I’m a few weeks late starting on the new season. I think anyone who still reads this site should probably strap in for sometimes anime this year, because apparently I’ve burned out on trying to watch things every week. So posts will probably be few and far in-between.
Anyway, I have a light season again this season, with Active Raid, Dagashi Kashi, Koukaku no Pandora, Luck & Logic, Musaigen no Phantom World, and Oshiete! Galko-chan. Overall assessment at the end of the post.
“Taste someone’s rainbow.”
It’s a show about a guy who doesn’t want to run his family’s candy store, and instead wants to draw manga. Except now he is being harassed by a girl who is the daughter of a chocolate candy empire, who is trying to steal his dad for her company, and the only way that happens is if he runs the store. Throw in a girl who runs a coffee shop and Tsuchimikado from Index and you have a candy-centric show in presumably the middle-of-nowhere Japan.
httpss://twitter.com/NepuNepugear/status/690614796945854464
Surprisingly, it’s pretty good for your standard slice-of-life show, and like an Alton Brown cooking show, it’s peppered (ha) with short skits and facts about candy and snacks. Not knowing much about Japanese snacks, a lot of the short skits sort of sail over my head, but I imagine it makes sense to the sort of weebs who go to conventions or big-city Chinatowns specifically to buy these sorts of treats to feel like they’re turning Japanese. I’m an amerifat snacker personally, give me the standard Hershey’s lineup and some other odds-and-ends.
But I kind of enjoy the small-town candy shop appeal a little, having grown up in a suburb-rural town where we had a local-owned convenience store that sold a lot of interesting candies and things like candy cigarettes that were a sort of childhood rite-of-passage to being 2cool4skool. It was right next to my elementary school too, so if you tried to sneak out to there you’d get caught pretty fast. They always knew, those crafty teachers.
Come for Marc Summers: The Anime, stay for facial reactions, snaggleteeth, and good ol’ fashioned teenage innocence.
First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible/Commie
“Bubblegum Crisis: Working”
I just started playing Warframe last night, so my immediate thought was a show where people donned robotics to fight rather than mobile suits is not a bad change of pace. However I was probably not prepared for a Bubblegum Crisis-Rail Wars-Working triple triad of robotic fuckery that actually ain’t half bad off the starting line. That said, there are plenty of reasons for me to remain guarded about its outcome, the chief among them being a second-season confirmation already. That tells me that if you fuck up the final episode/arc transition in to the next season, you’re going to have a bad time, and when your director is Code Geass’ Taniguchi Gorou, doubly so. Having also seen some of Studio Orange’s other shows, like Black Bullet and Majestic Prince, I am just sort of expecting an average experience here.
But I like the characters so far, keeping true to the Working-third of things, they have a pretty good mix of archetypes. Plus you have to laugh a little at the distorted bureaucratic system they have to play with in order to deploy their mobile base along Japan’s rail and road system, clear areas to engage in, follow engagement protocols, bribe and blackmail local politicians to ensure they can do their jobs without destroying surrounding infrastructure, and a bunch of other nonsense that most shows ignore and just level entire cities. All this while the main female lead is being sent in to investigate the team and clean up their act.
That was enough to earn it a starting seven. Well played, Orange.
First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible
“Android Marshmallow”
So let me get this straight, Taketatsu Ayana, who played Koneko in DxD, plays Hotaru in snackanime, while Numakura Manami, who plays Saya in the same show, also plays Clarion in this show, but Clarion has the cat ears, and Hotaru does not? Someone made some bad decisions here, fam.
Nevertheless, the first episode to this was rather, interesting. A mad woman scientist (STEM field, amirite?) and her cat-eared cyborg girl are apparently wrapped up in all sorts of high-tech messes, and have dragged another girl who is a full-cyborg in to the fray, and given her abilities to do various things like shoot guns, all by touching cat-girl’s crotch-box?
httpss://twitter.com/Mai88tan/status/688355656903036928/
I know a lot of older weebs like myself want to split hairs on the finer points of anime fanservice, like a fine-dining expert snub-nosing McDonalds, or how most video game journalists pretend games are art, but as long as the show has something for me to watch, fanservice is great. The only kind of fanservice I don’t really care for is the kind that just takes up the entire show without doing anything else. If you’re going to make porn, make porn, don’t pretend it’s Alice in Wonderland.
First Rating: 7
Sub Group: Horrible
“You failed both rolls.”
The consequence of being the sort of weeb who has watched a lot of fucking anime, is that I go in to new shows stocked with a decent amount of talent with higher expectations. A Dogekobo-Bandai show produced by FMP’s director really should try for a strong opening, at minimum. I didn’t get that impact, and forget FMP, it looks like he’s directing the successor to Gatekeepers here.
The main problems I have are the premise and the main male lead. It’s yet-another-monster-a-week-call-the-magic-swat-to-save-us-all show with a guy suffering from PTSD after presumably getting kicked in the balls by The Mon-Stars in Hong Kong, holing himself up for two years, and only returning to fight because WE NEED TO SAVE THESE PEOPLE. I mean, what, has there been no monsters in your town for two years? Did they see your PTSD and steer clear until now?
With this flag, the show can go one of two ways. It can either go the Infinite Stratos route of him being the only guy in the super squad who all save the day, or it can go the Mahouka and he can be Logic Jesus. I think it is just this genre of anime, but I am worn out of it. No part of that first episode got me interested. I’ll have to watch a few more to see how I feel about it.
First Rating: 6
Sub Group: Horrible
“Haven’t we done this before?”
After praising Kyoani for their performance with Amagi Brilliant Park, it only seems fitting that they take several steps back and reconfigure Kyoukai no Kanata to maybe appeal to a wider audience, which isn’t really that many people. After all, Kyoani, like Nintendo, has a built-in fanbase and anyone who isn’t a Kyoani super-fan just doesn’t care. I’ve only seen the first ten minutes of this, admitingly, but like any Kyoani show, you can usually figure out what is going on from the excessive dialogue, constant visual bombardment, and reaction faces.
But, I’ve been surprised before, so continue I will. For science. You monster.
First Rating: 6
Sub Group: Horrible
“Sexual Innuendos”
As I expected, it’s a seven-minute short which pretty much brings up random situations and topics, from the size of areolas, to public hair thickness and more. Not much else to say, really. Might be good for a laugh or two.
First Rating: 5
Sub Group: Horrible
Final Assessment: Few strong shows this season, but not really a power-house compared to the last couple years. It is to be expected without a lot of heavy-hitters. I’ll take what I can get. Just looking at what has been announced so far for this year, I wonder if we’re starting to see a slowdown.