The halfway point is here! I’m not the only one who feels like this has been a really fast season, right? I mean, it’s obviously going to feel like I’m running through anime faster if I’m enjoying it more, but it feels like Flying Witch and The Lost Village and My Hero Academia just got started a couple weeks ago, and suddenly here we are. As has at this point shifted from “it’s cute to say some silly blog thing is ‘traditional'” to “wow, this really is a tradition, I’ve been doing this crap for a substantial portion of my adult life,” I’ll be running down my current schedule from best to worst as your seasonal reminder that rankings don’t matter, we’re all going to die, the only truth is the abyss. I’ve got a lot of very fun and very different shows to get through, so let’s not waste any more time in preamble. From top to bottom, here are this spring’s very best cartoon contenders!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Spring 2016 – Week 5 in Review
We had a fresh new crop of anime roll in this week, and I’m here to sort out the top tier cartoons from the rest of the cargo. It won’t be easy this time – there were plenty of great episodes this week across the board, with a wide variety of genres and favorites pulling off excellent performances. The Lost Village’s fourth episode more or less cemented it as a ridiculous semi-classic, while Concrete Revolutio had another stunning vignette, and Flying Witch maintained its clean streak of strong episodes. This is the best season I’ve personally had in about a year, and I’m enjoying it to the fullest. Let’s dive right into this pile of nonsense and RUN ‘EM DOWN!
Spring 2016 – Week 4 in Review
God damn is this ever a season of anime. I keep trying to drop shows, but they all keep being too entertaining. And now I check out Macross Delta and find out that’s a lot of fun, too? I really wouldn’t have minded one or two of these shows back a season ago, but it’s also great to log on twitter and see people enjoying such a wide variety of new anime. Even this season’s ambiguous productions are generally coming up solid – Kiznaiver had its strongest episode yet this week, and other borderline stuff like Haifuri is executing well, even if it’s not exactly my thing. It’s a fine time for watching too goddamn many cartoons, so let’s start at the top and RUN ‘EM DOWN!
Spring 2016 – Week 3 in Review
With this season’s extended preview week finally over, I found myself left with way too many fine shows to watch. Thus, this week was one more return to The Culling, that fun time of year when shows that would be reasonable watches in weaker seasons all get the axe purely for pragmatic reasons. Between full show reviews, Current Projects work, and other various media, I can only really spare the time for a bit more than half a dozen airing shows, and so anything that isn’t truly noteworthy had to be cut. That still didn’t make this easy, of course – this season is good, I want to watch everything I can. But I was able to trim some hedges here and there.
Spring 2016 – Week 2 in Review
Well hell, Wednesday’s here already. I already covered most of the prior week’s episodes in my retrospective, but that didn’t hit any second episodes, so I guess I’ll make a week in review or something. Fortunately, this week’s second episodes were all definitely worth talking about – in fact, going forward, I’m guessing these posts will be getting pretty mountainous. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is hitting new peaks, My Hero Academia is demonstrating exactly what I find compelling about its premise, and Joker Game is shaping up to be a stylish and legitimately engaging thriller. This season is ridiculous. Let’s get right to it.
Spring 2016 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective
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!
Spring 2016 – First Impressions, Part Two
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!
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!
Spring 2016 – First Impressions, Part One
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!
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!
Winter 2016 – Week 12 in Review
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!
Winter 2016 – Week 11 in Review
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.