[Anime Survivor 2] Final: Binbôgami Ga! vs. Humanity Has Declined

It is the spectacle, the enamoring uncertainty, which lurks in Survivor that has made it last for such a long time. All of the competitors are so unknown that first glances do no good at predicting a winner. The weak may be able to outsmart the strong, the strong may be able to out-muscle the weak, and those in the middle may end up victorious due to both eating each other in the process.

That apparently isn't the case with Anime Survivor. If anything, this was more a Lord of the Flies approach to survival, the weak constantly getting picked off each week, while the strong survived due to momentum (the strength of previous episodes) or genetics (how well the staff had performed in other shows). Those shows that had a bad premise didn't stand a chance at making it to the final round, while those with weak plot lines were exposed in the middle of a feeble season.

Really, Anime Survivor was a miserable idea I came up with. Better than BTOOOM!, perhaps, but certainly worse than Battle Royale.

And that leaves us two shows that many predicted would have legs this past summer. It was all between Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Binbôgami Ga!, and Humanity Has Declined (Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, or hashtagged as #Jintai) from the starting gate, and while shows like Kokoro Connect and Moyashimon Returns pulled hammies halfway through the race, these three showed staying power. That is, until Natsuyuki Rendezvous displayed one of the weaker dramatic endings and collapsed yards from the finish line.

So which show—Binbôgami Ga! or Humanity Has Declined—wins in this photo finish in the last ever failed Anime Survivor experiment? Well, let's just say that the cameras weren't required for the end.

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Top 25 Ending Themes for Summer 2012

To tell the truth, part of me didn't want to do these rankings. I honestly never made it as far as the ending theme in some shows (Dakara Boku wa H ga Dekinai, Ebiten), so it's required some forced research. That may be why some shows fell through the cracks this season, but in all honesty I'm rating the OPs higher than the EDs this summer. There was just part of me that appreciated the beginning of some shows instead of their ending.

What did I see a lot of? Scrolling. Miles and miles of top-to-bottom scrolling that probably didn't need to be done. Hey, I suppose it beats "running shots" by a mile, but at least five shows tried that pan.

What didn't I see a lot of? Good endings. Apart from the Top 5, a good season may have left a lot of these endings off the chart. I suppose the producers were as sleepy as we all were this summer.

So let's get on with it already. Here are your Top 25 EDs of Summer 2012. Cuddle up to them and get some good Z's.

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Top 25 Opening Themes of Summer 2012

This summer desperately needed good music.

You could have put an anime to just about any song (as the above video has so eloquently showed us), and I would have considered it rankable before I considered it rank. Mind you, that doesn't mean it's time to see a K-On! "Gangnam Style" parody at the next convention's anime music video contest, but at least there was something good to watch for a few minutes before I turned the streaming service off.

So I present to you this season's Top 25 opening themes. It took a while to weed through so much. Perhaps I should have kept things short, since it was pretty hard to settle on one, but I think I've made the right call.

And not one horse trot in any of 'em.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 3rd Place - Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Let's make this short and sweet before the shine is gone, folks. I'm going to hate myself for this review miles more than you might.

I had convinced myself that we had a sure thoroughbred this season once we saw what the moe train wrecks had wrought. No matter how many times Tori got punched in the crotch, no matter how many lingerie shots Campione! gave us, no matter how many ping-pong balls got eaten by Chinatsu's hair in Yuru Yuri...we were doomed to have a long, hot season of anime that we would forget once the first episode of Robotic;Notes was screened.

I'm just stunned that noitaminA would royally let us down. The wide-open net was there. All they had to do was nudge the ball through, but Moyashimon Returns shanked the kick, missed completely with its complete change of character profiles and drab storylines from the first season. The second show clanged their shot off the crossbar in the 90th minute. (Pardon the soccer metaphor—finally saw the US National Team win!)

Considering the severe letdown, I really shouldn't devote much time to this review. Third place in Summer 2012's Anime Survivor is Natsuyuki Rendezvous.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 4th Place - Kokoro Connect (Blogger Random)

Yes, "Freaky Friday" was called "Fortune Cookie" in Japan.

We've seen this formula before, back when Lindsey Lohan wasn't a druggie and both Judge Nelson and Fred Savage were still inexplicably popular. The whole "body switch" thing. I mean, it's not so foreign a concept, and manga such as Your & My Secret already beat other shows to the punch. Hell, even off-the-wall comedies such as Excel Saga and Binbôgami Ga! gave it a shot.

But if the human body can be treated like a vehicle, why stop at just changing drivers? Why not see what happens if someone resets all the radio stations or puts diesel in an unleaded-only tank?

That's the concept behind the 4th Place...

Excuse me.

Hello to all of you people reading this blog. I hope you don't mind, but I've decided to involve myself. You all know me as "Heartseed", the real star of Kokoro Connect.

I noticed recently that the person who writes this electronic mumbo-jumbo doesn't have all that much to provide for fandom. His biases against harem shows are crimes against humanity at times, and he's grumpier than Clint Eastwood at an Ikea. He thought that Nobuna Oda show was worse than that show with the chrome-plated chests, and this was after he teased us with a review of Kids on the Slope that never actually manifested itself.

So I have decided to intrude and make things more interesting. From now on, this blog will switch with another blog randomly. No matter who the reviewer is, they must review the show without skipping a beat.

And that brings us to the show that comes in 4th Place in this season's Anime Survivor, Kokoro Connect. Let's see who shows up to review...

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Selling the Sizzle: The Summer Anime Season in Logos

Call me a sucker for commercialism, but a well-crafted logo sometimes is enough to draw me into purchasing a mindless product. You could throw all the testimonials and infomercials at my proverbial wall and hope that something sticks, but more often than not, the five-year-old in me will opt for the colorful mascots and neon signs. I'm the type who can't really enjoy the wooden nature of Wheel of Fortune or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, but Press Your Luck is a different animal altogether.

I found myself applying this to Summer 2012's selection of anime. Amongst those that qualify as "mindless drivel", I found myself disliking three shows to the point of not bothering to care how they end (Campione!, Love and Election and Chocolate, Ebiten). All are chock-full of mindless plot lines and unnecessary sexual escapades, but I found myself ranking them in a manner that correlated to how bad their logo was.

Love and Election and Chocolate (Koi to Senkyo to Chokoreeto) wasn't as bad as the first episode suggested, but it was still bad. Like its logo, a melted and messy confection, the show was good in construction, but bad in organization. Perhaps it was too complex for such a simple design?

Campione!, like its own logo, was incredibly difficult to view. If there is symbolism surrounding its "Pick-Up-Stix" design, I certainly can't see it. I mean, considering the show started in Italy, I haven't the foggiest idea why the exclamation point is stuck with a rose bloom. It's like the staff assumed France and Italy were the same country.

This brings us to Ebiten, a show so horribly disfigured by multiple personalities that it can't decide on an anime logo. I'd show you what they look like, but I don't want to be reminded that there's a train wreck like Ebiten out there. I'd be doing a disservice if I even showed the logos to people. (Out of mind, out of sight.) The manga's logo is relatively better, but a logo written solely in Sans Serif would look better.

So that got us thinking—which anime shows from this season have the best logos?

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[Anime Survivor 2] 6th Place - Moyashimon: Reloaded

For the longest time, I had hoped that noitaminA would target the right shows for a sequel. So far, the only sequels have been Honey & Clover (back in 2007, before the first streaming anime shows were screened) and a few follow-ups to Nodame Cantabile. Since 2010, we have had a few two-cours shows, but one of them was Guilty Crown, and I'm pretty sure most of fandom isn't hammering down doors to get that one green-lighted for a return.

There could be many arguments that some don't deserve sequels (No.6, Hataraki Man) and that others would have continuity ruined by a second season (AnoHana, House of Five Leaves), but many could say that shows like Princess Jellyfish, Shiki, Eden of the East, and Fractale Tatami Galaxy are ripe and ready for one. You could say they are practically fermenting in potential.

How appropriate that I mention fermenting. It's just too bad this show wasn't left in the vat for a little longer. Sixth Place in Summer 2012's Anime Survivor is Moyashimon Returns, a noitaminA show that didn't deserve a half-hearted attempt at a sequel.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 7th Place: Tari Tari

I will be one of the few that will admit the luster wore off Hanasaku Iroha after the first season.

P.A. Works did a wondrous job animating the series, and it felt great to see an anime focus on something closer to the heart of Japanese culture and the whims of society. I think a lot of people take the small tourist-based businesses of Japan for granted when they watch them in an animated form, so it felt good to get a sense of realism surrounding the onsen inns of Japan.

However, that sense of realism seemed to eat at my core like a grater to my inner daikon. As time went on, I found myself disliking the false disconnect between the "realism" of an animated show and my own. I couldn't find myself accepting the characters as real people, and some of their personalities got under my skin. If anything, I found myself appreciating the stern leadership from Sui, the inn's matriarch, more than the bubbly effervescence of the shiny-skinned youths working at the inn.

When I learned that P.A. Works was going to release a show that had that same sort of feel and animation, I wondered if I'd be able to stand the characters, now that a connection was made to Hanasaku Iroha. I suppose that's a reason why 7th Place for this season's Anime Survivor goes to Tari Tari.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 8th Place: Total Eclipse (a.k.a. What Hath Shirow Wrought?)

One of the first titles that rooted me in anime and manga (and eventually reviewing) was Masamune Shirow's Appleseed for two very different reasons.

When I bought the compiled manga volumes from Dark Horse Comics, I wasn't exactly sure what kind of manga I liked. I was partial to Rumiko Takahashi's works, but mecha hadn't thrilled me that much. Voltron had caught me as a kid, but I never got into Macross and Gundam (as much of a sin that might be to some). Bubblegum Crisis didn't catch me right away, as it was still an expensive get. When I opened the pages to Appleseed, I finally got the picture. Machinery was cool, especially if there was an underlying point to all of this technology. The translation was complex, and the conversation was foreign enough for me to get lost in the electric traffic jam that Olympus brought with it.

Of course, then I saw the digital wreckage that the OAV series spawned. Limp animation was coupled with ham actors, and all of the philosophy and mechanical jargon were stripped to leave the beat-up heart of a jalopy. It was then that I discovered the power of a good mecha show—a good distribution of detailed technology, deep thoughts, and even a svelte body sliding into the mechanical shell was what made a good mecha show to me.

Well, it looks like we found a show that left just that last part. 8th Place goes to Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse.

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[Anime Survivor 2] Nobuna Oda (a.k.a. Desperately Seeking Shôgun)

From now on, we're through with the whole "survival" angle.

Really, this season feels like "survival" applies more to the viewers than the actual shows themselves. Shows like Dakara Boku wa H ga Dekinai will be there when the season ends, but our resolve to endure all the harem shows absent from Spring 2012 won't be there. Many have already tapped out from the Boston Crab that the second season of Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere slapped on us. Those who have survived that wringer just for the sake of a happy ending in Natsuyuki Rendezvous will have to gut this one out.

That being said, it's going to be much more difficult this time around to get to the cream of this crop, but one thing still applies—a show that involves a gender-swapped ruler of Japan from the past can never be seen as a truly noteworthy accomplishment.

Ninth place in Summer 2012's Anime Survivor is The Ambition of Nobuna Oda.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 10th Place: Arcana Famiglia

Now that our second Anime Survivor is underway (the first having contributed heavily to a desire to eat whitefish and a staggering fear of owls), I can honestly say that I have no idea what show will wear the heavy crown this time around. There are a handful that may make it to the finals, but I can't guess which would make it to the top. Perhaps this is a sign that I randomly chose all the good anime shows (or all the bad ones) for this contest.

In analyzing the other shows at their face value, I'd say that we're in for crazy weather. It seems that the bountiful harvest from spring (Kids on the Slope, Tsuritama, Fujiko Mine, and the close of Fate/Zero) has dried up into a dustbowl of barren choices. Again, I blame the lack of relief on the immense gains usually left for the equinoxes—Summer and Winter just aren't for fans.

That being said, I'm going to try to remain optimistic. There is still a chance we found some roses growing among the thorns. That's not to say that it's impossible to pluck the stinkweed from the bouquet. And La storia della Arcana Famiglia is a story in desperate need of some Prada perfume.

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Summer 2012's Anime Survivor (Live From Otakon!*)

Hello from Otakon 2012! AniMaybe is having a great time in Baltimore! We're partying with cosplayers and attending all the big panels and industry announcements and glowstick-glowstick-glowstick dacing at raves and

Yeah, yeah. That's all one big fat lie.

Hardy har, Geoff. Joke's on you. Everyone and their tsundere sister is having more fun without you at Otakon, while you're stuck back home with your work and lack of a decent personal budget.

Fine. You know what? I am totally prepared to have fun without you guys. Screw y'all and your collective Haruhi dances. I'm going to have just as good a time partying with Crunchyroll and Funimation during...

Summer 2012's Anime Survivor!

(Oh. That's right. Everyone's at Otakon, so the announcement loses its punch.)

No matter! I'm going to run my own panel from the solitude of my apartment called "Geoff Tebbetts Actually Liked Hand Maid May: My Year With A Tsutaya Records Rental Card"! Just go ahead and party with the bigwigs from ANN! I'll be fine by myself!

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