First Impressions: Steins; Gate & Gintama

Steins;Gate

Quite possibly the most anticipated anime this season, Steins; Gate opened dramatically with tantalising sci-fi sophistication. The show pitches time travelling phones and secret organisations and doesn’t hesitate to get the ball rolling with glimpses of paranoia, time leaps and alternative realities/events despite being relatively quiet and slow paced. The preliminary cast seem to fit quite nicely against the shows bleak aesthetic. Each one casts a shadow of intrigue without being overly out of context considering the mad scientist, childhood friend and mysterious new girl stereotypes the anime is playing with. It’s especially nice to see these characters act with a degree of sincerity and not falling flat into archetype behavioural patterns. There is some seriously strong writing going on here, overall its not to shabby.

Initial Rating: 8.5/10

Gintama

After a year in hiatus, Gintama finally returns with its fifth season, as always throwing caution to the wind and executing a true uproar of comic genius. Non-stop laugh out loud, Gintama really know its stuff! What’s great about a show like Gintama is that it can pretty much do whatever it wants and very often does, in this case opening with quite a grand development or more specially several. Gintoki impersonating Yamcha (Dragonball), Kagura having aged several years, Otae and Kondo getting married, Kyubei becoming a man on the outside, Katsura becoming a woman on the outside, seriously I’m right there with you Shinpachi, what the hell?! I can’t wait for the next episode to see how things have changed for the Shinsengumi.

Initial Rating: 8.5/10