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joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh · 3 years

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Season in Review - Fall 2020

So I made a couple of posts saying I’d be dropping my current Season in Review format after this last entry and move towards something such as tier lists, but I just decided to move to tier lists with this very entry, so I’ll probably post the draft Season in Review of the old format I still have written. But this is the real deal, and any feedback anyone has about this format, please feel free to share. I hope people are happy with the fact that these are a lot shorter at least, so I won’t get nearly as many people complaining about read mores.

So yeah that’s a very easily understood format, yeah? Like 24 shows I tried out this season, that’s pretty good imo. The intention of the rest of the post is to give what are basically just notes for each show and then I’ll do Girl, Boy and Anime of the Season at the end. I think that last one is kind of obvious just from looking at the scores, but still. Tiers aren’t ordered by the way.

Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka? Bloom

Lowkey we had reason to be worried about this season since the show went through another studio change, and Encourage Films’ track record isn’t really the greatest.

But actually this ended up looking just about as nice as the last season, and it seems like most of the core staff were the same anyway so it all worked out.

It’s more Gochiusa, it’s cute as all fucking hell, I absolutely adore it.

That “Bloom” part of the title is followed up on, lots of the characters and their relationships have actual development this season. I mean, it’s still fairly static - this is mostly a status quo cute girl show after all - but they still feel like they grow in really nice ways.

Chino still best girl.

Gochiusa is the 2nd best cute girls doing cute things anime behind K-On at this point.

Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

I was more excited for this than any other anime this year.

At the same time I was more nervous about this than any other anime this year.

My specific fears were that we’d see episodes so laser-focused on singular characters that the plot and group relations would suffer, a la 22/7 earlier this year; and that Yu’s presence would spell disaster either by basically resolving everything in typical self-insert manager character fashion, or having so little presence that one has to wonder why she even exists.

Neither of those things ended up being issues. We did do a character-focus episode structure, but they were almost always in service of advancing the current plot and most of the cast had tangible presence throughout the entire show rather than just their focus episode.

Yu meanwhile is just actually a character, she helps out in some conflicts but it would be weird for her to solve all of them, so she doesn’t. And then she has an arc of her own and different relationships with the different girls of the club, it’s not just an “everyone loves her because ???” thing like in SIFAS. As someone who doesn’t like self-insert characters most of the time I was much happier with this angle.

OP and ED included, we got 13 new songs in just this one season, and they all go hard as fuck, this is musically the best season of Love Live yet.

The music is enhanced by a more music video style for the performances, featuring lots of different iconography and imagery for the girls and just taking us to a new world for every performance, they’re always super fun and charming to watch.

On that note the visuals are probably the best Love Live’s looked too - it’s a slightly simpler art style that looks a bit less distinctive than what we’ve had before but it animates so fucking cleanly and is just really easy on the eyes, we don’t have any weird diamond-mouth type shit like in Sunshine season 2. Characters get to be crazy expressive without looking stupid. Also the 3D continues to improve, somehow. Shit just looks poggers as hell.

Once it moves past the single character focused episodes, we’re mostly just up to some charming slice of life and main plot advancement stuff, though we do unfortunately have to deal with a jealousy arc. It sucked the least of every big dramatic thing at the end of a Love Live thing, but it’s not that enjoyable to watch and the resolution felt fairly flaccid compared to how dramatically some elements of this plot were set up.

Other than that the biggest problem with the show was just that some of the character focused episodes were a bit boring or underwhelming, most notably the already lacklustre Kanata.

It’s nice to have a Love Live series where there’s no groping whatsoever - Sunshine season 2 did away with it first but Sunshine season 1 was still a stain on Aqours’ legacy in that regard. Niji girls are perfectly clean.

I shit on N girls a lot but seeing so many of them animated felt really sweet.

I was overall very very happy with this and it would be poggers if we get a season 2 for them.

Taiso Samurai

Thought this would be boring because tbh gymnastics doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

And actually it still doesn’t, most of this show’s gymnastics moments aren’t super easy to understand, use some pretty bad CG, and we probably see more gymnastics from characters we don’t care about than characters we do.

While I’m criticising the show, rival character Tetsuo Minamino feels like he’s set up to be a big part of the narrative but he’s not even present for most of the show and has no development or little involvement when he is present, so that was disappointing.

Everything else about this show is great though.

Rei is an amazing character who gets so many amazing moments throughout the show and made me cry twice - I was definitely worried she’d just be “daughter character” but she becomes so much more than that really quickly and it’s great.

Her daughter moments are also great though, the father-daughter moments in this show are maybe the sweetest I’ve ever seen.

I think one of this show’s biggest strengths is in the fact that the characters feel very lived. When a character thinks back on their past to reflect on who they are or seek motivation or something, it’s basically always a different flashback, it makes the characters feel like they've experienced a lot more life than just what we see on screen, which enhances so many scenes and it’s great.

Jotaro is a very endearing lead and an absolute hunk. He doesn’t have loads of development necessarily, much of his growth comes very early in the show with him learning to listen to the people around him and push himself for their sake just as much as his own, and it’s nice how quickly he learns that lesson, makes him feel very adult. After that he’s closer to a flat character arc thing for the sake of Leo’s growth, and I think that was really good.

Leo is a twink, later twunk, who I wanna plow. And he’s also a nice character with a lot of great relationships and dynamics with the other characters and some really nice voice acting, I think his development across the show is very satisfying.

There’s a really colourful and endearing cast of extended characters that are all either really dumb or really cool, but it’s always in the best way possible. Shoutouts to Mari the gilf and Ayu the Mizuki Nana gyaru especially.

OP and ED go hard as hell.

CG aside, the visuals have a really nice, almost pencil look to them. Really enhances these already lovely character designs and gives the show a very unique style.

I’m mixed about the show’s early absurdity - the Aragakis adopting a ninja and having a witty talking bird called Bigbird in their house felt silly in a way that didn’t really feel in service of anything. Once I’d just accepted that the show was like that, it stopped being offputting, but idk, it still felt weird in terms of the show’s meta.

Maoujou de Oyasumi

This is a show that I watched the first episode of, immediately thought 8/10, and then thought that there’s no way it’d be able to maintain that quality and it’d probs go down to like a 6 or something once the premise got tired (HA CAUSE SHE’S TRYNA SLEEP).

I was wrong. It maintained that quality and never got tired.

From start to finish this show constantly feels really inventive with the amount of scenarios it can get itself into just with the premise of “hostage wants to sleep”. It’s constantly doing new things and getting you really invested in all of it thanks to a cute Dragon Quest-esque quest introduction visual that makes all of our objectives and victories really clear and satisfying.

It’s an anime with a good sense of humour, those are hard to come by so it’s worth watching for that alone.

Unironically Inori Minase’s best vocal performance. Some of the noises she makes in this show are amazing.

This wasn’t a problem later when they turned his character fully into a joke but some early episodes spent too much time on the Hero character out to save our princess when none of us care because he’s boring as fuck.

I wanted to see more of the succubus and harpy girls because they’re adorable beyond words.

Just want to repeat that the most impressive thing about this show is how consistently entertaining it manages to be despite a premise that feels like something you’d only get half an episode or so out of. Genuinely amazed me in that regard.

Akudama Drive

Definitely a show elevated by its visual style above all else, this show’s direction is strong as all fucking hell and enhances every single scene, and then the world and character designs are so over-the-top and colourful and there’s this super stylish scene transition they do with backgrounds entering the frame in partial segments and it looks great. This also isn’t a show that compromises on animation just for the sake of stylish art - it’s not the most outright sakuga show in the world but the animation is still pretty fucking clean given how complex the artwork gets.

Characters and plot are also quite style-over-substance, with every character being larger than life and committing insanely hard to whatever their gimmick is - everyone is dedicated to their craft and it’s fun seeing such intense characters clash with one another.

Writing actually feels quite meaningful at times despite that, there are lots of great dramatic irony moments regarding Swindler’s character and the show can manages to draw great character arcs out of places you wouldn’t expect.

I like that the show doesn’t really shy away from its cast being horrible people either, notably Cutthroat actually is a serial killer and Doctor’s almost cartoonishly evil.

It ends up critiquing criminal justice systems and law enforcements if you care about that too, I thought those elements of the show were fine but they’re not what kept me watching.

The show could be a bit boring at times - it doesn’t always manage to maintain the exciting pace and style of the early episodes. The moments where it drops that on purpose could be pretty good - Swindler being forced to kill some bandits that are out to prostitute her was a great scene - but other times it’ll just not be as exciting as it clearly wants to be.

But I think it still does a really impressive job at maintaining its style and pace for the most part, again there are weaker moments but up to the very end of the show it’s still a super exciting neon bloody joyride.

Semifinal episode is just kinda nonsense and Hacker was definitely the weakest character of the group.

Tomoyo Kurosawa is based as fuck.

Munou na Nana

Death Note but for kids tbh.

Psychological battles between Nana and whoever she’s out to kill that week but usually it’s her against super detective Kyoya, though they’re both kinda stupid and yet constantly overexplaining themselves in ways that are a little weak.

Though honestly I think their dynamic is still exciting to watch - cat and mouse between two persistent genius characters is generally always gonna be fun even with some slip-ups.

Early section could sort of drag when it was trying to establish how Nana really operates.

Mid section could sort of drag when it was just Nana getting in arcs where she kills people as normal - everyone’s too much of a scumbag for the moral question of “is what Nana’s doing right?” to be interesting.

End section could sort of drag with the introduction of some dude in a suit who could transform who I forget the name of and I literally never understood who he was, what he was about, or why. He just kinda sucked.

So the show would frequently drag is the point, which was unfortunate.

Not helping is the visuals - artwork isn’t really outright ugly for most of the show but it’s only really passable as just “fine”. And then there’s very little animation, colouring looks cheap, and the direction is super lame. You can like see the exact manga panel in every shot, they rarely take advantage of the medium. The main way in which they do so is that, whenever we’re in Nana or Kyoya’s mind, the screen’ll change to red or blue respectively and their expression will change. Super boring way of conveying this.

Soundtrack never really did any work either, though the ED would usually kick in at nice times.

Show was probably a bit over-reliant on cliffhangers - they’re always engaging cliffhangers on their own but it’s never consistent how well the next episode follows up on them, so some would be retroactively disappointing.

I’ve mostly said negatives though but to get to the show’s main strength - the dynamic between Nana and Michiru is amazing. My post about episode 13 goes pretty in-depth if you just want to check my tag for that or something, but TL;R is that they operate on so much dramatic irony that frames their relationship in really interesting and exciting yet super fucking sad ways and it literally always tugged at my heart seeing the so innocent and ridiculously good person have so much faith and trust in Nana despite her being a serial killer, and then that kinda worked and made Nana a better person anyway, it’s a super sweet dynamic. Michiru on her own is a pretty boring character but she draws so much out of Nana and it’s the absolute best, these two are probably my favourite character dynamic of the year.

So yeah show could be pretty lacking in a lot of ways but the dynamics between Nana and Kyoya + Nana and Michiru really elevated the thing and I actually plan to read the manga since I don’t know if I should expect a season 2.

Adachi to Shimamura

I’m a yuri cuck

This show is yuri

I’m a slice of life cuck

This show is slice of life

This is a show where we’re inside of characters’ heads a lot and they have a lot of just, thoughts about the nature of the relationships they have with the people around them, and to a certain extent the things they say are quite basic and a little overexplained but honestly I still had fun hearing them, Shimamura especially is really extrospective and nice to listen to.

Adachi’s head is fun to be in because she’s constantly fantasising about Shimamura which is a mood

With this show you kinda need to be okay with the fact that everything happens super slowly and there’s not loads of growth or progression in the narrative, but it’s still going somewhere - I was okay with this so even though we don’t even get a kiss, let alone some sort of confession, I was still enjoying myself just watching these 2 girls vibe.

Adachi is wife as fuck.

This is very much a leg anime and yo I’m good with that.

Not much else to it really. You’re just watching cute girls be gay and think about stuff and being a cuck. Alright by me. Season 2 would be nice.

A3! Season Autumn & Winter

I only got to cover 3 episodes of Spring & Summer when I did my Season in Review for that show’s airing since it got delayed and then never did a definitive thoughts on post, but it wound up being decently enjoyable once we moved on from the Spring troupe.

This season that’s even more the case, since Autumn Troupe actually wind up being super fun and likeable characters. They’re all pretty standard characters still, kind of just stock tropes with stock character arcs, but the stock trope they all sort of embody is some sort of badass delinquent dude with arcs relating to said traits. I’m into that shit just inhernently, so I just genuinely unabashadly liked all these dudes.

I had Winter troupe hyped up to me by fans of the game who promised that they were especially well written compared to the rest, but unfortunately Winter’s 6 episodes were also devoted to being a competition with God Troupe and establishing the future of Mankai Company and doing slice of life scenes with all 20 boys. All of this to say the individual characters in Winter really didn’t have enough time to grow and develop on their own, which sucks.

I’m not the target demographic for these sorts of otome shows at all, and I’m also a secondary with no interest in the game, so it’d be easy for me to be like “hahahahaha I’m glad this show’s over now so I don’t need to think about it more” but I’d be lying if I said that. I genuinely wish this was an 18 episode series because Winter tries to do so much stuff that they genuinely deserve a full cour of their own just so they can accomplish that stuff with any degree of competence. Autumn are simple characters so 6 episodes is fine for them, but Winter should have gotten more.

Still ended up being unexpectedly fun though, I started watching A3 literally exclusively because Studio 3Hz were doing it but now I feel genuinely justified in having done so.

Kamisama ni Natta Hi

Genuinely funny as a comedy, it surpasses both Angel Beats and Clannad as one. It’s great at developing new gags and putting characters in new situations, and Hina’s absolute faith that her plans will work combined with Yota’s absolute insane dedication to playing them out despite his own doubts is a really endearing dynamic.

The early episodes also turn comedy into drama and vice versa quite gracefully, so much so that the Izanami episode became the first Maeda thing I’ve seen to make me cry.

Unfortunately Maeda anime are remembered for their drama, and this show’s transition from mostly comedy to mostly drama is a stumble at best. It’s technically foreshadowed with this hacker dude but it takes so long for that to feel even connected with the main plot at all, so it feels like an awkward divergence at most. And then when it finally does connect to the main characters it just feels sort of arbitrary and like we’ve run out of jokes to tell, so we’re just gonna get to the drama part now.

Beyond an awkward stumble to get us to the drama portion of the show, said dramatic portion just feels a bit sucky. It’s like, it feels like there’s enough material there in theory to have much more of the show be spent on it or even just have an additional cour to fill it out. But at the same time, it feels like it wastes a lot of time saying very little - it just repeats itself without saying anything new and the ending is really fake profound in an unsatisfying way.

I would say I was endeared to the extended cast as comedy characters and some of their own drama could be nice, but it’s not quite enough for me to find their words of encouragement to Yota or their desire to rescue Hina feel compelling or believable, basically these dudes all needed more actual character.

I think just from the comedy stuff this show was looking to be like, a 7 or maybe an 8 from me, but that drama stuff just, wasn’t quite it.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

This show should be absolutely amazing because it’s about a cute girl with a really nice voice wearing a bear costume and amassing a harem of utterly adorable lolis who completely love her.

Instead it’s just really slow and boring and meandering for its entire runtime. I couldn’t have fun with the show until I started watching at 1.5x speed.

Once at 1.5x speed though I had fun with the show so like, 5/10, sure.

Assault Lily: Bouquet

This was one of the most exciting non-sequel or spinoff shows for me this year, just because original Shaft anime with magical girls and strong yuri vibes and really great character designs that’s fucking obsessed with thighs sounds absolutely based as all fucking hell.

It just wasn’t lol.

Writing was completely all over the place and the show would constantly introduce new shit only to have it not be relevant ever or you’d see a character be introduced, have a complete non-arc that it makes no sense for her to have anyway, and then just be killed off.

Actual best episode of the show is the slice of life one where Yuyu goes to buy ramune for Riri

Outside of that though it’s just huge plot moments out of literally nowhere, repetitive plot beats, and just generally an aimless, structureless mess of a show.

Stupid funny in how bad the writing is a lot of the time though, I laughed at many of the show’s most dramatic moments.

Honestly has super fucking great visuals still so I’d recommend the show on the basis of it being a solid production with a so bad it’s good plot and lots of hot girls.

Class S nightmare. The main characters are called Yuyu and Riri. They adopt a daughter called Yuri. Everyone says gokigenyou. Riri calls Yuyu “onee-sama”. Everyone’s job title is Lily - literally “yuri no hana” in Japanese - the yuri flower. This show is an experiment to see how far they can push every single class S and yuri trope at once without ever having anyone be in a relationship. It’s basically like the show’s just edging for its entire runtime. As a yuri cuck I was pissed off.

Ochikobore Fruit Tart

Kirara cute girl show where the girls try and don’t really succeed at being idols.

Rarely funny and you’ve seen most of the jokes before.

Main strength is in the fact that it’s a lot lewder than most other Kirara things, plays up the fanservice a lot and panders to tons of fetishes as well. These are definitely the best moments in the show.

Art’s alright but looks kinda cheap and older than it actually is.

The few idol performances in the show are entirely 2D and usually decently well animated so that’s a plus.

Ino is one of the most based MCs I’ve ever seen.

Senyoku no Sigrdrifa

Written by Re:Zero dude with character designs by Takuya Fujima so it seems like it should’ve been good.

And tbf the character designs did indeed hold up, all the girls are very cute and very hot and I’d probably buy merch of them.

Writing is disappointing though. This is some of the most technically competent on paper yet super fucking boring on execution writing I’ve ever seen.

Like every scene in this show seems good when they’re completely self-contained, you can imagine them being good scenes in a better show, but for some reason they just don’t come together in a satisfying way at all.

I’ve not played enough JRPGs to be bored of the “and then they kill god” trope yet this show’s fight with god bored me.

I don’t think planes are cool at all.

The best episode of the show is like episode 4 I think it was, everyone’s in a swimsuit the entire episode and it’s a semi-absurd slice of life comedy thing. The show’s technical execution of comedy isn’t as good as its technical execution of drama, but the comedy is a lot more appealing anyway.

Noblesse

I also had to watch this show in 1.5x speed for it to be tolerable.

Tower of God of High School felt like weak adaptations without even needing to read the manhwa. Noblesse comes across as adapting an already shit source material. Smh Crunchyroll if you’re gonna be doing these originals then you need to step up your game.

This is another show that’s just boring, it’s not satisfying watching a level 100 character go fight a bunch of level 30 enemies. Not even as a power fantasy either because Raizel is too boring to project onto or be in any way attached to.

Once the show starts settling into comedy a bit more it can be pretty enjoyable though - seeing all these massive bishounen dudes with these crazy designs all living in a house together and doing mundane shit or playing basketball when they’re all gods is actully quite endearing.

Favourite character was the generic shounen MC high school dude with the nose bandage but he had no screentime.

Action looked pretty good but this is definitely a much less lavish production than Tower of God of High School were.

Wasn’t always the worst but I’d be okay if Crunchyroll stops adapting manhwa at this point.

Rail Romanesque

Well dressed train lolis hang out and the voice cast goes pretty fucking hard so I was looking forward to this.

I sincerely like the designs on paper and I guess they weren’t translated to anime in a horrible way, but they still ended up looking like shit anyway, especially in the faces the artwork was just shit and ugly.

I’m not into trains whatsoever so seeing these lolis come up with railway themed merch for like 10 straight episodes was torture.

Episodes were only 3 minutes long but still felt too long.

There are some moments that are just slice of life though with a slight yuri undercurrent and I was into them.

Why does this get a season 2.

Maesetsu!

Another show that seems technically competent on paper and the writing is honestly a bit better than Sigururi but the show is even more boring.

I think this show’s good at making its characters feel like genuine adults who have to struggle on the path of pursuing their dream career.

It also has a couple dramatic moments that like, don’t suck.

Again all of these scenes self-contained would look like they’re good scenes from a good show but they just fail to come together very well so it’s just boring a lot of the time.

So this show is about manzai comedy, but there’s literally not a single comedy routine in the entire series that’s remotely funny.

Some of them are deliberately unfunny and won’t get laughs from the audience and are narratively supposed to be weak performances. Some of them are super successful and will have everyone tell us how great they were. I couldn’t tell these apart.

Looks nice I guess. Cute girls. Distinctive style.

Ayumu’s seiyuu is in it so I got to listen to more Love Live voices.

Iwa Kakeru!: Sport Climbing Girls

Anime about muscle girls so this should’ve literally been anime of the decade.

Most of the girls don’t really have much muscle at all though.

Also the artwork is utter dogshit so nobody’s hot.

Writing is cringy as fuck and it gets laughably bad a lot of the time.

The show’s surprisingly not that boring for much of its runtime though, I laughed a few times even. Not at the jokes but still.

I guess this counts as “so bad it’s good” but it’s not the most enjoyable example of that. I think this was only bearable because I was watching an episode a week.

Wandering Witch

I actually have a full review of this out already that you can read.

TL;DR is that this is the most disappointing anime I have ever seen.

Travel shows are my fucking jam so this sounded hype as hell.

Elaina’s design and the fact that she’s a witch are also things I adored in advance of watching the show.

I just really want to fuck Elaina more than I can put into words.

Elaina ended up being one of the worst protagonists I’ve ever seen - she’s too unlikeable for the dark and dramatic episodes to work and the comedic episodes suck so much to begin with that Elaina doesn’t help them either. Plus she acts so inconsistently that it’s impossible to ever take anything she does at face value.

Every dark plot is too edgy and fucked up for the sake of it, with nothing to actually say.

Every comedic plot is too much fucking otaku pandering bullshit that it completetly takes me out of the world and none of it’s funny either so there’s no value to be found.

I don’t think a single country we visit ends up having any intrigue whatsoever - their depth always extends as far as their premise and that’s it.

Just watch literally any other traveller show. Fuck this show.

D4DJ: First Mix

Started airing way later than everything else and had an episode delayed too so we’re only 8 episodes in as of writing.

I fuckin love this a whole ton actually.

Characters are super duper super duper super duper cute and appealing and I love everyone a whole ton but especially Muni and Shinobu.

This show is consistently cute and sweet as all fucking hell and the one “dramatic” thing that was set up got resolved in a really cute and wholesome and adorable way.

Not super into DJ style music but this stuff just ends up being closer to electro-idol so I could vibe with it.

Some of the best anime CG I’ve seen, they take advantage of the 3D space and camera in a lot of really good ways but they’ve also literally never compromised on character expressiveness, these models get to be stretched and deformed and do super exaggerated expressions and I adore it.

OP is super catchy and memorable, it’s kinda constantly stuck in my head lol.

If you like Bandori you’ll like this, it’s more consistent in quality than that show even if I like the girls and music less.

Jujutsu Kaisen

Started cool as fuck tbh, it’s one of those edgier shounen a la Bleach and it feels even cooler than that series did at first.

Then it went to shit lol.

Once Yuji dies and is brought back to life the series just loses all sense of direction, we’re 13 episodes in and it feels like nothing has happened or nothing will happen - the most eventful thing is that Yuji made a friend who died but I fail to see why that’s relevant or will matter at all.

Yuji’s cool and I like him, and Gojou’s pretty based too and it’s fun seeing him completely overpower his opponents, but these fuckin shounen fans calling him the best character in any show this year just baffles me, he’s fine but that’s it.

Every other character sucks and is annoying because the character writing is for actual babies, everyone just spells out exactly what their deal is and then we just watch them be that deal.

Like oh wow that panda talks? Crazy! How about that dude that only speaks in food names? That’s so endearing! Dude that’s gonna beat you up if you have boring fetishes even though he likes tall girls with fat asses? Inventive and lovable! How about girl? She’s a girl! Oh, and I nearly forgot girl! She’s also a girl! And I’d be remiss to mention girl, she’s a girl!

Directionless and carried by the extremely high quality production, MAPPA have been going off all year tbh.

The one thing I agree on with all these shounen fans I constantly belittle is that the OP and ED are absolute bangers, I think the best of the season for each of them.

I hope the 2nd cour goes anywhere at all.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou

I’ve never seen or read any other Higurashi thing which is important for context.

I like this though. It set itself up as being a readaptation but it’s apparently a sequel, though the story structure is such that I’m not necessarily required to watch the old stuff to appreciate this.

It has spoiled me on old stuff to a degree, most notably the existence of a character called I think Hanyuu, but I’m fine with these spoilers since they make the idea of watching the older stuff more appealing to me. And the old anime should hold up even with these spoilers already known because if knowing these things ruins them then they were bad shows to begin with. And Higurashi is so respected and adored that I don’t think that’s the case.

But anyway so far I do think this has felt a little meandering - we’re basically just in these timeloop stories that’ll follow fairly expository narrative arcs before ending in everyone’s deaths but moving onto a new timeline before we really answer anything.

The moment to moment is fun to watch but it has yet to really amount to anything like I’d expect from such a respected series. 13 episodes into a 24 episode series though so I’m happy to be patient.

It is nice learning about something in one timeline such that it can just be a part of the next timeline without needing to be explained - Oyashiro’s curse stops being explained to Keiichi early on and Shion is also just allowed to exist in the 3rd timeline after we’ve been given a fuller introduction of her in the 2nd timeline.

Mysteries are always pretty engaging and despite some goofy faces it nails the horror atmosphere.

Love Akio Watanabe’s designs and seeing the contrast in having these adorable characters get fucking drenched in blood or whatever is usually pretty effective.

Basically this is fun to watch but the structure so far hasn’t necessarily been satisfying and I’m waiting for the show to “click” so I can understand why Higurashi is so critically acclaimed.

Of course it’s fully possible this anime will fail to have that clicking moment, but just to quell any doubts I fully intend to watch the old anime once this is over and that should make it click for me it this anime fails to do that on its own. I also intend to watch it even if this anime does end up clicking for me, but you know.

This is the first show where I’ve ever heard Yukari Tamura talk in something closer to a normal voice rather than that squeaky loli thing and it’s weird but I like it. I also like the squeaky loli voice, Rika sounds cute as fuck.

Rika’s probably best girl, if not her then Satoko.

Keiichi’s a lot more based than I think I was expecting him to be so that’s nice.

Yeah fun time.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park

Dropped after 3 episodes.

Doga Kobo adapting a respected series of early 2000s gang war mystery novels sounds super interesting.

But it was just episodic task plots with lame climaxes and uninteresting moment-to-moment writing and no compelling mysteries or drama to be found whatsoever.

A lot of this show is just characters talking about how cool and competent they all are and how many useful connections they have. Whenever it would advance the plot to do so, a character will just reveal that “oh yeah I used to have a part time reporting job so I know how to get us in here. Or “oh I’m best friends with the chief of police so I can do anything basically”. The leader of the G-Boys (I can’t take that name seriously) and the Red Angels all constantly suck off MC’s cock and it’s super borign.

You’re literally just watching people talk about being cool while not being or doing anything cool at all. It’s not relatable, it’s not enjoyable, you can’t project yourself onto anyone, nobody’s actually admirable in any way, it’s just fucking words and it’s super dull.

Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle – Rhyme Anima

Also dropped after 3 episodes.

Tbh this wasn’t bad actually, I had no expectations because “bishie-boy rap anime” sounds like an absolute disaster, but it was fairly competently made.

Main strength is the presentation, I kind hate the character designs but much of the world as seen in the early episodes is quite gritty and edgy in a way befitting rap, but it doesn’t go so far as to be too edgy for the silly premise.

Music performances are where the show goes hardest - aside from some poor CG implementation they’re just these visual overloads of style and flair and effects and really exciting and intense lyric integration, just fun to watch.

The rap itself also ends up being pretty good, Buster Bros especially clearly know what they’re doing and how to rap so they’re pretty exciting to listen to.

Unfortunately the charm wears off almost straight after the first episode, with much lamer visuals and tamer performances.

First episode cut between all 4 groups so none of them got tired but with episodes 2 and 3 spent on single groups each it became clear how dull these characters are.

I’m also just not the target demographic for this and I only watched it for the novelty of anime boys rapping. As soon as that novelty wore off, I was done.

I’d probably have finished this in a less stacked season but this is the fucking 23rd show in this post so clearly that didn’t work out.

Tonikaku Kawaii

Once again dropped after 3 episodes.

Nasa’s annoying as fuck.

Tsukasa has basically no personality to begin with but then it’s all drained away so she can be a blushing dere waifu.

Them being married changes nothing about the show and they just use the same tired cliche rom-com jokes we’ve all seen before.

That’s kind of it actually.

OP starts out real nice but has a shitty dubstep bass drop that sounds like one of those 2017-ish Geometry Dash YouTube intros.

It also looks like one of those because it just has the show’s logo bounce around the screen a bit and be zoomed in on at random points and it’s so laughably cheap and shitty that I have no idea how anyone can respect it at all.

Character designs are not nearly as cute as the show wants me to think they are.

That’s it.

And hey that’s everything! Was that fun? It was easier to write, that’s for sure. More good shows than bad this season and we even got a 10/10 in there which is nice, and a 1/10 too, what a season! But before we end this newly formatted Season in Review, I still want to end with some classics.

Girl of the Season - Setsuna Yuki

She’s my pfp on here and Discord, my bio here reads “Simp for Setsuna” my Discord name is “Setsuna Simp”, I really don’t think this should come as a surprise. I went into Niji super biased and expecting Setsuna to be the favourite and the anime did not disappoint at all - they really capitalised on the potential of her two identities thing with how they loaded Nana with regret over her Setsuna persona and her reconciliation with herself is super duper amazing to watch, and DIVE! was the best new song in Niji too pog. Just adore this girl so fucking much.

Boy of the Season - Jotaro Aragaki

Hunky dilf with nice growth early on that becomes a very admirable and enjoyable flat character arc thing. I kinda said everything about him in his show’s section actually, he’s just a really admirable and loveable dude who I’d like to be like. Rei’s a better written character than him but he’s a perfect lead for the type of show Taiso Samurai is.

Anime of the Season - Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka? Bloom

I realise this is kind of implied by it being the only 10/10 show here, but I want the tier list format to be how I do these from now on and with tiers not being ordered, well, some shows might both get 10 and so it’s good to outline the specific winner. And I need that consistency, yo. But yeah. Basically, I had problems with Nijigasaki, I didn’t have any problems with Gochiusa. This show physically hurt to watch because smiling ear to ear for entire episodes would tire my face muscles. If your show can make me smile that much I think it deserves to be called Anime of the Season lol.

And yeah that’s us for real now. I’ll post that draft I wrote shortly.

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