First Impressions -- Ultimate Venus

Ultimate Venus is one of the worst messes of a shojo I've ever seen. Yuzu's mom is dead, she's about to become heir to an extremely wealthy family, and there's at least 3 cute boys fighting for her right now. Not to mention she likes to wear glasses but looks much prettier without them, the main boy wants to protect her and has some mysterious connection to her past, she gets into ridiculous situations that the boys have to save her from, and she just started attending high school. There's so many cliches, I wouldn't be surprised if someone turned into an animal when hugged. I won't be reading this series any longer. I grabbed it from the library just because I wanted something to read, and it was awful. I could barely finish the first volume. The only positive thing I have to say is that the artwork is clear and easy to understand, even if it looks like every other shojo artist under the sun.

First and Last impressions rating: D

First Impressions -- Durarara!!

Durarara!! comes from the same light novelist, director, and studio that brought you Baccano!, and as such, I've been meaning to watch it for a long time now. The first episode focuses on a couple of kids, but like Carol and the Vice President, I don't think they're the real "main" characters. Episode 2 switched over to a minor character from the first episode, and the motorcycle rider that seems the most likely candidate for main character.
Animation is good, especially the few fight scenes that I've seen so far. At the same time, they have simple sequences of internet chat rooms that must save them so much money. Opening theme is amazing animation, but I'm not as sold on the music as I was for Baccano! Story is beyond interesting. It's addicting. I really want to see more.
But is it good? For anime can certainly keep you watching without being good. It's hard to say at this point. Characters are pretty cool so far, and the animation is good... but it's confusing as heck, and I feel like I'm biased because I love Baccano! so much.
Biased or not, my impression is that it will be a very good series. Better than my impression of Shakugan no Shanna, at least, and I've heard good things about both series.
First Impression Rating: A

First Impressions -- Shakugan no Shanna

I'm starting a new set of reviews called "first impressions". There's a bunch of series I've been meaning to start, so I'm going to go through and watch 1 or 2 episodes of each of them, and pick what I want to watch from there. Those 1 or 2 episodes, I'll post a short review on.

Shakugan no Shanna started off like any ordinary high-school-plus-magical-powers-shonen series. It cut in with a really interesting monster attack, then cut back to boring high school. If it had started straight in with the fighting and skipped the pointless "I was just entering high school. I'm going to say general things about myself that really don't define my character at all. It was a nice day outside. Don't you wish this was more interesting?" It's not necessary. The monster design was cool enough that the contrast between the two worked, but I still would prefer less pointless high school.

The fight was also pretty ordinary. Time stops, mysterious girl fights giant monster, boy asks questions and nearly gets killed. The flames made me think of Soul Eater, the monsters and girl with a sword made me think of Bleach, and the monster reporting to its master made me think of Sailor Moon.

The most interesting premise was saved until the very end, and for that I will watch another episode, but my first impression is a solid standard-shonen C.

Check it out at FUNi's youtube channel!