Brief thoughts on what I’ve seen of the new season listed roughly in descending order of interest:
Book of Bantorra (aka Armed Librarians): the art & animation are a bit lackluster, but the premise is interesting (Battlin’ Bibliophiles vs Dastardly Do-evilers!), as is the core concept of dead people’s souls entombed in “books” (which look like stone tablets). Probably the most promising of an admittedly weak season so far.
Seitokai no Ichizon: as HRose suggested, it’s a spoof on high-school harem comedies about a five-member Student Council - four cute girls and one boy hell-bent on turning them into his dating-sim-esque harem (literally - he keeps referring to dating sims for “guidance”), despite their overwhelming lack of interest in him. I thought it was surprisingly amusing, especially given that it is literally set in a single room almost the entire time; but there are a lot of in-jokes and meta-humor (starting with the opening conversation about their own anime adaptation), so if that’s not your thing it would probably fall flat.
Letter Bee: the setup is a straight-forward “lone hero escorts small child through dangerous wilderness,” but the setting is a bit more interesting than most: think of alternate-reality early 20th century Europe with steampunk & fantasy elements. The hero is a postman, the child is his delivery. I suspect I’ll lose interest once the novelty of the setting wears off, though.
Natsu no Arashi Akinai-chuu: I only watched the first couple of episodes of the first season, but it looked like a clever, funny twist on both time-travel and ghost stories. The first episode of this season was less interesting, though, since neither time travel nor ghosts played any role. Instead it was the requisite gratuitous “let’s go to the beach!” episode, to be followed by the obligatory “onsen fun time!” episode next week. Still, there were enough amusing bits to remind me I should really go back and finish the first season.
These shows I only skimmed:
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun: I don’t know how you take a premise like “super-powered teenagers - one of whom can fire coins at supersonic speeds like she’s a living railgun - patrol the city fighting criminals” and manage to make it look this good yet be so dull (apart from one kickass moment at the end)…and yet, here we are. At least I don’t dislike any of the cast as much as I disliked Touma and especially Index in the first series. More kickass fights and less jailbait yuri nonsense would probably help, but that’s probably just wishful thinking.
Nyan Koi: teenage boy accidentally defiles a cat shrine and becomes cursed - not only can he hear cats’ thoughts, but he has to help 100 cats to end the curse or he’ll turn into a cat himself. A few funny bits in the first episode - mostly having to do with how allergic he is to cats - but not sure there’s enough here to sustain a series. It’s also very disconcerting to hear Atsuko Tanaka (Kusanagi in GitS:SAC) play a cat, using pretty much exactly the same tones she used in GitS.
Sacred Blacksmith: looks pretty. Also looks pretty generic. I’ll give this one a pass unless I’m bored or hear it gets better.
Kampfer: once upon a time a show about healthy schoolgirls (and one confused boy) who transform into even healthier schoolgirls to beat the crap out of each other for no readily apparent reason - other than their potty-mouthed stuffed animals tell them to - might’ve held my attention. For better or for worse, though, that time is long past.
