Holiday weekend
Sailor Moon Crystal 31-39! the end of this season. Got to hand it to Usagi and Mamoru for talking about Uranus and Michiru in a open manner. Kudos to Chibi-Usa for setting them up. And it's nice that they have new vocals for the opening and a new character song for the ending. Tuxedo Kamen's ending theme is amusingly bad. Despite the occasional drop in animation quality, the quality is still better than the previous two seasons and the story content is still true to the manga. It's a darn shame that Professor Tomoe does not have the maniacal laughter he had in the original anime. He's bland in this series. ~8/10 rating~ for the nice upgrade in this anime and decent production of the manga. The original anime actually did a better job on the character development with this arc especially with Professor Tomoe.
Boku no Hero Academia 4-13! the end of season one. In the first few episodes, we learn about the students and teachers. Midoriya and Bakugo get to face off, and in their own way, reconcile. Hopefully, they mature beyond the crybaby and bully personalities in the next season. The climax of the season is when a group of villians infiltrate the school to kill off All Might, the No. 1 symbol of peace. ~7/10 rating~ the anime did not live up to the hype as most of the characters had cookie-cutter anime personalities and the plot again, we've seen before and done better before. Naruto, Soul Eater, Shingeki no Kyojin all had more unique school settings. And One-Punch Man and Tiger & Bunny had much more amusing hero vs. villian worlds. On the positive side, this had no competition in the genre this season, and each episode flew by quickly.
Flying Witch 4-12! the end. There's no conflict or climax to this anime. It's a nice slice-of-life anime to put on in the background while doing something else. If Harry Potter was about Harry living in the country occasionally learning a bit of magic, you'd have this. ~6/10 rating~ for simple and cute, but wouldn't want to watch reruns.
Magi: Sinbad no Bouken 1-8! Sinbad had his own manga and OVA spinoff and now has a proper tv series. This is good, because he was one of the more powerful and charismatic characters in Magi. We already know from the original Magi series that Sinbad captures seven Dungeons, so it's fun to watch a show where we know the hero will win big. Episode 1 shows us how his father dies and episode 2-3 is a rehash of the ONA where Sinbad conquers his first dungeon. 4-6 is about his capture of the Dungeon at Imuchakk. Sinbad learns about the trade business from the King of Balbadd in episodes 7-8.
Kuroshitsuji: Book of Murder OVA 1-2! I had forgotten about these movies. This takes place after the Book of Circus arc. The Queen orders Ciel to host a banquet for a lord and several other high-class nobles during which several murders take place. This is the mangaka's fanfiction-like take on a Sherlock Holmes mystery in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a Jeremy Brett-like character star. Like a Sherlock mystery, a lot of emphasis is place on the explanation of how the murders were done. ~7/10 rating~ There were definitely some slow spots in this so-so story. The viewers would never believe Sebastion was dead, so the suspense or mystery never built up. Looking forward to movie, Book of the Atlantic, since this was one of the stronger story arcs from the manga....but sad that it won't be out until 2017.
Bakemono no Ko (The Boy and the Beast) jmovie! Also got around to watching this movie directed by Mamori Hosoda (Wolf Children). It seems that this is takes place in the same world as the Wolf Children. A young boy finds himself a student of a lazy beast in the Beast World. Both boy and beast mature and become stronger in many ways. ~7/10 rating~ Fun, but forgettable movie. The antagonist, the Sasuke-like character, was too predictable.
Code Geass: Akito the Exiled 4-5! the end of the OVA/movies. The tv series ended in 2008, so having these OVAs released on a rather uneven schedule slowly afterwards killed much of the hype surrounding the series. On the other hand, the quality of the production is quite stunning to watch. If that's what took them so long to release the episodes, it may have been worth it to get the visual candy. The mech battles were great despite me not liking the mechs-on-skates design.The plot and characters were not as strong. They really could have trimmed much of the complexity and the number of characters. The last two episodes showed us the contrast between Shaing's geass and Leila's geass and their affect on Akito. It also ended the war between EU and Brittania. Joining the gypsies seems more like fanservice than actual character development, so those last scenes were rather odd in the scheme of things. ~7/10 rating~ for some lovely mech fights. While the whole arc seemed to parallel the original Code Geass story, the story and characters weren't as compelling.