Chihayafuru

One of this season's new anime is Chihayafuru. It's that rare beast the gender-neutral sports anime.

This one has been compared to Hikaru no Go, and there are indeed a few similarities. The plot is only loosely similar in that they are both sports anime. The real point of likeness is the suspense. Chihayafuru is about a poetry card matching game. On the face of it, nothing should be less likely to be thrilling and heart-pounding. Like HnG, however, it really kind of is. The story gets inside the players' heads and engages you in their reasons for playing and wanting to advance, the struggle to form a club and a full team, the way the game catches everyone differently.

The most intimate focus is on Chihaya, our heroine, Arata, our angsty hero, and Taichi, our ambivalent hero. Their relationships provide a lot of the dynamic tension, and the series succeeds wonderfully in showing that all three of them are human. They each have great strengths and equal weaknesses. Chihaya has natural ability in the game but also a tendency to obsess and pretty striking emotional immaturity. Arata is a genius, and deeply conflicted over the game that he once lived for and now feels he shouldn't have. Taichi is bright, popular, and desperately messed up by a fear of only being second best. All of them are, in turn, deeply exasperating and amazingly sweet, and only together do they seem to have any stability.

(They are just begging to be a threesome, especially as the romantic thread intensifies.)

This one is very worth watching, especially if you've been craving a good sports series. It opens with our focal characters' entry into high school, and almost immediately flashes back to how the trio met and played years ago. That section may feel like it's moving slowly, but it sets up the return to the present beautifully.

And on the basic eye-candy side, the art of this one is really lovely.

Star Driver

Crunchyroll loves me. They have acquired the anime Star Driver, and it's coming out weekly.

This one is almost as good as the commando maids in sensible footgear.

The genre is magical mecha. There are no pretentions to genuine technology, just a few trappings of it. All the time is lavished on the interpersonal suspense between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, usefully heightened by the fact that quite a few of the Bad Guys are in it for complicated reasons of their own and might, in fact, be considered Good Guys of a sort.

That makes it sound thoughtful. It isn't. It's silly and melodramatic and adorable. But it does have some interesting characterization to keep your brain a little bit busy.

The series does suffer from Feminine Clothing Impairment, alas, but in exchange the guys wear things every bit as silly. Indeed, the very silliest are the mecha themselves. The strongest of them are Renaissance fashion mecha, complete with poofy shoulders and poofy hips and high heels. This on the boys, mind you. There are plasma plumes on top and codpieces. Okay, not actual codpieces, but there's architecture that sure serves the same fashion purpose. And the transformation sequence for Our Hero is the swishiest thing you have ever seen. Be sure you're not drinking anything when you watch the first ep, because the first transformation is pretty much a guaranteed spit-take.

Amazingly, given this, the show manages to pretty much entirely avoid my dorkitude squick. Our Hero is a throughgoing sweetheart, and sufficiently self-aware and effective that his silly moments are cute. His love interest is determined and responsible, sometimes too much for her own good. His friend/rival/love-interest's-fiance/other-love-interest is polite and kind when he's not losing his shit because of his phenomenal cosmic power. The three of them struggle kind of adorably to remain a threesome instead of a couple and a spare, in any of the possible configurations.

(It's a canonical threesome! People spend time talking about how important it is that they remain a group of three! Crunchyroll loves me.)

Best of all, the women (despite clothing impairment) actually fight meaningfully. They have their own mecha, which are not about healing or support or any of that; no, they're about kicking ass, which they do both as well and as poorly as the men. The cast features a lot of strong talent (including Ishida Akira to voice Our Villain), and while most of the artwork is not especially nuanced the facial expressions in particular are wonderfully done.

I definitely recommend this one, especially if you need a pick-me-up.