More opinions. Yay.

Sora no Otashimono
I take back everything bad I said about other shows this season. This is the worst one.
A high school boy longs for a quiet life. He has a childhood friend who wakes him up in the morning (getting a full view of his, ahem, “morning glory”), a student council president who’s a bit odd, and a society president who is very odd and always carries around a magical girl doll. (The doll itself is not magical. Yet.)
Then, a massive black sphere appears above the Earth, orbits for a while, and drops an angel robot with massive tits on him.
This angel robot then imprints him as her master, a chain materialises around her neck going to his hand, and she proceeds to offer to fulfil his every wish.
Which she does.
He gets a billion dollars, goes invisible to grope his childhood friend’s breasts, stops time and runs around the town naked, eats a feast, and orders her to strip almost as a joke. Then we discover she cannot refuse orders once given them. He then proceeds to accidentally order world domination, which the angel achieves by erasing every other human being from the planet. Uh Oh.
But it’s ok, because her powers are so ridiculous that when he says “I wish this was all just a dream”, she does just that.
You may have noticed a few sexual references so far in this review. If so, good, because that’s essentially the series. Guy gets a genie with tits, uses powers to get tits. Tits tits tits. If this sounds like your kind of thing, who am I to judge, but I will not be watching any more, and would personally like a refund on the brain cells I lost while watching this show.

Miracle Train
Anthropomorphisations seem to be the in thing at the moment, and this anime (probably sponsored by Japan Rail) has leapt on the bandwagon. As the explanation goes, on the Oedo line of the Tokyo Subway, there is a miracle train that appears only to young women who are worried about something. On that train, incarnations of various stations along the line come to life as men in butler outfits and a young girl (although I’m not ruling out her being a young boy in a skirt), and in one case a dog.
Watch out for that lad named Shinjuku, he’s a bit of an egotist.
So, a show where nothing really happens, about train full of butlers helping young ladies with their problems, randomly interspersed with facts about the Oedo line. These bits are the best bits, as they just pop up on screen saying things like “The Oedo line was opened in 2000” when someone is talking about why it’s so twisty.
I’m not going to pick it up, but I can see why some people would. *coughyaoibaitcough*.

Kobato
After all that, finally something good. Being a bit of a CLAMP fanboy, I may be a little biased, but if you too enjoy their works, this will probably appeal.
Kobato is an otherworldly being (possibly some kind of angel in training) who has come to Earth to fill a bottle with the suffering of humans. This seems to be a good thing, so I assume she’s taking the suffering away for their good rather than to power some kind of infernal machine. Having said that, her firebreathing, spiked collar wearing dog plushie doesn’t really seem to fit the angelic mould.
There’s also some kind of angry young man who is secretly kindhearted but also tall and dark, in the way CLAMP tend to make attractive male leads. Except he has a ponytail, which is new.
Wild speculation aside, it’s cute. And fluffy. And the animation is of a decent standard.
So basically, if you liked the other fluffy things CLAMP have done, such as Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura, or a lot of their shorter mangas, check this out.

We're only a couple of days into the new season, and already a few things have been released. So here are my opinions. Yay.

Kampfer
Oh god, where to begin. A male high school student turns into a magical girl to fight battles against other magical girls for as yet unexplained reasons. The magical girls all have some kind of disembowelled talking plushie as a sidekick/exposition fairy, and their powers come in one of three types. Swords, guns, or magic.
Other characters introduced so far include a shy librarian girl who becomes very outspoken and violent when she transforms, and the main character's childhood friend/crush, who fancies his girl self. Also the school they all go to is stictly separated into a girl's side and a boy's side, and they aren't allowed to go to each other's side, except librarians, who have passes? Also the library itself seems to be available to all students. I'm not entirely sure about how it all works, apart from making some contrivance so that the main character has to be on different sides when he transforms.
The show seems to be going the almost fanservice route, but it isn't quite doing it. It also has utterly bizarre jokes shoehorned in about the voice actors and even a Gundam reference.
I'll be giving this one a miss.

Armed Librarians: Book of Bantorra
This one is pretty confusing, but looks like it could be mediocre. Set in a world where people's souls fossilize into stone tablet books, and there are librarians with magic powers fighting against some kind of evil organisation that can turn people into walking bombs. Um, that's about it so far, except one of the bomb-people is so blatantly a main character that it hurts.
I'll check out a couple more episodes before deciding whether to drop it.

Nyan Koi
A guy is allergic to cats. He accidentally angers a cat god. He is cursed to hear cats and grant 100 wishes before turning into a cat and apparently suffocating from his own allergies. Which doesn't quite seem to make sense, but hey, curses.
Mostly a comedy, although more lighthearted fantasy than out and out jokes.
This fairly promising as something easy to watch, but I'm not sure how much effort I'll really put into keeping up with it.

Seitokai no Ichizon/Student Council's Judgement
This is terrible. It's like a bizarre mix of Lucky Star and Excel Saga, and it just doesn't work. It's a very self-aware comedy aimed at relatively hardcore anime fans (where relatively hardcore seems to be "has watched Lucky Star, Haruhi and Dragonball"). But it's just bad. Avoid this one.

Seiken no Blacksmith/The Sacred Blacksmith
This one's a little odd. A fairly generic fantasy about a blacksmith with super-blacksmithing powers, and a girl who wants to be a knight. The odd part comes from the girl, who feels as though she's stepped out of a different anime. I know main characters are supposed to stand out from the background, but she just felt really out of place. Also this show is a massive proponent of "katanas are better", even though it's set in an approximation of medieval Europe.
Gloriously mediocre in its execution, I'll probably stick with it as long as it maintains a plot and doesn't dissolve into some kind of ridiculous harem antics.

Tegami Bachi/Letter Bee
The most promising thing this season so far, it's about postmen in some kind of post apocalyptic world. Maybe. The world itself hasn't really been explained yet, but it features relatively small cities separated by wasteland that's dangerous to travel due to GIANT ARMOURED BUGS. Bugs which can only be killed by SOUL BULLETS. Soul Bullets powered by MAGICAL AMBER.
Anyway, combat postman has to deliver a young boy (with a stamp on his arm) to the capital city. Young boy may or may not have mysterious powers, and his mother was taken away by the government. Postman also is trying to become head postman so he can try and find a cure for his sister's legs. And there's CGI white blobs all over the screen when people are outside. I'm not sure what that's supposed to be, but it can get irritating at times.
Possibly an interesting show, although it seems to be lacking that spark that makes a show great as aopposed to just watchable.

I know, I know, you'd think this was a community about anime or something.

Anyway, it's new season time again, and I have to say, despite my low expectations looking through lists of what was starting, I've been pleasantly surprised by what's been thrown up.

( Oh God, Ben's talking too much about anime again )

And before you ask, yes, I did type most of this up at work.

You asked for fiction: mwhaha... These all link to LJ or fanfiction.net or fictionpress.comer yeah, i've been meaning to do this for a while sooo...

So anyway, time for Ben's halfway through the season round-up. This might be quite long, so I've learnt to do an LJ cut.

( Look at me, ma, I'm LJ-cutting! )

And there's at least two others I've forgotten about right now but want to sleep first. I'll edit them in later.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Anime Soc LJ Comm, a place for all you Anime Soc people, members or potential members or old members, members of all kinds *cough* to post about whatever you want!

I'm totally going to be encouraging you artsy, writingy types to post your stuff here - go go go!

Well, I don't know how popular an idea this will be, hopefully it will get used... If nothing else, you can now get weekly reminders of events on your friends' page! Cool or what?! Don't answer that.

Charlie xx