It's Apparently Bishies-and-Magic Week

I vaguely sense another Clone Army of series on the horizon, though it's too early to say. At least it's not the High School Series Flood of 2012, so that's gotta count for something.
This season, you see, seems to be gravitating towards detailed, reasonably conventional animation, modern fantasy plots and an absolutely baffling amount of men. Unfortunately, not the Cho-Aniki kind - that would at least be good for some laughs and a large amount of whiplash injuries caused by sudden recoils from the screen, thanks to good old Samson.
This season, then, attempts to capitalize on the recent inundation of made-for-merchandise females and bland, utterly forgettable males by pulling a reverse whammy. Suddenly, we get a season wherein three of the major shows (K, Zetsuen no Tempest and (or so it seems) Psycho-Pass) have a large, diverse male cast, whereas in return, the females are either absolutely bland, side characters or just plain not there. I'm looking at you, K. Having a gothloli utter three lines and someone who looks like the lovechild of Makina and a sentient, predatory NOL uniform utter about four does not count as a female presence, no matter how long you hold your breath and threaten to turn blue. Zetsuen no Tempest is scarcely any better - while Aika and Hakaze are certainly female (or so I dearly hope), both of them seem to be delegated to secondary plot-device roles, with Hakaze conveniently stranded on an island, only useful as mission control, and Aika having kicked the bucket long ago, thus only being useful as Mahiro's morality chain.
There could be many hypotheses as to this, including "novelty", "more opportunities for character design" and "that's just how it works, I ain't gonna explain shit", but the most realistic one looks to be "See the world out there, my fellow heartless, amorphous Grey Mass of a marketroid? We do not yet seem to have parasitized on the female fans, and yet they have so much delicious money to feed our masters. What say you that we create a bevy of series this season in which male characters are shoehorned in at every opportunity? Oh yes, ho ho, that certainly seems wonderful. Let us also drop some hideously blatant ho-yay in K, so that the fangirls will be interested, and not in the least care that the last work the studio created was a cyberpunk OVA series about talking four-dimensional cybermice that turn into organic clothes and guns that bleed, people implanting female genitals into their hands and cyborg 14-year-old boys with horns having homosexual romantic incestuous relationships with robot dolphins. Oh ho ho ho."
So, let us kick off.

Zetsuen no Tempest
As is my usual habit when reviewing shows I really look forward to, I will get the bad parts over with first.
Zetsuen no Tempest is chuuni as fuck, pretentious, hammy and melodramatic.
Well, who cares. Madoka was too.
As the facts stand, Zetsuen no Tempest is a damn promising series. The plot, though it clearly actively strives towards being strange, is still quite interesting. Deals with the devil, eldritch abominations, metallicizing plagues (Hey, Marco, we need you over here!) and an honestly interesting anti-hero in the form of Mahiro all work to make the first episode a truly interesting experience.
Well, it's not all nice and rosy.
For one, we have an overpowering aura of ham suffusing the entire universe. Overblown speeches, hamtastic promises of revenge, spontaneous shouted Shakespeare recitals and some rather over-the-top character motivations do not always willing suspension of disbelief support, young Skywalker.
For two, the clichés - dead little sister, questing for revenge, tired character designs when it comes to, say, Samon - sometimes become overpowering, and my conscious mind asks my subconscious why I'm not just watching Titanic instead, since I obviously seem to enjoy cliché in my ham sandwich.
For Elgala, the leading male wears hair clips with an uncanny resemblance to Yuno's double X's. Do I need to say more?
However, I almost shed a tiny little tear at seeing Mahiro - an interesting antihero with a novel and refreshingly normal character design who actually manages to be a physical magic user? Count me in.
Count me the fuck in.
A plot that, while not terribly subtle in its active attempt to be complicated, does seem to hide some truly interesting twists and turns, and on top of that possesses the lovechild of Azathoth and the Saigyou Ayakashi?
Count me in.
Count me the fuck in.
Rating: YES/100.