Ani-Monday for October 1

Well, last night we got the first two episodes of Virus Buster Serge. Frankly, I was highly disappointed. This anime was produced back in 1997 so I'm not sure what I was expecting. Scratch that, I was hoping for something as interesting as Ghost in the Shell. Wikipedia offers this synopsis for the series:

In the year 2097 in the city of Neo Hong Kong, man and machine have melded nicely and the city has been blooming with technological advances. However, an entity that takes over the machines called the Virus is becoming a problem. For this problem, there exists the organization STAND equipped with their Gears (machine suits) led by the mysterious Raven. The latest member of the team is Serge, a man who cannot remember his past and thought joining STAND and confronting Raven would help him better understand. Little does he know how important he will become to the whole Virus conflict.

From it I had thought there might be something interesting. Yet nooo... we get horrid character designs, fan service and female characters who occasionally display cat's (or maybe vampire) teeth and wear thigh-high go-go boots as part of their duty uniform (as opposed to the body armor they use during combat situations). Then to top all of that off, it was boring.

I was very sad, as I was hoping for two solid hours of interesting anime, but I was bored by the first episode, and struggled to watch the second. To be honest, I was probably more focused on the pc monitor than the television during it.

But hey, at least we got two episodes of Noein last night, which were great as usual.

In the first episode, Memories, we get to see Yuu being jealous of the attention that Haruka pays his older self, Karasu. Additionally, we get some emotional angst from Haruka as her powers flip her through time and then a heart-to-heart between Karasu and Yuu makes him realize a thing or two. The final bit of happening here involves Haruka learning a bit more about her power, what's she capable of, and what she's able to actually see in relation to her past. It's a nice break from the action of the previous episodes, and furthers the characters rather decently.

For episode two of Noein (SHANGRI-LA), we get to see a bit more of the main antagonist of the series, Noein. We're right on track for the usual track for these animes, in that the early antagonist has now joined forces with the heroes, as the real bad guy appears. Additionally, the action appears to be ramping up again, and it promises to be a fun ride. Well, at least that's my hope.

Next week, we get two more episodes of Virus Buster Serge and then two more episodes of Noein. What that means is that I'll probably once more resort to watching a single hour of Ani-Monday's fare and ignore Virus Buster Serge, I just wish they hadn't pushed Noein back to the 11 PM slot.