Summer 2018 Anime at the Half Way Point

I’m just going to be honest here. I have dropped four shows since I’ve written my first impressions.

-Holmes of Kyoto was a little too bland, didn’t have enough mystery, and a filler episode of Lupin the Third: Part Five did what this show couldn’t while being engaging.

-Chio’s School Road was funny, but an uncomfortable moment with sexual assault didn’t sit well with me. The humor wasn’t completely winning me over before that either and the camera like to hang onto certain scenes for too long. Humor is about timing after all.

-Hanebado: It took the drama with Ayano’s mother a little too far and had a lot of story telling issues involving rival characters appearing out of nowhere and not having a central focus. It does look nice though.

-Harukana Receive: The very fact that this show had an episode about the girls trying on swim suits and declaring love for each other was what lost me. I know that there is an audience for this, but it’s clearly not me.

With all of these out of the way and with some hang overs from last season, I still have nine shows to talk about here. I hope that everyone is happy with this decision. If not, too bad. It’s a lighter season, but I am still happy that I have some shows that are new and interesting to watch.

The Shows:

Seasonal Rankings from top to bottom:
-Watch These Right Now (possible classics)
-Then These (pretty good as well)
-If you have enough time (still decent, just forgettable)
-On the chopping block: Might not make it to the end of this cour

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Watch These Right Now

~Attack on Titan: Season 3

Once again, Attack on Titan is in top form. The story is more focused on humans vs humans conflict instead of humans vs titans, but the show has taken everything here with so much humanity and feeling behind it. The writing is so good and so is the acting. The visuals and action are also equally amazing. If you are a fan of Attack on Titan, you have no choice but to be happy with this season right now.

~Planet With:

If I could describe this show in a sentence, it would be a more focused FLCL. If you can see beyond some usual anime craziness like giant animal creatures, enormous flying cute things that are going to end humanities run, and other things regarding animal shaped mechs and typical anime fair, this show is for you. There is a story here centered around love and how it’s ok to not be the strongest person on the planet. The fact that there is awesome mech fights doesn’t hurt either. What else can I say? This show is really clicking for me.

~Lupin the Third: Part 5

What else can I say besides how smartly written these stories centered around 50+ year old anime staple characters are? While the characters themselves haven’t changed in forever, they are given new situations and new characters to bounce their experiences and personalities off of. Albert is a wonderfully characterized rival for Lupin. Ami is such a great, young girl not just because she is a hacker but because she is learning things by being tossed between two characters. She is so good. Going with mini arcs was a good choice. There are also some complex situations centered around a not India coup de ta involving the CIA and French terrorist activities that Lupin and the gang were non chalantly thrown in and it’s very inspired stuff. Add some amazing visuals, direction, and animation and you can’t get anything better.

Then These

~My Hero Academia S3

So here we are in the third season of MHA’s run half way through its second cour. It’s still entertaining and full of well animated action, but I feel like the most inspired stuff came last cour. All Might’s powerful moments carried that cour beyond usual shonen feels. We are now in the middle of another tournament arc to introduce even more characters. It’s not as well structured or as interesting as the school tournament arc was right now, but this is as standard of a shonen series as you can get and those always have some ups and downs. I do think that we are seeing some of Horikoshi’s tricks as well. Still, I want more. This provisional license arc is setting up something and I want to see what the result is. That’s probably going to be revealed in season four.

~Cells at Work

Here we are, the unique show of the season. A comedy and educational series centered around humanizing cells. We are given a specific disease or condition every episode which somehow turns into a fun monster of the week anime. I love it. The design of each of the infections are a lot of fun and we are given a lot of loveable characters to follow every week. The red cells, the white cells, and the Platelets. Especially the Platelets. I look forward to this every week.

If you have time:

~Asobi Asobase

Once again, we had another near tie. Cells and Asobi were really close to each other. The difference was how unique they are. Asobi Asobase is a very funny show that plays around with the classic school girls in a club kind of show. We have fun with playing around with expections, pure insanity that gets backstories, and some of the best anime faces I’ve ever seen. Somehow all of this well grounded in believable situations that can be pushed too far. I can’t help but laugh at this show. There are couple of skits that are wrong and need to be destroyed, but there are more good jokes then bad here. The Asobi is a good time.

~Gundam Build Divers

In its second cour, Build Divers has been pure bliss. The characters are nothing to write home about, but there is a heart to this story that wasn’t there in the first half. All they are doing is playing the game, but each situation is so interesting. The Gundam fights are so fun and unique which keeps everything fresh. It’s still just mindless entertainment but mindless entertainment I can enjoy. Why wasn’t the first cour like this.

~Angolmois

If there is a way to describe this show, it’s good enough. Angolmois starts off with an absolutely solid plot of the Mongols invading a small island off of Japan’s coast. The first episode focuses on some convicts that are taken to this island to deal with this situation or die. After a stellar first episode, everything else is just good. Our characters are developed enough to at least feel like people. Our plot is predictable but interesting. The action is ok. Maybe nothing stellar like the first episode, but it does have some forward momentum to it that I can get into. It was a bad choice to put this anime against good action shows like MHA, Cells at Work, and Titan, but I can dig it. Angolmois is not a waste of time.

On the Chopping Block:

~Banana Fish

This show is beginning to show a lot of wounds and weaknesses on it. At first, it was only the drug plot that was too convoluted to follow. Now on top of that, we are having problems with these characters possibly not even being human. Never mind the stupid decisions they make, few of these characters feel realistic or consistent, which is bad when you have a show that is a crime drama. While all of these characters have good backstories and motivations behind them, the drama never affects the characters in anyway or they make decisions by turning on a dime when the show demands it. I think it’s because the show is being adapted at too fast of a pace. I mean, our group got to L.A. in record amount of time from New York and we never get a scene of them hanging out or sharing bounding moments on the road. Other times, we spend half an episode establishing drama that will split the group apart just for it to go completely unaddressed. It does look pretty though and the animation is stellar. Everything else is kind of bad.

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I could have put Yamato 2202 on this list, but that show is easily tanking almost every single show on this list right now. Completely unfair for each of them. Still, this season is still ok. There are shows still worth watching. I just have some extra time to watch some older series and that’s ok. I am not disappointed by anything right now because each show is true to themselves. What more can you ask for?