The start of the Fall 2014 season was great. There were so many good shows that I still haven’t managed to watch all of the things I’m interested in viewing… However a part of me says that it won’t be a memorable season. It fell off towards the end…
Still, the quality of the season overall was great, and I haven’t been invested in anime as much as I was this season since 2011, so it definitely had an impact.
As I mentioned above, there are still a whole bunch of shows I’ve yet to pick up, all of which will be mentioned at the end of this post, and some of which I’ll talk about in future. Luckily the Winter season looks awful, so I’ll have time to catch up on all the good stuff~ For now though, let’s talk about the shows I did watch.
A quick reminder: I rounded up my thoughts on the last season and my thoughts on the state of shows mid-way through this season in a previous post. Check that out if you haven’t! I also summarized my thoughts on 2014 as a whole here. Contribute to the discussion!
Sora no Method was a show that I never actually finished, and have no real interest in revisiting at this point in time. I dropped the show after 6 episodes for many reasons. The characters weren’t very likable. They had motives, and their actions were understandable, but it wasn’t entertaining. As I’ve watched a lot of drama (in anime form as well as live action) I have a big rule when it comes to drama-based stories: If the conflict could be solved by talking, but the characters refuse to talk, then the drama in your show is just annoying. This is Sora no Method in a nutshell.
Not only are the characters unlikeable and the drama infuriating, but the show constantly attempts to create tearjerking scenes where they have no place to be. Forcing an emotional connection and repeatedly failing at it is a surefire way to ruin a story. The show lacked patience where it counted, and then dragged out conflicts across episodes that could (and should) have been resolved in a single episode.
I don’t know if the writers simply struggled with the anime format or something, but it really wasn’t good.
Considering this is the first anime that studio 3Hz has created I have to give them props. The animation and the soundtrack were great. Unfortunately those are the two things I care least about in the media I consume, so it doesn’t mean anything. The character design was good from a visual standpoint, but personality-wise it was just bad.
So yeah, I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think SnM is worth watching.
Chaika: The Coffin Princess - AVENGING BATTLE is one of the many fantasy anime that aired this season, and while I loved it a lot, I don’t think it stood out amongst the crowd. Chaika is a good DnD-style story. The cast is funny and interesting, and they all interact with each other well. The enemies are seemingly untouchable… until you get a lucky roll. Traps and convenient events hold your party back. The ideas of good and evil are just small parts of the alignment system. These are all things that are fun to watch. Unfortunately, maybe due to a low budget or the limited amount of episodes the writers and directors had to work with, the ending throws all of these things out of the window. The story becomes black and white, the wide range of well-developed characters are left to the sidelines, and the conflict… is forgotten.
For the most part AVENGING BATTLE was fun to watch, and if you pair it with the first season then I recommend watching it, but don’t expect a fulfilling conclusion.
Well, there’s always the manga!
You can get a full-ish review of AVENGING, with a look at what the series did correctly, over at RRA, or if you prefer to see specific review scores you can go to Anime-Planet.
7/10
Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works was very good. I fully advocate the Ufotable over-hype. With UBW, they got a story I strongly disliked for many years, and made me enjoy every second of it. They also made me say wow to animation, which is no small feat. I care about animation almost as much as I care about the wellbeing of someone pointing a gun at me. HELP ME
As someone who hated the VN, but loved everything else about the Fate franchise (apart from maybe Extra) Ufotable’s UBW was the greatest gift I could ask for. I can only hope they somehow get their hands on Rewrite in future.
Now if only the BDs didn’t cost more than everything I own put together…
I won’t say anything about the story because my opinions on it will get me exiled from the internet, but anyone who hasn’t seen it will probably pick it up eventually anyway.
8/10
I can’t talk about Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete without going into a frenzy of typing, so instead of taking up lots of space… if you want to read that, you can check at my review at either RRA or Anime-Planet.
TL;DR - AOTS and ED of the season.
7/10
I dropped Nanatsu no Taizai at episode 3 and have had no motivation to keep watching it any further. It could be a bunch of fun, but there’s better stuff to spend my time on.
Trinity Seven is… Yeah, I have nothing to say about T7. I have every right to hate it, but every episode was fun and enjoyable. I still need to watch the last episode, but finding time for it is hard… (This is why I hate fan-service in anime! When am I supposed to have time to watch this stuff?) I’ll give T7 a score when I watch the final episode!
I’m expecting it to just end the arc, after which I can move onto the manga I guess? I doubt I will…
I generally save Manga for stuff like Bokura no Hentai, Wandering Son, or Kodomo no Jikan… Anime is my platform for male-oriented media. Manga for female-oriented. I think DMWL and TWGOK are the only exceptions to this.
ALL I WANNA BE IS MEEEEEE commence head-banging.
Shingeki no Bahamut started off really strong. The characters were introduced as slightly trope-y people who weren’t afraid to go against the viewer’s expectation. A beautifully animated world full of bounties, conflicts and adventures… and then it slowly settled into mediocrity.
The characters, while incredibly undeveloped, were fun to watch. The episodes, while rushed, were exciting. The story, while unoriginal, was fun to speculate about. The show didn’t get enough time to blossom, which I guess is expected of a show funded by a mobile automated card game… but still.
I think SnB suffers a lot from the same problem as Zankyou no Terror did. It tries to be smart, and then only really gets half-way there before dumbing it down or giving up. It has cool ideas for twists and surprises, but never executes them very well.
The show still had a very strong start though, and the intelligently written opening song is my OP of the season, so I’m going to be kind with it and say that the show is above average. I even recommend watching it. Crazy, right?
No seriously, it’s a good show, it just suffered a bit due to it’s limited number of episodes. You’ll probably still love it. If you’ve played the game you get to spot a bunch of nice little references too! Unless you main God cards… Then you get like… Bacchus and Hamsa… or Michael… Not even a single Miku reference ;~;
6/10
SAO II: Mothers Rosario is where SAO starts to not be terrible.
You know, I tend to hate the SAO anime fans because they are unaware of the direction SAO is taking and just want a long series focusing on nothing but Aincrad, but that’s understandable considering the first season of SAO stretched the Aincrad arc out waaay further than it should have been, and I’ve read the books so I know more than I usually would about an anime. All that, and .Hack is better
Due to all that, I judge the anime very harshly. So harshly in fact, that I’m going to ignore GGO even existed (keep it as a book) and move onto MR. MR actually benefited from being an anime in some ways. We lose the inner monologue which makes some scenes appear to be completely random or just strange, but the improvements the visuals bring balance it out. Considering I completely lack the ability to visualize while reading (a big reason of why I think books are dreadful as a form of entertainment) these are big things for me.
So the adaption process wasn’t bad. What was bad is… how the story connects to the viewer. I’m sure lots of people felt connected or something, but to a narcissistic white teenage male who has lived mostly without conflict, this stuff was just boring and melodramatic… That’s a minority opinion though. Mother’s Rosario has every right to be praised in the way that SAO was originally. Not my type, but it is good nevertheless.
Now bring on Alicization! I want to see those first two books adapted! (The rest are rubbish. Forget about them.)
I won’t rate it due to the bias formed by knowledge of the source material.
Later I’ll talk about the 2+ cour shows that are continuing to air through the next season. There’s some good ones!
Parasyte -the maxim-
Tribe Cool Crew
Akatsuki no Yona
KimiUso
I might bring up the shows I still want to watch too:
Cross Ange
Girl Friend Beta
Hi-sCool! Seha Girls
Laughing Under the Clouds
Lord Marksman and Vanadis
Shirobako
When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace
Wolf Girl and Black Prince
Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru
