Its time to roll into the Fall season!! Here is a peek at the shows that I will at least watch the first episodes of...and this season, at least for me, is looking pretty dismal.
Yano-kuns Ordinary Days
Class rep. Yoshida has a caring nature about her, particularly due to having to look after two younger siblings. Her nature kicks into overdrive when the boy next to here, Yano, is cursed with misfortune and arrives to school everyday with persistent and escalating injuries. She pushes through his easy going attitude to figure out what she can do to make his life easier, even if she can't stop his clumsy nature.
It will be interesting to see how this story can break out of the already exhausted joke of Yano's continuous injury through oblivious personality. It is nice to have a reverse in the detested care taker trope that has existed in anime for a long time know, where the strong male figure is compelled to care for the dojikko girl. Yoshida feels like a motherly version of Hori Kyoko...but Yano is terribly boring and rote. We shall see how long this lasts on the watch list but the first episode wasn't terrible. Yano himself is a bad character and the artwork in general isn't great.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
A Star Brighter Than the Sun
Sae has always been taller than the other girls and in elementary school many of the boys. On her first day of elementary school she fell in love with a smaller boy named Koki and they became close friends up until middle school. At the end of middle school she realizes her old friend has become bigger, stronger and popular. Can she still harbor her feelings for him, especially since theyve grown a part the past few years? When they end up in the same class again in high school she thinks it may be time to open up to him. But it might be tool late.
This is a really sweet story so far. Sae is presented as a self conscious character in a natural and believable way. Her friendship with Koki over the years was one of mutual respect and Koki appears to be the kind of character that's nice to everyone, causing stress on Sae's internal dialogue, things we have seen countless times before. But this one seems like it will be a nice take on this romance trope and I look forward to seeing their relationship develop.
This series is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Let's play
Sam is an aspiring game developer who finally released a passion project she worked on in college that received encouraging feedback on an indy game platform until a popular streamer attacks the game as unplayable, causing a firestorm of negative opinions. Things get awkward when she learns the streamer is her new neighbor. Side note, her day job is a corporate grunt for her fathers company and her supervisor is trying to mold her to be his replacement by treating her like...well a regular employee.
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I like Sam as a character from a few angles, but all of the other characters are not to the same standard. She seems to be surrounded by a Friends like level of agreeable companions but is too distracted with her own life to repay their attention. She also had some sort of hospitalization as a child that incubated her dream of game development that should come into play more as the story progress's. I will stick with this one for now, purely based on the strength of the main character, even though much of the things around her are...caricatures of reality.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
My Awkward Senpai
Kannawa is good at her job but terrible at interacting with others. To protect her unease she has cultivated a stern and authoritative outer shell that acts as a ward to those around her. She does this to protect herself as she doesn't know how to interact with people shes unfamiliar with. Her plan has worked well until she is assigned to mentor her departments newest employee. Concerned that she may be letting down the new hire she begins to change her projected personality and begin become more adept at communication...but how easy will it be to change herself quickly?
I enjoy work place comedies as stories devoid of kids are hard to find in the anime landscape. One of the best has to be Servant x Service and this is a bit of a far cry form that one, aside from the bust sizes of most of the women in the office... The first episode really doesn't dig into why or how Kannawa is the way she is. She isn't presented as a sympathetic character as her own problems are her fault. Not sure how long this one will stick in the queue...but I'll give it a few more episodes. I don't suspect there will be much more than the premise already laid out in the first episode. Count on their being a semi romantic twist to things at some point.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Potion, Waga Mi o Tasukeru
Kaede finds herself in an unfamiliar alley in a strange town out of some RPG. After spending all day trying to figure her surroundings out she notices a book she didn't put in her backpack. In it is a note telling her to use its pages to survive in this world. With in are a few pages for creating potions that only require her to gather them and utter a the word generate. After crafting some basic potions over night she sells them at the first opportunity...for now she finally has money for food and a room at an inn...now what.
I famously dislike isekai, but something made me watch to watch this, perhaps because of it not seeming like some power fantasy spectacle. At first I was off-put by the limited animation but the first episode was fun so far, only time will tell how interesting it will really be.
This series is not available for streaming in English.
Spy x Family season 3
We once again return to the world of spy's and intrigue and a bit of weird. OK, a lot of weird. Loid still has his mission to accomplish in order to ensure peace between the East and West for the time being...too bad it all hinges on Anya. How closer can he get to finishing this job before the season ends and will he actually develop feelings for Yor?
I am really happy to have this show returning...I still need to watch the movie however. This first episode brings us right back into things with two stories reminding us why we love the good guys. To be fair, some of the past arcs in the Academy bored me but its a central to the actual plot of the story so I have to bear with it.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
When we last saw Fushi he settled in to a long sleep at Renril as he started a plan to emesh himself into everything he could on the surface of the planet, until he eradicates the Nokker threat and peace descends. Unknown centuries/millennia later he awakes to a world of 'peace' finding himself in modern times. In his travels he ends up in this worlds equivalent to Japan and is adopted by a hyperactive high schooler who also believes heavily in the occult/super natural and the legends of Fushi. Its time for Fushi to gather his companions so they may live out their unnatural lives in peace and security.
I suspect this season of To Your Eternity comes as shock with its shift in setting for those who have not read the manga. Unfortunately the series was not completed when Crunchyroll closed the doors on their first manga platform, so I don't know how this arc and the story ends. But I am happy to see this part of the story animated and eagerly await its conclusion.
This series if streaming on Crunchyroll.
Two young girls find themselves in the overgrown countryside of Japan, humanity has vanished and nature is creeping into replace it. Yoko, who pilots the electric motorcycle is chasing after memories of her older sister and her journeys before everything changed.
At first I wasn't sure about this show, believing it wasn't going to dig into the reason the world was devoid of people. But about 13 minutes into it it went sideways and I think this is going to be equal part sci-fi and equal part iyashikei. Here I was thinking it was going to be a generic attempt at capturing the heart of Girls Last Tour...but no, this seems more like a prequel to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Ranma 1/2 season 2
We swing right back into the story with the introduction of a character the original anme adaptation snubbed, Gosunkugi Hikaru as he replaces Sasuke in his rightful roll and works to understand is Ranma has any weaknesses.
Its so good to have this remake return! The first season did a great job of breathing new life into this classic manga and wiping away the ills of the original anime. This season is set to be a banger with the introduction of so many fantastic characters. The big question on everyone's mind....how will they address Happosai and his...predilections in a different social environment?
This series is streaming on Netflix.
A Mangaka's Weird Wonderful Workplace
Futami is a new manga artist who's uncertainty and self doubt does much to cripple her decision making process. The only way she gets anything done is through her reliable assistant. To make matters worse her editor at the magazine struggles to properly communicate in a manner that eliminates Futami's concerns.
This is a run of the mill comedy full of cute female characters living idyllic care free lives. It leans heavily into caricatures of the characters professions and a world devoid of real conflict. In other words, we have another iyashikei comedy on our hands that isn't too bad. Time will tell if its going to be memorable or not, but at least the characters aren't designed for the male gaze.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Chitose Saku is a talented student with a positive disposition and group of close friends. His homeroom teacher tasks him with trying to get a boy in his class back to school, since he's been absent since the prior year. Being the ideal person he believes himself to be, he sets out to break through the shut in's defensive walls.
Since the first episode is largely set up and I suspect a lot of the story is going to be about this popular guy and his clique getting to know the hikkikomori otaku, its hard to say how this story will be. After the first episode, I don't like it. Chitose is obnoxious as is his not-harem. Not to link myself to the dreary angry otaku, Chitose embodies the people I disliked in my school days. But of course there is some darkness mystery around our perfect model student, who even takes slander with stride. This story needs to do a lot of work in the next few episodes to change my mind.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Gintama - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class
Based on omake from the original Gintama manga and shown in the TV anime adaptation, Gintoki's high school teacher doppelganger, Ginpachi, holds class for a greater period now in this stand alone series wrapping all the familiar personalities from Gintama into alternate versions of themselves.
Its been a while since we saw anything new for Gintama and this weirdness is welcomed. It had been even longer since I've watched anything related to it and it didn't take long to get reacquainted to the large cast of misfits. Here's hoping this one can do a good job with the humor, but it may have a hard time with the fantastic A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School from earlier this year.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll and anime.com
Gnosia (10/12)
A ship of 5 refugees fled a world over run by an aggressive alien species the Gnos. They are bent on wiping out humanity and pretend to be humans to do so. The ships computer detects a Gnos life form but is unable to determine exactly which of the inhabitants is the culprit. The world they are trying to land on has tasked them with rooting out the danger or face destruction to protect themselves. The people aboard the ship must play a game of social deduction to save themselves.
Based on the video game of the same name, this is a flashy representation of the well known social deduction genre of games. Perhaps most famously, Among Us or the boardgame Blood on the Clocktower. You could also liken this to the classic body horror movie The Thing. So we know the general idea of how the series will go, chock full of lies, twists an deliberate misinformation. That alone would be meh, because all that really matters is the ultimate resolution. Yet this story with its relatively high production value animation immediately presents an interesting world to build. I'm not as concerned with who is the bad guy in the story, I am more interested in what the universe they exist in is like...it seems really intriguing and I enjoyed the first episode for that reason. The ending was a bit...dumb? We'll see is each week is just a reset of the game potentially adding different players. I really want to know more about the world though!
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment