Spring 2011 anime preview

Written by A. H. on 14 Mar 2011

The days are getting longer, the sun is even shining on occasion - spring must be here at last!  However, if you're an anime fan then don't expect to be seeing too much of the great outdoors despite the improving weather, as it's time for what is looking like a bumper and jam-packed spring 2011 anime preview, containing around fourty brand new series which will be hitting Japanese television screens in just a few short weeks!

With so much animated output to choose from, what should you be looking forward to?  Allow us to take you by the hand and guide you through what might be hot and what to avoid for the spring 2011 season.

30-sai no Hoken Taiiku

Right off the bat we have a rather interesting candidate for an anime adaptation - Health and Physical Education for 30 year-olds (to give its English) titles, which began its life as an educational book for 30-somethings yet to experience love, romance, sex and all that stuff.  Amazingly, the book proved to be a huge success amongst otaku in Japan - who would have thought?

Should I watch it?  Are you a thirty year-old virgin?  It's okay, you don't have to answer that question publicly, but your response to that should probably help you decide whether this is worthy of your time.  Alternatively, if you just want to watch something perverted, that works too.

A Channel

Where would the anime industry be without a supply of four-panel manga to fuel it?  Who knows, but our first "4-koma" to anime adaptation for this season is A Channel, a slice of life series revolving around the lives of four high-school girls who take in the usual range of character archetypes from ditzy girl through to "the clumsy one".

Should I watch it?  Four-panel manga always tends to be hit or miss, but with a relatively unknown studio (Gokumi) working on it and little buzz behind the source material, this is liable to be another one of those forgettable Lucky Star wannabes.

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai

One of this season's pair of noitaminA productions for Fuji Television is the rather wordy Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (let's just call it Ano Hana for short).  This original work produced by A-1 Pictures revolves around six former childhood friends who drifted apart during high school, and more specifically an attempt to reunite them by one of their number - a "shut-in" named Jintan who acts on the request of another former member of that group named Menma.

Should I watch it?  The noitaminA programming slot's mission statement is to produce work designed to attract more than just normal anime fans, so expect some deep-seated character development, drama and emotion from this series.  Coupled with A-1 Pictures normally strong production values, this could well be an impressive outing in a similar vein to this winter season's Wandering Son.

Ao no Exorcist

Another A-1 Pictures project for the spring is Ao no Exorcist, or Blue Exorcist, an adaptation of an on-going supernatural manga series already licensed by Viz Media in the US.  Blue Exorcist's world is made up of two dimensions, one consisting of humans and the other demons, and with travel between the two only possible by possessing a suitable "container" to do so.  Enter Okumura Rin, a teenage exorcist who also happens to be the son of Satan and is hell-bent on killing his father.

Should I watch it?  It's a well established manga, has a decidedly cool-sounded plot, and it looks the part from the trailers we've seen thus far.  This is certainly liable to be one of the spring's major hits, so no doubt we'll be hearing quite a lot more about it moving forward.