I disappeared this season. Yeah, I know. But I was still watching animu. You can never stop watching animu. But regardless of how dedicated you are to watching (or undedicated to writing), this season felt like a chore to get through. Not really because the shows weren’t any good to begin with, but because their best moments really only took place in the last few episodes. That said, anyone who lacked the patience might have skipped out on a legitimately good show had it not been for a mix of odd pacing, boring plot flows, and wishy-washy animation. For whatever reason you had in dropping a show mid-season, you might want to think about picking it up again after reading the season end ranking. Because frankly, quite a number of shows I would have dropped out of frustration (or boredom) actually turned out pretty well. Good things come to those who wait, apparently, and that was no different for this season’s batch of misfits. So how did they do? Let’s run ’em down, from worst to best!
ReLIFE
Summer 2016 – Initial Impressions
Okay, so let’s go through what we’ve got this Summer. To be honest, I wasn’t very excited for this season. Perhaps the only thing that really caught my attention was Food Wars! since it’s a manga that I’m actually following. Everything else is pretty much a wild card – even the “venerable” Psycho Mob 100 which is, apparently, the show “to look out for” (most likely because of its OPM roots). Times like these are pretty much shooting in the dark, and though I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the results, there weren’t that many shows that I could honestly say weren’t very good save for a few. And these shows were probably just formulaic and, well, not very engaging. I’ve wondered for a while if it’s because I’m getting older (one of the shows I decided to drop was a Visual Art’s/KEY work, which used to be a non-negotiable probably 10 years back), but either way it’s been a steady first week, but really just one wild card after another.
But before everything else, I’d like to apologize for disappearing last season. I mentioned in my previous Spring impressions that I was utterly floored at how writers are able to do the things that they do every season — and that still holds today. The difference is that I’m not a professional writer — I just like to rant about anime and share my thoughts. With that put into perspective, I’m a little more pragmatic as far as how frequently I can update the site. Either way, all that matters is the anime — so enough talk, and let’s do this! Continue reading
Summer 2016 – Previews (Part 1)
I wasn’t able to provide a list of shows that I was planning to watch, but you can check it out over at my MAL. Either way, it’s still a pretty formidable list that will likely get knocked down a couple levels as the days go by — but that doesn’t mean I won’t try to watch as many first episodes as I can to help navigate you guys through the busy Summer season. So let’s get started then, shall we?
ReLIFE
The premise is simple enough — given the chance to relive your high school life, how would you do it? For Kaizaki Arata at least, he doesn’t have much of a choice after signing up for a fishy experiment whilst being half-drunk. Though I’m pretty sure most people will be split between actually enjoying the carefree adolescent life versus the dread of reliving the labors of puberty, ReLIFE successfully navigates its way through this hypothetical question in its pilot episode. Continue reading