Tag Archives: Blood Blockade Battlefront

Fall 2017 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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A new anime season has begun! As it turns out, in spite of last season’s incredibly tepid lineup, the reports of anime’s demise were greatly exaggerated. This season is looking to easily be the strongest of the year overall, and likely one of the best single seasons in the past several years. Offering phenomenal shows in a wide variety of genres, a strong mix of sequels, originals, and adaptations, and an absurdly deep bench, Fall 2017 looks to be one for the record books. After a season where my weekly diet was “Made in Abyss and Tsuredure Children,” it feels nice to actually have to pick and choose what I have time to watch.

As usual, my work on ANN’s preview guide has given me an exhaustingly full perspective on the season’s offerings, and so I’m here today to rank my selections from the highest highs to the lowest lows. I’ll be grouping shows by vague, perhaps even meaningless tiers, and trying to offer a brief summation of my overall feelings. All of these titles will also have links to the guide itself, so if you want my more extended and theoretically professional critiques, click on through and search for Nick Creamer. Let’s start at the top and run this season down!

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Fall 2017 Season Preview

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Holy crap everyone, it’s time for the season preview. Season previews are exciting to me even in the most mundane of times, and this is far from that. Personally, this summer season has been the least interesting batch of anime since I started watching seasonally (which was… three… five?… nevermind years ago). In contrast, the upcoming season is packed with returning favorites, unexpected revivals, intriguing adaptations, and promising anime originals. It would be very nearly impossible for this coming season to undercut my current 3.5 show roster, and it’s actually looking quite likely that I might have to sacrifice even some promising shows just for the sake of time. Summer may be ending, but a new anime dawn is approaching!

As usual, I won’t be running down every single upcoming show in this list. You can check a site like anichart if that’s what you’re looking for, and can also easily find all upcoming synopses there as well. What I will be focusing on are the shows I think are promising, along with laying out whatever reasons I might have for believing in them, be that solid source material or talented staff or just a great first season. Let’s start with my most anticipated prospects and run this season down!

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Top Ten Anime of 2015

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And so, another year of anime winds to its end. There have been surprises and disappointments this year, and my ultimate list doesn’t really look much like what I’d expected to find, but in the end, anime is anime. At the beginning of this year, I was looking forward to crowning two of 2014’s better series – Your Lie in April and Parasyte. Unfortunately, both of those shows kinda lost their way in their second halves, which was sad for everyone. Later on, at the year’s halfway point, I was again excited about my end-of-year list – I already had a good seven or eight shows I felt were top ten-worthy, and was beginning to think this would be a year to rival 2013. Unfortunately, the year’s second half only really gave me the last couple shows I needed, and so here I am, recognizing just enough shows to fill out a full list. This year didn’t end out quite as strong as I’d hoped, but ultimately I probably shouldn’t complain about any year that featured enough shows to fill a list plus honorable mentions.

And I actually do have an honorable mention, one I honestly feel a little bad not including on my list proper. Although not all its sequences were equally strong, Studio Khara’s Animator Expo definitely deserves a mention – you might have heard of it just because of Me! Me! Me!, but the whole thing is full of wonderful, creative little vignettes. If you’re interested in the visual potential of anime, or just want to see some cool short-form pieces, Animator Expo is a can’t-miss experience. The third season is still available online (here’s a particularly good one), so I’d definitely check that out. I should also probably mention One Punch Man, since I get the feeling not mentioning it means it will dominate the comments. Yes, I watched it, and no, I didn’t think it was that great. Strong animation, but everything outside of that felt pretty mediocre, and so you won’t see it here.

But that’s all preamble. You guys are here for the top shows, and top shows you will have – shows from a wide span of genres and creators, shows to thrill and shock and make you cry. Every year in anime brings new treasures, so let’s buckle in and run down the best in one more year of Japanese cartoons!

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Blood Blockade Battlefront – Review

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Aw dang I reviewed the Nightow-Matsumoto monster mash. My ultimate feelings on the show are kinda negative, but that’s mainly the result of potentially overly high expectations. Matsumoto’s a genius, basically, and so I expect her works to be masterpieces. Instead we got a very aesthetically compelling series of adventure vignettes with some crappy humor that somewhat falls apart in its second half. Certainly not a bad thing, better than most shows you see, but basically nothing I’d place next to Kyousogiga. But it’s unfair to judge every show next to its creator’s first masterpiece, and so I’m hoping that going forward, I’ll be able to temper my expectations a bit and just accept that even the best directors don’t always make the best works.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, which is definitely more positive than this little blurb. Or you can check out my brief notes for the finale below!

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Fall 2015 – Week 4 in Review

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It’s that time again! We had a reasonable crop of episodes this week, with four out of my six active series offering solid episodes, and one of the last two never promising to offer a single solid episode in the first place. I think at this point it’s safe to say Iron-Blooded Orphans is the breakout star of the season – it’s not the flashiest show, but it’s just absolutely solid in everything it does, full of strong characters and well-chosen dramatic turns and plenty of threads I’m excited to see through. Other shows are more tentative, but still enjoyable so far – in particular, I feel like it’d be easy for either The Perfect Insider or Utawarerumono to fall apart, but I’m still having a fine time with them so far. And One Punch Man is starting to wear out its single joke, but I’ve heard the original series picks up from here out, so I’m hopeful this is just a temporary lull. Overall, this isn’t the flashiest season, and certainly can’t compare to the year’s stellar first half, but I’ve got enough that I’m enjoying that I can’t really complain. But that’s enough news in brief, let’s get to it and RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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Spring 2015 – Week 12 in Review

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Spring season is nearly ending, bringing with it that seasonal terror of aging and a whole bunch of finales. Spring’s shows seem to be ending reasonably well on average, though this week had its stronger and weaker episodes. The big hit this time was Blood Blockade Battlefront, which rallied back from a weaker episode and a recap with likely its best episode so far. Sound! Euphonium had a stellar episode as well, though it’s hard to pick a favorite in that one. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure also had a fine ending, and Nagato Yuki-chan maintained its streak, though the staying power of its current trick seems like it may be running out. Other episodes were less strong, but nothing seems to be actually falling apart at this point – I’ve dropped too aggressively for that. Anyway, let’s get to ’em!

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Spring 2015 – Week 10 in Review

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Another very fine week in a very fine season. Oregairu and Euphonium both pulled off characteristically wonderful episodes this week, but the real surprises were JoJo and – I’m serious – Nagato Yuki. On the JoJo side, the Dio-Kakyoin fight managed to not only be exciting and entertaining, but genuinely beautiful. And on the Nagato Yuki side, an abrupt shift in tone resulted in an episode that was almost equally beautiful in its own way, slow-building and melancholy and just brimming with a compelling, deeply felt sense of atmosphere. Color me extremely surprised!

Alright, enough preamble. LET’S RUN ‘EM DOWN.

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Spring 2015 – Week 9 in Review

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I should have something piercing and salient to say here, but really I’m just staring at all the stupid faces I chose for the episodes this week and giggling to myself. Goddamnit Takeo. Goddamnit Shinji. Hurray for silly anime faces.

Anyway, some anime came out this week. It wasn’t the best week, outside of Oregairu having one more Holy Shit Good episode, but most of the episodes were reasonable nonetheless. Let’s run ’em down!

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Spring 2015 – Week 8 in Review

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Holy crap did this week have some peaks. God damn. Not all the episodes here were great, but the ones that were… I’d be surprised and ecstatic to see Oregairu and Euphonium’s episodes here somehow be challenged for positions in the top 5 episodes of the year. They were both just That Good – that full of everything that makes their respective series great, and that satisfying as a realization of everything that had come before. Those two episodes were stunning, and I feel lucky to be watching two shows that good in the same season.

Anyway, some other episodes came out too, I guess. Let’s run ’em down!

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Spring 2015 – Week 7 in Review

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There were some good episodes this week, with JoJo and Oregairu tossing out particular standouts, but overall, I have to say this one was defined by its worst episodes. Nagato Yuki had a second straight episode that was just completely without merit, and Unlimited Blade Works hit what I really, deeply hope has to be rock bottom. Last week I expressed hope that Caster’s absence would help the show regain a sense of momentum – well, apparently Archer had other plans. He’s always been one of the weakest parts of this show, and this episode was his grand performance, where twenty minutes of dialogue conveyed ten lines of information we already knew. I’m too far in to stop now, but UBW is not making the ride easy.

But that’s enough doom and gloom for now. Let’s talk JOJO.

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