Okay, it’s almost 2009. And it’s time to look up what’s the winter anime that will be airing on January 2009.

Maybe I’ll watch some of them

Check the list below:

Akikan!

Starts Airing: January 3,

Station: BS11

The story revolves around a typical high school boy named Kakeru Daichi and the can of melon juice soda that he bought from a vending machine. The can suddenly transforms into a beautiful but standoffish girl that Kakeru nicknames “Melon,” and more “Akikan” (”empty can”) girls appear. However, Akikan girls need to be infused with carbon dioxide from kissing to survive.

Source: My Anime List

Asu no Yoichi!

Starts Airing: January 8

Station: Nippon TV

The titular character Yoichi decides to leave his family’s mountainside home after his father tells him there is nothing more he can learn in martial arts there. The teenaged boy ends up in a martial arts dojo in the city with four girls.

Source: My Anime List

Before Green Gables

Starts Airing: January ??

Station: BS Fuji

This book is about the death of Anne Shirley’s parents and the resulting struggles of Anne’s pre-Gables youth. The book shows how deeply in love Bertha and Walter Shirley were. The book also tells details about the fever that killed Anne’s parents. The book tells in detail the emotions Anne feels, the people in her life, and the way she connects with other people till she is on the train to Green Gables. The Thomases are bizarrely bitter.

Source: Wikipedia

Birdy the Mighty DECODE:02

Starts Airing: January 10, 22:30
Station: Tokyo MX TV

Tsutomu Senkawa is an average high school kid who is busy studying for his senior entrance exams. Tsutomu goes out for some fresh air, after a hard day’s work studying for a big test, when he runs into a guy fleeing from a pretty young lady. The pursued man is actually an interplanetary criminal on the run from a Federation agent called Birdy Cephon Altera. Caught in the midst of this chase, Tsutomu gets thrown by the man at Birdy, which kills Tsutomu. Fortunately for Tsutomu, there is a way to keep him alive, although it comes at the price of discarding his body. He ends up merged into Birdy’s body.

Source: Anime News Network (from Season 1)

Black God

Starts Airing: January 8
Station: TV Asahi

Keita Ibuki is an independent and struggling freelance computer programmer who, with two of his friends, is developing and trying to sell a video game program to big-time video game companies in Tokyo while trying to stay afloat and survive financially with money being given to him by his 21-year old childhood friend Akane Sano. He had a chance meeting on one night with a high Mototsumitama named Kuro while eating alone at a ramen stand. He gives her his dinner, a bowl of ramen, and tries to protect her when she is attacked in an ambush by an unknown Mototsumitama. Keita loses his entire left arm during the fight between the Mototsumitamas, but Kuro was able to save his life by exchanging the decapitated arm with her own left arm since she has enhanced healing abilities like all Mototsumitamas. This creates a contract between them, which makes her more powerful than before. However, Kuro warns Keita that they need to be together all the time in order to be at their strongest.

Source: Wikipedia

Chrome Shelled Regios

Starts Airing: January 10
Station: TV Kanagawa

In this school fantasy story set in the distant future, creatures contaminated by pollution have overtaken the land, forcing humanity to live in isolated mobile cities called Regios. One such city named Czerni is a self-contained school in which freshman Reifon Aruseifu has just enrolled. Reifon reluctantly joins the 17th Martial Arts Studies Unit led by the third-year student Nina Antōku and embarks on a series of adventures.

Source: My Anime List

Fighting Spirit: New Challenger

Starts Airing: January 6
Station: Nippon TV

Ippo, a timid highschooler, is one day saved from being beaten up by Takamura, a boxer. Enthralled by Takamura’s skills Ippo begins to learn boxing, soon finding love for the sport and a drive to challenge the boxing world.

Source: Anime News Network (for the 1st season)

The Girl Who Leapt Through the Heavens

Starts Airing: January 5, 25:30
Station: TV Tokyo

The story is set in the year 311 of the Orbital Calendar, when humanity has migrated to countless colony clusters in space. A space colony girl named Akiha Shishidō encounters a malevolent artificial intelligence named Leopard that has been installed on a colony. Akiha is joined by an Inter-Colony Police officer named Itsuki Kannagi, a taciturn young girl named Honoka Kawai, and a robot named Imoko “Imo-chan” Shishidō.

Source: Anime News Network

Kemono no Souja Erin

Starts Airing: January 10, 18:25
Station: NHK Kyouiku

After her mother, a veterinarian, is executed for allegedly killing a clutch of fighting snakes, the daughter Erin is adopted by a beekeeper and meets the king of the animals in the mountains. Erin follows in her mother’s footsteps to become a veterinarian and this decision will put the fate of the kingdom of the animals in her hands.

Source: The Null Set

Major – Season 5

Starts Airing: January 10, 18:00
Station: NHK Kyouiku

Shigeharu Honda is a Major Leauge batter on the rise. His son Goro is a Little League pitcher who one day hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps. Momoko Hoshino is Goro’s schoolteacher, and the first woman Shigeharu has been interested in since the death of Goro’s mother. The destines of these three individuals will become intertwined as father and son experience both heartbreak and triumph on the baseball diamond. But when an unspeakable tragedy visits the family, it will take everything they have to pick up the pieces and reclaim their dreams.

Source: Anime News Network

Maria Holic

Starts Airing: January 4
Station: Chiba TV

The story centers on a sophomore named Kanako who enrolls in all-girls school because she has a phobia of men and wants to find her destined yuri partner. She meets a captivating freshman named Mariya who fits her criteria — except her seemingly ideal mate happens to be a cross-dressing sadistic boy.

Source: My Anime List

Maria Watches Over Us – Season 4

Starts Airing: January 6
Station: Chiba TV

Yumi is a first year student at the Lillian School For Girls, an exclusive all girl’s catholic school. The school has a tradition that older girls take a younger girl as their little sister or “soeur” in order to instruct and look out for them. Though Yumi admires Sachiko, a reserved second year student who is a member of the student council, she has no hopes of being chosen as her soeur. When an innocent encounter leads Sachiko to impulsively ask Yumi to be her soeur, Yumi is suddenly brought into the inner circle of the Roses, who are the members of the student council. With Sachiko at her side, Yumi begins to unravel and understand the relationships between the Roses and their soeurs and figure out her own feelings for Sachiko.

Source: Anime News Network (for the 1st season)

Minami-ke Okaeri

Starts Airing: January 4

Station: TV Tokyo

There are three of the Minami sisters: Haruka, Kana and Chiaki, who have an average life. The girls only have each other to depend on and help each other get through everything from love confessions to cooking.

Source: Anime News Network

Ride Back

Starts Airing: January 11, 24:00
Station: Chiba TV

Ride Back tells the story of a girl and her “iron horse” robot motorcycle in 2020, a tumultuous time of anti-government student protests.

Source: My Anime List

Shikabane Hime: Kuro

Starts Airing: January 4, 23:30
Station: Chiba TV

The “Corpse Princess” of the title is Makina Hoshimura, an undead girl who hunts down 108 corpses in order to go to heaven.

Source: My Anime List

Slayers Evolution-R

Starts Airing: January 12
Station: AT-X

Having lost the Sword of Light in the previous battle, Lina and Gourry continue their journey in search of a replacement weapon. On the way, the two of them meet up with Amelia and Zelgadis in the kingdom of Luvinagard while taunting some pirates. Lina is happy to reunite with her old friends, but appearing before her is Luvinagard’s Inspector of the Special Investigative Unit; a man called Wizer. However, Lina is amazed at his unusual behavior..

Source: Anime News Network (from 4th season)

Sora o Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai

Starts Airing: January 13
Station: Chiba TV

Akuto, the main source of energy is running low and the Heavens, a world of islands, hidden beyond time, floating above ours, has united against the Magical Kingdom whom uses the most energy. To save both the Magical Kingdom and the Heavens and restore the flow of akuto, the Magical King Munto must follow a vision and find the girl Yumemi in the lower world. Yumemi herself is just a normal girl except that she is the only one who can see the islands of the Heavens floating above. When Munto appears before her she starts thinking about hers and others responsibility to the world.

Source: My Anime List (from Munto)

The Tale of Genji

Starts Airing: January 15
Station: Fuji TV

The work recounts the life of a son of a Japanese emperor, known to readers as Hikaru Genji, or “Shining Genji”. Neither appellation is his actual name: Genji is simply another way to read the Chinese characters for the real-life Minamoto clan, to which Genji was made to belong. For political reasons, Genji is relegated to commoner status (by being given the surname Minamoto) and begins a career as an imperial officer. The tale concentrates on Genji’s romantic life and describes the customs of the aristocratic society of the time. Much is made of Genji’s good looks.

Source: Wikipedia

The Tower of DRUAGA -the Sword of URUK-

Starts Airing: January 8
Station: Tele Tama

The Summer of “Anu”: In a summer once every five years, demons in the mysterious Tower of Druaga lose their powers due to the magic spell cast by a god named “Anu”. King Gilgamesh, ruler of the kingdom Uruk, uses the appearance of demons as an excuse to invade the tower and find out the construct’s secrets. As 80 years passed, the Uruk army managed to fight back the demons and built a fortress city and safe haven on the very first floor of Druaga – Metz Kier. Thus begins the story of a warrior named Jil who, finding companions along the way, embarks on a quest for the fabled Blue Crystal Rod, a powerful artifact rumored to be in the highest floor of Druaga. However, other competitors, including the kingdom of Uruk itself, want the treasure, all for their own reasons.

Source: Anime News Network (from 1st season)

Viper’s Creed

Starts Airing: January 6, 22:00
Station: ANIMAX

The story revolves around the members of a private military company (PMC), and the uneasy tension between them and the regular military after a war that caused massive environmental destruction.

Source: My Anime List

White Album

Starts Airing: January 3

Station: TV Kanagawa

The White Album game centers around Toya Fuji, a college student dating a rising idol singer named Yuki Morikawa. The game deals with the challenges to the couple’s relationship from the other people at Fuji’s college, Morikawa’s work, and elsewhere.

Source: Anime Nation News Blog

Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou

Starts Airing: January 5
Station: TV Tokyo

The story revolves around Natsume, a boy who has been able to see ghosts since he was little. Unfortunately, humans shun him, and there is not much fondness between him and ghosts either. One day, he inherits a Yūjin-Chō (”Book of Friends”) from his grandmother. The book is actually full of contracts that his grandmother made to trap ghosts. As one ghost after another shows up, Natsume tries to release or help them — even while many of them seek vengeance on him.

Source: My Anime List

Credit: Josh