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Comments
> mixed-gender cast with female primary protagonists
> sci-fi elements
Egao no Daika / The Price of Smiles seems like something that's up my alley.
Kagayaki no Jewel's PVs are out. There's a lot I could say here so just imagine all my usual insanely overexcited hijinks because THE HYPE IS REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!
Mob Psycho 100 has been better than I expected. That show really has a lot of heart and does some unusual things for a shonen imo. The Promised Neverland is an interesting thriller, but the constant cliffhangers can get obnoxious sometimes. JoJo is just weird...
Aside from these, this cour I watched Fate/EXTRA Last Encore, the K SEVEN STORIES movie series, Evangelion 3.33 (possibly a decade late) and I binged revisions, which I'd usually count towards my 'three per cour' total.
As for those three, I'm watching Egao no Daika, Grimms Notes The Animation and Star☆Twinkle PreCure. Egao no Daika is pretty brilliant but not exactly near perfect, Grimms Notes is just the sort of mobage fantasy show I like, and Star☆Twinkle PreCure is doing a lot of cool, new things with PreCure but I don't know if I want to follow through on it yet.
I really, really loved Last Encore, and there's so much I want to say about the final three episodes, but I need way more time to process.
It was on CDJs ebooks home page and I was curious so I got it. It turns out BRUTUS is actually men's fashion magazine so most of it was just ads from big brands and loooooots of words. The "We Love Heisei Anime" article itself was paaaaaaaaaaainfully detailed, with full pages on the top five anime as decided by... somebody.
Second after F/GO was Hypnosis Mic, which is not only not an anime but also a very Otome project, but Yuri on ICE!! was also fifth and the list was lacking in general seinen things aside from Golden Kamuy and no ecchi thing made it at all.
Each of the top five anime had a full two-page writeup and Subakyun even got to do a whole separate page for Hypnosis Mic. Then there was a detailed timeline for all of anime, business number breakdowns for the entire Heisei era, and then articles on the evolution of practically every genre.
For some reason, probably cultural relevance, there's a whole genre evolution page where Madoka features instead of the magical girl bit, along with Penguindrum and Devilman Crybaby. I'd post more from it, but I'm acutely aware that the digital copies of magazines are basically a massive right awarded to me by CDJ and if stuff from their site starts floating around everywhere something unpleasant would probably happen.
Unrelatedly; this ad on the back cover:
Lately we've seen a few more adult protagonists in anime. Weirdly enough, a bunch of them basically star in "adult person is in more-than-friends-sort-of-maaaaaaaaybe love with an elementary aged kid". Like, the first two got past the radar because they starred women, but now we have a show about an average office worker guy who gets his very own fox girl coming up in Spring.
I mean, on a context-less level, these shows are pretty "harmless" and basically PG, but
like
honestly.
Winter 2019 Retrospective
I honestly never thought I would get here, for some reason. I watched quite a bit this cour, probably because I was only watching 3 shows all cour long.
Those shows are:
Aikatsu Friends!
This was the final cour of the first season of Aikatsu Friends! and it delivered so much. Breaking the mold of every series before it to have Pure Palette create their Miracle Auras (another first for the anime!) in an extended performance was more than beyond epic.
As the first season winds down in an extended epilogue, the focus on each of the units has really brought all of what made them shine individually to the surface and endeared them all to me even more than before. It was really nice to have a final call-back to Aine and Mirai's relationship, as well as Mio and Karen's, outside of the context of their units as Mirai and Karen take a step back to let the new rivals shine for a while.
So let's get into Kagayaki no Jewel now where we don't seem to see too much relevance from the Friends units...?
I mean, this is mostly a joke, because I'm really excited for Kagayaki no Jewel. To see Hikasa Yoko finally get to sing for this series is kind of a dream for me. I loved Risa from Denpagumi.inc as Elza, but a part of me always wanted to hear Hikasa as an Aikatsu! Series character and now I do. This also means she'll be playing two pink/red-headed singers this summer (Kagayaki no Jewel and Symphogear).
Egao no Daika
One of the main metatextual things I took away from this series is that I still haven't seen everything with anime, because I never will. There will genuinely always be new ideas for amazing self-contained stories, and this was one of them.
Forget the format, forget the beautiful worldbuilding even, and... definitely forget the sometimes less-than-pleasant ventures into the not-perfect art zone. This show was quite the achievement for everybody involved.
It made me love each of it's characters, even if most were painted with broad strokes. It allowed me to expect nobody was safe because it truly dealt with the horrors of war. It made insane space-race science technobabble work really well. There were character arcs that were so well-polished they actually made me think in ways I hadn't before, along with really great symbolism.
Basically, I loved it.
Grimms Notes The Animation
Grimms Notes is no Last Period, it's really not even a Seisen Cerberus, but I love the well-adapted mobage genre, so it never needed to be.
It also featured probably the best use of public domain characters I've seen in quite a while, and it's universe is quite appealing (if disturbing). As for the main characters and those who surrounded them, they're always really fun, and I really liked them all.
But, there have been episodes that were just... off. Luckily, they weren't any of the ones I looked forward to, but unfortunately a lot of them were ones that focused on the main characters.
So yeah. Enjoyable, but with a lot of questionable moments.
--
Now for the shows I didn't watch weekly:
revisions
Guys, revisions was good.
Like, really good. It was a mecha show with a crazy nightmare of a protagonist whose friends each got a real chance to shine (or implode, depending on the episode).
Well, actually, this isn't right. Despite being in it a bunch, Gai and Lu never did much, but the other two (three if you count Milo) really drove this show to great heights. I mean, it was a story basically written around two of the main characters, with the other providing a more sane (if a bit selfish and childish) eye to the events of the show.
The plot was really good, and I haven't found a time-travel series this fun in quite a while. At points it really reminded me of Final Fantasy XIII-2's style, which I also appreciated.
Fate/EXTRA - Last Encore (original cour; Winter 2018, Spring-ish 2018 for the final three episodes)
I'm a bit confused about this show. What I can honestly say is that the final three episodes were the best finale I've seen possibly since the first Eureka Seven anime (sorry, AO, I love you but you couldn't match this series).
However, there were a lot of weird parts early on, and I don't entirely appreciate the "Once there was this girl and other girls and all they really needed was for the first girl to be reincarnated AS A MAN to save the world" subtext it ended up having.
The Robin Hood episodes were flat and mostly depended on everybody just talking until the villains, who might as well have been a blank white wall, were taken out. And I can't quite remember why, but I feel like the Alice episodes were a lot of emptiness hidden in Gekidan Inu Curry and some really great backstory scenes (sorry show but what the heck happens to Misao anyways?).
The Berserker episodes also had a weird bend that was mostly used to deliver a single speech, but the characters introduced in that arc could have also been empty blank walls.
Okay yeah the final three episodes were really good but everything else was probably not.
So there's everything about Winter, which is a lot more than I expected.
Yeah I mean no Earth Girl Arjuna, no Figure 17, etc.
Actually though I think outside of SoL we've moved back towards the preference for city-scape or similar settings. NORN9 was a series where the characters balanced their quirky sci-fi world with a natural setting, but it was also set inside a giant snowglobe spaceship.
I want to make a list of shows from the last few year or so where people spent their time in nature/adventuring vs school/city/similar settings. I think I'd need to talk to like, a loooooot of anime fans since you can't really know a show's setting until you see it for yourself.
That sounds like a lot of work.
I think it's become a theme that I have a lot to complain about when it comes to ANN's reporting, but their most anticipated Spring anime amongst like 6-8 staffers appears to be exclusively Carole & Tuesday and Sarazanmai with like, two outliers. You'd think at a publication that trades in a deep wealth of anime knowledge they would have more diversity than "It was made by that one person who made that really great anime in the 90s".
This isn't a comprehensive list of everything that'll air, just a list of things I thought were notable or looked promising.
-Fruits Basket-
The popular shoujo manga is reimagined in a second take on an anime series with a whole new staff and cast. This is yet another shoujo anime that captured the hearts of millions around the world being remade for the modern anime audience, following in the footsteps of Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card-hen and the Sailor Moon web-anime. Hopefully it works out for the best this time.
This time around, the mangaka seems to be more involved. Expressing a few regrets from the earlier adaptation, she promised that this would be a full-on and more faithful adaptation of the original manga as she's more involved as a consulting producer.
Oh! Um, the plot. When a girl decides to squat on private property, the owners; a bunch of pretty anime boys who turn into animals from the Chinese Zodiac when members of the opposite sex hug them. Somehow not the premise to a modern mobage. Expect lots of romance and brothers/cousins fighting over the main girl. What more could you ask for, really?
Seiyuu Digression The main character will be played by relative newbie Manaka Iwami, who was inspired to become a seiyuu after hearing Ai Kayano in AnoHana (and not what I believe her true breakout role as Kirika in Symphogear G, dess). She's played a deuteragonist before in Urahara, and probably gave a convincing emotional performance as the main character of the critically acclaimed Mari Okada movie Maquia.
The pretty boys will include Maaya Uchida's little brother and (Unofficial) Best New Male Seiyuu UchiYu/Yuuma Uchida alongside veterans Yuuchi Nakamura and Nobunaga Shimazaki. Other veteran (but not old enough to be around when the original Fruits Basket aired) will fill up what is truly a star studded cast, alongside many new up-and-comers. So if you're looking to hear Maaya Sakamoto alongside One Punch Man himself, Makoto Furukawa, this is your chance.
Music? avex's continuing attempt to launch Beverly's career will continue with the appropriately named opening theme called "Again", and rock-band that people surely like Vickeblanka will be on the ED, "Lucky Ending". These are presumably the first of many, as the series will cover the entire manga and therefore be many, many cours long.
-Kimetsu no Yaiba-
What is anime without the historical blade and suffering series (that I never watch)? Well, straight from ufotable, who don't really have a history of this sort of thing (Seven Arcs was somehow responsible for the third Basilisk anime) team up with a (somewhat?) critically acclaimed Shounen Jump manga to create what promises to be endless fuel for your Meiji-era themed nightmares.
In this story, a young man who supports his family after the death of his father has his world rocked when his family is slaughtered. It only gets worse as he realizes that the only survivor, his sister, has been turned into a demon! Though all hope is not lost, as his sister still shows signs of humanity, so our determined main character takes it upon himself to slay the demons who attacked his family and turn his sister back to normal.
This is all well and good, but have you guys seen how adorable the character designs for this series are? The awesome contrast between the characters painfully cute eyes and the violent death-glares that will emanate from them is reason enough to watch this series. Oh, also the hypermuscular pig head guy, he's pretty cool too.
Seiyuu Digression: This is a major(ish) Shounen Jump property, so expect nothing but the best from the cast; veterans like Natsuki Hanae will be bringing their years of experience to what is surely going to be an immersive experience. Also everybody who still thinks it's cool to hate Sword Art Online can finally watch Kirito (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka) play a guy with a pig head.
However, the main character's demon sister will be played by a relatively new face; Akari Kito, who is making quite the name for herself with a few other main character roles under her belt. As for her demon-playing chops, I can personally confirm that the person who played Layla in Lostorage conflated WIXOSS is more than capable of pulling off crazy.
Music? We don't know much about the ED, but Aniplex has the heavy hitter on the OP. LiSA, who you know about if you've watched any major Aniplex anime, is on the OP. Details are under-wraps for now (even after the premiere screening), but expect only the best in anirock from this show.
-Kono Oto Tomare!-
Amongst it's shounen flavoured music anime contemporaries, Kono Oto Tomare! manages to eke out a surprisingly unique position just by being nothing but a high school band anime. For example, it's romantic overtones are nowhere near those of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso/Your Lie in April. Somehow, a more typical take of the fare will prove to be a breath of fresh air this spring.
This anime follows a typical club format; once his seniors have graduated school, our main character is left to recruit new members of the koto (a traditional string instrument) club lest it be terminated.
Platinum Vision is a relatively new studio, and their art meber really inspires an amazing amount of confidence when compared to the various manga they've adapted, but this show proves to be an interesting take on the genre if you keep that in mind. Another thing to remember is that this will be airing as a split-cour series, so expect more in October!
Seiyuu Digression: If you're looking to see the seiyuu of now populate a series, this is your best bet. There are a few veterans peppered in here and there, but this show is staffed entirely by contemporary seiyuu. We have the aforementioned UchiYu and Makoto Furukawa, as well as Atsumi Tanesaki (The Anchient Magus' Bride) and a few newbies to round it all out.
Music? To be honest, I'd entirely written this show off based on the art alone until I paid attention to the two artists providing the opening and ending themes. KING RECORDS continues to built it's in-house artists with this show, with an instagram ready Shouta Aoi ready to soothe us all into submission via his opening theme, "Tone". Yuuma Uchida, on the other hand, will be celebrating his first ever anime tie-in song with the ED, his third ever single, "Speechless".
-Gunjou no Magmell-
We've already discussed one big shounen title on this list, but this is looking to be one of the most influential shounen titles of not just this cour, but at least a few years to come considerig it's less-than-traditional start as a Chinese manhua. Well, if all goes well. With Magmell, Pierrot is looking to continue it's portfolio of successful animated properties with a show with a less... traditional premise. Think the business sense of Toei's Toriko, but with an entirely different concept based on a Chinese manga.
Here we have a young man who travels all over a new and unexplored continent. But, and this is where the twist comes in, he's not a traveller himself! He's a rescuer and aid delivery guy who provides his services to said adventurers. Of course, that doesn't mean he's your average TaskRabbit guy, since he has a trusy assistant robot and what appear to be lightning powers. For a major Jump series, this is quite the departure, and I can't wait to see what will come of it.
If this series succeeds, it could possibly herald a new era of actually successful/decent Chinese adaptations. I mean, if it weren't airing at ten PM.
Seiyuu Digression: There isn't too much to say about this one, since about four cast members total have been revealed so far. We have quite a reliable cast, with March comes like a lion and Gundam IBO lead Kengo Kawanishi in the lead role, playing a role quite a bit younger than those, but there's no doubt he'll pull it off. Supporting him will be death game and ecchi staple M.A.O. as well as Hibiki Yamamura, with Toshiyuki Morikawa playing the first major villain and/or rival-type character.
Music? A bit of this an that with Cross-dressing idol unit Fuudanjunku on the OP "Dash&Daaash!!" and the rock band a flood of circle performing the ED, "The Key".
-MIX: MEISEI STORY-
Yet another sports story not many people outside of Japan and a few select European/South American countries have heard of returns! But this won't be a re-adaptation but an adaptation of a sort-of-sequel manga, featuring a whole new set of characters at the same school but twenty-six years later.
The real life brother and sister team Maaya and Yuuma Uchida will be playing the two main characters, as MIX is a series not just about baseball, but also about the relationship between siblings. Playing their other sibling will be Yuki Kaji. Another really interesting aspect of this series is it's character designs, which is as retro as they come, but with a modern cleaned-up animation style to back them up.
Music? Girl group on the rise Little Glee Monster will be on hand to provide the ending theme, "Kimi ni Todoku made", whilst rock band sumika will be performing the opening theme "Equal".
Other notable series:
My personal favorite series from the upcoming cour is Shoumetsu Toshi, a sci-fi story about a city that has disappeared and the people who investigate the circumstances surrounding this. It's actually based on a mobile 'runner' game, and the main character rides a motorbike, so we'll see where that leads. Expect lots of conspiracies.
The visual novel YU-NO (typing the full title comes at your own risk) is finally getting a cleaned-up and comprehensive adaptation thanks to the folks at 5pb., Genco and feel. The ED will be by now-veteran anison performer Konomi Suzuki, and it's one of her best in recent years.
In what will probably be snapped up by Netflix only to never be heard of again, P.A.Works suddenly decided to shed whatever was left of it's 'kind' image and make a gritty original anime about soldiers getting surgery to turn eldritch abominations and it's ramifications in a show called Fairy gone. The frequently silent music collective known as (K)NoW_NAME (which includes my personal favourite musician/soundtrack composer R.O.N) will be performing and composing the OP and ED.
Inspired by a Supernatural (yes, the CW show) fanfic, the Omegaverse is an unnecessarily complex take on M-Preg stories (hopefully I don't have to explain this too <_<). It's gotten so big and prominent in Japan that a new genre of it, basically furry Omegaverse stories, get their own drama CDs starring the guy who plays Toshiki Kai in Cardfight! Vanguard.
So yeah, this stuff exists.
Every Cour: Aikatsu Friends!, obviously.
Fall 2018:
- Akanesasu Shoujo
- SSSS.GRIDMAN
Forgot: Ken En Ken. This is so weird since I was listening to the OP yesterday!Summer 2018:
- High Score Girl
- Planet With
Forgot: Free! -Dive to the Future-Spring 2018:
- Last Period
- Lostorage conflated WIXOSS
Forgot: Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu HAPPY KISS!. Yeah, this one makes sense.Winter 2018:
One of the themes of the last story arc is...surprisingly close to home for me.
I'm only at episode 20 though. I'm curious how it'll be resolved.
The only problem is her best friend is taken away from her and she's left to fend for herself whilst dealing with a bunch of aggressive egotistical weirdos, and the interpersonal drama they all create is a beautiful thing.
Or, it was, until late in the second volume a whole slew of sci-fi elements were introduced. Everybody has powers now, and there's been a murder because why not, right? Two entire chapters are dedicated to explaining mechanics that the story decided to break immediately after they were formed.
I feel quite disappointed now.
Actually, as somebody who regularly reads manga on a smartphone or computer, I'd mostly agree with text needing to be way bigger (especially in cases where the manga is only available digitally in English to start with). I don't mind swiping diagonally that much.
This part was vaguely terrifying though:
What slice of life animu should I watch? I'll try K-On! but I'd like to try something else too.
Blend S is fun because it has some male characters and a lot of fun typical anime nonsense, but I never finished that either.
Non Non Biyori is ridiculously popular with genre purists, and people overall like GochiUsa.
As for my own anime watching, I'm considering getting back on the UtaPri train because I'm only 7 episodes and an upcoming movie away from an "ending".