved almost to the point of dying being overjoyed at getting something to eat, you know.

In short, I can't say I liked this episode, even though it was well-executed. I did like how it combined live action footage and animation.

Otona Joshi no Anime Time's third episode is about Hatoko, an office worker approaching her fortieth birthday who has some interesting choices on her list of top ten life moments. lol She is single and spends a lot of nights with her good friend whiskey, thinking over her life's top ten. Even she recognizes that this is a sad way to spend time.

A lot of older folks, I imagine, would sympathize with Hatoko being like "Holy shit, I'm almost forty? It doesn't feel like I'm almost forty. My life really hasn't gone the way I wanted it to." I was amused by her flashback to she and her middle school best friend predicting with dead certainty what their lives would be like at twenty, thirty, forty and when they're in their twilight years. (Like I'm completely beyond doing that. >_>; )

Her life not only did not go as planned because she is single and never married, she has a job with a snotty kouhai and friends who don't listen to her when she brings up non-trivial topics.

She decides to attend her high school class reunion because her first boyfriend Yuusaku, who she dated for three weeks in middle school before he dumped her for an older girl, is attending. She counts her time dating Yuusaku as the high point of her life's top ten. (To give you a better idea of her standards for that list, her grandma's funeral is on it too.) She expects Yuusaku to be a handsome adult, and hopes sparks fly when they run into each other.

Hatoko's batshit plan aside, I liked the part of this episode taking place at her class reunion because, even only about five years out of high school, I've been surprised at finding out what has become of some old high school classmates.

Hatoko runs into Yuusaku at the reunion. Rather than go to the reunion's after party, they get drinks and go to a love hotel. She later finds out that he wasn't Yuusaku, and laughs it off. Good for her being able to laugh it off, but I don't know if I would count something like that as my top moment in life. lol Although, yeah, we've established that she has some unusual criteria for that list. She learns to cook using the insanely expensive cooking ware he scammed her into buying and enjoyed the time she spent with him in the hotel, so I guess she got something out of it.

My impression of this episode is mixed- it is one part amusingly relatable, one part stupid and one part unintentionally funny. It also has my favorite art style of the OJnAT episodes.

OJnAT's fourth episode made me want to call home and apologize for taking so much for granted. It's a heartbreaking look at Maho, a woman who works as a cashier at night to support her family after her husband loses his job. Her husband, college-aged son, and high school-aged daughter don't care about how much she's doing for them, and her elderly mother only wants her to listen to her complaints, never listening to Maho.

Maho emotionally hits rock bottom before essentially telling everyone to go fuck themselves and deciding that she will live for herself more. The make-up drawn on her from that point on is a nice touch. I like that this episode focuses on family instead of romance, for a change of pace in this series. It's a rather bleak portrait of a family, but it's an involving one and also very much worth watching as a character study of Maho.

Railgun season 2 (1 episode watched):
I feel confident saying that the people writing the Railgun anime adaptations write Railgun better than its original creator. I lost interest in the Railgun manga, but still look forward to seeing how this season plays out.

While season one of the Railgun anime followed the Level Upper arc by resolving Kiyama-sensei's quest to save the children Academy City used as guinea pigs, in the manga, she gets carted off to jail after Mikoto defeats her and we never see or hear of her again.

The second season's first episode nicely bridges the two seasons, as Mikoto, Kuroko, Saten, Uiharu, and Uiharu's roommate Harue visit Banri (one of the kids Mikoto and the others saved at the end of season 1, and best friends with Harue) in the hospital to give her a present. A criminal recovering in that hospital makes a break to escape with help from his friends, taking Harue hostage in the process. Of course, things turn out fine, with Mikoto, Kuroko, Uiharu and Saten all getting chances to be awesome. Early on, we also meet Misaki, a Queen Bee at Mikoto and Kuroko's school who uses her mind-control ability to warn Mikoto from challenging her status in their school.

In short, fun episode. It highlighted the characters who made the first season great (the Sisters Arc's biggest weakness in the manga is its dearth of Kuroko, Saten and Uiharu (well, that and Touma lol; couldn't care less about him or the Index series); here's hoping they appear at least a little more in the animated adaptation of it), and I'm looking forward to watching episode 2 this Sunday. My only complaint about Funimation's treatment of this series is their translating Kuroko's "Oneesama" as "Sissy." That one stupid translation choice isn't a deal breaker for me, but, well, it is stupid.

Like Railgun season 1, Railgun season 2 is streaming on Funimation. US and Canada.

Red Data Girl (1 episode watched):
15 year-old Izumi lives at the Tamakura shrine, where she was raised. One day, she gives herself a haircut before going to school because she wants to be different. Because her hair is tied to her powers, which influence electronic devices, her haircut affects how her abilities manifest.

Her absent father wants her to go to school in Tokyo, but she tells him that she will stay in her hometown and he has no right to make decisions for her since he's never around. Unfortunately, this is the only spirit we see from her the entire episode.

Her guardian, a man named Sagara who looks like he could be her brother even though he has a son her age, picks her up early from school. He takes her to a hospital to have her abilities tested. When he brings her home, we meet Sagara's son Miyuki, who is Izumi's destined guardian and an asshole. Going from the next episode preview, he will become Izumi's love interest. Blech.

I don't see any reason to watch more based on this episode- especially because I found so little to like about Izumi and so much to dislike about Miyuki.

Red Data Girl is streaming on Funimation. US and Canada.

Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan; 2 episodes watched):
In a Medieval Europe-like setting, Eren and his adopted sister Mikasa live in a city bordered with fifty meter walls meant to keep out the man-eating giants, called Titans, that roam outside. The walls have held out the Titans for a hundred years. Eren doesn't want to spend his entire life inside the walls, and thinks that doing so is living like livestock. He plans to join the Recon Forces that venture outside the walls to attempt to reduce the Titans' numbers and learn more about them.

The day his parents find out what he wants to do, Eren's father leaves on a trip, telling Eren he'll show him what is in their basement after returning. A sixty foot Titan then breaks down the outermost wall, Wall Maria. A lot of townspeople are either crushed by rubble or eaten. The latter fate befalls Eren and Mikasa's mother as a friend of hers forcibly carries them to safety on her request. Her legs being incapacited, she couldn't run away herself.

In episode 2, Eren, Mikasa and their friend Armin make it out of the breached territory, into the safety of the land surrounded by Wall Rose. Because the refugees put a strain on Wall Rose's food supply, the citizens of Wall Rose send the adult refugees on a doomed "campaign" to reclaim Wall Maria's territory. A few years later, Eren, Mikasa and Armin join the youths being trained to kill Titans in the event of future attacks.

I like this show (it's in my top 3 of the season, with Gargantia and Railgun), but you might loathe it. Why might you loathe it?

• The brutality of its premise. Too stupid to converse and driven to eat humans for the sake of eating humans- not for nourishment- the Titans are kind of like zombies, except that they aren't dead and can swallow you whole if they feel like it. I've taken a look at the manga, and the anime isn't as violently graphic, but there's still no shortage of blood spraying and horrific implications here. I am a horror fan and am completely fine watching something like The Walking Dead, so, although I am not a gorehound, my tolerance for that kind of thing is higher than most people's. (Although I still can't stand torture porn.)
• Araki Tetsuro, who directed Death Note, Kurozuka, Guilty Crown, and High School of the Dead, is directing this series. His vision is not subtle. As with this show's premise, I can understand some people being repelled by it. Even though there are a couple points in these first two episodes at which the direction feels overwrought to the point of being cartoonish (like when the leader of the Recon Forces snaps and rants that they haven't gained anything, for all the soldiers they've lost, after the mother of a fallen soldier asks him if her son's death helped the human cause), it mostly doesn't bother me and fits the mood the story's going for.

My biggest knock against this series is the question of how the huge walls meant to keep out the Titans were built after the Titans appeared. It would be an easy enough plot point to address- say, by making it that the walls existed before the Titans showed up and the surviving people in the area retreated behind them after things went to hell. For now, I'll stay hopeful that this plot point will be addressed satisfactorily.

Attack on Titan isn't high art, but I like it as popcorn entertainment/effective horror/a shounen series that will end, and want to see where it goes. Adding icing to the cake, Okazu reported that this series will have a yuri character named Ymir, who looks to be one of the teens training to fight the Titans.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. US, Canada, UK, and Ireland.

Sparrow's Hotel (1 episode watched):

Easily the worst-looking show this season, Sparrow's Hotel is another series composed of shorts.

Sparrow's Hotel follows the staff at a hotel. Most of the gags revolve around busty, none-too-bright, physically formidable Sayori, pictured above- Sayori fishing a hotel key out of her cleavage because she wanted to keep it warm for a (pretty startled) customer, her disappointing a customer who thought she was asking him out by being like "Do you have any plans after your stay in this hotel? Do you want to make an extended reservation?", mistaking a customer's love confession as his saying he loves the hotel, and making apple juice for a drunk customer by smashing an apple with one hand.

Hopefully next time someone adapts a 4-koma manga about grown-ups, it will be one that is good.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll didn't list their region restrictions for this show when they announced it, but said they would later. I can't find any further news from them on that.

Suisei no Gargantia (Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet; 2 episodes watched): 

Urobuchi Gen's first one cour series since Madoka Magica, Gargantia is very good so far.

Urobuchi isn't doing as much work on this series as he did on Madoka and Psycho-Pass, but he is still in charge of its series composition. For anyone not sure, being in charge of a show's series composition = being the head writer, who directly writes at least one episode and plans out the rest of the series, supervising any other writers involved to make sure they write in keeping with how s/he wants the show to come out. Urobuchi scripted the first episode of Gargantia. The person who scripted episode 2, Tanimura Daishiro, has worked on several projects- including the screenplay for Wasurenagumo, which is an unsettling gem of a short horror movie. (Utterly different from Titan's brand of horror, for those of you who don't like Titan.)

As loads of other people have noted, Gargantia is a change of pace for an Urobuchi show- lighter in tone than Madoka, F/Z, and P-P.

Gargantia's protagonist Ledo is a soldier living in the distant future, in which mankind has moved into space and created a territory called Avalon for its most privileged. The computer running the battle mech that Ledo pilots tells him he has spent enough time on duty to earn four weeks of eating, sleeping, and reproducing as he pleases in Avalon after he finishes his current tour, to which Ledo has a pretty lukewarm reaction.

When Ledo and his fellow soldiers retreat from a battle against their alien enemy, the Hideauze, a Hideauze intercepts Ledo and he gets knocked off course. Ledo's mech wakes him up months later on what turns out to be Earth, which he thought had been rendered uninhabitable long ago.

Apparently global warming happened, so the people of Earth live on floating communities. The Earth people aren't nearly as technologically advanced as Ledo and, despite the obvious technical superiority of Ledo's mech over anything they have and their old legends about how some people left Earth to go to space when the Earth underwent major changes, are skeptical when he says he comes from space.

A teenaged girl named Amy believes Ledo and befriends him, and is the only one on his side when the leaders of her community discuss what they should do about him. They only agree not to do anything to Ledo because they fear he has companions out there who might want revenge. Unlike the grown-ups, Amy's kid brother thinks Ledo sounds awesome, and her two best friends are benignly curious about him.

When pirates attack in episode 2 (for all the warmth in the Earth scenes up to this point, mostly because of Amy, this series is blunt about the fact that pirates can really fuck you up if they target you), Amy asks Ledo to use his mech to help. He agrees, figuring that it will make a good bargaining chip. He kills all of the pirates with such quick, literally laser-focused precision that the Earth folks must realize by now that trying to do anything to him would have been suicidal.

Despite Gargantia's warmth- especially for an Urobuchi show- I fear for what might happen to the Earth characters if/when Ledo's people find him because of the distress signal he sent out. ^_^;

Gargantia's first episode did a great job establishing the differences between Ledo's society (which a friend and I jokingly called "Psycho-Pass in space") and Earth's society-  it imparted a lot by showing instead of telling. (And I'll admit I laughed at Ledo's mech's over-literal translation of Amy's cursing. I like how the language difference between Ledo and the Earth characters is being handled in general- more realistically than that kind of thing normally is in entertainment.) Episode 2 further established the characters, and... well, I'm excited to see how it'll play out. It's a well-written sci-fi adventure, and its visuals are sharp to boot.

Streaming on Crunchyroll. US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Portugal.

Yuyushiki (1 episode watched):
Three best friends start high school. One of them is the sensible tsukkomi and the other two act as boke. There's some yuri-flavored humor that isn't going to lead anywhere. (Mostly the pink-haired one intentionally flustering the blonde by being like, "Let me kiss you on the cheek! Let me grab your boobs! Can you lick this ice cream off my face?") There are a lot of unfunny puns also. I don't expect anything ambitious from a show like Yuyushiki, but I don't think it's too much to expect to not be bored.

Yuyushiki is streaming on Crunchyroll. US, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Scandinavia.

Sci-fi Yuri Anime and Manga

I decided to catalogue all of the titles I could think of that scratch the itch for science fiction as well as yuri. I came up with more than I expected. Maybe I'll do a fantasy-themed list later. If you have suggestions for additional titles, feel free to chime in with them!

In anime:

Battle Athletes OVA (6 episodes):
In the distant future, the most prestigious athletic event is the annual interplanetary Cosmo Beauty competition, which determines the strongest athlete. Akari's deceased mother Tomoe became the greatest Cosmo Beauty in history, and Akari strives to win the Cosmo Beauty title for herself. Akari and her teammate Kris fall in love. They are separated at the end- because of Kris' duties as a priestess and Akari's duties as the new Cosmo Beauty- but promise to reunite.

Battle Athletes Victory (26 episodes):
A goofier, more wtf-inducing version of the OVA story. The first half takes place when Akari competes on Earth to qualify to enter the Cosmo Beauty competition. BAV also goes beyond the OVA's timeline by revealing a very...unexpected reason for why the Cosmo Beauty competition was created. Thankfully, Kris is still present. Her attraction to Akari is more overt in the TV series than in the OVA, but the attraction on Akari's side is more toned down. A comedic love triangle dynamic forms after Ichino, Akari's childhood friend, meets Kris. In the end, Ichino and Kris are still competing for Akari.
Here are my two reviews of this series.

Blue Drop (13 episodes):
Girl meets alien. Unfortunately, the alien is from a much larger (all-female) race that plans to colonize the Earth. The star-crossed lovers in this series don't get a Happily-Ever-After, but it was nice to watch them while it lasted.
My review.

Fight! Iczer-One (3 episodes):
A crappy, ultra-violent 80's OVA. If you like that sort of thing and you like yuri, you'll love Fight! Iczer One. I only watched one episode in high school. An alien race known as the Cthulu (with members who have names like Big Gold and Sir Violet) invades Earth. A female android named Iczer-1, who the Cthulu created, saves a human girl named Nagisa after the Cthulu kill her classmates and parents. I think there was some yuri (or hinted yuri) between them? I remember that two alien women were making out in the first minute or so of the OVA. According to Wikipedia, Nagisa and Iczer-1 survive and the world is reset to how it was before the Cthulu invaded, with Nagisa not remembering Iczer-1.

Kashimashi (12 episodes + 1 OVA):
In the first episode, our protagonist Hazumu gets killed by an alien spaceship and regenerated as female instead of male. Cue love triangle involving the girl who rejected Hazumu pre-spaceship crash (for the stupidest reason possible) and Hazumu's childhood friend. Two of the aliens start living with Hazumu so they can observe human behavior and provide comic relief.

Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon (one 13 episode season + another on the way):
In a futuristic recreation of Japan's Sengoku era, a high school boy named Toori rallies his friends (including a cute lesbian couple, seen above) to help him save the girl he loves from...I don't want to explain it all again.
Here are my two early impressions and my write-up on it in my Anime of Interest to Yuri Fans in 2011 list- and here's my final review.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (13 episode first season + 13 episode second season + 26 episode third season):
Starts out as a straight-up (and unfortunately, boring) magical girl fantasy, but between the cloning and the Time and Space Administration Bureau, it becomes more of a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid.  Once you get past...well, most of the first season, it really is worth watching.
Reviews here, here and here.

Mai-Otome (26 episodes + one 4 episode OVA + one 3 episode OVA):
Another title I haven't watched since high school. Mai-Otome, you are not, really, a very good series, but I had a lot of fun watching you, and you drove me to collect a million GB of slash fan art. This spin-off of Mai-Hime takes place in a future Earth, in which the military might of nations depends on women who gain super-abilities from nanomachines they choose to be implanted with. There are several yuri characters and multiple pairings.

Mouretsu Pirates (airing now):
Went a little overboard with the screencaps. ^_^; So, Marika is now captain of the the Bentenmaru. The story is still awesome and there was some nice Marika x Chiaki subtext in the most recent episode. (Still looking forward to seeing Lynn and Jenny as a canon couple later also.) If you aren't watching this series, you really should give it a shot.
Earlier impressions here and here.

Project ICE OVA (3 episodes):
Tried one terrible episode in high school. I remember the plot being something about a post-apocalyptic future in which all men have been wiped out.

Re: Cutey Honey OVA (3 episodes):
Android meets police chief in a cracktastic, Gainax-animated version of Tokyo. I love this OVA. It's my favorite part of the Cutey Honey franchise. Technically, just about every installment in the Cutey Honey franchise could go on this list, but I'll just list this OVA since it's the most yurilicious one. Here's my review of the original Cutey Honey manga, which is definitely worth reading.

Senhime Zesshou Symphogear (airing now):
Three of the four leads sing to transform into super-powered battle armor that they use to kill aliens called Noise. Two of the leads and one of the villains are confirmed yuri characters, but none of them are interested in each other. This show hasn't impressed me, but there's half a season left. We'll see what happens.
Earlier impressions here and here.

Simoun:
In the world of Simoun, everyone is born female. Some countries use surgery to allow people to become male if they choose, but in the country of Simulacrum, each person can choose their gender at a sacred spring. Simulacrum is at war with Argentum, a nation that want the technology Simulacrum uses to propel its flying vessels known as Simoun. The Simoun are piloted by priestesses called Sybillae, who can't choose a gender without being disqualified from being Sybillae. Of course, several couples form, and the lead couple is a yuri one through the end.
An excellent series.

Stellvia:
I still haven't watched this. I've hear that it's good, and have had it on my to watch list for a long time. It's a space opera with a likeable-sounding lesbian side couple. (Update: Hmm, doesn't sound like there's all that much yuri, even from that one couple. I shall adjust my expectations accordingly when I watch the series.)

The Third:
In the distant future, 80% of the Earth's population has been wiped out. A group of beings known as the Third (because of the red third eye on their forehead, which they use to communicate with each other) monitor the humans to "protect" them from using too much technology. (Any human caught using forbidden technology is killed.) Honoka is a human who was born with a blue third eye. It grants her special abilities, although not the same ones used by the Third. She travels around in a tank doing odd jobs for different people. A supporting female character has a crush on her. Thanks to P.S. for pointing this series out!

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (26 episodes + 1 OVA episode):
In Academy City, which is technologically 30 years ahead of the rest of Japan, the government develops the abilities of children and teenagers who are psychic. A series with this concept could easily be A) trite or B) creepy and Orwellian, but it's mostly a fun romp with a group of friends who solve different incidents involving rogue pychics. One of the major characters is a yuri character, who has a crush on the lead.
Here's my final review.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (two 2 episode OVAs):
In a post-apocalyptic world, as the human population dwindles down while peacefully living in the twilight of its era, an android named Alpha runs a cafe while waiting for the cafe's owner to return. In the second set of OVAs, Alpha goes on a trip to explore the world beyond what she's seen. Another android, Kokone, is in love with Alpha.
If you have the chance at all, try Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. Here's my review.

In manga:

Battle Athletes Daiundokai (4 volumes):
I haven't read the Battle Athletes manga yet, but it sounds awesome. It only covers the Cosmo Beauty competition (what the OVA covers) and pairs Akari and Kris more overtly (and focuses on them more) than either the OVA or the TV series do. As in the TV series, Akari and Kris kiss after Akari wins the Cosmo Beauty title, but Kris doesn't say that she did it because of something or other having to do with her religion. (I call BS on that explanation anyway. Almost from the moment they met, Kris was all over Akari in the TV series. I like to think that she gave that excuse to calm the flustered spectators while secretly thinking, "Oh my god oh my god, I finally did iiiiit!") As in the OVA, Akari and Kris are separated after Akari wins the Cosmo Beauty title. Unlike in the OVA, Akari reunites with Kris, and then Happily-Ever-After. (It sounds like the manga pairs Lahrri and Mylandah more overtly too.) Additionally, Akari is less of a crybaby and more competent in the manga. AUGH, I want to read this series.
Update: Teaser scans from the manga!

Blue Drop (1 volume):
While the Blue Drop anime is a prequel to the invasion of the Arume, the Blue Drop manga shows the Earth after the Arume have colonized it. The Blue Drop manga is a collection of one-shots featuring a few different couples, all but one of them yuri. The anime has the luxury of more time to develop its characters and their relationships, but the manga is ultimately happier. (Overall, I like the anime more.) The closest thing the Blue Drop manga has to a lead is Yui, a half-Arume half-human lesbian who kicks ass. (I liked Mari plenty, but wish the anime had revealed what happened to her after the invasion.) I haven't read any of the other Blue Drop one-shot collections because they're supposedly horrible.

Chirality (4 volumes):
I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't read this yet. It's one of the earliest English-language yuri manga releases. In a post-apocalyptic world in which the men have not been wiped out, a girl named Shiori and an android named Carol fall in love and save the world.

Girl's Only's "Endless Narcissus" (one-shot):
Part of a collection of one-shots that ran in Carmilla, a now-defunct lesbian magazine. "Endless Narcissus"'s lead is so...well, narcissistic, that she has a clone of herself created for sex. (She killed her former girlfriend for cheating.) The clone kills her after she sleeps with someone else. I know, wtf.

Himitsu's Shoujo's "Planet Aimer-Lis" (one-shot):
Chi-Ran's work really doesn't do it for some people, but I enjoy her yuri work. "Planet Aimer-Lis" is a cute one-shot about a girl named Yuma who meets an alien named Aimée from an all female planet called Femme. Aimée came to Terre (Earth) to find a bride (as women from Femme can only have children with women from Terre), and proposes to Yuma. Silly but fun.

Iono-sama Fanatics (two volumes):
Iono-sama doesn't have much sci-fi, but what it has at the end is noteworthy. Iono is the charismatic lesbian queen of a small country who comes to Japan to find sobame. (Sobame can mean "lady-in-waiting" or "concubine.") Iono's battle cloak counts as sci-fi, but what's really noteworthy to me (and most yuri fans) is the way two of Iono's sobame have a baby together at the end.
My review.

Kashimashi (5 volumes; 2 omnibi in print in the English release):
Same premise as the anime, but with a better ending.

Kaguyahime (27 volumes; re-printed as 14):
Before entering foster care, Akira lived in an orphanage on an island in which children were beheaded in sacrifice to Kaguyahime after turning sixteen. After Akira and some of the other orphans found out what was happening, they escaped the island. Years later, they learn that nobody who escaped the island has made it beyond their sixteenth birthday without dying violently. Akira, now fifteen, and some of the other orphans return to the island to figure out if there's anything they can do to escape that fate. Cloning plays a major role, and Akira's foster sister Mayu, who loves Akira, comes to the island as a stowaway. Pretty fascinating stuff so far.

Phryne magazine issue 1's "Salyune" (one-shot):
A cute but unremarkable one-shot about a woman who confesses her love to a woman who is on the same spaceship full of female refugees traveling from a devastated Earth to the planet they plan to settle in.

Pure Marionation (re-printed as 3 volumes; originally 2):
An android girl named Anon is allowed to attend high school. There, she falls in love with a girl named Aina. How will Aina react when Anon comes out as an android? This series starts off dull, but becomes a cute, surprisingly sincere love story by the end. I especially liked how Anon and Aina got together in the final chapter and thought it was charming that Anon's coming out is about her being an android instead of her being in love with a girl.

Rakuen le Paradis volume 3's "A Lifeform in Puberty - Vega" (one-shot):
A fun, slightly futuristic one-shot by Hayashiya Shizuru, about an alien who needs a kiss from the human girl she loves to get her full abilities back so she can fight alien monsters.

Renai Idenshii XX (1 volume so far, still running):
Another series about a post-apocalyptic world in which men have been wiped out. The twist is that the women have been divided into Adams (those who adopt a traditionally masculine role) and Eves (those who adopt a traditionally feminine role). It is forbidden for an Adam to have feelings for another Adam or for an Eve to have feelings for another Eve. Our lead, Aoi, is an Adam who falls for another Adam named Sakura. This series has some well-written characters, and I know that the point is how stupid the system that Sakura and Aoi live in is. (And by extension, how stupid patriarchy, gender discrimination and heteronormativity in general are.) But the "post-apocalyptic world composed entirely (or almost entirely) of women" scenario needs to be put to rest.
My review of volume 1.

Simoun (1 volume):
A Yuri Hime manga version of the Simoun anime (another, much worse manga version ran in Megami) that only ran long enough to promote the anime.

Stellvia (2 volumes):
It has more yuri than its anime counterpart. Thanks to A Day Without Me for letting me know about it!

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (7 volumes, still running):
Covers the same territory as the first half of the anime, then continues beyond it. I still like the anime and plan on buying it when Funimation releases it (whenever they get around to it), but have lost interest in the manga.
Reviews here, here, here, and here.

Transistor ni Venus (7 volumes):
A female spy named Enus travels the galaxy to carry out missions, having flings and relationships with different women along the way. Basically Star Trek meets James Bond, but with a yuri spin. Strangely, what I read of this series didn't do much for me. Other people have really liked it, though.
My review of volume 1.

Twinkle Saber Nova (3 volumes so far; seems to be on hiatus):
In the distant future, a cheerful, spacey girl named Hayana attends a school that lets students form any club they want. Hayana uses super-powered battle armor to fight her school's World Domination Club. A girl who fights alongside Hayana has a crush on her.
Twinkle Saber Nova is Fujieda Miyabi's least interesting series, but it isn't bad.
Here's my review of volume 1.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (re-printed as 10 volumes; originally 14):
Read this if you haven't. It's a masterpiece. The ending isn't explicitly yuri, but it is definitely yuri-friendly. As a yuri fan and a fan of good stories, I loved it. Won't spoil it, though.