Spring 2017 Anime in Review

So now that the season is at an end, fo the most part, it’s time to put this into some sort of ranking. While there were some strong shows this season, I feel like the winter season was a little stronger. I know that this sentiment isn’t going to true for everybody, but the winter season had more strength behind it for me.  This spring season started out stronger, some shows lost their edge and everything special about them later on in their run.  Now for some ranking stuff.

-Watch these right now

Tsukigakirei

For a premise that sounded incredibly basic, this anime caught me by surprise. Seeing these two awkward teenagers figuring out how to date each other and somehow make better progress then other romance series was amazing and so sweet. I felt like I was going to get diabetes every single episode, and that is a good thing. The ending made everything complete as well.

My Hero Academia S2

This series started slow, it has progressing become stronger as each episode progressed through pure spectacle and great character development. The peak episode was obvious the Midoriya vs Todoroki fight, but every episode surrounded it as well. This cour had one of the best tournament arcs that I’ve seen in a long time.

Sakura Quest

Seeing the revival of a farming town has never been more interesting and heart breaking. Seeing five unique girls work hard, making missteps, and learning from their experiences has been quite an experience. While some set up episodes maybe always be questionable quality, the episode after  always more than pays off for them. This cour’s cliff hanger was great as well. Please watch this show.

-Then these next:

Attack on Titan S2

This season’s first half was where all the hype was. The fantastic pace, the energy that kept going through it, and the mystery. All of that was great. Then the second half happened and everything slowed down and nothing really felt the same. The last two episodes of this cour did pick up again, the impact was lost by then. Still, even if it was far from perfect, I was highly entertained by it all. Still a worthy watch and was made even better by not having all the hype surrounding it. At least, that’s how it was for me.

Tiger Mask W

I’ve talked about this show quite a lot already, but everything felt completed toward the of the series and even highlighted a possible women’s wrestling series next, which I really want. I will did into this series more with my next post.

Re:Creators

The premise of this anime is fantastic, along with all the meta stuff behind it. Anime and video game characters joining sides to fight each other and having these characters talk to their creators in the process? Fantastic. Unfortunately, this series is a lot more talky then I imagined it to be. While the dialogue is alright, it slows down the series quite a bit.

Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul

This is a questionably alright fantasy series. There is a lot of spectacle and fantastic animation, there is only a small amount of focus and that has been genuinely annoying every time. I honestly feel like this anime was built on “and then this happened” storytelling, instead of forming any kind of flow. That was fine with the first season, because that was an adventure series and it went from place to place, but the bad story telling is really sticking out when the anime stays in one place.

-Then maybe these:

Berserk (2017)

I already wrote a post about this series. You can read that if you want.

Grimoire of Zero

This series’ first half where all the interaction between Mercenary and Zero was at its best was the best part. In the second half, they were separated due to convoluted reasons and it became yet another fantasy series. Not bad, but not exceptional either.

-Only if you want to:

Kado: The Right Answer

What happened to this show? If this show stopped eight episodes into its run, I would say it’s the best thing that aired this season. It was intelligently written and felt like it was trying to say something about human kind, like any good science fiction series does. In the end, the writing felt like jumped off a cliff. I wonder if the creators behind this series just ran out of ideas and didn’t know how to handle everything they set up, because the ending was incredibly heavy handed. The main thing we learn is that humans are special, which is what almost every science fiction series does in a much more subtle way. I think I might wrote a post about what I think went wrong some point in the future.

Suka Suka

I honestly don’t know what to say about this series. The world this series took place was unique at the start, because not many other light novel series put as much work into the setting as this series did. Even the characters, while standard light novel fair, had something unique about them that made them interesting. Then came the pointless filler episodes this series didn’t need and emotional beats that I felt miles away. This series also felt like it didn’t want to go anywhere, because it waited a longer than it should have before it reached it’s finally. In the end, I felt nothing from this series.

Atom: The Beginning

Don’t let the opening of this series distract you. It’s nowhere near as hype as that. For most of this series we get pointless slice of life material that barely leads anywhere. This happened after a first episode that set up a fight between Atom, future Astro Boy, and another robot. Eight episodes later, the series finally gets more interesting with a tournament arc and a rather lousy one at that. *sigh* Just a big disappointment.

—

For this summer season, I think I am actually going to hang back a little bit and watch more older series instead. That doesn’t mean that I won’t watch some seasonal anime. I will, but I want to watch series that I have meaning to for a while instead. Just wanted to let you guys know.