Today I’ve got a review of one of Kyoto Animation’s least celebrated recent features, the fairly awkward Myriad Colors Phantom World. The crass fanservice of the show’s first two episodes led me to drop it back when it was airing, but the overall show is a fair bit better than those episodes would indicate. It’s still not good, but it’s a better-than-average entry in its genre with absurdly accomplished visual execution, which is still something!
You can check out my full review over at ANN.
All of our new shows have turned in their final assignments, and the testing period is over. Who will rise, who will fall, who will entertain us mightily for a few weeks only to slowly sink into a mire of mediocrity and disappointment – all these questions lie ahead, but for now, we can already viciously judge the labor of thousands of animators based on our first impressions of their new creations. I knew from before this season even began that it would be a relatively light one, but with that in mind, the haul here is actually pretty solid. We had a couple truly great premieres, a few more shows that demonstrate either potential or reasonable genre chops, and The Rest. There’s always going to be a The Rest, but as long as anime continues to produce just a couple shows that justify our nostalgic Stockholm Syndrome every season, this unhealthy relationship can keep chugging merrily along. Let’s start right at the top of the list and RUN ‘EM DOWN!
A new season has begun, and I’m already well into the friggin’ preview guide. I mentioned back in my initial season preview that this looked to be a particularly dire season, and the shows so far have unfortunately born that out even more emphatically than I’d assumed. That list of shows only had eight new entries in the first place, and of those eight, two have turned out strong so far, three have disappointed me, one hasn’t been picked up for streaming yet, and one likely isn’t even airing this season. It’s a hard time for all of us, but as long as backlogs exist, I should be the only person who actually has to suffer. There have been a couple strong premieres so far, and there’s always the chance one of the season’s wildcards will impress, so there’s no reason to give up hope yet. Let’s keep the anime faith alive!
You can check out the full list of shows covered so far over at ANN, or check below for my list of scores and links to individual reviews. LET’S GET TO IT.
We’re approaching the last act of the fall season, which means it’s time once again to shift an eye towards winter and see what the future might bring. This winter season is not looking good, frankly – there are basically no shows I have strong confidence in, and even the potential hits are pretty sparse. But every season has its surprises, and it’d be hard for a season to be as barren as this past summer anyway, so I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. Winter seasons are historically pretty lousy, anyway; last winter was a fantastic outlier, but with nothing like Shirobako carrying over and nothing as promising as Death Parade or Yurikuma awaiting us, we’re going to have to forage our way through the lean months. Check out your backlog, finish shows you fell behind on, and maybe spare a minute or two to check in on a few of these potential titles
As usual, I won’t be running down every upcoming title here – you can read synopses as well as I can, and there’s only so much I can say about Crappy Light Novel Adaptation #375. You can check out the full list over at anichart, but I’m just going to be hitting the stuff that actually looks interesting to me, and explaining why. Let’s get right to it!