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Now that we’re a fair way into the Spring season, I guess I’m starting to develop a good feel for which new series are really worth watching. The first is Shin Mazinger, which is difficult to describe without throwing around some casual hyperbole. I’m sure you’ve heard it’s ‘epic’, ‘gar’, etc, but whatever, so far, every episode has been insane and exciting.

When this premièred, I read a lot of people complaining that they were confused, as if to suggest that prior knowledge of the earlier Mazinger series was required, but that’s wrong; you’re supposed to be confused, and even worse, applying logic to this is to rob it of it’s beauty. Forget about thinking, and simply feel the awesome absurdity of a man kicking the shit out of a giant robot, and screaming ‘Rocket Punch’ over and over again. It’s so epic, gar, etc.

Perhaps the polar opposite to Shin Mazinger is Cross Game. Just another sports anime, right? Wrong. The whole baseball theme has, so far, taken a back-seat to what is an involving character drama. It’s about the young people that play baseball, rather than the sport itself, and it has been engaging, and tragic, and fun. The mangka Mitsuru Adachi specialises in this genre of story, and I loved these opening episodes so much that I’ve started watching his 1985 series, Touch, too.

Then we have Eden of the East, which is basically the full package. Wonderful opening and ending sequences, top notch production values and a thrilling plot. Perhaps the only weakness is the female lead, whose archetypal ditziness feels a tad out of touch in this relatively dark and complicated story.

Eden of the East could be seen as a more realistic take on the style of Code Geass and Death Note, since all three concern young men charged with changing the world, albeit with a huge price to pay in the end. I wonder what it says about Japan today when three such hugely popular series are built around a desperate yearning to force a change in society?