Season in Review - Spring 2020
Early on in the season before we really knew how many shows would be COVID delayed, I honestly didn’t know if I would do this post or not, since hey what if most of the shows have only aired like 3 episodes or something? Fortunately, most of the stuff I was watching did actually finish airing, giving me enough content to really write about, but a lot of shows I was watching still got delayed so, yeah that’s a thing. But yeah, Spring 2020 in anime. Winter was a fucking banging season to open up the new decade with, so how’d the next season fair? Let’s fuckin talk about it!!!!!!!!!!!
Listeners
So generally when Studio MAPPA drops an original show, it’s a pretty interesting time.
This time it wasn’t though.
Listeners is a show that I really, really struggled to finish the first episode of. And then a week later, I struggled even more to get through the second episode. And at that point, I was ready to call it quits. Listeners gets the honour of being the first show I’ve dropped in about half a year.
And the whys as to that decision are pretty much just because the show was boring as fuck and had very little to like. Didn’t like the character designs, didn’t think they animated all that well, didn’t like the mechs, didn’t like what little we learned about the setting, more specifically its mechanics and history, didn’t like the humour, didn’t like any of the characters, just, pretty much everything that was possible to have an opinion on, my opinion was negative.
There were exceptions though, more specifically some of the music was pretty decent, thank god since it’s an anime about music, and also the world design could be pretty good, episode 1 is mostly a junk heap but it looks pretty sick and episode 2 has this abandoned toilet building I really liked, plus it leaned into a sort of album cover aesthetic when talking about the magazine content and that was pretty awesome. But yeah that’s it. Oh and Tomoyo Kurosawa was in it, gave a performance unlike any I’ve heard from her, not so much that it was really strong but just that it was different from her usual stuff, though still higher quality than the rest of the performances so.
And yeah that’s it, can’t really predict a score off of 2 episodes so, we’ll just move on.
Appare Ranman
(best quality I could find, sorry)
Anyway Listeners was the only show I dropped this season so let’s get into stuff I watched!
Sorta, because Appare Ranman got corona after 3 episodes and has been off the air ever since.
But I did actually quite like what we did watch!
Premise is just a little inventor dude and whatever the male equivalent of a yamato nadeshiko is ending up in America and participating in a transcontinental race in the late 19th century or something. Which, dog, that’s my fucking jam! Yo Tom and Jerry Fast and the Furry is a fucking banger and that but a historical anime instead? Sounds absolutely fucking great. No I’ve never read Steel Ball Run.
Now, those first 3 episodes were all more setup than anything else, dealing with how our characters met each other, ended up in America, met some of the other competitors and sorted out their car and stuff. I enjoyed these episodes a decent bit, the characters got up to some pretty entertaining shenanigans and Appare and Kosame have honestly really enjoyable chemistry and great interactions with the wider world too, but I was definitely waiting on the actual race more than anything, so it’s pretty upsetting that this show would be delayed, but I suppose it’s better that we delay before the race actually starts than right as we’re in the middle of it?
With little else to say about the plot and stuff, I think the visuals were pretty okay. Character designs are those sorts of colourful stereotypes of the country of origin of every character, think Punch Out, and I quite liked them, they popped quite nicely. I am writing this at the end of the season after having not seen the show for 9 weeks or however long so I can’t say I remember how it all looked super well, but I feel like it had solid art and animation, plus the backgrounds were maybe particularly good. Who knows? It probably looked fine is the point.
And then I don’t really know what else to say about this one. 3 episodes isn’t a lot to go off of so. I do hope it ends up being 2 cours because I would like the show to spend the majority of its runtime on the race, but hey we’ll see what happens. If I had to predict a score based on what we got I’d go 6 or 7.
Houkago Teibou Nisshi
Next up for COVID shows is Doga Kobo’s next cute girls do cute things show, and this time it’s fishing, but also they gut and kill and eat the fish themselves, which the main character struggles with cause she’s used to arts and crafts and shit and sorta got pressured into this club. But it’s a cute girl show so she’ll grow more comfortable outside her comfort zone and everything will be nice and cute and it’s all great.
Ngl I didn’t like this one.
Probably the biggest detriment against this show is that the character designs are among the weakest I’ve seen in any cute girl show, the main character is the cutest girl but only in so far as she’s so plain as to have nothing really going against her, meanwhile her best friend has stupid hair, club president is just fuckin weird, and glasses girl made me feel claustrophobic which is something that’s never happened to me from looking at a character design? Maybe it’s because she’s got like the full winter uniform and a hat and glasses you can’t see into and she wears a fucking lifejacket on top of it all yet if you look outside in this show the weather’s fucking gorgeous and it looks hot as hell, she must be dying.
So actually the show does have really pretty backgrounds, and it’s still a Doga Kobo show so even if the girls aren’t all that cute they do animate really well and all the seiyuu give entertaining performances so like, you know it’s enjoyable.
Actually, yeah, it’s enjoyable! Forget the part where I said I didn’t like this one, because actually it aired 3 episodes and while I didn’t like the first 2, I actually had a lot of fun with episode 3. I think this is just another case of a cute girl show taking a while to vibe with me, but in the end when it did I got really upset that it’s delayed. And this was like the only normal cute girl slice of life show this season so fuck dude, I want it back a lot.
So yeah I didn’t like Houkago Teibou Nisshi initially but then I did, and uh, those are my opinions on it. Again if I had to guess a score I could do like, 6 or 7 again also. Cool.
Gal-Gaku: Hijiri Girls Square Gakuin
Next for corona shows is a 3-minute per episode idol show, which I didn’t initially realise was based off of a real idol group where all the girls are like, 10 years old or something.
And this is another one I didn’t really like, and I didn’t grow to like it after any amount of episodes or something either. It aired 4 episodes, they were all really difficult to find for different reasons for a long time, I didn’t really like any of them, and that’s basically it. The designs are sorta cute but really same-y, all of their music sounded like shit, and yo Japanese children sound fuckin weird dog, of the like 5 characters that even have speaking lines by that point in the show I couldn’t really get behind any of their performances.
Show felt like such a cheap tie-in overall that I’m kinda surprised they even delayed it, 3 minute episodes don’t seem like loads of work to put in but they chose to be cautious anyway. I respect that a lot though, prioritise the health and safety of everyone involved in stuff. Show’s shit anyway so it’s not like I’m complaining about not getting it. Predicted score of like, 3 or something honestly.
Olympia Kyklos
So for our next corona delayed show, except actually right as the season was ending this came back on air, we have this little mixed media project that I think wants to loosely celebrate the (formerly) 2020 Tokyo Olympics, since half of the setting is the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, meanwhile the other half is uh, ancient Greece. So that’s a thing.
Again it’s mixed media, we’ve got a fair amount of actually really solid claymation, alongside some paper cutout type stuff, even a few live-action skits here and there, and they use all these different styles for different settings which I think is pretty fun. Ancient Greece’s claymation I specifically appreciate because hey they look like what the statues do now! That’s pretty funny. Show in general is actually decently funny, I get to see Daisuke Ono run away and cry like a little bitch because someone insulted his pottery and that’s real neat, the humour generally isn’t very Japanese which is worth appreciating since there are no good Japanese comedies.
But nah the show’s funny, it could be slightly boring though, but that was more for episodes 1 and 2, meanwhile 3 and 4 were solid. And then it got delayed! And then when episode 5 came out it was fine. The show sometimes does the “haha airtime left” joke which I don’t care for, but it’s generally fine. I don’t know what else you want me to say about a show that aired 4 episodes and they were all 5 minutes long. The EDs were pretty funny?
That’s all I’ve got dude. Uhhhh 5/10 or maybe 6 for final score if I had to guess? Might get really tired of it and give it like a 2 tho, we’ll see what happens when it returns to air.
Mewkledreamy
And closing off corona delayed shows, except like with Olympia Kyklos this also came back on air albeit a bit earlier in the season, we have a little Sanrio magical girl show that’s just, the most sugary sweet adorable thing ever.
Which actually about sums up my feelings on the show! Mewkledreamy is an adorable show with delightfully cute mechanics for all its magical girl stuff, a cast where both boys and girls alike are moe incarnate, a snappy and enjoyable sense of humour, and just fuckin, possibly the single cutest main character I’ve ever seen.
It’s a show that makes me really happy to watch and I was bummed out as hell when it went off air, which also meant I was hyped as fuck when it came back. What’s really painful is that the subbing effort is taking a fair bit, so we end up having subbed episodes a full week after they air, but I can take it, it’s worth the wait at least.
For me having just said all of that though, I do think the show can sorta struggle to hold your attention beyond just being cute. It’s not necessarily a boring show ever, but it has its fair share of moments or even episodes where I’m not engaged much beyond the cuteness of it all. Which is kinda disappointing compared to many of its contemporaries which hold up a bit better, but like, eh. Also fuckin, we’ve got 3 main characters with their talking Sanrio plush companions, but only 1 of them can become a magical girl and enter dreams and shit! What the fuck! What the fucking fuck! If Maira and Kotoko don’t get to be magical girls ever I will fucking riot.
By virtue of being delayed the show’s obviously not finished so I don’t want to score it, also I don’t know how long this show will be and I think Sanrio sometimes license things for a full year of airing so we could get like 50 episodes of this? At its current pace I could predict a score of 6 or 7, maybe. It definitely started out stronger than most other shows this season but idk, it’s faltered a bit, you know?
Komatta Jiisan
So I don’t actually know if this show is finished or not since I’ll be posting this before a possible 13th episode might air, and I can’t actually find any info on this really, but uh, this is a show that I’m either finished or still watching, so uh, yeah.
Anyway Komatta Jiisan is a show where the premise is just one joke – old dude’s a fuckin ikemen and his wife is always caught off guard by it. Every single episode is a different play on this joke and you can literally predict the entire episode based on the title of it alone. It’s cute the first time, you think maybe you can take a little bit more of this, and when you’re 12 episodes in you’re so fucking tired of it that you’re desperate for it to just be over. You’re also thankful that episodes are only a single minute long at least, which is the sole saving grace the show even has. You think of giving it a 2/10, but you can’t score it right now because it’s not able to be marked as completed right now, and MAL’s 505ing you anyway. You are me.
Moving on.
Tamayomi
The first show I finished this season was this cute girls do baseball show, and it wasn’t very good.
It’s pretty simple to boil down where Tamayomi fails actually, all you really need to say is “visuals”. The girls are very not cute and have extremely hard to differentiate character designs, and going off of the pretty rough artwork, pretty limited animation and the best animations being reused multiple times an episode across the entire show, I think this show probably had a pretty poor production. I’m honestly amazed it even finished airing given the current climate, like you guys could’ve delayed this because corona and polished stuff up a little, but I respect the hustle tbh. Not helping the show is that there appears to have been some blunder with Funimation being sent the wrong footage or something so episode 4 specifically is extremely gross to look at, but that was actually a mistake and I did watch the proper episode 4 myself, and it looked as mediocre as the rest of the show, so, yeah.
The other big area in which Tamayomi’s not very good is the characters – they need to fill out a full baseball team as well as loosely characterise the other teams we go against so it’s a pretty large cast, and I think it’s fair to say that 0 of them are at all fleshed out, and there are maybe 4 characters that have a remotely endearing personality. But by and large they’ve not even got enough in the way of characterisation to be called stock templates or anything, most of them feel like they’re there because yo baseball needs big teams, you know? I definitely forgot who about 95% of the cast is which isn’t a good thing.
I think it’s okay as a sports show though. It’s one of those cute girls do x shows where x is more important than the cute girls, and beyond that, it doesn’t hold your hand like some of those shows do either. I don’t know shit about baseball and so this show was fucking loaded with terminology I was unfamiliar with, which made it sorta hard for me specifically to watch but I respect it anyway because it caters to its audience you know? And then it’s generally satisfying enough watching them make good plays, frustrating enough watching them make bad plays, and I was genuinely happy when they won the big game in the final episode. So clearly the show did something right.
That’s the thing with Tamayomi, it’s pretty bad at most of the things it tries to do, but I found myself inexplicably charmed by it sometimes anyway. I was happy when they celebrated the birthday party, I was upset whenever best girl Nozomi-chan failed at anything at all, I felt the hype behind some of the pelts, sometimes I even laughed at the jokes. I felt the intended emotional response for a lot of the moments even if I think the execution was lame, that’s just what its charm was to me I guess.
5/10, I did sorta like it.
Kakushigoto
Next up we’ve got a show about a guy called Kakushi Goto who’s kakushigoto is that he kakushigotos amirite lads???? Hhahahaa
So Kakushigoto is a comedy anime about a mangaka who draws raunchy gag manga, and hides that entire occupation from his innocent little daughteroo, and alongside those two is the former’s numerous coworkers and the latter’s friends and teacher and cool senpai voiced by Rikako Aida who I loved for that reason and also because she’s nice.
As for how it is as a comedy, it’s fine. An overwhelming amount of the comedy is based around misunderstandings, but not like tsundere anime MC gets walked in on changing, instead it’s just 2 characters maybe talking about 2 different events that sound similar and assuming they’re the same thing, shit like that. I don’t know if I really laughed per se but that’s a high barrier to clear and even without necessarily laughing, I still did enjoy the comedy stuff. Helping the comedy stand out is a fair amount of genuinely sweet moments between characters, namely Goto and daughter Hime, as well as some really strong and unique visuals that elevate every single scene – the character artwork is top tier, the backgrounds are brilliant, there’s not loads of motion but all the animation is super great when it does happen, and just in general the show has this really solid visual identity, feels like something out of a Shaft show despite being like Aija-do or some shit idk. Also fuckin great vocal performances all around, that elevates the comedy a lot also.
When the show’s not being a pretty solid comedy with really solid presentation, it’s something of a mystery show actually, with cuts to a future without Goto and Hime unravelling some plot stuff placed intermittently throughout the show. Very little actually happens in these scenes but I’d be lying if I said they weren’t the most intriguing parts of the show for me, and fortunately they build up to a really nice ending for our last episode that gives everything a big satisfying emotional climax while also being its own new beginning of sorts, that was really neat.
Show’s just overall pretty enjoyable from start to finish, balancing a good slice of life comedy with an interesting mystery that gets a satisfying payoff and keeping a consistently strong presentation the entire time. OP’s also a bop. 7/10.
Yesterday wo Uttate
I think the worst part of writing these is figuring out how to introduce every segment lol.
So anyway, Yesterday wo Uttate is a show that, from the first episode, certainly felt like it had the potential to be the best anime of the season. Because it sets itself up as a sort of coming of age romance story, albeit a more mature one, with our characters already being adults and just figuring out how they’re supposed to do that part, blending slice of life and drama and all that. And I’m 19 and I’m a year into uni so I sorta know the feel. And the show looked so deliberately crafted to be very careful and mature with how it presents itself to where it just seemed like it could be really good. And obviously, potential means fuck all, the least interesting premise can make for a great show still and great premises can be totally squandered, so it’s not like I had reason to assume this would be great, but the point is that I had high hopes.
And the show didn’t really deliver in the end. And by “in the end” I mean “for the entire run time”.
I think the problem with Yesterday is that it doesn’t seem to know what it should show in order to advance the plot. A lot of what should be really important moments only have any narrative impact in that exact moment, meanwhile a lot of bigger developments actually happen off screen – Rikuo idling away at a convenience store but then finally moving on and making some progress by getting into photography is a big deal, but him actually doing any of the stuff in that process isn’t something we see, he and Shinako end up dating but we only learn that apparently 3 months after they started, we don’t get to see how Shinako and Rou end up together, etc. The show just spends a lot of its runtime wasting away without much focus on anything and shying away from letting us actually see major developments. The show even has what feels like some filler episodes in the middle with two minor characters that only serve to reinforce shit we already know about the main characters, but why not spend more time developing said main characters instead? As a result of all of this, the show never really feels like it advances past the feeling of the first episode – we’re always locked within that mundanity and while it always feels like there could be something more, there never ends up being anything else.
So in that regard, the show was really disappointing, I’d be lying if I said it was all bad though. The characters are pretty enjoyable for the most part. Rikuo’s a pretty relatable dude, feels very human in his portrayal and actions, and he was generally pretty interesting to watch and develops well when we get to see that. Shinako is basically all the same things but also a babe voiced by HanaKana, and then Haru is fuckin, mega super cutiepie who I loved, albeit doesn’t feel written as well as the first two. Haru also suffers from sometimes feeling more like an obstacle to Rikuo and Shinako’s relationship, and even when she does end up with Rikuo the whole affair ends up being rushed, but she’s not nearly as bad in those regards as Rou, who actually does just fucking suck and he’s never likeable or interesting and doesn’t develop in any satisfying way, and while his character is sorta relatable he still really feels like nothing more than an obstacle which is lame. And then those 4 are kinda the only remotely important characters, everyone else is either meh, bad, or Rikuo’s convenience store buddy who’s actually pretty cool.
The other area in which the show’s really good is the audio and visuals. There’s very minimal use of music so it always hits well when it is used, and the voice acting is fucking, really damn good, everyone gives really emotive and convincing performances but I especially wanna give a shoutout to Chikahiro Kobayashi as Rikuo, he captures that sort of nervous, selfish dude that smokes a little really well, and there’s a certain raspiness in his voice that’s still pretty nice to listen to and gives you a great idea of how he’s feeling in his more emotional moments. It also makes the times he sounds properly friendly really stand out, it’s a really strong performance overall. And then the visuals are fuckin, stunning. The first episode is like, KyoAni movie tier, and then while the art and animation don’t stay that beautiful, they certainly don’t falter very intensely and the show’s pretty gorgeous from start to finish. Animation is kept pretty subtle, the show definitely wants to convey a sense of intimacy with all the movements, it’s the actual artwork, lighting and backgrounds where everything’s really at its peak. What caught me off about this show as well is that it’s Doga Kobo, whose shows usually excel in all those areas anyway, albeit maybe with stronger character animation, but they also usually do cute girl slice of life shows. This is a pretty serious drama with more grounded and realistic character designs in a more mature setting. And it still looks great! Definitely makes me hope Doga Kobo does more of these sorts of shows in future, just let them flex that they’re good for more than just cute girls. Don’t stop doing cute girl shows though please and thank you. One problem I did have with the visuals though is that tons of the male character designs are really similar, to the point where it can be hard to tell them apart, but like, eh.
For as much as I felt this show squandered its potential, it was at least entertaining enough from start to finish to where I can still say I enjoyed it. Alongside some of the episodes were 6 little mini episodes that were as perfectly fine as the show itself, and I gave both the show and those mini episodes a 6/10. Haru best girl.
Nami yo Kiitekure
Following up on that, how about another show that, in the same vein as Yesterday, is sort of an adult slice of life drama, albeit one that leans way more into the slice of life aspect and is in fact more of a comedy than anything, and isn’t really a drama much if ever. This show’s nothing like Yesterday lol.
So Nami is about a woman called Minare who’s sorta between jobs because her boss wants a male harem at his restaurant and she ends up talking to a radio dude while drunk at a bar and then finds herself involved in radio, getting her own program at fuck off in the morning despite being an amateur, and the show’s sorta just about her in that position.
And it ended up being pretty decent.
The show’s biggest strength by far is Minare, she’s just this infectiously charismatic and humorous lead who has great interactions with literally every single character in the show. Her sense of humour is very much based in comparing x to y, with y almost always being shit I’ve never heard of, but she delivers her jokes with so much punch and passion but also this sort of deadpan snark to where even if I didn’t get most of them, they still felt like they were funny. She’s always dramatic and over the top but has such a charming approach to life and relationships to where it’s basically impossible to not root for her, when we eventually learn that Minare means “to make laugh” she definitely feels like a character who lives up to her name beautifully well.
And then the cast outside of her are pretty solid as well. Again it helps that they have such strong interactions with Minare but they all manage to feel enough like their own person, even if I didn’t fully care about what their arcs actually were week to week. The only character that I didn’t really like is the restaurant manager who’s just a predatory gay joke which I didn’t really enjoy, outside of him though everyone’s likeable and charming in their own right, and the character designs are surprisingly solid as well, everyone looks really distinct from one another and you can get a pretty decent grasp of how everyone is just at a glance.
In being a show about radio as well, Nami chooses to approach radio in a way that’s pretty respectable. Because Minare’s effectively learning about radio as we are, it’s a really beginner friendly approach to something most of us don’t really care about. And neither does Minare, but as she learns to have fun with it, connect with people from it, and realise how it can be a source of comfort for everyone in bad situations, she grows to care about radio in a way that I sorta did too? It’s pretty well executed on that front.
I think visually, the show’s not great. Artwork’s generally decent, animation a bit less so, especially the cars which for some reason fuckin bounce around like mental and it’s dumb. Biggest problem with the artwork for me is the colouring though, because everything has this sort of textured look that really doesn’t work with the character designs and while it gives the show an identity, it’s not really a good one. The general presentation is still decent though, radio sections will generally transport us to whatever bit Minare’s acting out, so we might see her get attacked by a bear or aliens or bury a corpse and that’s always fun at least. I won’t pretend to remember any of the soundtrack, but the OP and ED were pretty good, and voice acting was also really strong. Ai Fairouz seems like she could’ve been a great fit for Minare but I mainly say that because I want to hear more of her, Riho Sugiyama actually plays Minare though and gives as infectiously wonderful a performance as befits the character.
Overall, Nami yo Kiitekure is just a pretty enjoyable comedy slice of life with an adult cast for once that do feel like adults. The visuals aren’t amazing but it has strong enough presentation anyway, and the main gimmick of radio, while it doesn’t have as much presence in the show as one might expect, at least has a ton of impact when it is used. Biggest problem with the show is it’s another one where enough of the content in the episodes is boring to where the show’s just less consistent than it could be. Still a solid 6/10 though.
Arte
So Arte was, a weird little show. It’s a period piece set around when Assassin’s Creed 2 would’ve happened, and stars the titular Arte, a girl who wants to be a painter. Which just sounds insane, right? A female painter? That sounds laughable. And she’s a noble too? What has this world come to?
And that mentality is what Arte addresses, because this period piece is also a feminist narrative that speaks up for uh, 16th century women, telling them that yeah, they can find work and do stuff!
Now I obviously don’t have any problem with the message of this, equal rights for everyone forever please, but this feels like a kinda pointless narrative, right? Maybe the point is to try and reapply it to today, because while it’s easier for a woman to get a job today than it was back then, especially for artistic fields, it’s still obviously a rougher process than it is for men, women are underrepresented in boards of directors across the world and stuff, I don’t even know how the situation is in Japan beyond knowing that sexual harassment in the workplace is really bad there, but for all of that, Arte just feels so basic, uninteresting, and dated with the message it wants to push, that I just, didn’t really get the point of it all.
Fortunately though, Arte isn’t exclusively a feminist narrative with nothing else to offer. The titular Arte doesn’t even fit many expectations of feminism – rather than call for societal change and acceptance of women broadly, Arte is a character who decides that being a women means she needs to work even harder to reach the spot the men are at – she sees all the sexism she faces as a personal challenge that she needs to rise above, and that hard-headed, almost shounen-esque mentality, makes for a character that’s pretty fun to watch. And of course in choosing to push against the curve where many other women at the time would’ve been complicit, Arte ends up inspiring a degree of societal change anyway. She encourages some women to stand up and speak for themselves, she encourages a man to be less of an “I’ll do everything for you” type, and that part about being a noble is also an influence for others, Arte inspires another noble to be more indulgent in her hobby, namely cooking, rather than just hiding stuff away and not being honest with herself or family. Point is that Arte as a character isn’t a conventionally feminist one, and she ends up inspiring more change than just feminist change with what she does for that noble character too, so like, the show ends up feeling more about what Arte the character does rather than being a feminist narrative that stars Arte. Idk, it’s just a lot neater and significantly less overbearing than it looked like it would be, which I appreciated.
I did overall like Arte the character, though the wider cast don’t quite fare as well. My favourite character was Katarina, the noble Arte inspired, because she’s fucking cute as shit and voiced by MAO and has a nice character arc, but outside of her and Arte it’s a pretty weak showing. Leo, Arte’s master, is sorta just your cranky old master who ends up inspired by this one specific student and has her best interests in mind, Arte falls in love with him also, and he’s really not much else, not very entertaining when he’s on screen. There aren’t really any major characters beyond those 3, but most of the minor characters are recurring and they’re all sorta like, interesting for an episode tops, and then boring as hell for the rest of the show. And most of them aren’t even interesting for a full episode. Episodes structured around some of those characters also end up flowing really awkwardly for reasons specific to those episodes, couldn’t tell you anything specific off the top of my head but check my tag for this show if you care ig. It’s a show with a good protagonist and one other likeable character, and the rest just, aren’t very good at all.
Speaking of episodes, probably the biggest problem with Arte is that a lot of the episodes are just, really meh from start to finish. It’s overall a show that’s appreciable but many of the individual episodes or larger moments can be a drag to sit through. I don’t think there was any one episode where I liked every minute, and I probably found more episodes boring than fun. Not helping is that visually the show’s pretty weak, with fairly meh artwork, dull animation, and the backgrounds for most of the show are just fuckin, Florence, so everything all looks the same. Also some of the paintings we see are just actual paintings but every so often we’ll see a painting in the style of the show but like, textured with all the browns and shit of a painting from the era, and it’s uncanny as fuck. Musically, nothing stood out as being anything above meh, beyond an okay Maaya Sakamoto song for the OP and a pretty chill vibes ED. And then all of the voice acting is perfectly sufficient, nothing more. The presentation of Arte is just generally nothing special, which kinda sucks.
In the end, I did give Arte a 5/10. It’s one of the more worth watching and enjoyable 5s I have, but it’s still just a 5 so it obviously didn’t do loads for me. It’s a show I kinda forgot I was even watching week to week, could be because it was on Saturday sandwiched between 2 better shows, but like, still. Speaking of…
Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 2
It’s always weird covering sequel series in these Season in Reviews when I’ve already covered the first season in an earlier one, since generally the quality between seasons will be consistent enough and my thoughts unchanging over time to where all I really need to do is repeat what I said for the first season.
So a TL;DR of my first season thoughts for those not in the know are that I thought it was overall a pretty solid romcom, albeit way better at the com than the rom, and while it was generally enjoyable, many of the bits were pretty poor in quality and the show overall felt pretty inconsistent, plus it went for an emotional finale that it didn’t earn at all and was melodramatic and insufferable as hell.
Now that’s my thoughts on season 1 pretty much, and remember a few seconds ago when I said “generally the quality between seasons will be consistent enough”? Yeah toss that out the fucking window, Kaguya-sama season 2 was a fucking dramatic improvement over its predecessor.
Season 2 excels in everything season 1 excelled at but just to a stronger degree, with much more striking and well animated presentation, better set-ups for less predictable jokes, an actual narrative arc that develops most of the cast surprisingly well, especially Ishigami who gets some fucking brilliant moments this season, and season 2 even does its more emotional moments well, to the point where it’s managing to balance rom and com extremely well, and both are similarly great.
And then the main thing season 2 excels in where season 1 faltered is in that consistency – I’d be lying to say every section of every episode was good, but unlike with season 1, I can at least say that every episode overall was still good. It felt like season 2 had longer sections than season 1 did, and they ended up being more fleshed out and enjoyable with that in mind. There were honestly very few sections I even disliked this season, and even most of those I didn’t dislike so much as I just liked less than what most of this season was, but that’s way more credit than season 1 got.
We’ve also got some new characters this time to freshen things around, by which I mean Miko Iino and her friend, the friend being very unimportant, and Miko herself being unfortunately underutilised if I’m honest. The episode where she debates Shirogane on stage is fucking brilliant and she’s pretty enjoyable before that, but unfortunately she has pretty little afterwards, and most of her presence in any given joke is just being misunderstood/scared of everyone else in the student council. That’s probably the biggest area in which season 2 had room to improve, Chika’s also tragically lacking in screentime, but the other 3 members all get to shine really brightly this time, and a couple of the more minor characters, Shirogane’s imouto, Hayasaka, Chika’s imouto maybe, they get to be fun as well.
So I mean basically Kaguya-sama season 2 did for me what I think season 1 did for most people, and that’s just be a really endearing and enjoyable romcom with extremely solid presentation. I certainly don’t think season 2 is worthy of the like 8.94 or something it has on MAL at the time of writing, but I certainly liked it enough to where I gave it an 8/10.
Tower of God
So while Kaguya-sama season 2 did kinda live up to the hype, the next most hyped show after that, with Crunchyroll pushing it everywhere they could as hard as possible, is Tower of God. And the meta of this is cool since it’s an expensive adaptation of a Korean manga and it appears to have done well for itself, and hey if that means we can get more Korean manga adaptations that’s obviously cool, I’ve never read any such manga but a wider pool of content to adapt is always good.
And then speaking of adaptations, Tower of God the anime felt like a pretty subpar adaptation. Now I’ve not read the manhwa, so I can’t personally contribute an opinion on that front, but going off of what people have said about the manhwa, what people are saying about the show, and some of the replies I actually got from some very lovely Tower of God fans, it definitely seems like “subpar adaptation” is the truth. And again even while watching that I sorta just felt like that was the case, some inexplicable instinct that what I was watching isn’t nearly as good as what it’s based on. Could that be to do with the odd pacing and how exposition is handled? The fact that I know some changes have been made that people aren’t all that fond of? Just general “here’s how not to adapt something” stuff? I mean, yeah I guess it’s all of that.
To speak of the show on its own merits rather than waste time saying “bad adaptation” of something I’ve not read, Tower of God is actually pretty solid. The main intrigue of the show is in the setting – the titular tower. As a setting it’s got a lot going on all the time, it’s a full booming society while being this massive freaky goal that everyone has, it’s loaded with everything you can ever want to know or do, but it’s also deadly and demands a lot of you, blah blah blah it’s just a cool, pretty vaguely defined and yet very interesting setting. Another thing that makes the tower so appealing is that in being such an important part of the setting, pretty much the only thing that exists in fact, it can sorta be a metaphor for basically anything, and it ties into every single character’s motive because of that, by extension tying everyone in the cast together really organically, it’s sick.
And then speaking of, those characters are for the most part pretty solid. We’ve got a fairly extensive cast of characters that all do actually have like, character, and they’re so massively diverse in every single facet of their entire existence in a way that you don’t see all too often. They’ve all got their backstories, their motives, their individual arcs and developments, how they interact with the rest of the characters, how they perceive the tower, just all that shit is done pretty solidly and it makes for a really likeable group. The area in which the show falters most is actually in its main characters. Bam honestly just feels like a really bland and nice boy shounen protag, Khun is just the bishie genius who’s always on top of everything, Rak just fucking sucks, and then it takes until the last episode for Rachel to even become a character. Aside from Rak they’ve all got their own reasons to be likeable, but as actual characters and especially as protagonists they’re honestly a pretty weak bunch, and the time we spend focusing on like, Anaak for example, or a few of the other randos, ends up feeling better written. Again though, they’re still likeable, and a likeable main cast with a strong supporting cast is good enough.
Visually, the show’s really solid, I like the artwork and colouring a lot, it’s got this really unique style that’s sort of, almost pencil feeling is the best I can describe it? It still obviously looks super digital but something about the art just feels a bit rawer than you see in other stuff and I love it a lot, also while there aren’t necessarily any big sakuga moments or anything, the animation is still consistently really strong, action animation especially. The show’s direction is pretty solid in general, it does a good job investing you in most of the scenes, at least when the writing doesn’t take you out of it completely (the scene where Khun and Rak pretend to fight is genuinely cringeworthy). OP’s not my thing but I sorta liked it anyway, ED’s solid, voice acting’s pretty great all around, and the biggest thing to take away from the audio is the soundtrack. This show’s OST is absolutely brilliant, as one might expect from the ever incredible Kevin Penkin. This dude didn’t do my favourite soundtrack in anime but he’s working his way towards being my favourite composer anyway, and his work here is honestly on par with Made in Abyss, maybe worse, but then I’ve seen Made in Abyss like 5 times so it has that advantage going for it, we’ll see.
And then that’s sorta everything I feel like saying about Tower of God. It’s pretty good, suffers from a few issues holding it back though, not the least of which is that as an adaptation it feels like shit. Still solid though, 7/10.
Princess Connect! Re-Dive
Ending off TV anime for the season, and being the last thing I finished as well (ignoring corona and whatever Komatta Jiisan’s up to) we have Princess Connect, a cute girl gacha game adaptation that’s unreasonably better than it seems like it needs to be.
The show’s main character is supposed to be Yuki, a male in an otherwise basically exclusively female world, which is a red flag for me usually, but Yuki’s the fuckin best, because this dude is like, the most 0 IQ cunt in the entire fucking world, and spends most of the show just being a ragdoll to be saved. Also, he doesn’t develop romantically with any other character – a very small amount of other characters have a crush on him, mostly Kokkoro, but it’s genuinely cute instead of feeling like typical gacha bullshit, and then with everyone else Yuki just ends up having actually sincere and charming friendships.
And then speaking of Kokkoro, the rest of the main cast and who end up being the most dominant characters are her, Kyaru or Karyl who fuckin knows, and someone that gets called Pecorine for most of the show until a meh reveal about her real identity at the end. These 3 girls are fucking, just amazing. I loved them all so much. They’re all very top tier cutiepies with great voices and great interactions amongst themselves and with Yuki and with the wider world and every single one of them is greatly endearing for their own unique reasons and Kyarylu is definitely best girl and they’re all so very fun to watch and very expressive and chill and sweet but funny and bombastic and it’s all so wonderful. The best episodes of the show just have them fucking around, eating food and shit, vibin, you know the drill.
The worst episodes then are the more plot heavy episodes or those reliant on other gacha characters. See, I believe I’m what’s called a secondary? Meaning I’ve not played the gacha this is based off of and know jack shit about anything to do with the story or the characters. I think the show did a good job endearing me to those main 4, but sans a squad of cute lolis I really couldn’t give less of a fuck about the other characters that are occasionally shoved down our throats. I get that they need to appease the actual fans by animating all of their waifus, but imo show’d be better without them.
Speaking of animating though, this show’s visuals are really stellar. The artwork is consistently really well done and there’s quite a fair bit of action sakuga that looks really nice, and the special effects going on for all the magic moves and shit is all super pretty, and all of that being coupled with the adorable character designs just made this show a joy to look at.
Princess Connect was just overall a really enjoyable experience, like it could’ve been better but I felt like I was sufficiently enjoying myself for the bulk of the episodes and even when it focused on characters I didn’t give a shit about it still had enough of the characters I do give a shit about to not be unbearable, you know? 8/10. Probably might’ve been Anime of the Season if not for…
Anime of the Season – Brand New Animal
Last year, it was Beastars. This year, it’s Brand New Animal. Furries dude, they’re fuckin saving anime.
So BNA is Trigger’s new original IP that released on Netflix, and unlike everything else this season I watched it all in one sitting at the very end. I spent the whole season struggling over what I thought Anime of the Season was, and then I watch this fuckin sleeper hit and it decimates the competition by just being, fucking amazing and exciting and just raw trigger hype, but now with furries.
Now where Beastars is this pretty dark but very sincere story about this uniquely fascinating anthropomorphic society where like, shit happens I guess, read my Beastars review lol, BNA is comparatively a very easily digestible and pretty safe Trigger show with themes of oppression and free will, and all their usual hype. Because unlike Beastars, our characters aren’t fully furry per se. If you’re born a human, you’re born a human, and can only become a furry by medical accident, as happens to 2 of the main characters. Whereas if you’re a beastman, you can enter a human form at will, but you are actually a furry and also if some shit happens you might go full furry rage and kill people and shit, and some humans want to stop that by converting you to a human entirely. And it’s a show that’s constantly balancing a lot of elements in its narrative with tons of characters of varying alignments and goals and opinions, and it actually manages to balance these huge amounts of things surprisingly well. The only area in which the main plot felt a little undercooked was in Nazuna and Michiru becoming friends again, but even that I can sorta take anyway because like, fuck it if you’ve been genuine friends for all that long who cares if one of you became a cult leader and the other one acted poorly for the sake of the first one but not realising what the first one wanted or whatever. You know?
Anyway in being a Trigger show with Nakashima, Imaishi and Yoshinori playing such huge parts, it’s obviously full of all the flair and finesse that makes their shows great to watch, we’ve got a loveably large cast of characters, lesbian solidarity, funny poor characters, fucking jaw-dropping action sakuga, first episode especially is so colourfully stunning and I fuckin, god I loved it so much, the soundtrack is far and away the best we’ve had this year, fuckin, some of the early episodes are more episodic and border on filler but I think they were better executed as that than some other Trigger stuff and helped make the cast and world feel very alive, it’s just all so fuckin good man.
You can kinda tell that when it comes to Trigger I get so much joy out of the sheer hype and excitement of watching them that talking about them just becomes a thing of “this was great, this was great, this was hype, this is so fucking good” in place of attempting to have any sort of structure or coherent thoughts lol. BNA gets an 8/10.
Girl of the Season – Michiru Kagemori
Show’s so good yo, and Michiru’s a fucking brilliant and extremely adorable protagonist. I don’t know if this is a hill I’m ready to die on, but she might even be best Trigger girl? Was gonna go with Karyl but Michiru stole it at the last minute.
Boy of the Season – Yuu Ishigami
My man’s just had a lot of development this season and went through a really solid character arc, plus generally had a lot more meaningful presence in bits where he wasn’t developing, he’s more of a character in and out of the jokes than just a punchline for the jokes and it’s great.
Anyway yeah that’s us done. Not a brilliant season overall I’d say tbh, but there were certainly some brilliant shows in it, so like, what can you really complain about? Other than fucking COVID-19 destroying the world. Fuck.
