THAT Anime Blog has a roundup of most of the upcoming season. It makes an interesting comparison with this prediction I recently received via E-Mail.

As your brains may grudgingly recall, this time last year I predicted some of the anime trends we'd be seeing soon. For those of you whom
time has been a balm to soothe the mind, let me rub raw some
old wounds: remember Hobos, Hairdressers, Veterinarians, and Mushrooms.

I confidently measure my predictive powers against the track records of
such luminous benchmarks as Nostradamus, any economist (other than Adam
Smith), and the Christian Bible. As we venture forward further, the
producers of Japanese manga and anime have begun to make their intentions
known. I predict 2010 shall be the year of:

1) Demolition Derbys (a.k.a Banger Racing in Europe)
2) Reptiles/Dinosaurs (listed separately because there are too many people
on this list who know the difference).
3) Gardening
4) Belgians

As usual, at first the new elements will be introduced into fairly safe
territory:

Thumb Green : A heartfelt series about an orphan, Tanazaki, who is adopted
into a family of estate gardeners. Mom works in topiaries and Dad prefers
tea roses, but the adopted son follows in bonsai-enthusiast grandfather's
steps. When the last Japanese heir to the estate dies and the manor falls
to the young Belgian heiress, can Tanazaki learn to forgive her shameful
secret and teach her to live in harmony with the back lawn? And will
Tanazaki's new sister, who may feel more than sisterly-affection for
Tanazaki, ever perfect her compost pile? Look for the hidden symbolism of
the koi pond as it reflects the state of romance between the heiress, the
orphan, and the possibly-insane sister.

Crash 1911 :  A truly anachronistic and jingoistic offering, Crash 1911 is
set in 1914(!) in a Miyazakiburgstein (one of those generic
Western-Central European with steampunk touches) setting. "Crash 1911" 
refers to the undefeated reign of driver Josef Tildeff's and his 1911
season winning twelve-competitor collision. Now in 1914, most of the
participants of that epic season have returned with even more-outlandish
cars and unlikely proteges, including a deaf Mongolian, a Cajun
zydeco-playing grandmother, and Tildeff's own protege who is (you guessed
it) a Japanese orphan. How will each of the competitor's life experiences
aid them in the upcoming derby? And why is it every non-Asian character
except the son of the Belgian calvary officer painted in such a negative
light?  Still, all the mechanical designs will look like "the Secret of
Blue Water" meet "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bag" to the point that the only fan
disappointment will be that none of the cars actually fly.

Sensai Crocogator-san's Class Trip : Middle-school Crocogator takes his
students on a different class trip each week, visiting factories, places
of historical interest, zoos, etc. Students from different walks of life
(dirt poor, privileged rich, brains, jocks, and just-average-losers) all
learn important lessons each week while they face the challenges of
growing up Japanese. Each week at least one student will be eaten by this
pedagoguish member of Osteolaemus holtzus (common name:  the Too-Clever
Crocodile), but never fear - they tend to reappear in the middle of the
episode with no apparent ill-effect. The series will impart a love of
history. Season highlights will include the hilarious Alligator-wrestling
episode and the tour of the Diet building.


Later, as fallow ground goes further a-weed, we will see:

Caimen Maid Crisis! : This rather pedestrian tale will be a complete
ripoff of last season's 'Matic-Panic Stylist Yuki, except the
cybernetic-valet will be replaced with an alien Crocodilian Princess and
the original threatening alien invasion will be replaced by Atlantean
golems. There will be no plot-twists that couldn't be predicted by
hyper-active ten year-olds. Sales of the figurines of the Caimen Maid will
convince the producers to put out 19 OVAs, each of which feature her in a
different provocative outfit that can be lucratively merchandised.

Pumpkin Road-rage: It's the future, and a growing segment of the
transportation market features mutated, semi-intelligent vegetables. The
smartest of these appears to be Pumpkin Buggy, an orange sports-car with a
seed-spitting cannon. When rogue cars from the Belgian-based Zucchini
Biotechnical begin causing traffic havoc, Pumpkin Buggy and his owner are
drafted into the Tokyo Police Department to fight these street-racing,
squash-smashing renegades. It's "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors" meets
"Speed Buggy" with a hint of "Riding Bean" and "ADP Police."

(Name Witheld For His Protection)

The story about four high school girls that try to sustain their school’s popular music club despite being unable to read music or play instruments.

Oh be still my beating childhood!
Wow...Sad case of arrested development that I am, I fear I am going to have to watch this. I mean what could be cooler?

Oh yeah....that.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:54 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 417 words, total size 9 kb.