As much as I disliked SAO Season 1, first episode of Season 2 is showing promise. I’m liking the music a lot more than the first season as well.
Season 1 was a pretty bad adaption. They dragged out a story that shouldn’t have been dragged out.
Worst of all, it made fans get angry when it moved away from the MMO Sword Art Online, which really wasn’t a central point in the books.
GGO is pretty good. It’s a lot more about psychological warfare instead of hacknslash battles. They may fit in Mothers Rosario this season too. It’s short, and GGO isn’t long enough for 2 cours.
Alicization is where the franchise starts to get good though. Think Aincrad, but with an interesting world and lots of character development.
Oh, and since all the shows I am watching are out, might as well do my small ranking.
Akame ga Kill > Free 2 > Aldnoah > Trains > Argevollen > Shana no Blade Dance (gonna troll this show hardcore) > Land Nagi > GGO
Kirito sucks, that is all. Rest are my opinions.
We’re lacking in anime discussion here, and most currently airing shows are about half-way through now, so it’s a good time to look through them.
First off, I’ll follow up my post from the start of last season and quickly say my thoughts on the stuff I watched. I’m not entirely done with the season yet >< This season ended up being the season of 8/10 ratings somehow. The shows I finished were great, but not amazing. They were all shooting for AOTY, but they all fell a bit short.
Ao Haru Ride was great. It was a very realistic and refreshing romance story, which is always nice to see. Almost got my AOTS vote, but it wasn’t quite there. It’s definitely worth watching anyway though. The cast is great, and it’ll make you feel lots of feels.
8/10
I ended up dropping DRAMAtical after 2 episodes because… the lack of life in it was creepy. One of the worst anime I’ve had the displeasure of watching.
2/10
Re:Hamatora was… more Hamatora. If you didn’t like the first season, you probably won’t enjoy this season too much. It’s better though. Hajime got lots of screentime, and she’s pretty much the best character of the season, so yay! There’s a bunch of convenient plot-twists and the sudden change in atmosphere from the first season can be suffocating at times, but it’s an enjoyable show, it answered all of the questions from last season, and I’m glad I watched it. It’s better than the X-Men movies at least~ Re:Hamatora had my [favorite ending song of the season.][1] The singer’s voice is just soooo good.
8/10
Tokyo Ghoul was very enjoyable. It’s my type of action anime. My favorite manga is DMWL (never speak of the anime adaption) and Tokyo Ghoul has a similar atmosphere about it, so there’s no surprise there. The first couple of episodes are gold. The fight scenes are great, although the censoring is pretty bad in one episode. The MC is actually pretty fun to watch, and Touka is a great balance to his personality. There’s also a couple detectives that are interesting to watch, but they aren’t the best detectives of the season. That award goes to Zankyou no Terror’s detectives. I’m looking forward to a season 2, but I might end up reading the manga. I’ll miss the soundtrack and voice acting though ;~;
Oh, and [best OP of the season.][2] Kinda reminiscent of No.6 visually.
8/10
Zankyou no Terror had a brilliant start, but episodes 5 through 8 were pretty boring. I almost came close to dropping it, but I’m glad I didn’t. Episode 9 onwards brings the show back to the quality it had in the earlier episodes. The characters are well designed, the animation is great, [the soundtrack is absolutely amazing][3] (Yoko Kanno woo!) and the writers actually researched before adding “facts” into the show. They screw up some bomb mechanics and a bit of mythology, but the rest of the anime facts are actual real-world facts too~ I’ve heard a lot of Psycho-Pass fans loved this show, so if you like that show, here’s one for you! Personally I didn’t like Psycho-Pass, but Zankyou no Terror was great regardless.
While it fell of in quality mid-way through, Zankyou no Terror managed to take the title for this year’s recommended anime, which you can now check on [my Twitter profile][4] instead of Anime-Planet like previously.
8/10
Now onto the present. Honestly, at face value there’s more stuff that I want to watch from last season than this season, but I’m being surprised every time I pick up a show that’s currently airing. I think that Winter will be incredibly lackluster in comparison to this season. I don’t believe in rating something that I haven’t finished watching unless it’s absolutely unbearable to watch, so no quantitative data this time around!
Sora no Method has a discussion post that you can check out, but I’ll quickly sum up my thoughts on it so far. It’s had a bumpy start, but it looks like it might have found where it wants to go. It’s not great yet, but it still has the chance to be. The ED is colorful and catchy, and it’s probably my favorite part about the show so far.
Should you watch it? Not yet.
One of the most interesting DnD games of the year is back! That’s right! Hitsugu no Chaika: AVENGING BATTLE is all the Chaika goodness you could ever want. Chaika good? Yes good. Bones-sama, kansha.
If you like your typical medieval-ish fantasy stories then you’ll probably enjoy Chaika. It has some good battle scenes and a really good plot. The characters are all really well done too. The animation is… well, let’s just say that Chaika is [incredibly gifable][5]. (Totally a word.)
Watch Chaika? Yes watch Chaika.
Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works. Do I even need to say anything? Ufotable did a Fate again. I didn’t even like /Stay Night until now, but now I’m loving it.
Watch it.
Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete got a lot of bad press when it started airing. People praised the first episode, but the hatred of the animation was louder, so it was very surprising to find out it was actually pretty good. In fact, it’s the one show this season that I get excited about watching every week. I usually just watch a bunch of anime episodes when I have the time, but Ushinawareta has me making room for it. The biggest problem people have with it is the animation, but I love Kanon’s art style, played games on a 8’ CRT TV until Christmas 2010, and can’t tell the difference between 12fps and 60fps, so I’m not the best person to go to for opinions on animation. The story is very interesting, and that’s what matters to me. I’d love to read the VN when the anime finishes but… language barriers.
Possibly AOTS
Nanatsu no Taizai is a show that I was really interested in first, but I’ve slowly lost interest as it’s gone by. I’m 3 weeks behind in watching it, but what I’ve seen so far has been good. If you like typical shounen action anime where characters just keep getting stronger, then this might be your style of anime, but it doesn’t appeal to me very much.
Should you watch it? If you like seeing OP characters fight over who is more OP.
Trinity Seven is my guilty pleasure of the year. It’s full of stupid over-the-top perverted humor that makes you sigh and question the state of this post-TLR world, but past all that is a show that’s actually entertaining. It’s a harem anime that actually has good characters. Even more surprising is the fact that the best character of them all is probably the protagonist (although Levi comes pretty close to besting him.) It’s very much a power-play anime, but it’s a compelling one. If you listen to what’s going on, you can learn the mechanics behind T7’s magic system, but you can totally ignore it and have just as much fun watching the characters. The best way to describe T7 is to imagine what Demon King Daimao would be like if it were good.
Should you watch it? If you like Highschool DxD. Other harem action anime with good MCs are available… somewhere.
I’m planning to watch some other shows that are airing. Laughing Under the Clouds, Parasyte, Rage of Bahamut, Yona of the Dawn and Your Lie in April are my priorities, but a few others look interesting enough to check out.
How is everyone else finding the season? Any differing opinions, or thoughts on an anime I didn’t cover?
[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLLevtu8jOQ
[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C-k_3dcfNY
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBfcJt6ygEQ
[4]: https://twitter.com/Taka_Sakagami
[5]: http://i.imgur.com/QBUGakP.gif
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I think most shows of the season are barely on the “OK” level or below, with only like two anime getting close to being “amazing”. And those two are kinda problematic.
The first one is Fate/UBW, the story of which most people probably already know from the movie and/or the game.
The second one is PSYCHO-PASS 2 which I’ll adress in detail shortly.
As for differing opinions, I’d like to express mine on Tokyo Ghoul.
I din’t like most of it for two reasons: 1. Pointlessly over-the-top disgust-inducing stuff that exists purely for the shock value 2. Weak protagonist.
Don’t get me wrong on the second one. Kaneki is a nice guy with his own set of values and all. That’s not a bad thing. But the problem is that he has the worst possible attitude and personality if you consider the extremely dangerous environment he’s been thrown in AND he always instinctively chooses the worst possible course of action. Realistically speaking, his chances of survival should be zero.
The last episode of the Anime is where it gets really good, so stopping there was kind of a bad move. I read the Manga and I liked it. What happens in the anime is a mere intro.
I shall now adress a few Anime Takafumi didn’t cover.
Amagi Brilliant Park is this season’s KyoAni work. Like most things KyoAni has brought out lately, it’s good for a laugh. Humor is a very subjective thing, though, so opinions will differ here. Don’t expect anything surprising, deep or thought-provoking. It’s “just” entertaining and funny. Enjoy it for what it is.
Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de is your average school life romcom… except that it has characters with amazing superpowers which certainly makes it more interesting.
Comedy is the strong point of this one and who knows, maybe something surprising is waiting around the corner. It’s certainly entertaining.
PSYCHO-PASS 2. Now, this is a show for the faint-hearted. If you thought the first season was cruel and disgusting, you’ll find it quite pleasant compared to the second season. The first season was a mere warm-up. Prepare yourselves accordingly. Remember that this show is about the human psyche in very extreme situations. This anime will definitely leave a lasting impression is thus really amazing. If you liked the first season, you’ll probably love this one (Though it seems to be going in slightly different direction).
I love the Fate stuff generally, but for some reason I never see it as “amazing.” It’s just kind of… there? Maybe it’s because it has been around for so long.
Is this the show that lost some good staff during the switch between seasons?
I remember trying season one of Psycho-Pass because Egoist were contributing to it, but I only got a couple episodes in. It didn’t engage me quickly enough, and the focus of the series wasn’t particularly interesting, so I let it go. The characters were pretty annoying too. I’m not sure the protagonist knew what job she signed up for at the beginning.
Psycho-Pass had bullets that caused people to explode. Pretty unnecessary really, especially in contrast to the serious atmosphere it tried to create. Tokyo Ghoul embraced it’s over-the-top action, and it wasn’t for shock value; stuff like that is just something manga like this tend to do. I prefer it to the anime that have all these crazy fights and yet none of the characters get injured at all. If a blade flies towards your arm, that arm wont be around for much longer.
It’s a stylistic preference though. It’s not MK levels of over-the-top gore at least 
The weak protagonist is the reason I like the show. He’s a nice guy who is a little introverted and was very sheltered growing up, and then suddenly he’s forced into living the life of a monster… at least, he is sometimes. I think his attire expresses this very well. He covers the red eye when he’s able to live his life, but when he loses control his human eye is the one that becomes covered. Watching this conflict, and his slow decline into accepting this new half of him, is what I enjoy the most about the show… When DMWL ended I lost one of the few manga I enjoyed, and Tokyo Ghoul is a fitting replacement. But hey, my favorite anime is Guilty Crown. These types of stories strip all the maturity from my ranking scores, which I manage to uphold for the most part. (For example, my favorite anime from 2000-2009 is only rated 7/10 on my list, and many anime that I didn’t like anywhere near as much are rated higher than it.)
Hey.
KimiUso is already a god damn Masterpiece and is the best show we’ve had for a loooong ass time.
1 Like
Whattywuso?
Don’t forget Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu. Funniest show of the year. Period.
2 Likes
Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso.
It’s a drama romance and it’s amazingly well written, directed, and animated.
Oh yeah, I mentioned that above. Plan to watch it eventually, but some other shows interest me more right now. I’m kind of tired of the former musical prodigy trope right now, and there’s been a whole bunch of good dramas recently, so I’m waiting for my interest in that genre to peak again. Looking forward to it though since it’s had a lot of praise~
Well, I expected to be called out on that, so I didn’t go into detail in the first post.
The thing is, Urobuchi never does disgusting stuff just for the sake of it being disgusting and shock the reader. For him, it’s a stylistic device (his favorite one), utilized in order to really drive the point home and drag you out of your comfort zone. The difference isn’t always easy to notice. Let’s use an example.
In PSYCHO-PASS, you get a gun that makes people explode. And if the system tells you to fire it at a human being, you just do that, no questions asked, since you’re working with the premise that the system is always right. And yes, you who makes people explode, you’re the good guy. It’s a contradiction. If it was just a normal gun, you’d go “hey, that’s not ok” but the additional cruelty makes you think “oh GAWD, that’s sick!”, thus empowering your impression of the system that makes good people do inhuman things being a totally bad idea. You can’t get it out of your head easily and you’re forced to think about it. (And yes, the protagonist had no idea what she signed up for. She’s not chasing mere criminals, but really, really sick-in-the-head psychos capable of messing up ‘normal’ people’s minds.)
While I agree that Urobuchi’s cruelty is over-the-top, it’s never pointless. And it’s never about the cruelty itself. It’s about the human mind that gets destroyed.
In Tokyo Ghoul, villain characters get that extra portion of being disgusting, just so you hate them a bit more and be more happy when they get owned. Like the pervert getting high from sniffing on a handkerchief or the dude who wants to murder a woman before her daughter’s eyes (and then all humans say he’s a really nice person…).
And then there’s the pointlessly cruel torture around the end of the anime. It didn’t have to be cruel because it didn’t cause the character to completely lose his mind and become like the guy who’s torturing him. It caused actual character development which is the opposite of becoming a psycho.
What bugs me about the Tokyo Ghoul protagonist is how he’s actually able to survive in such a harsh environment despite walking into pitfalls all the time and refusing to do things that would keep him alive and safe. It’s just way too unrealistic.
I honestly think it’s more comical. Shooting someone and seeing them explode is funnier than shooting someone and seeing them just… stop living. Maybe I just don’t understand Urobuchi’s style? The only show I’ve finished that he was involved in is F/Z, which I liked a lot… but I dropped Madoka and Gargantia. I’m not sure how much he contributed to them though. I heard he was renowned for writing the overall plot and then letting others do the individual episodes.
Ah well, it doesn’t matter~ I didn’t enjoy Psycho-Pass for whatever reasons. The only real thing I have to say about it is that if you sign up to a job and get hired, you should actually do your job in a way that the higher-ups prefer. Girl needs to learn life.
I believe that scene had two meanings that are significant. Firstly, it brought up the motivation of the twisted villain at the time. He used to be a nice(ish) guy, and now he’s as bad as the people who broke him in the first place. I thought that was a nice little minor plot point. Secondly, it was the final straw that made the protagonist accept himself. He settled with eating flesh so long as he didn’t have to get it himself. He had to accept the death of a mother to not get himself killed. He had to fight himself to stop injuring humans. This is the scene where all of that changes. This is where he accepts it all and begins his journey as the link between humans and ghouls… at least, from what I can tell~ Anime-only impressions here~
He has good friends to teach him, and he hasn’t exactly been surviving unscathed. Every foe he faced (in the anime at least) progressed the story, taught him something, and took something away from him. It is a fictional action-based seinen manga, so don’t expect too much realism~ There weren’t any scenes that made me think “how on earth did he survive that?” so it’s good enough for me.
Ooooh you guys are talking about the Psycho Piss stupid explody bullets.
Yeah it’s a stupid childish goreporn to grab dumb testosterone filled teenagers, all that is going to realistically do is fuck up the people enforcing.
I took it as a sign of bad writing using a cheap trick like that to grab a specific dimwitting viewerbase who wouldn’t realize the writing is bad and dropped it straight away.
I heard something about the villain quoting random bits of established literature later which is another trick to make him look like a genius in the eyes of the manchildren they established as the main target audience.
I cringed so hard while watching it that I died to death 11/10 anime of the year
On a (slightly) more serious note, this show is actually funny as heck. Haven’t laughed as hard as I did with the first episode in a long time. Also, for someone like me with an insanely low tolerance for cringe-worthy things, this show is going to be the death of me.
It’s whole story was based on “tricks” but I thought it still brought up valid points about the way laws and society works, and what effects the invasion of privacy may have in future.
I didn’t like the show, and I think all of those points are incredibly pointless (screw privacy and laws and stuff) but hey, I can’t say the decent writing isn’t there.
I think it definitely skewed the view of authority to grab an audience though.
Did you notice something? The scene itself had a meaning. But the torture part totally didn’t.
The protagonist recalling his past and the faults of his attitude was important. Seeing two people getting killed because of his indecisiveness was important (related to the attitude thing).
The torture itself had little relevance. What made him change was the thought that his passive behavior will cause the deaths of all his friends one day.
Madoka was amazing, but Gargantia isn’t really worth one’s time. I believe he didn’t have a big part in Gargantia (the vibe I’m getting) and they just used his name to get people hyped for it. I’m getting the same vibe from Aldnoah, because that thing is EMPTY. It has no message (except maybe “If Aliens were to appear, they would invade the hell out of us.”)
Urobuchi uses what-if situations as a starting point.
What if you lived an ideal and embodied perfection, but that same ideal caused the biggest tragedy possible? (Fate/Zero)
What if the world around you started to look hideous and disgusting to you? (Saya no Uta)
What if you were offered to have one wish, any wish, fulfilled? (Madoka)
What if you had a device that could instantly recognize and quantify the state of mind of a person as well as his/her criminal tendencies? (PSYCHO-PASS)
He then proceeds to lead the characters down a very thorny path with cruel events pounding at them relentlessly, exposing their flaws and weaknesses as the plot progresses to show just how messed up that situation and the events that lead to it are.
I dont really agree with your characterization of Urobuchi’s style. In fact, I honestly feel that the way you’ve described his works make them seem simple and somewhat empty. I think Urobuchi’s goal is to take things that either we or the characters take for granted, and to question them, especially though stories and characters that will expose their paradoxically nature.
Though I’m not gonna elaborate any further here because its not really relevant to this topic.
Btw, I think this is really more of Nasu’s theme than Urobuchi’s.
AND, so this post isnt completely off topic, I have also been watching
SHIROBAKO, the anime about making anime. Its really fast past and interesting, but I’ve only seen 2 ep, so hard to make a judgement call.
Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru, magical girl show, but there just seems to be something off about it. Its been kinda slow so far, so I wouldnt really recommend it yet, but they do seem like they might be getting to the point soon.
Also Garo looks sweet, but like most of the anime this season, I havent really had time to look into it yet.
