Welcome to another look at the summer season. A season that had some goods things in my mind that propped it up from just being ok. Some of those are sequels, some of them were just mediocre, and others just made me so angry. It that kind of season, but there are good and enjoyable shows which need to be mentioned. I know that I haven’t watched all the summer shows because it is literally impossible to do that and in some cases I kind of just refused because of lack of interest. So as usual, these are ranking some shows that I watched and mostly enjoyed.
So yeah, this a part 1 because Love Live! Superstar Season 2 and Fuuto PI started late. I was thinking about including Superstar in this one too, but there is so much to look at in that show that I want to see how its finale goes before making any sort of judgement. Same with Fuuto PI even if I know that the execution is just going to continue being good. I want to see how its finale arc plays out because while its not a make or break sort of deal, it does determine its seasonal score over all.
Ok, lets talk about some seasonal anime.
A Handy Guide for how I feel about shows:
Solid: Seasonal Favorites, Highly Recommend.
Good: Maybe not as high quality as the first category, but still pretty enjoyable.
Ok: What it says on the tin. Maybe preferable for those who are into the genre the show is from.
Bad: I’m not even sure why I am still watching it besides maybe learning something from it.
Shadows House Season 2
A show that I will have to write about more in the future. Shadows House season 1 was really good, but season 2 was incredible. It has everything I want from good scenery and locations to great characters to wonderful and thoughtful world construction to an outstanding mystery. This show had episodes based on the Shadow House lore alone and those were simply incredible because everything about this show is just so interesting. I have to write more about my thoughts soon. Probably with Made in abyss too.
Aoashi
I’ve written a post about this show alongside Call of the Night recently. Yeah, just a really good sports anime. Really well executed with beautiful games crafted in ways that show how the mechanics of how soccer is played. Very organic way of showing and executing all of those things and its amazing and I want a season two right now.
Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun
I’m going to write a post about this show in the future, but it was messy but brilliant to the end. Some solid and exceptional things about its story and what it wants to see. Also some very brutal and ruining things for everything in the show making me question if it was worth it sometimes. If the appearance of some characters in the show wasn’t very good, then I would say no. But in general, just an incredible looking, sounding, and moving show that is so wonderful.
Call of the Night
I have just written a post that this show which will come out after Halloween, but this show really sold itself better for me by the last three episodes. Yes, it was the female detective Anko that did it. For and not for all the reasons that you think. Until then, those are my thoughts in a few sentences.
Tokyo Mew Mew New
I was going to put this in ok at first because episodes 10-11 were a bore fest for me because I was seeing this pointlessly long romance thing that I didn’t like. The finale placed it in the good department for me. It was very solid and everything that I liked about the other 9 episodes of this show of just being fun adventures with these girls. It really re contextualized a lot of things for me again that most of the show is just solid fun besides the two romantic leads. Can’t wait for more.
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer‘s First Cour
These are big things for any anime production, but besides animation and some good direction for this show, it’s still entirely watchable with good character beats and solid writing decisions. So it might not work for everyone who was disappointed in this phenomenal source material to not get a grade a anime production like so many other works. Still, I enjoy it quite a bit. Can’t wait for cour 2 to start because that’s all the really good and heavy material.
Yurei Deco
Everything in this show up to episode 11 was good material. Interesting world, good characters, some very good and simple plot elements to make the show function episodic like while moving forward at its own pace. Episode 12 just ruined all of that in an episode that literally had nothing to say or interpret in interesting ways. It was just Willy Wonka Matrix Style all along and it just deflated all of my feelings for it. Really frustrated by it.
Devil is a Part-Timer Season 2
This is the first time I’ve used this section in a long time now I think? It was just a transition over this season too. It started out as being moderately annoying by at least watchable. As the cour went on, this one just looked like it didn’t have any good ideas or wanted to stick with them if the show had any to have them for a long. It’s a very long and frustrating watch culminating in a finale that had to inject new lore and finalize it in the same episode. It was that bad.
Conclusion
So yeah, that was part 1 of the season that I watched. A lot of sequels kind of lifting it up but there is some interesting and creative shows that came out. I’m glad they came out in this summer portion so they have some time to breath before being crushed literally by everything coming out in this fall season. There are just too many hard hitters and its unfair. So yeah, see you guys on part 2 and the start of the fall season.
Mechanical Anime Reviews 
I’ve started reading the third volume of The Devil Is a Part-Timer! light novel series, which corresponds with the early part of Season 2. Remember how Satan mentions Suzuno buying him a new bike to replace the one she destroyed in Season 1? In the light novel, we get a scene of Satan and Suzuno buying the bike, and the interactions between these two characters was great. Too bad we didn’t get this scene in Season 2!
Where I’m at in Volume 3, outside of the scene of the bicycle being purchased and the trip home from that errand, the anime has been following the light novel pretty closely. I’ve only gotten to the point where they got the tickets for the amusement park, so I can’t speak much beyond that at this point.
I’m starting to think that the studio and production committee for the first season saw what was coming next in the light novels and couldn’t figure out a way to animate it and make it interesting… which would explain why the original studio didn’t go further even though the first season had done pretty well. But why another anime studio decided to pick it up and continue it about a decade later, I have no answer.
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I think we are all still stunned about it happening, so maybe the studio thought it was away enough time to get some nostalgia points for it returning? It is one of those cases where we probably never will find out.
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I read a little more of the volume since I commented, and I found a couple of other missed opportunities. Before going to the amusement park, Satan takes Alas Ramus to the bike shop to get a child’s bike seat to attach to Dullahan II. This would have made for a great bonding moment between these two characters. It makes me think that the studio didn’t want to design and cast the bicycle shop owner.
But the even bigger missed opportunity is the initial confrontation between Gabriel and Satan. In the anime, this was depicted as taking place outside. In the light novel, it takes place in Satan’s apartment. As Gabriel leaves, he and his henchmen fall down the stairs (like Emi did back in the first season). This would have been really funny and added some of the humor that the first season was known for.
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I’ll check out that Call of the Night post when it happens. Anko was an interesting character — I like the tension she added to the story on top of the existing tension from around the middle.
I need to watch that second season of Made in Abyss. Once I get around to watching Dawn of the Deep Soul.
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Oh jeez, expectations. The tension from the first half onward was what helped me jell into the show a little more too and it really does have some good build up where it needs it.
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