Summer anime first impressions
I'm still waiting on a late premiere or two (notably Silver Spoon if I decide to try it), but most of the new summer anime have had their first eps now. I'm finding more to watch than I expected, but still not much to get really excited about.
Of course, judging series by their first episodes is rather dicey (as last season reminded me so well), but as of now, my list in roughly-descending order:
(Conveniently, everything I want to watch so far is on Crunchyroll, too.)
The Eccentric Family (Uchouten Kazoku) is a kind of daily-life drama/comedy set in modern Kyoto --- among the Tanuki and Tengu who share the city with humans. Japanese supernatural is something I have a taste for, and so is daily-life if it's not boring, so this one's kind of up my alley, and we're already seeing some interestingly complicated characters and relationships. Even at the top of my list, I can't really call it "exciting," but it currently has my vote for "most likely to be a genuinely good show." (I will say the way people's ears are drawn in this is so weird as to be actually distracting, but it would be petty to hold that against the show.)
Sunday Without God (Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi) has less seeming of quality perhaps, but it is more exciting, and I'm hoping it will give me my anime-esque world-built fantasy fix. The first episode works well as a narrative hook, with lots of intensity and lots of unanswered questions --- but also a well-managed blend of light/cute and dark/traumatic and enough solid ground to stand on and appreciate the end-of-episode rug pull. From the setup in which God literally speaks from the sky to say "Man, I screwed this place up; I'm outta here people, you're on your own," to said rug-pull, the whole thing was darkly audacious enough to feel like a bad dream but balanced enough to make it the kind of bad dream you don't want to wake up from. So yeah, I'm in.
Those are the two that so far seem essential... And then there's Free!, which is kind of essential, but that's due to the internet-explodium factor more than the actual content (I feel like I ought to make some kind of sodium-in-water joke but it's just too technical for me right now). The actual content actually didn't excite me that much; so far, none of the characters are all that interesting. On a forum I saw someone hit the nail on the head by saying that if the Haruka/Rin rivalry is going to anchor the show, Rin has to be likeable, and so far he's just an a**hole. I admit, my benchmark for this one is Kuroko's Basketball (a show which, it seems, naturally produced the substance Free! is trying to synthesize), and it's not even close to that level yet --- but there's still time. It's just barely gotten into anything much and there's still all that footage from the PV of complex emotions playing across faces that's yet to come, so even factoring out the internet-explodium, it's worth playing along with at this point --- even if all the skin isn't my flavor of candy.
But that makes a good transition to Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist. This show is nothing but candy, although I have to admire its forthrightness if nothing else, what with gorgeous prettyboys all-but-kissing even before the OP. After the OP, William Twining is enjoying life as a snobby British atheist and presumed tea-leaf scion until his uncle/guardian apparently decides to put everything into Rooibos. Scraping through what's left for anything to sell for tuition money, William and his gorgeous prettyboy butler accidentally summon the gorgeous prettyboy demon from before the OP, William's atheism takes a turn for the flat-earth variety as demons start having politically-motivated flashy magic fights over him, and I find myself thinking that if the people who made Earl and Fairy decided to try again after binging on Black Butler, it might turn out kind of like this. The flat-earth atheism joke is already wearing out its welcome, but for the most part, yeah, this is just candy. It happens to be a flavor of candy that I like, but I have no illusions about what I'm watching.
The last one I've picked up is kind of an odd one for me; Servant x Service is a light office comedy about civil servants (hence the name). That's it. It's pretty fun in that capacity, and it is refreshing to see a daily-life-focused show about grownups. I might get bored and drop it, but for now...
And then there's various stuff I sampled that I mostly won't say much about. A few "school life with cute girls" shows of varying kinds (Going Home Club, Kiniro Mosaic, and Stella Academy C3) just kind of bored me or didn't click; Blood Lad didn't click, either. Gifuu Doudou!! is a show about the manly bromance of manly manly samurai by the Fist of the North Star artist; not being a fan of his, it just looks ludicrous, but not so much so that it becomes worth watching for ludicrousness' sake.
The one that sticks out in my mind --- and was in fact an edge case before I decided I had too many better things to watch/do --- is Day Break Illusion, which I kind of have to feel sorry for. Fairly or not, given its mood and its timing it cannot escape comparison with Madoka Magica; almost any show would be at a disadvantage under those circumstances, and this one sure as heck is. Our heroine Akari is having a nice life reading tarot cards and making people happy until her cousin/housemate snaps because of edgy French literature and the animators splicing in scary footage of blood cells and scissors, and so cousin turns into a mass of tentaclerapeweed which is then killed by Akari's tarot-based magical alter-ego, only then we back up and crazy cousin was actually erased from the timeline...? I think that's what happened, it's kind of unclear... And that's part of the trouble; the episode reads like someone said "yeah, let's make magical girls dark and edgy!" with no apparent understanding of what Madoka Magica was even about that made it work, and then they just threw in every dark edgy thing they could think of until it turned into a mess, a mess too twisted for any given twist to be effective (heck, putting aside Madoka, Sunday Without God did a conspicuously better job with the blend of light and dark and the first-ep rug-pull). If it takes ep 2 to huddle and sort itself out it might go somewhere, but I have too little optimism and too much else to do.
‡ original post at Dreamwidth ‡
Of course, judging series by their first episodes is rather dicey (as last season reminded me so well), but as of now, my list in roughly-descending order:
(Conveniently, everything I want to watch so far is on Crunchyroll, too.)
The Eccentric Family (Uchouten Kazoku) is a kind of daily-life drama/comedy set in modern Kyoto --- among the Tanuki and Tengu who share the city with humans. Japanese supernatural is something I have a taste for, and so is daily-life if it's not boring, so this one's kind of up my alley, and we're already seeing some interestingly complicated characters and relationships. Even at the top of my list, I can't really call it "exciting," but it currently has my vote for "most likely to be a genuinely good show." (I will say the way people's ears are drawn in this is so weird as to be actually distracting, but it would be petty to hold that against the show.)
Sunday Without God (Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi) has less seeming of quality perhaps, but it is more exciting, and I'm hoping it will give me my anime-esque world-built fantasy fix. The first episode works well as a narrative hook, with lots of intensity and lots of unanswered questions --- but also a well-managed blend of light/cute and dark/traumatic and enough solid ground to stand on and appreciate the end-of-episode rug pull. From the setup in which God literally speaks from the sky to say "Man, I screwed this place up; I'm outta here people, you're on your own," to said rug-pull, the whole thing was darkly audacious enough to feel like a bad dream but balanced enough to make it the kind of bad dream you don't want to wake up from. So yeah, I'm in.
Those are the two that so far seem essential... And then there's Free!, which is kind of essential, but that's due to the internet-explodium factor more than the actual content (I feel like I ought to make some kind of sodium-in-water joke but it's just too technical for me right now). The actual content actually didn't excite me that much; so far, none of the characters are all that interesting. On a forum I saw someone hit the nail on the head by saying that if the Haruka/Rin rivalry is going to anchor the show, Rin has to be likeable, and so far he's just an a**hole. I admit, my benchmark for this one is Kuroko's Basketball (a show which, it seems, naturally produced the substance Free! is trying to synthesize), and it's not even close to that level yet --- but there's still time. It's just barely gotten into anything much and there's still all that footage from the PV of complex emotions playing across faces that's yet to come, so even factoring out the internet-explodium, it's worth playing along with at this point --- even if all the skin isn't my flavor of candy.
But that makes a good transition to Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist. This show is nothing but candy, although I have to admire its forthrightness if nothing else, what with gorgeous prettyboys all-but-kissing even before the OP. After the OP, William Twining is enjoying life as a snobby British atheist and presumed tea-leaf scion until his uncle/guardian apparently decides to put everything into Rooibos. Scraping through what's left for anything to sell for tuition money, William and his gorgeous prettyboy butler accidentally summon the gorgeous prettyboy demon from before the OP, William's atheism takes a turn for the flat-earth variety as demons start having politically-motivated flashy magic fights over him, and I find myself thinking that if the people who made Earl and Fairy decided to try again after binging on Black Butler, it might turn out kind of like this. The flat-earth atheism joke is already wearing out its welcome, but for the most part, yeah, this is just candy. It happens to be a flavor of candy that I like, but I have no illusions about what I'm watching.
The last one I've picked up is kind of an odd one for me; Servant x Service is a light office comedy about civil servants (hence the name). That's it. It's pretty fun in that capacity, and it is refreshing to see a daily-life-focused show about grownups. I might get bored and drop it, but for now...
And then there's various stuff I sampled that I mostly won't say much about. A few "school life with cute girls" shows of varying kinds (Going Home Club, Kiniro Mosaic, and Stella Academy C3) just kind of bored me or didn't click; Blood Lad didn't click, either. Gifuu Doudou!! is a show about the manly bromance of manly manly samurai by the Fist of the North Star artist; not being a fan of his, it just looks ludicrous, but not so much so that it becomes worth watching for ludicrousness' sake.
The one that sticks out in my mind --- and was in fact an edge case before I decided I had too many better things to watch/do --- is Day Break Illusion, which I kind of have to feel sorry for. Fairly or not, given its mood and its timing it cannot escape comparison with Madoka Magica; almost any show would be at a disadvantage under those circumstances, and this one sure as heck is. Our heroine Akari is having a nice life reading tarot cards and making people happy until her cousin/housemate snaps because of edgy French literature and the animators splicing in scary footage of blood cells and scissors, and so cousin turns into a mass of tentaclerapeweed which is then killed by Akari's tarot-based magical alter-ego, only then we back up and crazy cousin was actually erased from the timeline...? I think that's what happened, it's kind of unclear... And that's part of the trouble; the episode reads like someone said "yeah, let's make magical girls dark and edgy!" with no apparent understanding of what Madoka Magica was even about that made it work, and then they just threw in every dark edgy thing they could think of until it turned into a mess, a mess too twisted for any given twist to be effective (heck, putting aside Madoka, Sunday Without God did a conspicuously better job with the blend of light and dark and the first-ep rug-pull). If it takes ep 2 to huddle and sort itself out it might go somewhere, but I have too little optimism and too much else to do.
‡ original post at Dreamwidth ‡