Here comes my usual mid-season anime short impressions post. I'm only following four shows this season, three of them being carry-overs (FMA:B, Railgun, and Tatakau Shisho), and one new show (Vampire Bund). Let's get down to business, shall we?(And yes, this post has spoilers, as with almost every other post in this blog)Dance in the Vampire BundNeeds a little more of this.The only new show I picked up in this season, Vampire Bund has thus far proved to be decent. Outside of the bizarre first episode, the show is progressing in a somewhat typical manner. There is nothing really good about the show, but there is nothing really bad either. Animation is decent, story is tolerable, characters are alright, and the action is good but a bit scarce for my tastes. After watching the trailer three or four months ago, I was under the impression that Vampire Bund is going to turn into a blood-fest. That hasn't happened yet. I'm still waiting for the scene in the trailer where Mina lopes off the head of some unfortunate commando.Fullmetal Alchemist: BrotherhoodWatch FMA if you don't want this kid to get hurt.Just like a season ago, FMA:B continues to roll along. Over the last 13 weeks, the story moved through the Briggs arc of the manga. There were a bunch of big revelations (Selim is Pride, Sloth's debut, reverse transmutation circle and more), and there were some good action as well. Production quality is as good as always, and the story is becoming more compelling as we move towards the next arc. The only thing of slight concern is the endings of the manga and this series. The manga is near the end but could still have a few months left, and FMA:B is going through the material pretty quickly. The endings are probably coordinated though, which would give the manga maybe three or four more months which sounds reasonable.FMA:B is only going to get better from this point on, so I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming episodes.Tatakau Shisho - The Book of BantorraR.I.P. Noloty.In my last mid-season post, I commented that Tatakau Shisho was intriguing but somewhat of a mystery. Over the last 13 weeks though this show has become surprisingly good. All of the seemingly unconnected story-arcs from before have been tied-in together to form something grand and exciting. I'm really impressed with the way this show build up its story.While the story has really upgraded in terms of its scale, one thing about Tatakau Shisho still remains the same as episode one, and that is it has no reservations about killing any of the character. Volken got killed off, the old lady got killed off, even Noloty the hot mocha-colored babe got killed off (those bastards). On the other hand, the queen bitch Harmutz is still alive, and I have a feeling that she's going to live at least until the last episode. After all, Harmutz is (sort of) the protagonist.To Aru Kagaku no RailgunKuroko is not pleased about the string of fillers.The To Aru Majutsu no Index spin-off that I had such high expectations of. I have since learned to lower my expectations. J.C. Staff really should have made this show one cour (13 episodes), but instead they chose to make the show two cour (~24 episodes?). This translated into quite a few filler (or near filler) episodes over the last 13 episodes. The end of the Level Upper arc was decent; the swimsuit episode was... well, the swim episode; episode 14 wasn't bad since it was an epilogue for the Level Upper arc, but things started going downhill after that. The two Big Spider episodes were not that great, but still better than the next two side-character fillers that came after. Those two filler episodes were boring and uninspired, and they were the lowest point of the show so far. Things appear to be on the rebound though as the show moves into the major story-arc of the second half. I'm not expecting too much at this point especially since it's an anime-original arc, but I'll be happy if the arc has a few scenes of Mikoto and friends kicking ass and blowing up stuff like in the second OP. That's not too much to ask, is it?
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