Category Archives: Week in Review

Spring 2016 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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This season is incredibly dangerous, you guys. I know first weeks are always misleading, and that at least a few shows generally fall apart soon after a strong premiere, but there are just so many good shows in so many genres that I feel I’m finally going to be buried in cartoons. There are tons of great action shows, plenty of diverse comedies, dramas and slice of lifes and Concrete Revolutio besides. It really does feel like there’s something for everyone this season – not only is it a diverse crop, but the best shows are scattered across a wide range of potential tastes.

That said, there are certainly both winners and losers among this group, and busy anime consumer that you are, I’m sure you don’t have the time to sift for the best of them. So as usual, I’ll be breaking down this season’s premieres into distinct, precisely calibrated categories, starting with the shows to celebrate and moving on through to the shows that punished me for daring to live. All the links on the show names lead to the ANN preview guide pages, where you can find my more extensive thoughts on every single one under Nick Creamer. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do, so let’s cut the preamble here and RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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Spring 2016 – First Impressions, Part Two

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The hits and misses continue this week, as another handful of shows are tossed right dang into our laps. As usual, the accumulation of shows worth sticking around for is a slow process marked by a whole lot of suffering – but I’m the only one here who actually has to watch all this crap, so please, enjoy my wailing and gnashing of teeth. Outside of Mayoiga being significantly more ridiculous than anticipated, the season’s performing about as well as I’d expected so far, meaning we’ll likely end up with a pretty solid line of hopefuls. The future is always bright!

Cerberus

You can check out the full list of reviews over at ANN, or check below the cut for individual scores and links for everything added since the last post. Time to get back to it!

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Spring 2016 – First Impressions, Part One

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Preview week has begun! The shows are already starting to pile up, and as usual, I’ve got a bunch of picks and unpicks and first impressions for your approval. The season has sadly not measured up to expectations so far, what with one of my top picks (Mayoiga) turning out to be so-bad-it’s-good and one of my speculative picks (Kumamiko) just turning out straight bad. But I’ve still already got several shows I’m planning to follow up on, and the deluge of shows has only just begun. There’s nothing out yet that I have high hopes of truly loving, but if you’re an action fan, both JoJo and My Hero Academia are sure to please!

Kumamiko

You can check out the full list of shows so far over at ANN, and as usual, I’m including individual links and grades for everything I’ve hit so far below the cut. Happy anime hunting!

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Winter 2016 – Week 12 in Review

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Most of this season’s anime came to a close this week, leaving just those two oft-compared highlights, Rakugo and Dagashi Kashi, to finish the season alone. ERASED pulled itself together to end with as much dignity as it could, given the circumstances of its villain, while Active Raid similarly felt hamstrung by its own weak antagonist. I almost feel tempted to write an article specifically about antagonists now, because the problems with both those shows were so specific and so centered on the ways they handled their villains. Though of course, that article would then end up spinning out into how an antagonist shouldn’t be something you design independently, and should instead reflect the core themes and conflicts of your narrative, and then we’re all the way back at storytelling step one again. Anyway. Some shows ended this week, some shows didn’t. Let’s crack those knuckles once more and RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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Winter 2016 – Week 11 in Review

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Anime was pretty great this week! Basically anything would feel like an improvement after last week’s tragic slate of episodes, but this week’s selection was about as strong as you could hope for. ERASED didn’t magically fix the heavy fundamental damage its last episode caused, but it recovered as well as it could with an episode that mostly rediscovered the concept of subtlety. Dagashi Kashi had one of its best episodes so far, and Rakugo made up for its relatively grounded visual storytelling with some of the most endearing character moments of the season. Things are looking pretty okay in animeland at the moment. This may have been a relatively underwhelming season, but with Rakugo on track to become a legit classic, you can’t really call it a letdown.

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Winter 2016 – Week 10 in Review

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Well I guess some weeks have to be disasters. A couple of the shows I’m watching were fine this week, but there were some real terrible episodes in there, and one in particular… I don’t even know what to say. It’s pretty rare that a generally excellent show completely sets itself on fire just a few episodes before the end, but here we are. This is what we got. So let’s get right into it.

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Winter 2016 – Week 9 in Review

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Anime stayed pretty respectable this week, offering up reasonable episodes all around. It seems like Rakugo’s going to the only show I can call truly great by the end of this season, though. ERASED just has too many moments where its thriller mechanics drag down its more compelling variables, and though Grimgar is quite interesting and unique, it’s also a very uneven production. The season’s second tier is also somewhat questionable; Konosuba and Dagashi Kashi both regularly gesture towards jokes that don’t work in the slightest, and Active Raid is pretty much just an average crime procedural. The season has managed to hold together to the point where I’m not actively disappointed, but I’m still very ready for the much richer spring season to begin.

That said, at least Rakugo continues to knock it out of the park every week. So let’s start right there as we run ’em down!

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Winter 2016 – Week 8 in Review

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Anime was good this week! Basically every show I’m watching had a solid episode, and some impressed with legitimate highlights, too. Both Konosuba and Dagashi Kashi have now established their character relationships firmly enough that they can often just coast on audience investment, and ERASED pulled off a real stunner this week, focusing largely on Hinazuki’s feelings for the first time. Grimgar executed a major action sequence with characteristic emotional grace, and Rakugo Shinju continued to be just as great as it always is. This season has a fairly light spread of shows, but you don’t really need catalog depth if the first couple tiers are holding strong. Let’s get right into this week’s highlights and RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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Winter 2016 – Week 7 in Review

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This week in anime was a week in anime. We’re entering that stretch of the season where shows often become kinda tough to write about – they’ve established a firm rhythm and personality at this point, but they’re not quite into the leadup to the climax, and so episodes can oftentimes just be described as “pretty much like the last episode, I guess.” Even a show like Konosuba, one of this season’s most inconsistent wildcards, is now at least becoming steady in its inconsistency. There were some slight dips and slight rises among individual shows, but everything is at the moment falling within the margin of error of its existing expectations. That doesn’t mean things are impossible to talk about – that just means I have to work harder to find good points of interest. So sit there and appreciate my hard work as I run this week down!

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Winter 2016 – First Half in Review

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And suddenly, six weeks have passed. Fortunately for me, it’s actually hard to pretend the winter season has rushed by; not because the shows themselves have proceeded slowly, but because I live in goddamn New England, and so every day is an interminable march of suffering through sub-arctic temperatures and mocking snow. I hate winter, and I’d rather live in a place where it doesn’t exist, but for the moment I’m stuck here. As far as anime goes, this has actually been a perfectly reasonable season.

This seems like one of those seasons where, to an even greater degree than normally, the show quality just drops off a cliff after the second tier. In an ordinary season, there are a decent number of shows I’m not watching that people in a general sense are still enjoying – things that don’t appeal to me genre-wise, or whose writing or art style don’t gel with me, or some other quirk of preference. But this time, it seems like nearly everyone I know is watching the same shortlist of anime, and then there’s just a vast desert of nothing. But this actually doesn’t affect my viewing habits at all – I never tend to find more than half a dozen or so shows watchable, and as far as that small crop goes, as long as I have two to three shows that seem genuinely good, I’m satisfied. But it’d be far too mature of me to just say “I’m enjoying a fair number of shows for a variety of reasons,” and besides, we’ve got traditions to uphold. So let’s start at the top and ruthlessly rank this season’s claimants to the throne!

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