WHAT’S UP WITH ANIME? Fall 2015 Edition
It’s fall, the season of wishing for cooler weather only to drown in the swamp that is DC in September. This has been a fairly tricky year for anime, seeing multiple projects w/ big ambitions and cool ideas fall hard on their face. Will this fall follow suit, or are the sakuga lovers doomed to cry for another year? Or maybe investing yourself in the health of another medium is quite unhealthy and you’re better off going for a run, or something. The fall’s good weather for it. So it goes.
KEEP AN EYE ON THESE
Concrete Revolutio sees Fullmetal Alchemist director and scribe (Seiji Mizushima and Shou Aikawa respectively) collaborate on a project that is literally the kitchen sink and then some. Reportedly Aikawa’s take on Watchmen, the trailer shows heroes, magical girls, giant robots, and a very loud (but stylish!) aesthetic drawing liberally from pop art. Part of me’s a bit worried by Aikawa (who has some sketchy political beliefs) interpreting Watchmen of all things, but I’m in this for the spectacle if nothing else.
Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans is the most recent installment in the Gundam franchise, but it’s written by Mari Okada holy shit. More pertinently, it’s directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai, her collaborator on some of her best-loved work (including Toradora, the second season of Honey and Clover and AnoHana, though some people HATE that series.) Okada’s plotting can be sloppy, taking batshit twists and turns, but I admire how she always puts her characters and their relationships first. Definitely curious to see what she does w/ the Gundam toolbox: could either be a breath of fresh air or a hilarious disaster.
One Punch Man: It’s One Punch Man. The manga’s the kind of thing where you wonder if animating it would be to do it a disservice; people have already made gifs of individual panels with more attention to detail than most TV anime! The director of Space Dandy’s working on this one, bringing some of his animator buddies on board, so this stands a chance of being fairly incredible. Or not. Either way the source material’s good, I hope they don’t mess it up!
Subete ga F ni Naru: “Wait!” you might say. “Didn’t the guy who directed this also do Elfen Lied? And wasn’t that show terrible in retrospect??” This may be true, but he’s also worked on some of the weirder, slower eps of Cardcaptor Sakura and (more recently) cult favorite Sound of the Sky. Add the guy who did series composition for Gatchaman Crowds, character designs by Inio Asano (a comics artist you could charitably call a voice of his generation) and award-winning source material, and you’ve got a recent Noitamina series that could actually be good??
Garo (sorry: GARRRROOOOOOOOOO) is getting a second anime season!! I’ll definitely miss the director and writer from the previous season, but this one brings director Atsushi Wakabayashi to the project (a very experienced and talented director of shounen anime) as well as a writing team led by Shou Aikawa. So it could in fact be more polished than the rather inconsistent (if often good, and sometimes brilliant) first season. Either way I’m excited for more over the top battles and Romi Park is back this time around too it’s gonna be great.
IF YOU LIKE THIS KIND OF THING
We’re getting a sequel to K, which I am unusually hyped about. I predicted the first season would be a disaster, but it turned out to be a charming disaster w/ unexpected fidelity when it came to nailing smaller details most other anime rarely attempt (even if it botched the more important stuff!) GoHANDS has overreached before, and I dunno if I’m up for a super angsty, self-serious sequel season of K. But if we get more cleaning robots, Kuro and Neko cameos and giant floating planets, I AM UP FOR THIS. Think of all the Space Jam remixes that have been made since the first season
I have no idea what to expect from Osomatsu-san, except that former Gintama staff are reviving an old-school classic. That is really all I need to hear to sell me on this, at least for one episode. Also frequent Ikuhara collaborator Yukari Hashimoto is doing the soundtrack, wow!!
ALSO THERE’S SEQUELS
We’re getting a second season of Noragami this fall; ultimately I didn’t find the first to be too memorable, but it had a hip style I want to see more of. Monogatari appears to be wrapping up (or is it? To be continued!) Haikyuu’s getting a second season, which should make some of my fellow Twitter friends very happy! Ditto Aikatsu, which I’ve heard is pretty damn solid if you’re into that kind of thing. Then there’s Seraph of the End season 2 which is, yeah. World Trigger. Fafner. It’s weird. But that’s it! Maybe anime will be good. Either way, Legend of the Galactic Heroes exists.