First Impressions / Series Introduction / Snapshots

Ladies versus Butlers! – 01

「ぼーいｘれでぃ」 (Booi x Redi)
“Boy versus Lady”

What do you get when you put the director, character designer, studio, broadcast station, and leading seiyuu behind Kanokon together again? Ladies versus Butlers (…apparently). Here, we get an early special premiere before the series’ official start in January and it looks like Xebec and AT-X will focus a fair bit on the service side again, albeit not nearly as much as before.

Season Preview / Series Introduction

Winter 2010 Preview!

With the new year almost upon us, it’s also time to look at the new series that will be premiering this Winter season! As usual, I’ll try to watch the first episode of as many shows as I can within certain parameters (in other words, not those kiddie shows), and what I list here are the chances of me actually blogging something based on my initial impressions from promotional material. However, even if I list the chances for a show as good or guaranteed, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll stick with it for more than a few episodes unless it actually is good.

By no means does this list reflect every single anime series that is going to be aired, though I did try to be as comprehensive as I could. Check out MOON PHASE for an entire listing, syoboi’s calendar for specific airtimes, and Fansub Wiki’s Fall 2009 page for who’s tentatively subbing what.

Technical Note: All times are given in a 24-hour, relative-day format where times are extended to show which day they belong to. For instance, Friday morning at 1:30AM would become Thursday at 25:30 to show that the episode aired late Thursday night.

Dance In The Vampire Bund
http://www.vampirebund.com/
Premieres on January 7th, 2010
Airtime in Japan (JST, GMT+9): Thursdays at 09:00
Airtime in U.S. (EST, GMT-5): Wednesdays at 19:00
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi
The first of SHAFT‘s two Winter series, and arguably the series I’m most excited about out of this entire list, is Dance In The Vampire Bund. It’s about the princess of all vampires and her bodyguard as they establish a new kingdom in Japan and all the challenges and dangers they run into with humans and with other vampires. The main girl is a bit like Nagi from Hayate, but instead of a comedy, this is a dark and much more mature series with a dose of politics and plenty of backstabbing. I could barely put down the manga because it was such a fun and interesting read, and hopefully SHAFT will do a good job with it.
Odds I’ll Blog This: Guaranteed
Katanagatari
http://www.katanagatari.com/
Premieres on January 25th, 2010
Airtime in Japan (JST, GMT+9): Mondays at 25:10
Airtime in U.S. (EST, GMT-5): Mondays at 11:10
Information Links: ANN Encyclopedia, AnimeNfo, AniDB, MyAnimeList, syoboi
From the author of Bakemonogatari comes a story about a guy who is the head of a sword style family that doesn’t use swords. He and his sister live on a remote island until a woman arrives asking for his help gathering 12 swords made by a legendary swordsmith. The original light novels were written one a month for twelve months, and in that same vein, the anime will have one episode a month for twelve months. The anime adaptation, however, is not being produced by SHAFT and is instead being done by WHITE FOX. That shouldn’t be a bad thing since they did some pretty nice work with the anime adaptation of Tears to Tiara, and the promo videos also show off the music that composer Iwasaki Taku (who also did Gurren Lagann and Soul Eater music) has contributed. All of that means that there should be a lot to look forward to with this series over the next year.
Odds I’ll Blog This: Good

Note: This is a rather long and fairly comprehensive list of January shows. Much much more after the jump, including a bunch of promo videos.