Naruto was for a long time my favourite shounen anime. More than just a faithful translation of it's source manga, the show proved it's worth with excellent production values and beautiful animation. The highlight of the series was surely the climatic episode 133, where master animator Norio Matsumoto showed off his skills in a virtuoso fight sequence that is already considered by animation connoisseurs to be one of the greatest fight scenes in a shounen anime, ever. Sadly, the series dove from that high point into filler hell, where it's remained for the past year! I'll start watching Naruto again as soon as it resumes the manga storyline, but not an episode before.
Bleach started out pretty strong when it debuted in 2004, with an interesting premise, engaging characters and a nice mix of action and humour. However, the series suddenly switched gears in it's 2nd major storyline, which introduced a massive cast of superfluous supporting characters (beloved by fans because of their admittedly gorgeous character designs) and a plodding, overly-complex plotline designed to impress those who mistake complexity for depth. I stopped watching it after the 60th or so episode as it'd just become another example of everything I hate about mainstream anime.
Yakitate!! Japan, on the other hand, is an example of a great show that, despite hewing very closely to the standard shounen anime formula, managed to consistently be wonderfully entertaining. I took a break from watching it early this year as my sister, who I watched every episode with, went off on an overseas trip. She's back, but we haven't gotten around to catching up with the show just yet I was pretty surprised to find out recently that the series ended with it's 69th episode! I'm kind of disappointed- wacky, unique and fluffy-fun series like Yakitate!! Japan don't come around very often (or rather, they do but they're frequently not that good).
Eureka 7, which launched in 2005, was a surprisingly heartfelt show about growing up, young love, freedom, responsibility and giant surfboard-riding mecha. A weird combination, to say the least, but somehow the series (directed by Tomoki Kyoda of RahXephon fame) managed to make it work. I'd fallen way behind on my viewing and sure enough, the show seems to have ended! By all accounts, it was pretty good til the end. I can't wait to see what I've missed.
Noein is probably the most interesting new shounen anime I've seen this year. The first episode is all I've seen so far, but what I saw was really gorgeous! The animation was delicious, with loose, sketchy drawings (that probably made loads of regular anime fans recoil in horror) and beautiful movements. The fight scenes are truly a marvel. Disappointly, the second episode seemed to revert to a "normal" anime look, with detailed characters that lacked the free-flowing sense of movement that they had in the first, but Ben Ettinger (who has a keen eye for good animation and runs the very cool Anipages Daily blog) mentioned really great work done by the animators on later episodes so I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of this series (which ended earlier this year).
I was really looking forward to Blood+ as I thought the movie it's based on was an excellent mood piece and relished the idea of it being fleshed out. However, the best part of the series turned out to be it's first ten minutes- a stylish extended introduction animated in a similar style to the original Blood movie. The rest of the show, which took the safe route with typical-looking character designs and animation, just alienated me. The storyline of the show turned out to be just as prosaic as it's look and by the 5th or 6th episode, I'd lost all interest.
If you're an anime fan, you'll have noticed that none of the above are anime from 2006! Disappointingly, none of the shounen anime released this year have been very good.
A friend of mine recommended Air Gear, citing it's similarity to SEGA's thoroughly hip Dreamcast classic Jet Set Radio (aka Jet Grind Radio). Unfortunately, the show tries it's darndest to ape JSR but fails completely. The music sucks, the animation is totally boring and the storyline and characters just grate (to my horror, there's even a loli character). BORING. 'Nuff sed.
I do have a couple shows on my to-watch list that might be cool:
XXXHOLic & Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle- I really liked the first volume of CLAMP's XXXHOLic manga and it's sister manga, Tsubasa Chronicle sounds pretty interesting too, so I figure I'll check both anime adaptations out.
Tokyo Tribe 2- Santa Inoue's manga Tokyo Tribe 2 (released in English as Tokyo Tribes by Tokyopop) has fast become one of my favourite manga with it's epic story about warring street tribes on the streets of an alternate Tokyo- one that's rife with crime and corruption. Santa takes his cue from the great Hollywood gangster movies by centering the story around two characters- Kai and Mera, ex-best friends, now members of rival gangs and embroiled in what's about to become the biggest gang war to ever go down in Tokyo. The anime is being produced by the always reliable Madhouse Studios and will be directed by Tatsuo Sato, who made the surreal and experimental Cat Soup, amongst other things. Pretty exciting!
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