Spring 2018 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

Hey all, and welcome to the Spring 2018 Premiere Retrospective! If you haven’t been here before, here’s the deal: my work at Anime News Network means I end up watching and reviewing nearly every single new premiere in a season. That normally adds up to somewhere between thirty and forty premieres, and given a solid percentage of those premieres tend to be shows I wouldn’t inflict on my worst enemy, it seems like a worthwhile idea to rank these episodes to aid future travelers. As usual, I’m not implying these rankings are “objective” or anything, and obviously my own tastes will dictate a great deal of how things shake out. I also should stress that a show ending up somewhere further down the ranking isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I grumble about it, but in truth, the majority of anime are perfectly watchable, and will likely appeal to an audience who finds their premise intriguing. You can check out the full list of ANN reviews here, and I’ll be grouping my own critiques into vague tiers below. Alright, that’s enough preamble. Let’s rank some shows!

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Spring 2018 – First Impressions, Part One

The spring season has begun! As usual, I am pretty much booked solid on viewings and reviews and previews and all my other random projects at the moment, as I rush to offer the hottest of takes on the freshest of shows at the fastest pace I possibly can. As for this particular season, things are actually turning out pretty swimmingly so far – both Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Lupin III had very solid premieres, a few unexpected shows managed to surprise me, and pretty much nothing reduced me to sobbing in the fetal position. I’ve got thoughts and ratings for everything, so if you want to check out the full ANN list you can head right here (I’m Nick Creamer over there, incidentally), and if you’d like to see my own scores with links to each individual review, click through below!

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