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lia-nikiforov · 7 years

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Fall 2017 Anime Watchlist

Blablabla school is kicking my butt blablabla I shouldn’t even be doing this blablabla THERE’S A LOT OF GOOD ANIME THIS SEASON

So naturally I’m gonna go back to my worst to best format for this list. Get the trash out first

Dropped

Dies Irae: Aren’t these villains named after actual historical Nazis who were directly involved with orchestrating the holocaust soooo cooooool , so interesting, such tortured profound souls that--- ugh, I just threw up in my mouth a little. I don’t care if the Nazis are the villains, making them into complex, appealing characters is unacceptable, less so given the times we live in.

(get it, it’s a real nazi getting punched in the face, aren’t you glad you follow me so I can provide you this quality content)

Yuki Yuna wa Yuusha de aru: Yuusha no Sho: Because I wasn’t a big fan of the first season, I thought this might make for decent hate-watch, but it’s just not bad enough to warrant it. It’s also criminally boring. And because part of what made the original so bad was the ending, and this being a prequel we already know how it ends, there’s no point to it imho. I enjoy screaming at the void about shows I find stupid, but this one isn’t even worth the time. Ballroom is all the hatewatch material I’ll ever need

Black Clover: I could say a lot about this show’s egregious lack of uniqueness and originality, or how poorly executed the whole thing is, but really the only thing you need to know about this and why it’s an insufferable watch is:

THE!!!! PROTAGONIST !!!!!NEVER!!!!! STOPS!!!!! YELLING!!!!!!

Inuyashiki: My first problema with this show is the main dude is supposed to be 58 years old but he looks older than most 65+. It’s a dumb little thing, but it completely breaks my suspense of disbelief. Other than that, the writing is just so viscerally hateful it’s extremely uncomfortable to watch. What I’d understood from the synopsis was that the aliens had accidentally merged the old man and the young dude into a single robot body, but the way it is presented -with the old guy as the hero and the young guy as the villain- the moral of the story seems to be basically “millennials are killing the diamond industry”, or, in terms of a more well-known -though perhaps too easy- meme:

Urahara: I really wanted to like this show and support these young female creators in an industry that tends to not give them any opportunities. It’s not like it’s bad at all, nor is it offensive, it’s just really boring. The visuals are adorable, but the characters feel completely unreal –three high school girls run their own shop in Harajuku?-, especially pigtail girl who delivers every line like she was trying super hard to sound like an ojousama archetype. The show is completely committed to its Harajuku kawaii culture aesthetic and attitude, which is commendable but also something that honestly make me a little uncomfortable for no particular reason. I also feel extremely robbed off actual transformation sequences in this magical girl show. In a less busy season I might hold on to see where this went, but as it is, I’d rather wait and see how it ends and then decide if I should spend time on it.

Utter trash that I’m still gonna watch because I hate myself or something

Ousama Game: I think it’s important to make a distinction between hate-watch and irony-watch. Hatewatch is something you do with a show that’s terrible and probably offensive, but it never touches so-bad-it’s-good territory. You can pick the show apart for all of its flaws, be it an ill-conceived plot, poor characterization, or, you know, being grossly mysoginistic. Examples of shows I’ve hatewatched include KADO, Sailor Moon Crystal and Super Lovers. An Irony-watch is a show that pretty much everyone can agree is a dumpster fire, and it succeeds so much in its terribleness it’s histerical. Hand Shakers and Neo Yokio are prime examples of quality irony-watch material. And so is Ousama Game. It’s not even worth pointing out its flaws because there’s just nowhere to start, there is not a single thing this show does right and it’s hysterical. Of course it has the squick factor of having some gross fetish with people’s tongues lolling out and their faces getting ridiculously contracted in gross fashion when they die, but other than that, it takes itself so seriously and mixed with its 2006 low budget aesthetic the whole thing is madly hilarious.

Welcome to the Ballroom: This is my choice for hatewatch show of the seaon. After the disgusting dung that was episode 15, I’ve lost all hopes of the show ever getting “better” as was repeatedly promised by fans of the manga once the queen lord and savior Chinatsu appeared. Lo and behold, Chinatsu’s character arc is to learn to be more “feminine” and to let herself be “controlled” by Tatara. Throw in some casual homophobia just for good measure. I really have to wonder why the mangaka set out to write a manga about a sport that necessarily requires a man and a woman in partnership if she hates women so much and can’t treat them as anything above second-class citizens-

(srsly show, why do you hate women so much)

Sengoku Night Blood: It’s been a while since we got a dumbass Sengoku bishonen show that wasn’t aggressively boring. This one though, still challenges my tolerance limits for being dumbass ridiculous with its premise of vampire/werewolf Sengoku daimyo. The costumes and character designs are super ridiculous yet strangely non-distinctive. I have a hard time figuring out who is who because most lack their historical counterparts most notable features, and there’s a lot of same-face-iness everywhere. The show is clearly not afraid of embracing its otoge origins, the “love event” moments are terribly transparent. I just wish either the female character was completely erased or that the guys would stop treating her so badly. I know she’s useless, but I don’t understand why the show has dudes saying things such as “it’s really bothersome that you’re here” and frame them as if they were suuuuper romantic.

(lmfao there are no gifs for this one, maybe I’m the only sucker watching it)

Juuni Taisen: To be honest I was ready to drop this one after confirming it was gonna be more Nisio Isin fake philosophical bullshit that is actually just otaku fanservice. Instead I got schlocky ultra violence garbage and it’s actually kinda fun? Look, I’m gonna come clean, I’m just watching it for the necromancer chip’n-dale rabbit with high heels and a huge fluffy tail, but if that’s not a good reason to watch a show, none is.

Not bad, but not quite good

Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryoukou: This was another one that wasn’t quite on my radar before the season began, I only checked it out because it got excellent reviews. It’s actually surprisingly charming, although the pacing is slow, the muted color palette can be tiring and nothing really seems to be happening. I honestly struggled to stay awake during episode 2. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with the show, I’m considering dropping it because I’m just watching too much stuff and don’t have time, but I’ll wait for episode 3 to make my final decision (I’ll probably watch it Monday)

Shokoku no Altair: After the really good Sultan arc, apparently we had to go through another speed course on how to acquire new members for the party. I’m pretty much resigned to this not being the epic historical drama Arslan also failed to be, but it’s still sad to see this one getting the crappy production values while Inuyashiki is a lavishly animated production about bitter old men hating youngsters. Anyway, as long as further arcs can replicate the level of excitement and intrigue of the sultanlu arc, I’ll be looking forward to it and how Mahmut’s story unfolds.

Fate/Apocrypha: You can tell how trashy the summer season was that Fate, which was one of my favorite shows of the season, is barely in the middle of the pack of this crowded Fall season. It’s also worth noting that I’ve lost a lot of the goodwill I’d mustered for the show after the writers remembered Palurdo-kun was supposed to be the protagonist, so now that he’s taken the center stage (and become Astolfo’s Master, which is a travesty, Astolfo deserves so much better than satisfying otaku’s otokonoko fetiches orz) I find myself rolling my eyes more often than not. Still hope to get cool fights out of this one and more Astolfo and Mordred.

GARO Vanishing Line: MAPPA brings us a new iteration of the GARO franchise, this time with a modern setting that throws back to ultra macho 80s anime OVAs aesthetic –I wouldn’t know, never watched those-. The hero is a buff uber muscular dude that literally prays at women’s boobs and Zaruba is a giant motorcycle that thinks women stink. The production values are impressive, both fight scenes are incredibly cinematic and exciting. The hypermasculinity borders on the hilarious, but I wish it could do away with the sexist humor, which luckily hasn’t been abundant enough to be insufferable. It’s a little soon to judge because they’re barely introducing us to the characters, but I’m still hoping this won’t devolve into shit territory like Crimson Moon did.

Kino no Tabi: Full disclosure, I only watched the first season of Kino a few months ago, so I have it very fresh in my memory. Since I didn’t know that this new season was more a soft reboot rather than a sequel, I thought I needed to watch the first one to check this one out. Turns out it wasn’t necessary, but I’m still glad I did it because the first season is fantastic. Which is why I’m a little concerned about this one, because the reinterpretation of the Colisseum story was… not good. It rushed through the story and made Kino look like a psychopath. The first episode was good so I’m crossing my fingers that this won’t turn into a horrible mess, but so far I’m feeling cautious and worried. But even if this one turns out to be a good reboot, I’d 100% recommend you check out the original.

Anime is in Fact Good

Classicaloid: Another show that came back with a different director and that I worry will struggle to replicate what made the first season special. There are some tonal things that make the change very evident, but so far it has overall been pretty great nonetheless, Classicaloid insane business as usual. I must say “New character appears claiming to be X’s relative, X believes it and starts treating N better to the detriment of the established cast” is a trope I’m not too fond of, but I’m willing to give them some time purely because they have a Hippopotamus that can do Musik. Honestly watching anime makes one write the weirdest of sentences.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu. Something comedy shows have in their favor is that if they come back, even after a long time, it feels like they never left. Hoozuki’s the same old Hoozuki and it’s a load of fun. I’ve loved both episodes so far, I can’t even pick a favorite skit of the ones we’ve had so far because all of them were so good. There’s not really a lot to say, if you liked the first season you’ll like this one. As usual it’s only detriment is you may miss some of the jokes if you’re not familiar with Japanese folklore, but there’s a lot of fun to be had nonetheless.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie: Honestly, I’m very quick to judge a book by its cover, or in this case, an anime by its title. In this case, I promptly dismissed this as yet another otaku oriented harem videogame fantasy or whatever without even reading the synopsis. Then I heard the positive reactions to it and decided to give it a shot and boy was I pleasantly surprised! Not only does it feature a woman in her thirties as a protagonist –which is insanely rare! But it also focuses on delightfully adorable romance that breaches the barriers of gender. And honestly, there’s that scene in episode two in which Moriko sends a text and then horrified realizes it’s 2:00 am and feels super ashamed about it and it was so relatable I was 100% sold.

Best of the season

(don’t mind the order, I’ve loved all of these equally

Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau: So I may have misunderstood what this was about. I rarely read plot synopsis, so for some reason –I guess at first I thought the title was Kujira wa Sora- I thought there would be flying whales. There aren’t, but that’s definitely not a detriment to this incredible fantasy dystopian world. The color palette and the watercolor texture of the backgrounds gives it a magical atmosphere that is just a delight to watch. Although there’s a lot of exposition, none has felt like a forced infodump. The pacing is overall fantastic, and although the characters are a mystery for the most part, they’re already very endearing. This season is ripe with enchanting fantasy worlds and I’m really hyped about it.

Houseki no Kuni: I was concerned about the CG designs on this one, but they work surprisingly well! The plot is still a bit unclear, but they’ve done a really good job in building the characters through their relationships to one another. Even though we don’t know a lot about them, I felt a lot of empathy for Cinnabar and Diamond and Bort, and Phos is a pretty nice point of view character to follow around. I’m definitely intrigued by the concept, and the execution has been great so far.

Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond: I hadn’t realized how much I missed this show until I watched the first episode of this new season. The loss of Rie Matsumoto’s wonderful directorial vision is very noticeable in the straightforwardness of the storytelling, but otherwise the show is surprisingly still a load of bombastic fun with endearing characters and fascinating world building. I particularly liked the hospital episode. I’m not sure where this story is going, but I’m excited to go along for the ride.

The Ancient Magus Bride: It’s important to note that the first episode has a lot of questionable material (please, can Elias never ever call Chise a puppy ever again), but I have to commend a great production when I see it. Readers of the manga assure that the questionable content will be contextualized later on, so I’m hopeful, because I’m already really sold on this show and I really don’t want it to be gross. It’s hard to explain or describe, but it just has this fantasy magical charm and a beautiful production that got me hooked from start to finish. It has been hyped to hell and back and so far it has lived up to my expectations. I think, apart from the lovely production values, the characters feel very real and deep from start to finish. It’s hard to explain why I feel so drawn to this show that should have so many red alarms ringing in my head, but I can’t help feel completely charmed by it

How am I gonna survive such a busy season with so much homework? Will I die trying? Will Ballroom ever stop hating women and gay people? Stay tuned to find out! And let me know which shows you’re watching this season!

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