Spring Anime 2008

A new TV season is just around the corner (end of March, early April), and so it’s time to start looking over the new anime series that are scheduled to start, and see what is worth checking out. Big thanks to Paul Baron for pointing me to the “Spring Season Preview” post on the Star Crossed Anime Blog. Looks like the author does a good job of separating the junk from the maybes, as well as the “looking forward to” seeing. Me, I’ll be checking the first episodes of the following (see full descriptions in Star Crossed Anime’s post):

• BUS GAMER: “It follows the story of three young men hired by a mysterious company to participate in a business game, a way for companies to gamble against each other for corporate secrets.”
• HIMITSU – TOP SECRET: “The story takes place five decades from now, when brain scanners have been perfected to the point that the government can retrieve up to five years’ worth of memories from people’s minds — even if they are dead.”
• LIBRARY WARS: “In the year 2019, the explosion of information and misinformation became a direct threat to society. In a daring decision, it was decided to create a new government agency dedicated solely to information management. Now some thirty years later, the government still monitors and controls information, suppressing anything they find undesirable, but standing against their abuses of power are the libraries, with their special agents called ‘the book soldiers.’”
• CRYSTAL BLAZE: “Adult-oriented mystery-story set in New York.”
• REAL DIVE: “The story takes place in 2061, 50 years after humanity developed the “Net society” that depended on information networks despite their security issues. To improve security, a new network called Meta Real Network — or “Metal” for short — was developed. People`s personal memories are reduced to information and placed within “protected virtual stand-alone organic cyber enclaves called bubble shells” online.” It’s from Production I.G, based on a story by Masumune Shirow (GHOST IN THE SHELL).

Update: Let me add KAIBA, a new series directed by Masaaki Yuasa (MIND GAME), and set to start April 10.