Bit late on this one, but I fell behind a bit and I’ve still got a lot of the shows on-hold. Still, there are a bunch that I did finish to talk about.
My first impressions of the season can be found here.
I have nothing to add to my Akatsuki no Yona points, mainly because… I haven’t watched it since. There’ll probably be a full review of the series once I finish it.
When I last spoke about Parasyte, I said it was in the middle of a change, and I was uncertain of if I liked this change. Now that the show has finished, I definitely think the second half of the show was much weaker. The story managed to focus on what it was aiming to tell, and there were some interesting ideas about humanity thrown in. The big problem with the show is that it was centered around two things: Shinichi’s transformation, the Parasyte threat. Shinichi’s growth was shown multiple ways, mainly through Migi and Murano. Migi was great, he did his job well. Murano was… she should have been great… but she became nothing more than a plot device.
Shinichi did have a good evolution throughout the series, but as the show used Murano to portray Shinichi’s humanity, they stripped away everything that made her a person.
I think the Parasyte threat was interesting, and it did leave a lot to think about, but in the end, it was all a bit anticlimactic.
The fights are great, the tension is gripping, and time flies while watching the show.
The show wasn’t bad by any means, and I’d recommend it… but… It could have been so much better, and it should have.
But you know, Parasyte was a show that brought up good moral ideas, and got you to think about it. That’s important enough.
7/10
Your lie in April is another anime that could have been so much better. Unlike Parasyte however, it brings up bad moral ideas, and forces them onto the viewer.
It follows the typical children’s shounen formula, and does it very well at times. Relax>Conflict>Action>Conclusion>Repeat. Then have an overlying storyline.
The Nagi arc and the Tsubaki arc are great for the most part. They were executed well, despite it leading to the characters being shafted screen-time-wise.
However, there are a lot of problems with the show.
First, due to the plot pattern is follows, the show puts a lot of time into the “action” part. The action in this show is classical music, generally piano playing. Now if you play Piano or some other instrument, and you can sympathize with everything going on, then great. To me though, I’m being left with 10 minutes of boring, monotone, lifeless classical music.
Of course, they add other content in with it. They add character development… well, they try to.
Again, this is following a children’s shounen formula. This means that during the action scenes they have to hammer in a moral to the kids watching at home.
“Todoke. Todoke.” This is essentially the whole of the dialogue during these scenes. They say the same things over and over. Repeat the same moral ideas, and project the same images, and get stuck in the same conflicts. The show clearly wants to set up a repeating pattern, and use this to highlight the small differences that appear as time passes, but it does a terrible job of it. Repetition can be nice, it’s memorable. Unfortunately for KimiUso, you have to be smart about it, otherwise it just becomes boring. You are actively making your show feel empty…
Even worse, it brings up a big disconnect between the characters and what they are saying. These are 14 year old kids, and they are speaking poetically about the passing of the seasons, and the effects of love, and… This is the stuff I expect from the Koi Kaze protagonist, not some kids almost 20 years younger than him.
There is only so much you can say “I hope my thoughts reach blahblahblah” or “the world was colorful” before it loses it’s effectiveness. Too much imagery is bad, and because of that, this anime is bad.
Now, there was some nice visual direction behind all of the overly-saturated animation, but that’s the only good directing you will see in this show. Poetic imagery is abused, the background ost is mistimed and changed inappropriately, comedic timing is all off, conflicts are dragged out for too long or completely forgotten, and speaking of forgotten, you have a whole cast of amazing characters to throw into the trash.
Normally I’d just say “yeah, it’s okay” but this show is somehow being given aots by some people. I don’t understand why. The exact same thing happened with Attack on Titan - God awful direction that manipulates it’s viewers, yet it’s still popular. If this was my style of show, I’d be annoyed at how butchered it was. Luckily I didn’t expect any better from it, but there is still something that annoys me about the show… It wasn’t just the side characters that were forgotten - Kousei was too.
This was Kaori - The Animation. None of it fit together well.
It just seems like whoever was in charge didn’t understand what they were doing. Maybe this is a problem with the Manga too though. It’d be interesting to see what Manga readers thought of it.
5/10
Aldnoah Zero was surprisingly good. I didn’t really like the first season, so I didn’t expect anything from the second, but boy did Slaine carry this show. The Terran stuff? Boring, let that pass. The Vers stuff though, pretty good. Slaine is a good character. He is contrasted nicely with the pink princess and the loyal underling. I don’t think there was anything really deep about this show, it’s all been done before and done better, but Aldnoah was still enjoyable. Oh oh, and the soundtrack was good too. I’m gonna have to listen to that one day.
6/10
Saekano wasn’t long enough. We need more! This is what happens when you get a talented writer to make a show as meta as possible. Normally I hate the “meta” idea since people adore it blindly, but Saekano did it well. The animation was… seriously, there has to be someone from Shaft on the animation staff. It was bugging me since episode 0.
I think this show was directed very well. It wasn’t too smart or innovative, but little touches like messing with background characters and selectively showing things on screen were nice additions.
If you like romance VNs and dating sims, or you have been watching tropey anime for a while, pick up this show.
8/10
Tokyo Ghoul √A is the continuation of a series I loved, and I’m really glad that th- pfft, haha, no. I can’t seriously praise this show’s existence. First off, if you liked Tokyo Ghoul, don’t watch this. It has no respect for what the first season built up.
I still really like the characters, so I watched it all the way to the end, but I have nothing good to say about the show. The animation was absolutely awful. Whoever timed the sound effects with the animation should be fired. In fact, everyone who directed audio should be ashamed. It’s not often you get a show that is so badly co-ordinated that it feels creepily empty. It’s not as bad as DRAMAtical was, but it’s not good.
The story was a mess. It never went anywhere, and it dropped every story arc without progressing it.
There were only two pairs of characters that got any development, and it was sub-par.
There is no merit to watching this.
Oh, but it still gets the OP of the season title I prematurely gave it, because ugh I’ve been listening to that song almost every day since the anime started.
4/10
I can’t praise Shirobako enough. It wasn’t really a show I got excited for every week, and it wasn’t anything amazing, but I enjoyed every second of every single episode, and hopefully there’ll be more to enjoy. Here’s to season 2!
Everyone should watch this show. Seriously.
9/10
Finally, there were a bunch of harem shows that I tried to watch. I didn’t get too far.
Absolute Duo was the best of them. It’s not great, but you can have a laugh with it probably.
Seiken Tsukai no World Break is okay. It has a good idea, and it follows through with it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Juuou Mujin no Fafnir had a bunch of opportunities to be something special, and abandoned all of them. Don’t watch it.
The Testament of Sister New Devil. It’s trash. Forget about it.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, I never got past episode one of Death Parade. Called it!
I’ll be putting up first impressions of Spring 2015 soon. I’m not too sure what I’ll be watching, but I’ll find something. Arslan Senki is on my radar, and I’m watching Fate, but there’s not really anything else going on yet.
I used to watch almost every show a season, only ignoring the pure slice-of-lifes and the mechas.