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joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh · 5 years ago

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Season in Review - Summer 2019

One of these again. Bitch about the absence of a “read more” and I’ll just ignore it, fuck you.

Bem

I always start these off with the shows I dropped, so uh, let’s cover the first show I dropped. Which is obviously Bem, which I finished the first episode of and then never watched any more.

There wasn’t really anything about this first episode that was like, extremely terrible, it was just very, meh, and nothing really hooked me. The main cop girl is annoying, like I can enjoy very straight-laced cops in situations where their straight-lacedness is challenged but she’s just irritating in her pissyfits in every scene she’s in. Then you’ve got the titular Bem and his squad of youkai. Bem is very boring, Belo is obnoxious, Bela is girl. The first episode had no other characters worth remembering. The setting isn’t necessarily bad, but “city of crime and youkai” also isn’t especially interesting. I didn’t like this show’s soundtrack at all, it’s jazz but it isn’t jazzy, so like, there’s nothing there at all. Didn’t really like the visuals at all either, most everything looked either below average or just bad.

And that’s all I have to say about Bem. I didn’t like anything in the first episode and there was no single thing that looked to have enough potential for me to want to stick with it.

Fire Force

As I said earlier, I start these off with shows I dropped. Fire Force is included in the list of things I dropped. Unlike Bem though, I made it fairly far into this one, managing an entire 9 episodes before giving it the boot, which is literally the most episodes I’ve ever watched of a show I’ve dropped, and also is I think more than a fair enough shot.

Fire Force gets off to an interesting enough start, the idea of people just randomly turning into these fire monsters that we have a special service dedicated to combating is quite cool, and moreover, the first episode’s absolutely brilliant visuals, especially for the fire which looks genuinely beautiful, just kinda make the whole thing feel super exciting. After episode 1 though things just, start getting worse. The first episode suggests that things will feel a bit like a generic shounen, but the rest of the episodes I watched really just drilled into my head that this shounen will be so generic and uninteresting that I stopped caring about the plot or characters basically immediately. And when the visuals stopped being as impressive as well, I really had nothing left to care about. Also I kinda hate this show’s character designs, and its relationship with fanservice is really bad. I don’t usually care about fanservice in shows, and hell even if you’re only having fanservice of the girls I’m still willing to accept it, but this show has to go really far in sexualising the girls at every possible opportunity, with 2 girls’ outfits being burned off to near nudity in the only 9 episodes I watched, as well as a character who apparently in universe has a skill called “Lucky Lechery” that makes it so she’s accidentally fanserviced the fuck out of in the most contrived ways you can possibly imagine. Plus the dialogue is fucking garbage, particularly around when I dropped the show and we’re introduced to just a bunch of shitty minor characters whose entire characters are some obnoxious gimmick with their speech.

So like, I genuinely disliked those elements, and found myself extremely bored by everything else. That’s why I dropped it. I kinda get why people are really enjoying it, but I mean to me all you really need to do is go on sakugabooru, check out some episode 1 gifs, and then you’ve experienced everything this show has to offer. I don’t score things I drop because that’s dumb, and Fire Force specifically is 2 cours so any score I could muster would only represent a third of the show, but I’d guess that if I did finish this show, I’d give it like, a 3/10.

Cop Craft

Anyway, shows I finished, let’s start with Cop Craft. Cop Craft is a show I was pretty cautious about. I think buddy cop is a ridiculously fun genre, I could probably call Hot Fuzz my favourite live action film and stuff, and the idea of a buddy cop/isekai hybrid where fantasy creatures and concepts coexist with the real world does sound quite exciting. And of course I’ve seen literally that exact concept done before with Netflix’s Bright, which was fucking awful, but still, I thought this one could be good. What had me worried though is that it’s a light novel adaptation by a studio with a uh, not stellar track record, and the fact that for the two main characters we seem to have hardcore cop man and, typical fantasy light novel waifu girl. Concept still sounds cool but it’s also really easy to see why it could suck really really badly.

And suck it did, but not quite in the ways I expected!

The major thing holding back the writing in this show is the pacing, it feels like they tried to cram multiple chapters into single episodes which completely destroys all sense of flow and dramatic tension, but also sometimes they spend two episodes on Tilarna being in a cat’s body and spend less time than that focusing on Tilarna befriending someone she probably shouldn’t befriend and that person being assassinated. But like, the writing seems like it should be good. It gets off to a pretty decent start and has a lot of cool concepts, Zelada’s massive mind control nuke for example sounds sick as shit, and like there’s this dude in episode 2 maybe that wants the mind control nuke from Zelada and his introduction is sick as fuck. Both main characters kind of have a character arc that would be “let’s be less racist and also grow closer as partners and friends” and while the light novel waifu-ness of Tilarna shines through in a lot of scenes, she does come across as having more personality than she might have had, even if the way its paced can make her feel way too waifu-y way too quickly. Like, lots of that stuff’s cool, but again the pacing kills everything, and also the misplaced focus does too, so we get shit like Zelada disappearing for most of the show until he’s the main antagonist, but once he’s defeated we literally have narration that goes like “and now the city is peaceful” even though there was like an extremely fucked political situation between elections and racial tensions and other stuff that just, is forgotten about. The show doesn’t do a good job balancing more episodic conflicts with an overarching narrative and tries to do too much of everything in too little time and it makes the whole experience kinda depressing to watch, because you can see all the good that’s there, it’s not like Bright where the good only exists in theory and in execution there’s none, this has so much more than that, but they just don’t really do enough of it well.

What’s really bad about this show though is the visuals – it’s honestly one of the worst looking shows I’ve ever seen. The first like 2 episodes look fine enough, not like, standout good or anything, but not bad enough to damage the viewing experience. After that though, everything goes to complete fuck. Art gets lazy, animation gets even lazier, backgrounds are dull, actual direction is borderline nauseating, replacing action scenes with rapid panning stills that are kinda blurry and speedline-y to pretend it’s action, but it’s just an eyesore. There’s a lot of 3D in this show and it all looks really really terrible, and I mean, I’m not really good at talking about visuals so that’s all I can really say – it just looks kinda disgusting.

Cool concept, execution is at times decent, but between the disgusting visuals and the atrocious pacing, this whole show just feels ruined. Never have I felt more like I’m watching a botched adaptation without even reading the source material than I have with this show. 3/10.

Sounan Desu ka?

In the endless list of cute girls doing anything and everything they possibly can, we’ve got cute girls do island survival. And this one was pretty good!

The main reason it manages to be so entertaining is because of the main character – Homare – who is like, a survival expert and super nerd. As in, a nerd about survival. A lot of the comedy comes from how overeager she is to do all the weird shit and that being contrasted with the 3 comparatively normal girls with her being, less eager. As the show goes on though the other girls do actually start trying to actively help more and show some initiative, and that little bit of character development is honestly quite nice. Girls are cute, comedy’s funny, there’s enough yuri for fans of that, including kiss scenes and tongue-in-asshole scenes (not kidding) and also a bunch of fanservice which I think is appropriate honestly, we’re surviving on a deserted island so you may as well lay it all bare, even if I don’t think the art style’s like, super sexy or anything. Also above all else, while this show’s formula is something that could easily get tiring, the show’s episodes are actually only like 11 minutes long excluding OP and ED, both of which are quite pleasant anyway so.

So yeah this show’s just pretty fun. Not necessarily a lot to say about it other than it’s entertaining and the shorter run time keeps it from overstaying its welcome. I give it a nice strong 6/10.

Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?

Next up in the “cute girls do everything under the sun” genre, we have Dumbbell, where cute girls do strength and body training at the gym, and it was really great!

Compared to Sounan Desu ka which really went all in on the survival element of it, Dumbbell is still largely just a normal cute girl show, like we still have some beach episodes and a new year’s episode, that sort of stuff, but to the show’s credit it goes pretty far with the bodybuilding stuff. The girls do some sort of exercise in every single episode and there are always cutaways to educational sections that tell you how to do exercises, how to not fuck up those exercises, and what muscles you’re training with those exercises, and if you think that sounds boring then you can still at least look at the uh, quite attractively drawn character designs Doga Kobo’s throwing your way. I mean, you know, I may as well say that, the show does have fanservice, and because it’s Doga Kobo, it’s quite hot. You know, whatever. I’m not complaining.

Nah that educational stuff is still quite fun, the attractive girls, nice voice acting and catchy background music really distracted me from all the guilt I felt about not doing any of the workouts that the show does actually want me to do. About all that audiovisual stuff, I’ve already said it’s Doga Kobo like twice, so you know the show looks cute as hell, but audio things are great too. Again, soundtrack’s catchy, and the OP is by far the best this season with the ED being easily the best this entire year. Also in the OP Hibiki’s seiyuu, Ai Fairouz, sounds so enthusiastic and emphatic and she’s having so much fun and it’s great. This show’s voice acting is top tier for a cute girl show, everyone just sounds great, and Hibiki being Ai Fairouz’ debut role is impressive as hell, looking forward to see her future works.

Now since it’s a cute girl show, I should probably talk about the cute girls already. Now, not that I didn’t like Sounan Desu ka’s cast, because I did, but that show was a real “Homare and the other 3 who are all equally less good than Homare”. Dumbbell’s cast blows them completely out of the water, hell it has maybe the best cast of any cute girl show this entire year so far. We’ve got the delightful gyaru foodie protagonist Hibiki, who just stinks of this infectiously charismatic personality. She’s legitimately hilarious and so quickly endearing, and at no point during the entire show does that charm ever waver. There’s the muscle fetishist Akemi, who’s always the most eager about everything relating to working out and is so unabashedly horny when it comes to all the muscle stuff that it’s impossible not to love her, also her design is maybe my favourite because long black hair is tight. We’ve got Uehara, movie buff alongside Hibiki, also a professional boxer and personality wise, she’s probably the weakest since outside of what I just mentioned she usually plays straight man, but she makes up for it in her design because tan girls in anime are great, and more over she’s the only girl with a sixpack which is hecking delightful. And there’s Gina, or Zina, who knows, a Russian girl that gets high on being a self-aware weeaboo, which surprisingly didn’t get old, also her design is sick because I also love white-haired anime girls. The whole group’s great and have delightful chemistry with each other.

But of course, I have yet to mention the best boy – Machio Naruzo. This absolute fucking unit is ridiculous, dude’s literally worshipped as a muscle god at some points he’s so colossal and buff and eager to work out and extremely happy to help everyone else work out, literally admiring any effort made regardless of skill level, the dude sings alongside Sakura in the OP and even does the entire ED himself, Kaito Ishikawa’s performance with this man is fucking bursting with personality, he’s the best. I believe the OP plays in the first episode which spoils the reveal that he’s shredded as hell, but it’s still funny seeing that tiny man in a tracksuit burst into this absolute titan with some of the most energetic animation this season.

Really the entire cast is just absolutely delightful. So is this show. It’s one of the strongest examples of a cute girl show with a specific gimmick really giving that gimmick proper focus, without overcommitting so as to be boring or tiresome or whatever. It’s just a great show all around. 7/10 because I mean I’ve seen other cute girl shows reach higher highs in years before this.

Granbelm

Next up in the list of hyperbolic descriptions of the abundance of cute girl shows, we have cute girls do Madoka, again, but shitty, again, and with mechs, which I believe is a first!

Evidently, I didn’t like this show. I’m just gonna get the pros out of the way first though because hey that’s at least nice. This show’s got pretty nice visuals, looks almost like a 3Hz show, fight scenes are pretty cool even if the sound design in them is shit, background art’s really good, character designs are also super cute sans Mangetsu’s dumb fuckin shitty ass ponytail and also I hate when they contort their faces and do weird fish eye lens camera bullshit and this show’s cinematography is quite unique I feel but it was ugly as sin. And the mech designs which are genuinely the worst I’ve ever seen, they’re somehow too chibi for the characters but also designed like serious mecha without a focus on cuteness or anything so they just look disgusting. I was supposed to be talking about the pros, sorry. The voice acting’s pretty great. This show seemed like the type that would just use a bunch of newbie seiyuu all of whom would do, just fine, and there’s nothing wrong with that approach, but surprisingly they actually got some pretty big names in here, most notably Aoi Yuuki who, very unsurprisingly, gives the best performance of any show this season. Seriously she’s that good. Also when this show does slice of life stuff, which isn’t that often but I mean, it happens, it’s all pretty good, and again with the girls being cute enough I can totally see myself watching a slice of life show that was like this except, you know, entirely slice of life. Oh, and there’s a yuri kiss scene. Which was my favourite moment in the whole show.

And uh, that’s it for the pros! And thankfully the cons are quite easily summarised – this show’s writing is a fucking mess. We’re told way more than we’re shown and events kind of just, feel like they’re happening with no rhyme or reason. Never mind whatever the fuck this show’s lore is supposed to be. Could not for the life of me understand what the fuck Kuon and her sister’s deal with Aoi Yuuki’s character was, some shit about eating each other for some reason? In episode 9 or whatever they find out that Mangetsu’s really powerful, and then they either confirm or very very very strongly suggest her imouto is too, and then they just, drop that. Shingetsu’s as strong as she is because Magiaconatus likes her I guess. That’s literally it. Magiaconatus just fucking exists because ??? and is an indifferent god thing that puts on these tests for the fuck of it. The theme of the show is that battle royales are bad and deadly, woah! Aoi Yuuki’s character just becomes the main antagonist because yeah. Sometimes if you lose in Granbelm you die and are erased from existence but only sometimes, because Nene is really cute so she’s exempt from the rule. In episode 12 Mangetsu says that the power to change the world with a single wish isn’t what hope is, and then the very next episode, Shingetsu changes the world with a single wish, which left me very fucking confused as to what hope is supposed to be in this show then and what the thematic conclusion is at all. Shingetsu actually very nearly dies against Anna, who is perhaps the worst most insufferable character in the show, and only wins because she repeats the mantra “you can’t beat me”, and then is evenly matched with Aoi Yuuki’s character who’s actually a doll who’s been at this for 1000 years with no foreshadowing, that is until she’s not evenly matched, but then fuses with Mangetsu because ????? and then suddenly she’s exactly as competent as she was before but now Aoi Yuuki’s character can’t keep up. This is just, stuff happens the show. Soundtrack’s not even good.

Tough choice between 2/10 and 3/10 because it’s true, stuff just happens, and there’s no thematic conclusion at all, but also it’s cute and looks good and can be interesting, and the slice of life is nice. Honestly I’m feeling 2/10. It’s one of the best Madoka likes in the technical elements with those stronger visuals I mentioned, but also it’s one of the most thematically braindead, and feels the most like a straight up ripoff of Madoka. So uh, yeah 2/10.

Machikado Mazoku

Running out of places to go with this “cute girls do x” thing. Cute girls do, well, one cute girl is a demon girl cursed to be poor who has to defeat a magical girl to be unpoor, and the other cute girl is a magical girl who starts hanging out with and training the demon girl and also constantly ends up doing things to make the demon girl more indebted to her.

And it’s pretty fun! I’m very unsubtly super into magical girls, and this show played off of that little interest of mine in a bunch of fun ways very often, which I super appreciated, and the main comedic duo of Shamiko and Momo are just pretty good. It’s a very unique dynamic where they’re both really stupid in completely different and entertaining ways, and the humour is derived from that but not really in that absurdist way where it’s all laugh out loud misunderstandings. It’s really funny and kinda hard to put into words, but it’s not really a dynamic I’ve seen anywhere else and I enjoy it a lot. Also the fact that basically everyone in the show kinda responds with equal like, I suppose flippancy, I enjoy that. Everyone in school’s just like “oh you’re a demon girl and have to kill a magical girl? That’s really cool! Do your best! Actually, there’s a magical girl at this school already” type thing, it’s funny I enjoy it.

That being said it’s like, got a surprisingly large amount of entire episodes that just aren’t great. Like, lots of cute girl shows have bits that aren’t really funny, but most bits in this show are pretty long and a lot of them just aren’t entertaining. Particularly everything relating to Shamiko’s family tends to be really lame and boring, and oddly expositive, also Mikan’s a character you can only do one gag with and that gag isn’t funny and doesn’t complement anything else well so. The show’s at its best when it’s Shamiko and Momo, and it’s not really that funny when you cut one of them out and only focus on the other. Except again some of the classmates are funny in how little they’re put off by stuff.

Visuals are about what you’d expect from any random cute girl show, I like the character designs, Momo looks like a very cute magical girl and if you just put her in a normal magical girl show I’d watch it, in fact I wish this show had more normal magical girl stuff. Shamiko’s cute, her crisis management form is, uh, appealing. Soundtrack’s pleasant enough, one of the midcard songs is really relaxing, Konomi Kohara is Shamiko and it’s great seeing her in a main role, everything else sounds cute, OP and ED are kinda lame, normal stuff.

6/10. Fine enough presentation and a funny premise that they do generally do well with, but fairly often lacklustre comedy. I’d watch a season 2, but like compared to something like Dumbbell, I don’t really want a season 2, you know?

Re:Stage! Dream Days

I’m out of cute girl jokes. Cute girls do middle school idol stuff.

Let’s just start off honestly and say this is very nearly my favourite show of the season. It’s not, we’ll find that out later, but I completely loved this show from start to finish. Well, kind of anyway. It starts out a bit slow, it’s got a fairly generic feeling first episode and then afterwards we’re on recruitment duty up until like episode 4, which had me feeling sceptical, but the general silliness that I love so much about the show and will talk about in a bit is introduced as early as episode 2, and that had me starting to properly have fun. If you go read my reviews for those episodes at the time I’m fairly cynical but in hindsight I hate that I was like that since the show so quickly grew to be such a delightfully fun experience and I should never have doubted it.

Anyway what actually makes this show so fun? Well it’s just, it’s just so ridiculously goofy and over the top at all times. For example, my best girl Kae is like this gamer hacker loli whose phone just can display like holograms and can wirelessly hack into laptops, allow her to type out entire word documents, and then print them out, in like 5 seconds flat for the entire process. We meet a few other idol groups than our main one in the show, including one where the gimmick is that one idol is the other’s aunt, even though they’re more or less the same age, and we meet another idol group that tries to get into an actual fight with ours. Also like the A-RISE equivalent of this series has a girl that talks like, mad shit at our girls all the time, not even Leah Kazuno “you’re not taking this seriously enough” shit nah I mean proper like “fuck you you suck and I’m better than you” type shit, it’s hilarious. And then Kae threatens to eviscerate her with this death beam ray type thing, it’s great. Also in episode 3 the group are trying to recruit Kasumi and Kae’s the only one who doesn’t immediately fuck up, but also she’s rigged the entire playfield with multiple extremely technically complex traps that she wirelessly activates to beat Kasumi who’s a survival game expert and stuff. Not all the goofy fun stuff relates to Kae either, in fact she’s actually got some of the least screentime in the show I feel, we’ve got delightful little shits like Minori, who’s like Dia, Eli, Nico and Hanayo fused into a single entity all at once and is the cutest and hottest character in the show and completely steals the show in every scene she’s in, or actually every other girl is likeable but those two are the best. Lots of this show’s dialogue is just funny, funny on purpose I feel but sometimes not funny on purpose but it also still feels like you’re laughing with it rather than at it. The character designs are goofy and great, everyone’s like this major hella loli and it’s adorable, they’re all super cute and Sayu’s hair looks like plastic tbh I don’t like it. But she has like a decent character arc and her convincing her parents she should be an idol is done surprisingly well, fuck they do it better than like the Sunshine movie for example. Oh, what else. Music’s pretty fun, all nice idol stuff with different styles between the different groups, also our group, who are called KiRaRe by the way I’ve not mentioned that, at one point they split into pairs and their pairs’ music’s fun, like if you don’t really like that type of J-poppy idol music this won’t change your mind but it’s all still pretty good, quite memorable as well. Visuals are good, character designs are cute, quality is consistent throughout the show, performances use 3D pretty well, it can actually look like the 2D except not worse and the animations are still cute. Surprisingly good vocal performances at times too, everyone crying in the last episode is kind of goofy but like they do a pretty good job at it, Minori especially.

Honestly it’s actually pretty hard for me to explain what it is about this show I like so much. My best description would probably be to say that this is the type of show that you’d really enjoy ironically, except since I’m not the type of person to enjoy things ironically, I just enjoy this show genuinely, in spite of and because of its flaws, but it’s also not like even flawed enough in any way for it to be a show I’d consider bad. Weird description? Maybe. This section of this post is a bit weird? Perhaps.

I gave this an 8/10, because I like to pretend I’m at least somewhat of a serious critic so I can’t give it any higher, but I loved this show a lot and tbh it’ll probably make my top 5 of the year. If you like idol shows check it out, if you like Love Live check it out, if you want to have something kinda goofy to enjoy with some pals check it out. I loved this show a lot and struggle to explain why. Desperately want a season 2. There are like 5 idol groups in the Re:Stage multimedia project and while all 5 of them are here, KiRaRe get the most focus and then other than Stella Maris being A-RISE, the rest are kinda just there. Give us more content and let us see what they’re like normally. Give me more of this show, you don’t need to try to increase the quality at all this is at the exact level where I could watch it literally forever, but also make it better if you want. I wish I understood why I enjoy things better.

Kanata no Astra

Anyway we’re done with cute girls. What’s next?

So Kanata no Astra (which is a way better title than Astra: Lost in Space because it has the protag’s name in it) is a show about a dude called Kanata getting lost in space with a bunch of strangers, or rather they’re launched into deep space via a wormhole, find a ship, and then have to journey across multiple planets to restock and survive the trip home.

Fun premise, and the execution’s quite interesting?

The show is obviously primarily an adventure narrative, but it has a lot of drama, suspense and mystery to it as well. Pretty much every single episode has some sort of new obstacle for the crew to overcome or a new reveal that reshapes the way they’re viewing their situation. This sort of approach did make the whole thing feel somewhat repetitive and predictable, but tbh it also meant my investment was pretty high week to week and I was always remembering what plot points were where and wanting to know the answers, also you can genuinely feel the group growing closer as they overcome these hurdles.

About that group, the show is very much more about them it is anything to do with the space travel. With a massive 10 characters on board, there’s a lot of ground to cover on the character development front, and the way the show goes about this is quite inconsistent. On one hand you’ve got characters like Aries who are gradually developed and our understanding of them grows throughout the entire show, but there are also characters like Yunhua who just get a single episode of character development and are just a “before-after” type case where once they’ve had their episode, that’s them. Now granted everyone’s reactions to all the various big plot mysteries is another source of development for and unique characterisation for everyone, like the entire cast are pretty distinct from one another and bounce off of each other well, but idk I feel like there was room for improvement. They’re all quite likeable, it’s a decent ensemble cast, Kanata especially is by far the best character, but idk they’re all kinda tropey on average. Zack’s the smart one, Quitterie’s the tsundere, Funi’s the imouto, Ulgar is edgy. I mean, I already mentioned loving Kanata though, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen any character in anime that’s quite like Luca, the intersex character, plus heckin, Charce’s deal is something very unique to this show what with all the clone and friendship stuff. I don’t know, the cast is like, it’s got some good ones, and thanks to the generally strong chemistry that the group developed, there aren’t really any bad ones by the end, but I did want a little bit more.

It’s worth mentioning that the group are quite enhanced by the nice character designs, everyone’s distinct and to be blunt they’re all pretty attractive, Funi’s just cute of course but everyone else is like, kinda hot, Kanata, Quitterie and Aries especially, like their designs are pretty memorable, and while the show totally could have gone the lazy route and given everyone the same old spacesuit, everyone’s suits are actually really different, not even just colour wise nah they have like in universe brands and manufacturers so everyone’s suits can look different, that was neat. The visuals in general are pretty good, there’s not really any standout sakuga moments or anything but the artwork’s pretty consistently good and while I’ll talk more about the planets in a bit, the environments do look nice, only real issue with the visuals is the annoying letterboxing that doesn’t seem to serve much of a purpose and so every time they stop the letterboxing and return to a normal aspect ratio it only ends up being even more jarring somehow.

Sound stuff’s also great, I mean the soundtrack’s not really memorable but every song complements the scene well enough and the voice acting’s just actually really good, everyone emotes really well and when you’ve got Saori Hayami, Inori Minase and Tomoyo Kurosawa as 3 of your girls? That’s sick, that’s incredible, Moyo’s performance as Quitterie is good enough to make me want to call cryporn, because fuck if she can’t do that ridiculously well. Love it.

Anyway like I said though I’mma talk about the planets, and by extension the show’s biggest problems I guess. Being a show that’s only 12 episodes long (first and last are double length though so it’s closer to 14 episodes in terms of time) and that focuses almost entirely on the characters and mysteries, basically no time is really spent on any of the planets. Pretty much every planet can be boiled down to “seems like heaven, then character drama and planet danger happen at the same time, and then everyone is saved and we move on”. This sucks! We’re a space exploration show that’s gonna explore an entire 5 completely different planets from Earth! That sounds awesome! We’re literally on separate planets thousands of lightyears away from Earth there is so much you can do with that and literally the only criteria you need is that the planet needs to be hospitable enough for the gang to get food from there! But it’s all so, boring. With the exception of I believe the fourth planet which has a very small habitable belt and the rest is either way too hot or way too cold, every single planet is one entire ecosystem, there’s no variety on any of them. And those ecosystems are just “some of these plants are cool, oh look predators dangerous”. There’s no dramatic tension on any of the planets because you always know they’ll get away fine, they make a device that can test if food’s safe in like the second episode and then on literally every single planet they always find exactly as much food and water as they need, the one time the ship seems irreparably damaged it turns out there’s another copy of that same ship on this planet that they can take parts from and leave no problem! This is just so much potential completely chucked out the window, and with the focus instead being entirely on these characters and conspiracies that are all still fairly cliché, I didn’t really like this show’s pacing. It’s an adaptation of a manga I’ve not read so I don’t know how much they cut if anything and how much could be added, but I wish this show was 24 episodes or something, we could spread out certain character arcs a bit to just make things feel less cliché and develop everyone a bit better, but moreover we could actually explore planets properly in a show about space exploration! Our own Earth is so massively varied in its environments and survival in some of those places is extremely difficult, I wish this show had done so much more to really explore all the potential this concept had.

Anyway uh, I think that’s about it. You know, characters and plot are decent, planets aren’t, whole thing’s still quite enjoyable from start to finish, Kanata’s a delight. I think more so than any other show I’ve ever covered in any of these posts, you should check out my “Kanata no Astra” tag to hear my full thoughts on every episode if you care, because week by week I did have a lot to say about this show, like it’s obviously not my favourite of the season but even with all the wasted potential it was still one I was really interested in and really looked forward to every episode for. I can say I’d recommend it, and while I don’t think I’ll ever rewatch it just because I’m bad at rewatching stuff, I’m not opposed to rewatching this show. It’s fun enough, could be a lot better, I do get why some people are giving it like a 9 or even a 10, but for me, I’ve settled on 7/10.

Given

No more cute girls, but how about a show about cute boys?

Given is, a really really good show. It’s a BL show where we’ve got 4 band members together, 2 of them being in high school and the other 2 being in college, and there begins the first praise. It’s so awesome having college aged characters in this show. Maybe it’s because I’ve just started uni myself but I like when shows even bother to acknowledge that life continues outside of high school, but also they’re not gone quite into regular adult life which is good for me because I’ve not either. Personal thing, but it’s cool, just having these 2 more mature and experienced characters that aren’t necessarily too old that the high schoolers can’t have fun banter with them. See everyone in this show has fucking amazing chemistry, there’s a sense of genuine bandmate-ship amongst them, but since it’s also a BL show, there’s explicitly gay stuff too, and it’s all wonderful.

See I’m not really a romance guy in the first place, and most yaoi I’ve exposed myself to in the past isn’t great either, but this show handles male on male relationships really well. The gay stuff is genuinely cute and feels accurate to real life, stuff like Haruki thinking “his profile is so hot!” about Akihiko and the like, nervous blushing that envelopes him sometimes too, it’s nice. And, this is gonna be kinda hard to describe, but one trap I feel like a lot of BL shows or shows with BL hints fall into (like the next show we’ll talk about actually) is having characters kind of not really act like you’d expect men in love to act? Of course everyone’s different and gender stereotyping’s silly, but it’s irritating seeing, say, high school and college males acting like actual anime girls and then there being romantic subhints from there. Everyone in this show feels convincingly like, male, but they just so happen to be into other men. Still on the topic of gay stuff Uenoyama’s fuckin “is there something wrong with me?” line is so damn great, sure it hits super close to home for a lot of people, but I’m also happy that they resolve it without dwelling on it for too long.

On that note, despite being something of a drama, this show is, it’s comfy. Yes, there is drama, some of it quite heavy at points with mention of suicide and abuse, plus strong hints of depression, but they always spend just enough time on it to where it doesn’t feel glossed over, but it also doesn’t weigh down the mood so much. Largely it’s kind of just comfortable band shenanigans and dudes being gay but like, being chill about it. Honestly I’d call this show borderline iyashikei at some points, Mafuyu’s walk around city in episode 6 I believe was really relaxing for example, and for a lot of the runtime it feels a lot like a K-On with a bit more drama in it. Like with K-On the comedy’s good too, I had a good couple of chuckles throughout the show. It’s never laugh out loud funny, but it doesn’t try to be, it just wants you to giggle a bit and have fun with everyone. It’s nice.

Speaking of everyone, I should probably actually talk about the characters. They’re just, they’re just really good. Uenoyama and Mafuyu develop really well as individuals and as a relationship, their impact on one another is super notable and you can truly see how they grow from being in that band together, but in a nice twist for once if you take one away from the other they’re still really strong and likeable in their own right. Mafuyu especially has a lot of really good solo scenes where Uenoyama doesn’t need to be involved whatsoever and Mafuyu can still shine. Though of course a lot of their best moments still do come when they’re together, and the emotional climax of the show – their performance in episode 9 – takes place while everyone is together, so, yeah. Akihiko and Haruki don’t necessarily feel quite as developed as Uenoyama or Mafuyu, in fact these two are quite reactionary characters by comparison, but they’re still both super enjoyable as individuals and as a pair, and that praise I gave them for being college students rings true in the way they’re characterised, hell I’d say Haruki’s probably my favourite character, I guess as a long-haired gay man I’m kinda just, inherently attracted to other long-haired gay men.

This show’s visuals are pretty good, I’d say. Animation is honestly somewhat stiff for a lot of the show, and the 3D they use in performances does look pretty bad, even if there aren’t that many instances where it’s used. Despite that, the character artwork is still pretty good, and I mean the designs being as great as they are, especially for Akihiko and Haruki, helps a ton. Moreover, I think a lot of the background art is quite nice. The town feels lived in, highlights again to Mafuyu’s walk in episode 6, the school feels active, the music shops feel real, and quaint. Sure it’s not a KyoAni show, but it manages to feel similar to one in the way environments are used. I just liked looking at this show. Soundtrack, unsurprisingly, adds to the iyashikei feel, it’s very nice and makes it all feel comfy, but a lot of the songs also feel quite, I suppose band-ish? Digi called the OP “math rock” and while I don’t know what the fuck that means, the OP was great and the one true performance that we do actually see is a joy to the ears, voice acting in this show’s pretty good all around but special shoutouts to Mafuyu’s seiyuu who really does kill his role.

I feel like I don’t have much else to say about this show right now. It’s just really good and you should watch it. As an iyashikei, it’s really good, as a BL, it avoids a lot of annoying genre trappings, as a more broad romance it feels compellingly cute, as a drama it feels real but never leans into melodrama, and I guess other than wishing the visuals were a little better, all I really want from this show is, well, more of the show. And since a movie’s coming out, my wish has been granted! Dudes, I loved this show enough to rewatch it, like, before I even wrote this review for it. It’s the only show in the history of these little Season in Review posts that I’ve ever watched twice before posting the review, that’s gotta mean something, right? I’d give it a very very strong 8/10, and say it edges out Re:Stage as well, you know the only other 8/10 on the list so far. Given was extremely close to being Anime of the Season, but one show did edge it out just a tiny little bit. But before we get to that, we’ve still got more shows to go through first.

Ensemble Stars

Don’t worry this is the only other cute boy show on the list, I’m not repeating that cute girl show again. So David Productions of JoJo fame took their shot at an idol anime, more specifically, an idol boy anime. I decided I’d watch this for the meme, even though I think I am completely outside of the show’s target demographic, and so far, I’ve been enjoying it, I think?

Again, I’m very much outside of this show’s demographic. I’ve never really been “into” anime boys in the same way I think this show wants me to be, like if you look at anime of my favourites it’s obvious that I’m way more into girls, because despite what I said in my Given review I’m not even gay. But the way the gay boys are written in this show, it’s what I was alluding to in my Given review when I talked about appreciating how that show wrote the characters like actual human males that were just gay. Ensemble Stars’ various gay characters are kinda just written like anime girls, but are boys. Like there’s a lot of excitement and jumping all over and hugging each other and calling them cute nicknames and stuff, like maybe it’s because everyone’s acting like an idol all the time but they don’t really feel like actual gay men. Kind of a shame. It is kinda cute in a different way from Given though, I guess? Again, and I’m gonna reinforce this a lot – I’m completely outside of this show’s target demographic, and I think this is proven by the fact that this show actually has like a self-insert producer-san character, but one who’s actually a girl. Maybe this show’s for fujos? Or people that wanna project onto producer-san because they wanna be surrounded by hot anime boys? I don’t know.

Anyway wow that was an interesting paragraph. What do I actually like about this show though? Honestly ell, the plot’s just actually kinda fun. It’s not tremendously well paced, a lot of time is spent on flashbacks which makes cuts back to the present feel confusing, and I really got the feeling that this is adapting the bare essentials of the mobile game’s storyline and characters to just get you to go play that, but I still felt like I was having fun. It’s just bizarre seeing this school of so many idols that have these crazy competitive systems in place and they’re all fighting for revolutions and like group B using its reputation to help group A do a sneak attack on group C, like it all looks like normal idol stuff but the dialogue and direction somehow successfully sell me on it being something so much greater, even if I’m not entirely sure what that greater thing is. I said in my Re:Stage part that I don’t do ironic enjoyment, and very early on in this show I found that I wasn’t even watching it for the meme anymore, in fact I’d lost track of why I was watching it, but somehow, I was still having fun with it. Maybe it’s the visuals, which are actually pretty solid and the 3D especially looks really amazing. There are like 10 billion idol groups in the show too so musical variety is aplenty, shoutouts to UNDEAD and uh, the group with the puppeteer man and the name I forget. Though Hibiki Wataru is best boy in the show for sure.

Frankly this show’s got me confused because I really don’t think I should like it as much as I do, but I also don’t even like it that much, like this isn’t a Re:Stage thing where I’m gonna give an 8/10 to a show that many people might think doesn’t deserve it, but still. If I could predict a score I’d probably go, 5/10? But uh, not much use thinking about that yet, because this is a 2 cour show! And I promise I’m going to continue watching it into that second cour and up to completion. That’s all. I kinda like the DavPro idol boy show, somehow.

Vinland Saga

So we’re actually at the very end of the season and this is the 3rd and not even last section I’m writing in this one day so I’m just gonna try be brief.

Vinland Saga’s great. The first four episodes serve as a very strong origin story and justification for Thorfinn to be the way he is and establish Askeladd super well, which is great because Askeladd’s easily the show’s most standout character yet, dude’s an excellent example of the “glorious bastard” character which is one of the most fun types of characters you can have in a story if you do it well, which this show definitely does. Not only that but like these 4 episodes are really well paced too, they could have drastically trimmed it down and fit it into a single episode but that’d be lame and I’m so glad they avoided that.

From there the story’s taken kind of a slower pace effectively following Thorfinn into Askeladd’s ragtag group of bandits, growing up with a pretty shitty and fucked childhood and being the posterchild for edgy revenge-focused kids, sure that this show would have plenty of Linkin’ Park AMVs if it aired in the early 2000s. Nothing wrong with that though, Thorfinn’s fascinating, also ridiculously well-acted, and since the show’s got some interesting suggestions about freedom and what it means to fight and also pacifism as personified through characters like Thors, Thorfinn’s dad, and also Thorfinn being paired up with the likes of the seemingly weak but maybe loveable Canute, who knows where his character will go. Like will he kill Askeladd and be happy about vengeance, but later regret his actions, or will he kill Askeladd and immediately regret it, will he not kill Askeladd and be above that, will Askeladd die and Thorfinn will actually be upset since Askeladd really is a gather figure at this point, maybe Canute will have something to say, Thorkell is a character that loves to fight just because and how will that be contrasted with Thorfinn in future? Lots of potential for cool stuff, and I’m appreciating the slower pacing that’s giving this all time to bubble. Also show looks fucking brilliant except for the disgusting 3D crowd shots. Show sounds great, great acting, great soundtrack, Mukanjyo is the best Survive Said The Prophet song I’ve ever heard (it’s the 3rd one I’ve ever heard), etc. Bit of whiplash comes from the fact that there are like 3 different spoken languages used in-universe but for us they’re all speaking Japanese, so it’s weird when someone’s like “do you speak English” and the other’s like “I can’t understand you I’m speaking Norse” but they’re all speaking Japanese so. Also this just might be my own idiocy or me losing track of things week to week, but because this era of history has some complicated politics it can be hard to remember who’s with who, but like whatever I don’t mind. Predicted score of 8/10. Really good show, I’m tired of writing and at this point want to apologise for the quality of this section.

Anime of the Season – Dr Stone

Yeah, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. This show is fucking brilliant. If you’re not watching Dr Stone, do yourself a favour and, go do that. If for some reason you don’t like it, I’m extremely curious as to why, you’re entitled to your own opinions obviously I ain’t gonna judge but like, damn, this show’s one of the best this year.

Dr Stone’s very premise of using science to rapidly kickstart civilisation in a world where society has been destroyed is one that uh, is great. It lends itself well to lots of instant gratification but also long term gratification, like Senku giving a cute girl glasses is delightful, but also Senku gradually working towards building antibiotics several stages earlier than actually happened in human history, that’s also delightful. There’s so much genuine chemistry between every character and also compelling differences in ideologies between opposing characters to where literally every possible combination of characters leads to interactions that are delightful for so many reasons. This show starts out looking absolutely amazing, as of right now it kinda just looks fine tbh. Character designs are great though, super distinct and memorable. Soundtrack’s great, voice acting’s great. I wanna fawn about Senku but I’ll do that in a bit and you’ll see why. Everyone else is sick too though. I’m just gonna keep fawning over this series for every episode I cover, read my older posts about it if you care. This show’s pretty simple in the things it does so the me that’s in a lazy state and just wants to post this today so he doesn’t have to do anything tomorrow doesn’t feel like he needs to explain much else, or something. Predicted score of 8/10, I could totally see it becoming a 9 though. Most instances of me being really positive about a show’s first cour end with me not liking the second cour, but apparently this first arc of Dr Stone is the weakest arc and it only gets better, which is super exciting. Cool. We’re done.

Boy of the Season – Senku

Usually I do Girl of the Season first but hey this fits better. Senku is the best genius character I’ve ever seen. I think the main thing that makes Senku so incredible is how refreshing it is to see a genius character who’s just, like he’s nice and good, and also human. He doesn’t see Taiju as the brawn that’ll do all the bullshit for him, he sees Taiju as his best friend who also happens to be super strong and so his strength is essential for society because brain and brawn are equally valuable, Taiju’s not “below” him for no reason. And he’s nice in that like, take reviving Yuzuriha, or bringing Chrome with him to collect sulfuric acid, I think a lot of genius characters are pragmatists and operate on logic, so seeing Senku be governed by emotions, even the emotions of others, and not in a condescending way either, it’s delightful. Also there’s the fact that the dude’s charismatic and sociable, like it’s cool having this genius character who just really loves people. Digi’s “Otaku Hero’s Journey” feels fittingly applied here. When I said he’s also human it’s like, Senku’s not a big super genius for whom everything he says goes, he has to put genuine work into getting the things he wants, science isn’t this magic formula that can do anything and everything, it’s a long history of trial and error, hard work and results. Senku underestimates how much work needs to be done to do things, he says the wrong things and puts himself in bad situations, he can make careless mistakes. It’s nice seeing a genius who’s not a god. Only thing he does that’s a bit iffy is dying and coming back to life, but I’m kinda willing to give that a pass because it’s a plan he literally relied on his friends for, like he didn’t tell them anything and his hint was so fucking slight that they couldn’t be blamed for not noticing at all, I think the fact that his only feat is so dependent on his friends, and that he’s so genuinely grateful too, it’s not just “haha good job idiots you did the thing I needed you to do” and instead it’s more “hey thanks so much friends, thanks to you I’m alive” but without necessary sacrificing his endearing confidence, it’s nice. Dude’s just great. Senku > Rick Sanchez

Girl of the Season – Kae Hiiragi

Lowkey deciding who to put here was the hardest thing I had to do in this whole post. It just seemed most appropriate to put my favourite girl from my 3rd favourite show, because like Given and Dr Stone I like more but Given has like 2 female characters and they’re eh and Dr Stone has a bunch but mostly they’re just all fine but Kae Hiiragi is funny meme gamer loli that does epic raves and is called Dark Shadow Princess or something goofy like that. Yeah.

Anyway that’s it, there’s your Season in Review. Sorry I got tired and lazy by the end, I just want to do some other things you see. Summer has definitely been the best season this year, so fucking stacked with so many fun shows, guarantee that like half of my Top 10 will be from this season. Fuckin’ miles better than last season for sure.

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