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From Chara-Mel volume 4. Now that's more like it.

Chara-Mel, as a magazine, is fairly sucktastic. It's mostly coverage of the most pathetically crappy and generic bishoujo games and anime that you could possibly imagine. BUT for some reason they keep getting Kosuke Fujishima to draw some of the most awesome female characters EVER for the featured illustration of each issue: in the past we've had Saber, Shana, Yoko, and now Horo. And Horo is pretty awesome.

There's such a contrast between the strong, interesting women characters that Fujishima draws on the covers, versus the actual contents of each issue of Chara-Mel, that it's not even funny.

PS - If you can't see the images displayed or linked here, try viewing this post from nenena.livejournal.com instead of from your flist. Sorry, but I've got the anti-hotlinking thing going here.

I was looking back at my anime year in review post, and I realized that most of the shows that I recced (and ALL of the shows that I uber-recced) were from the spring 2007 season. There was almost nothing that really pushed my buttons in a good way from the fall 2006 season. I mean, I enjoyed Hataraki Man, Red Garden, and Kanon (the latter despite the I-knew-it-was-coming-but-still-hated-it ending), and I enjoyed Code Geass for all the wrong reasons, but... The fall season definitely didn't IMHO produce any truly great series like Seirei no Moribito, To Terra, or Romeo x Juliet. Looking back, I definitely felt like the fall 2006 season was a mushy pile of generic harem shows stacked on top of generic harem shows, but the spring 2007 season felt like a breath of fresh air to me. I mean: Juliet, Seto San, Balsa, Swena, Clare, Nadie, Nia, and Yoko were all on TV at the same time, and how awesome was that?! I felt like anime was finally moving beyond the moe moe moe moe moe moe endless trend of generic moe moe moe moe generic shows. Which isn't to say that moe shows stopped altogether - there was plenty of moe in the spring 2007 season - but that we finally got a variety of shows other than just endless episodes of moe moe and more moe.

And now, what does the fall 2007 anime schedule look like?

Yup. We're back to square one. It's almost nothing but generic harem comedies, and endless amounts of moe moe moe moe.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm annoyed that other than Shakugan no Shana (which YES contains moe but at least it has a PLOT and awesome female characters) and You're Under Arrest, there's almost nothing good on TV for me to veg in front of this season. Or at least, nothing "good" for me, as I have very little interest in harem comedies or moe.

On the other hand, American television is currently exploding with awesome (Avatar, The Boondocks, American Dad, South Park, The Simpsons, and Robot Chicken), so that at least makes up for the dearth of good animated television on this side of the Pacific.

Here's hoping that the spring 2008 anime season will bring back the bucketloads of win and awesome that the spring 2007 season provided. Isn't Haruhi Season 2 supposed to air in spring 2008?