Midseason Review of the Dead

Sort of a part 2 to the post below this one.

Zombies Are In The Details (High School of the Dead)
>Review in short: good but slooooooooow
This show has a lot going for it: decent characters, good plotting, and violence. It is too bad that this show has the pacing of classic Dragon Ball Z episodes. It litterally takes them 2-1/2 episodes to leave ONE building. And guess what? The first half of episode 4 is review! This anime gets caught up in small, useless conversations and events and then spends whole episodes on them. In conclusion, this anime can be enjoyed, but one needs to appreciate that the plot is too slow to drive the show. Oh, and try to ignore the animation shortcuts, ugh.

Janguru wa Itsumo Hare nochi Bunmei (Occult Academy)
>Review in short: unwatchable
The jungle was always nice, and then came Bunmei. But unlike the show I stole this title from, Bunmei doesn't make the show but instead utterly destroys it. The first two episodes of the show introduce a strong, confident, and cool female lead named Maya... who by episode three gets pushed aside as the main character by a weak, cowardly, lying, pathetic worm of a man named Bunmei. The show's intriguing supernatural mysteries take a backseat to Bunmei's pathetic rom-com misadventures. In honor of this tragedy, I am going to start using 'Bunmei' as a word of its own, e.g. "oh wow, that is so freaking stupid; that is so Bunmei".

Vampires For Everyone! (Shiki)
>Review in short: Best show of the season O_o
Remember the movie Signs? Remember how the first half of the movie was spooky psychological fun, and the second half was an irridemably stupid trainwreck? Thusfar Shiki has the first half down pat. It does it so well it actually drives the show and makes it fun it watch. This show may be violence-free and bloodless (lol), but the show does not need them because it lets your mind do all the gruntwork, not unlike classic horror movies. Now I just pray this show never replicates the second half of Signs.

The Truth Is There Is No Review (Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail)
>Review in short: There is no review because there is no show
*Facepalm* My bad, episode one was only a preview. This show streaches over multiple-seasons of anime so this show can't really be watched right now.

Gotta Have Vanilla! (Digimon Xros Wars)
>Review in short: unremarkable fun
This show is exactly what we thought it was. This show gets major props for finally mixing-up the Digivolution formula and therefore giving us something that changes episode to episode, but otherwise this is a typical if not slightly dry season of Digimon. This show is entirely episodic, and thus each episode progresses in the exact same exposition-enemyattack-climax pattern. So, while this show has little to no depth to speak of, it does suceed in being fun and, frankly, I hope it gets Digimon back on American Saturday TV. It deserves that much.