The premise of these reviews is simple: watch the first episode of a series and then immediately sit down to record a review mini-podcast. The reviews are five- to ten-minutes long and entirely off the cuff. As always we only review new shows (so no sequels or continuations) and try to avoid anything that just looks outright awful. These are the next four of the new season:
Listen – Episode 1 of Rinne no Lagrange from XEBEC with the opening “TRY UNITE!” by Megumi Nakajima and is streaming on Hulu.
Listen – Episode 1 of Another from P.A. Works with the opening ”Nightmare Contagion” by ALI PROJECT and is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Listen – Episode 1 of The Daily Lives of High School Boys from Sunrise with the ending ”Ohisama” by Amesaki Annainin.
Listen – Episode 1 of Brave 10 from Studio Sakimakura with the opening “Shōryō Hirai” by Daisuke Ono and Tetsuya Kakihara and is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Reverse Thieves 
I haven’t seen or read Another yet, but what I find interesting is that most (if not all) reviews I read on it, refer to it as a horror-show, even though it’s based on a (horror)-detective novel by Ayatsuji Yukito, who is pretty much one of the Giants in Japanese detective fiction, being the poster child of the new orthodox movement and all. Wiki (of all sources) also refers to Another as a genuine detective novel. Even if it is a bit more oriented to otaku compared to Ayatsuji’s other novels.
Which makes me wonder whether the tone of the show will change to a good old fashioned mystery in a while. Orf course, there is always the chance the animation studio just got carried away with the horror-side of the story and will ignore the detectivey part of it…
Well Higurashi cuts out about 80% of the detective novel aspect of the original visual novel so there is a clear precedent for that occurring. If you play the original visual novel it is clear that Ryukishi07 is an insanely huge mystery fanatic and it permeates his work. The visual novel is set up like a horror/mystery hybrid and the extra after each chapter clearly steer the reader towards approaching the story from a detectives point of view. But the anime focuses on the horror with only a little of the original mystery pouring through.
I think the anime producers assume the j-horror crowd is going to be much more interested in watching an anime than the Japanese mystery fandom. But that is me speculating more than having any concrete proof.
– Hisui
Mwahhaaa!!! When I found out Shinji Takamatsu (Gintama, School Rumble) was directing Daily Lives, I was like, “Haha…this ain’t gonna be no Kimi To Boku.” I’m glad you both liked it :D
I don’t know yet what to make of Another but the adults in that series have to be super-evil. All the teenager’s are stiff, scared and act after the principle “This town is evil – so we hint very strongly at this but stop short of saying anything concrete because that’s the kind of thing that really helps in this situation.”. Not that it’s bad or anything but these adults really seem suspicious for not also acting like they are all sitting on a timebomb. And the main-character has to find out the dark mystery of that class – but not because he’s brave or anything. It’s just that he wouldn’t get out of town without an ambulance picking him up at some point while trying to do this. Best motivation ever, I have to say. I hope there’s a purpose to having such a sick main-character besides having a reason for him being in the hospital a lot since Mei also frequents that place. It will be interesting to see, though, how this main-character will act once he realized that something is wrong and that he should do something about it.