Season in Review - Winter 2021
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh it’s one of these again, let’s goooooooooooooooo
Yeah I cried at like half of these episodes because of how much I loved them lol.
Yuru Camp was already like my favourite anime from 2018 and this is just that but more.
Visuals have also been improved a lot – show’s super pretty all the time and the comedy faces are a lot funnier. Biggest glowup is Chiaki who’s hair is no longer disgusting.
Show feels a little less forced when it gets comedic so I actually felt a lot more endeared to Aki and Aoi and the like – there’s more proper iyashikei stuff done with them and the comedy is blended a lot more naturally.
It really was just better Yuru Camp.
No other show this season filled me with as much unconditional love as this did – it kind of has to be 10/10 lol.
Like for Dr Stone, this is just everything that was great about the first season but again.
Only now we have what feels like a much clearer sense of progression? Granted I could just be misremembering season 1 but because we are kind of past lots of the initial worldbuilding stage, characters have a little bit more room to take actions that have influences on one another and the setting.
Legoshi is now the ultimate carnivore guilt herbivore white knight ever and manages to be extremely cringe yet very compelling.
Louis runs the fucking lion mafia and reconciles his prey weakness and predator love in a really cool and interesting way.
The pair are extremely gay holy shit the homoerotic tension is off the charts.
Would say despite a greater focus on the narrative and the characters – including a fun follow-up on that murder mystery the show literally opened on – the worldbuilding still manages to be really strong by way of what’s technically filler content but just enhances the experience so much.
Like we don’t need to see cheetah girl and sheep girl go shopping together but all their dialogue about being unable to wear certain types of fabric because of static electricity or cheetah being unable to wear patterned clothing because of her fur – like it’s really quite inconsequential shit but you watch it and you’re like “fuuuuuuuuuuuuck that’s really well thought out and immersive”.
I don’t think I realised how god tier this OST was lol, fuckin jazzy and smooth as all shit, really gives every scene such an amazing atmosphere.
Beastars is just, really fucking good okay.
Dr Stone season 2 baybeeee!
Literally everything that was good about season 1 holds true here lol.
It’s just more of what was good about the show. Endearing cast, solid humour, great sense of multipurpose progression and gratification, just the usual “Dr Stone is fun as fuck” shit.
Its approach to its titular war is exactly as shounen idealism as I was hoping for – we set out to achieve a bloodless war and the only thing even closely resembling a casualty is Tsukasa himself – who still ends up in cold sleep to be saved later. Which was pretty damn emotional and feels like a satisfying thing to do with his character.
Visuals have been upgraded, weeeeee.
I don’t actually have much else to say lol, this is just more of a show I love and it’s an arc I loved and I’m so happy we’re getting season 3.
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby Season 2
So, I watched Uma Musume s1 more or less as it aired 3 years ago, I vaguely recall enjoying it somewhat, and I gave it a 6/10. Far from an impressive score to be sure, and today I remember just about as close to nothing as one could.
Suffice to say I didn’t really have much in the way of reason to be excited for season 2 – I expected it to be a cute and fairly easy time that wouldn’t really grip me much further than that, and in fact with a season so full of sequels I expected this to feel like somewhat of a chore in relation to some of the other stuff we had.
You can see how that turned out based on this fucking 9/10 score? For the fucking horse girl anime?
Yeah nah Uma s2 was just, like it completely blew me away.
I don’t think I expected as compelling a sports narrative as that turned out to be from Uma Musume, like I was sincerely completely engaged in almost everyone’s individual dreams and desires to win and emotionally devastated by the outside factors holding them back – before being brought back to tears again seeing them persist in spite of it all. Episode 11 especially had me ugly crying – which anime hasn’t really done to me in a while.
Apparently s1 looks a lot better than I remember but I really liked how season 2 has looked – the character designs are delightfully adorable and animate really well.
Also the voice acting is like, good, like really good, these girls have a lot of very sincere emotion in their performances that really elevate the viewing experience, like it’s shockingly much better than it needs to be.
Best way to describe this season really – “better than it needs to be”. A lot better. Unexpected sleeper hit of the season, already a favourite of the year, as weird as that feels for Uma Musume.
Marathoned the entire rest of this franchise about 2 weeks before s3 aired in prep, fell in love with it, and yeah season 3 was no exception to the quality of this series.
Non Non Biyori is just pure nostalgic iyashikei incarnate – like if you ever had fun as a child? Non Non Biyori is for you. It just reminds you of the good times, how much fun every day could be, that feeling of waking up not knowing what could happen and just living each day in pursuit of fun, free of commitments.
And like while that could make you sad about how much you miss the good old days in theory, Non Non Biyori is literally too fucking good to where you won’t even be able to feel anything other than joy watching it.
The only real thing that made this season feel weak to me is that it was competing directly with Yuru Camp which despite aiming to do things a little differently, still feels broadly similar enough to where like, I guess I just couldn’t not compare it to Yuru Camp – which was better in my mind.
Even then a 9/10 is a 9/10 though so fuckin, stop bitching.
Shoutouts to WEPcord because I had 0 intention of watching this at first – hell hadn’t even heard of it until WEPcord – and eventually got persuaded to binge the whole thing at the end of the season.
It was among the most enjoyable ~24 minutes of my life.
It’s just like, cute and funny and it looks really nice.
Pui Pui Molcar isn’t here for a long time but it’s sure as shit here for a good time and if you just want to laugh at these funny guinea pig cars being cute and charming and ponder the mechanics of this world where guinea pigs evolved into transportation yet regular boats and helicopters exist then hey you can do just that!
Not quite “sleeper” hit of the season since it’s highly rated and regarded by everyone it seems and got pretty fucking popular but still, certainly the most pleasant surprise this season.
Attack on Titan: The Final Season
“Final season” they said as if we’re not now waiting until Winter 2022 smh.
Anyway the dramatic shift in the setting following s3p2’s big reveal dramatically increases the scope of the world while still keeping the narrative feeling distinctly “Attack on Titan” in a good way.
Politics that are entertaining, characters having very huge and tangible and believable impact on the wider world, breaking trust, cycle of violence, buzzwords buzzwords, it’s 3 fucking am.
This season has really nice artwork but isn’t very exciting to watch – MAPPA sure as shit have less exciting sakuga cuts and their CG titans are a little offputting – their CG humans even more so. Expressions still very top tier tho.
Eren is extremely based but also scuffed and it’s cool and cringe in a good way.
I like lots of the new characters – Gabi specifically is really great, love Ayane Sakura’s performance.
Yeah idk how to be productive about this I’m tired. AOT good.
Woah, an anime original about skateboarding? That has actually literally never happened before – I have to pick this one up.
Works out that skating is, to some extent, near and dear to my heart – my stepdad loves skateboarding so I’m sort of interested in it by proxy. Second this got announced I told him about it and I’ve been telling him how I feel about every episode as it released – so that’s certainly been fun.
Actual show quality worked out to be pretty great too – it’s a fun sports narrative that puts “have actual fun with the activity” as its first core theme and goes through decently well written trials and tribulations to get us there.
Also looks really nice – I was a big fan of the character designs and there were lots of great action cuts during boarding around.
Seeing Reki and Langa close together brought out my inner fucking fujoshi so that felt gay.
Appreciate that the supporting cast wasn’t giant but definitely more could have been done with them – SHADOW and MIYA are important for all of a scene and then just kind of get to exposit shit. JOE and CHERRY kind of just are exposition and some jokes you’ve seen before.
Really didn’t much care for ADAM as an antagonist – he’s way, way too silly for me to take seriously, he completely defies physics in a way that makes it hard to be invested in the stakes of his races, and he doesn’t really have a compelling dynamic with anyone around him – not even his attempted main rival of Langa. Wouldn’t strictly say he dragged the show down – it was certainly fun watching him wreck people, but I do think we could have had a better antagonist.
In some sense this is definitely unfair but I do wish it had been a lot more grounded in reality – it’s the first skateboarding anime so if it wants to get people into skateboarding it should probably temper their expectations a little. Also by the show’s end it embraces the power of friendship so strongly as to suggest that skating alone sucks which I think is a bad message to send about an activity that’s perfectly enjoyable on its own. Those and a kind of eh jealousy arc were enough to hold the show back from an 8 for me. 7 is still not bad for a bishie boy sports original anime tho.
So this is Cells at Work but in a body that’s shitty and unhealthy.
It’s quite a lot more entertaining than Cells at Work – it’s got a good level of edge to it and a clearer structure that made it feel more narratively compelling than regular Cells and fuck, they even throw in major character deaths that got me surprisingly emotional.
Sweet moments also work decently well just because of what they exist in relation to.
Ending kinda shitty though and left a bad taste in my mouth.
Still just better Cells though.
I enjoyed the first couple of episodes more than I expected to but it quickly got boring as the cast expanded and all actual developments stopped.
Like I didn’t go into this expecting to like it because it was a high school romance that Reddit were hyped for so I expected it to be completely mediocre, but it surprised me with charming characters and good presentation in the early episodes.
Said good presentation remains a constant throughout the show, while the midsection or so is just lots of Hori and Miyamura being cute and fun – the will they/won’t they is resolved extremely quickly so we leave off with the feeling of getting to see a fairly realistic and natural portrayal of two high school lovers, I was a big fan.
However sort of throughout most of the show and becoming particularly prominent later on is a very expansive cast of super forgettable characters engaging in really quite bland interactions. Hori and Miyamura’s domestic life was this almost iyashikei romance for me that I really loved but basically every character outside of them was just a stock character template with a stock character arc in a stock high school slice of life.
For as good as the presentation is the show could feel kind of up its own ass at times? Particularly the shots of monotone silhouettes extending out of characters over a white background – didn’t seem to have a clear purpose and came across to me as more pretentious than anything else.
Probably looks better than s1? Lot of ugly CG though.
HanaKana is barely in it this time around, there’s like a normal cell boy who gets more screentime
Said normal said boy comes with some cute animal sidekick characters and because of how they’re introduced they feel like a shitty Manic Pixie Dream Girlfriend esque deus ex machina.
Tbh this probably isn’t actually worse than s1 which I gave a 7/10 but literally this and Black is just too much Cells at once for me and since Black was better uh, yeah, s2 felt a bit more like a chore.
I’m so glad this was only 8 episodes.
Yuri so I was guaranteed to watch.
Light sci-fi horror which sounds interesting and is a nice change of pace for yuri anime.
It’s not that great as a yuri because it doesn’t really reach the point in the story where the relationship between the leads develops.
It’s pretty alright as a horror though – it deals a lot in urban legend type stuff and while there are numerous monsters present, there’s quite a lot of horror in just the atmosphere of it all. The Otherside has liminal space vibes but as an exterior environment instead.
Helping the atmosphere is the really great and unsettling soundtrack – lots of very alien sounding things and jumps from high notes to low notes that are jarring in a really nice way. It’s got real “My favorite song was an untitled file called “ssssddsdrt66677888.ogg” that I found on a flash drive that I found in a landfill in Tunisia” vibes.
The main area where Urasekai obviously falters is in the adaptation itself. We don’t spend as much time in Sorao’s head as we seem to do in what I’ve seen of the novels, so she’s less gay and has less intricate characterisation. And the direction of the show in general is just a bit too weak to really sell you on a lot of the emotions it wants you to feel.
Really this show’s visuals are lacking in just about everything that’s not background art – and even that is only just fine. Character artwork is never impressive, animation is pretty lacking, they use ugly CG models for even mid-range shots of the characters, basically every monster design is some really bad looking CG, and as I said last point, the direction sucks. It’s just not particularly creepy or evocative or tense and it’s straight up fucking bad during chase scenes – it constantly changes the established sense of speed per party or distance between them or what the location is and generally just makes it extremely hard to actually follow, killing all tension.
I would say I was endeared to this show – I liked the characters and want to see them more and pretty much everything they were doing I still found to be fun, but this was clearly a bad translation from one medium to another and it sucks to see that happen.
Lowkey sleeper hit of the season.
Mecha magical girls do travelling around weird Japan for slice of life stuff and occasional action with a strong overlying comedic tone throughout.
Unironically funny, endearing cast with good and natural chemistry.
Art is kind of ugly and CG a bit offputting however lots of the choreography for fights is really solid and as soon as you’re used to the style it just actually looks good.
I completely get why this show is as low rated as it is but it was very easy to watch and definitely made my Wednesdays since the other Wednesday show - Re:Zero - was miserable.
Tfw you watch a show because it has ‘idol’ in the title but it’s like, a time travel world destroying sci-fi robot stageplay yuri loli fanservice show with maybe 3 minutes of idol content total.
At no point while watching Gekidol did I really know what I was watching nor why things were that way. Or rather – I eventually knew it was some weird sci-fi shit, but that made me question what the hell all the pointless stage acting idol cute girl window dressing was all about.
Also that yuri kiss in episode 4 made me more excited for the show than anything else but it’s never developed upon and sorta just happens?
Same for that nude gravure photoshoot a main girl did when she was age 13 – it informs one line of dialogue she says but is otherwise just a pointless random oddity.
This show was just kinda boring to watch a lot of the time actually, which combined with the rather complex plot made this show super difficult to follow.
Visually it’s, eh? The art is actually pretty solid and there’s some good and consistent animation but the direction feels weird for the sake of weird, the character designs are impossible to distinguish from one another, and the colour palette is not pretty on the eyes.
Ngl the main appeal of watching this show was being in WEPcord and talking about it with people – where I learned that it’s loosely adapted from some shows done by the real Alice In theatre troupe that’s existed since like 2010-ish, and Gekidol’s anime started being promoted in like 2016 or so, and was fully finished production around 2017-2018 – it only just made it to TV now for some reason. Fuck the full series Blu-Ray released before the 11th and 12th episodes even aired on TV.
Just the meta of Gekidol as well as the meme enjoyment of it in WEPcord endeared me to it more than I’d probably have otherwise, so like, yeah.
CG mocap idol sketch comedy thing.
For the most part once you’re past the initial jarring nature of watching this type of animation, the show looks really quite solid. Models are very high quality and quite a bit of attention is paid to how they interact with their environment. It’s really just the facial animations that look bad – they’re early Vtuber tier “snap” expressions with an unappealing art style to boot. Hair is also jank. Other than that though, looks nice.
Funny-ish? Idk, not totally absurdist but sort of wild enough to be fun, also the talking head was surprisingly endearing as a straight man.
Song from the last episode was actually fairly solid, wild.
This is like the first show I’ve watched and like, meme’d to death with a community of even a few others, which did endear me to it a lot, hence the actually decent score.
I mean it’s 10 episodes and they’re all only 8 minutes long, why not watch it?
The Promised Neverland season 2
Hahahahahhahahahaahahahahahahahahahaha
Man I’m anime only, right, and fuckin, in the first like honestly 10 episodes I did find a lot to enjoy. Well, maybe not “a lot”, but like a good amount of stuff.
Granted, I was also very often bored, or straight up finding certain narrative decisions to be bad and dumb.
Then the last episode came, right, and it like, set up a season 3. But it didn’t. Because it then gave us a 2 minute slideshow literally resolving THE ENTIRE NARRATIVE, like what???????
It was so bad it was good, so narratively unfulfilling but so inherently funny to see something cock up so badly.
Really got a lot of schadenfreude out of this one lol, s1 kinda mid to begin with.
Love the meta of it taking 12 episodes for these kids to escape the farms – the literal prologue – and it taking 11 episodes for them to resolve the entire rest of the global conflict lol.
Yeah idk man this was one hell of a trip. Funniest anime ever.
Can’t believe we got 3 idol shows this season.
Idoly Pride was probably the most technically well put together of these 3 idol shows – most polished visuals, really lovely character designs, a lot of the music was pretty good – it’s the most conventionally solid anime of the bunch.
But it’s also just kinda boring to watch outside of cute girls. Plots are very predictable and often super cringy, the girls are mad unmemorable with only the 2 leads having any notable character – really the only reason to like any of them is if they tickle your moe (*cough* Suzu and Chisa).
There’s like, a manager character. And he’s just a normal looking black haired anime boy whose only defining characteristics are that he works hard and is dense. Riveting. Dead girl is in love with him for some reason. He has too much screentime and fuckin, wish he was dead.
Speaking of dead, yeah dead girl. Mana. This show’s first episode is a painfully dragged out slog where we learn that the best idol ever died and then her presence hangs over the rest of the show in the form of a literal ghost that can talk to Makino and randomly one of the girls. It’s fuckin, real weird, kind of too goofy to take seriously, really breaks the tone of that first episode especially, and uh, yeah idk.
Honestly calling this boring is kind of all you need to do with it – it’s not really fun to watch and doesn’t add anything interesting to the meta of idols ala Gekidol and Idolls.
Only reason to even watch is because idol completionist.
This was just torture to watch.
I can’t fucking believe someone approved 12 HALF HOUR LONG episodes that ran the OP and ED almost never.
It would generally take me 2 minutes of an episode to feel like I’d consumed 24 minutes worth of content – by the end of an episode it’d felt like real world years had passed.
I don’t get why every single character in this show has to overexplain their full mental thought process for every single decision they make and every single emotion they feel literally every episode. Several minutes will occur where someone is just saying why they feel X way and it’s the most elementary shit ever but because it takes a while to say the fans have fooled themselves into thinking this dialogue is smart and means something or endears us to the characters.
Why did “Emilia was happy but then her family got killed and she was sad :(“ take 90 fucking minutes, or maybe 2 hours even I don’t fucking remember.
God this just sucked. I hated this.
Two cour original mecha anime, sure.
It’s 5am and the show could go to shit during the second cour as befalls so many original anime so I’m gonna keep this brief.
Back Arrow is a really charming and funny comedy show with a pretty basic set of characters and worldbuilding as well as some obvious influences but it feels like it wants to be and is its own thing entirely that’s inspired from yet not derivative of several more successful mecha anime. It also feels like a product of the 2000s but I mean that solely as a compliment – shit just feels easier when you’re watching Back Arrow.
Nothing about this show is the most compelling thing in the world but if you asked me to name anything wrong with it I’d have nothing to really tell you. It’s a show where the quality can be described as “pretty good!” without much need for anything else. Since it’s currently airing anyway there’s no harm in picking it up to finish – though how likely I’d be to tell someone to sit down and watch 24 episodes of this once it’s done just depends on cour 2 plays out I guess.
Easy recommend if you like what this show looks like – it kind of is exactly what it says on the tin – but if you like mecha anime you’re watching this anyway lol.
MAL score is in the 5.7s or something at the time of writing which I literally don’t get lol.
Though saying that if I had to estimate a score atm I’d go like 6/10 lol. Fun, charming, and obviously entertaining enough for me to not drop it in the season where I wanted to drop anything whenever I could – but mind bogglingly good this is not. Doesn’t make it not worth watching though, but we’ll see what cour 2 has in store.
Maiko-san Chi no Makanai-san
Want a show with a weird release? How about this anime that has 2 episodes out because they release monthly? They’re just normal enough TV anime episodes – 24 minutes with a 90 second OP and ED – one real defining characteristic being that episodes are split into thirds but that’s still kind of normal. Unsure what about this specifically warranted a monthly release but whatever.
Quality wise it’s been eh so far – it’s really boring for a slice of life and I barely finished the first episode – second one I didn’t even get 5 minutes in before I had to turn the speed up. Jokes are a bit too Japanese for me to care about and characters aren’t exactly endearing either.
Most notable thing about this show is that it’s full CG but you honestly wouldn’t really be able to tell at a glance – it’s very simple but it looks really nice. Not mind blowing in any way – certainly no Beastars level – but it’s enough to show that you can do CG shows that look perfectly adequate and have nothing really going against them visually.
The actual main reason to care about this show is to hear M.A.O do a Kyoto accent and feel very “woah that sounds weird” the entire time. The end.
This is a show for which my initial expectations of what I would like and dislike about it were pretty much spot on.
I expected I’d absolutely adore Aoi Yuuki’s performance and that she’d singlehandedly make the show watchable and that the rest of it would just be absolute bullshit I’d hate every second of.
And yeah, this show looks ugly as sin, everything that’s not Aoi Yuuki’s voice sounds awful, the dialogue is unbearable, and when it’s anything other than Aoi Yuuki I’m bored enough to want to claw my eyes out.
Turns out carrying an entire show on your own is a difficult task even for Aoi Yuuki – though once again this is actually just a “this season too busy” thing. If I didn’t crave more free time I’d keep watching this since Aoi Yuuki’s performance for this spider character actually is really great and endearing and exactly as high quality as I expected from her – she really went too hard for a show that’s otherwise as awful as this one is.
Also somehow got 2 cours and I don’t actually know if I could take 24 episodes of this so I’m glad I passed after only 3.
Self help guide for incels who hate how shitty the world is for them but do nothing to go about and change that.
Basically just tells them how to go about and change it in really obvious and easily applicable steps.
Relates them to gamer lingo because obviously.
Pretty noble cause for a show to indulge in, though not something I personally need, so I was basically just watching to cringe at the haha gamer humour.
Watching so many shows this season though and desperate to give myself more free time in a day that I decided to drop it.
Not bad and any other season I’d finish it but eh. 3 episodes is a decent shot still.
I think I expected this to be really wild and they'd make all sorts of crazy hybrid animals.
But instead they just make normal ones.
So it's an edutainment show, and I think 2 Cells at Work anime are enough edutainment in a season for me.
Character designs aren't my thing.
It was cool learning about how these animals interact I guess but not that cool because too much emphasis is placed on education and not enough on entertainment.
Might’ve finished in a less stacked season or if this was like 4 minute episodes or something – full length feels too long for this.
I just do not fucking know. I have never invested so much of myself into a seasonal anime and consequently have never been so emotionally drained by how one ended up. This is absolutely a show I’m going to need to think on a lot before I decide on any sort of score and definitely fit some amount of rewatches in as well. Would just say to expect a fuller thoughts on Wonder Egg post in the future where I decide on a score or something.
Girl of the Season – Shimarin
Yeah kind of obvious – she just is my favourite character from anything this season and season 2 especially gave us such a charming and loveable Shimarin, totally in love with her. I think I knew before the season even started that she’d be Girl of the Season and yeah, that sure as shit held true.
Boy of the Season – Senku Ishigami
Tbh favourite male is a tiny bit harder since Beastars exists but Senku’s just so charismatic and always fun to watch and super duper based and I particularly love the very sentimental Senku we get as this season came to a close – his friendship with Tsukasa was pretty damn gripping. Man’s just great.
Anime of the Season – Yuru Camp Season 2
Went over all the reasons this was amazing way back at the start, it’s the only 10 I even gave out here, this should really go without saying. Would call this like, my 6th favourite anime of all time – will probs be AOTY but we’ll see.
Overall this was one hell of a season – way more fucking sequels than you’d ever need, couple other random adaptations that were solid, some at the very least fascinating original shows, 3 fucking idol shows, a whole bunch of shit. Would certainly call this an overwhelming season – my completionist mentality forced me to finish a lot of things I didn’t exactly want to and I was constantly looking for excuses to drop things. Not gonna say it wasn’t rewarding finishing what I did anyway but my god I hope there’s literally never a season like this ever again. And yet I’ve already got like 15 shows lined up for Spring, and I think even Summer I’ve got 5 or 6 or so... Fuck I should stop following seasonals, huh?
