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animebw · 7 months

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Seasonal Reflection: Summer 2023 Anime

I've noticed over my years of seasonal anime watching that summer tends to be the weakest season of the year. For whatever reason, everyone saves their good shows for winter, spring or fall, leaving the middle of the year to limp along with few real standouts. But god almighty, even by those standards, this was a dismal fucking season of anime. Forget just not having many good shows, there were so few shows that even had the potential to be good. Trying to find anything with a fighting chance of turning out even halfway decent felt like trawling for nuggets of half-digested corn in an overflowing septic tank of obviously bad isekai, obviously bad light novel junk, and obviously bad wish-fulfillment rom-coms. And then, just to add insult to injury, basically all the shows that did start out strong ended up tripping over themselves in some way. So not only were there so few anime even worth keeping up with this season, none of them managed to score anything higher than "pretty good." This is, unquestionably, the worst anime season I've sat through since I started watching seasonally. So let's take stock of the few shows I kept up with and pray for better things once the much-more-promising fall season gets under way.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead: Unfinished/10

Well, isn't this unfortunately ironic. The increasingly exploitative conditions that anime is made under have resulted in so many high-profile shows suffering production delays as their animators crash up against the cruelty of overwork and corporate greed. But there's something particularly disquieting when that fate befalls a show that's all about breaking free from your shitty exploitative job. Zom 100 sets out to extol the joys of living a free life unchained by capitalism's cruel clutches even in the midst of the end of the world, but ends up so ravaged by those very chains that it was unable to finish its run before it ran out of timeslots. And now its last three episodes are left in limbo, the entire production team waiting for a chance to recover and find some way to bring their work to a close. It's a pretty bleak situation that almost makes you believe a zombie apocalypse would actually be preferrable to our current state of affairs. Especially when, uh, this is not a show you want to give the audience extra time to think about. Cause the more you think about it, the more all its aggravating flaws- painfully simplistic moralizing, a sexist streak that refuses to just fucking die- start to sour your good feelings for the rollicking ride it's taking you on. I can only hope the final episodes, whenever they arrive, close it out on a strong enough note to make the ride feel worth it.

Mushoku Tensei Season 2 (1st Cours): 1/10

I have stewed long and hard over how to phrase my thoughts on the second season of Mushoku Tensei. I've agonized for hours on how to express how viscerally, repulsively infuriating this show has become. But ultimately, there's only one thing I can say: Fuck this show and fuck everyone who likes it. Fuck every free ride this show gives Rudeus so he never had to face consequences for his actions. Fuck the hypocritical stabs at "redemption" that only serve to excuse and justify every female character slobbering over an unrepentant pedophile. Fuck the single worst use of slavery I've ever seen in an isekai (Cannot fucking believe I have to give Shield Hero credit for anything). Fuck this lifeless waste of a cast that steadfastly refuses to have a single interesting member. Fuck the misogyny. Fuck the masturbatory woe-is-me manpain. And most of all, fuck every last braindead, media-illiterate mouth-breather who decided to turn this irredeemable garbage into a modern anime classic. The success of Mushoku Tensei is the death of everything I love about this medium, and I will never forgive any of you for bringing us to this point. Go. Fuck. Yourselves.

My Happy Marriage: 4/10

God, I really wanted to like this one more than I did. Isn't it great to see high-profile shoujo anime with impressive productions making a comeback after years of drought? And this is a story about trauma and healing and discovering your self worth and all that good stuff! This should've been right up my alley. And yet, My Happy Marriage just left me frustrated and somewhat offended. There's such a powerful story buried in here somewhere, but thanks to a combination of painfully overwrought melodrama that robs its heroine of far too much agency, a poorly handled supernatural twist on the Cinderella formula that only grows increasingly awkward the more it tries to force the two together, and a condescending undercurrent that seems to think the only cure for years of abuse is embracing a hyper-traditionalist form of wifely duties, that nugget of potential never has the chance to blossom. What an utter disappointment.

Saint Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence: 5/10

Rejoice, folks; we've finally found the mathematical average of the slice-of-life moe romance. Saint Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence is the platonic ideal of the fluffy, disposable rom-com made flesh, pleasant and harmless while watching but leaving no lasting impression once it's done. It's a collection of cute character moments, amusing gags, and occasional stabs at emotion that sometimes tug at your heartstrings a bit, all arranged in their proper places with a likable cast and bouncy animation and just enough energy to stay moderately interesting all the way through. And aside from the somewhat unique setting of a Medieval church as home base for our two awkward lovebirds, none of it lingers in your mind once the episode ends and you find yourself forgetting all the jokes you were just chuckling to. Which may seem like a backhanded complement, but honestly? This is what I would consider the baseline for anime rom-coms. If you're gonna just be fluffy and disposable, this is the absolute minimum you should be aiming for to make me appreciate spending twenty-four minutes every week with you. I can't really recommend it to anyone but the most ravenous rom-com fans, but at least now I have a standard to judge any similar shows that fall short of the mark.

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale Season 2: 5.5/10

What strikes me most about Sugar Apple Fairy Tale now that it's over is just what an ambitious show it turned out to be. It's one thing to write a hackneyed fantasy racism metaphor about fairy slavery into your swoony shoujo romance, it's quite another to actually try and engage honesty with the implications of that idea as the core driving force of your narrative. And whatever else you might say about it, SAFT is really, truly making an effort to explore discrimination and systemic bigotry, tackling it from so many angles over the course of its 24 episodes without shying away from its thorny complexity. How many other stories like this would dedicate an entire subplot to showing how victims of one kind of discrimination can still perpetuate harm on groups even lower on the social totem pole like SAFT does with Brigit? Or explore how toxic systems of control don't magically get better just because a minority is at the helm like Lafalle? It's that kind of ambition that makes it easier to take this show's stumbles in stride, numerous though they might be at times. I'll always appreciate an earnest, messy attempt at making a statement over a safe, line-toeing space filler without the conviction to even try.

Horimiya Piece: 6/10

So this is a weird situation where the first season of Horimiya ended up rushing through the source material in order to adapt the whole story, and now this side-quel is going back and adapting all the content the first season skipped over. Essentially, it's a Horimiya DLC, scattered skits with no real cohesion or progression that just exist to give you more good times with the cast you love. But hey, Horimiya was never really heavy on plot to begin with; it's always been more a collection of moments across the lives of these friends than anything else. So I don't see anything wrong with doing a full season of just slice-of-life shenanigans, since that's basically what the first season became once Hori and Miyamura got together. And if nothing else, I certainly appreciated all the extra time with these lovable goofballs; this show does a better job than most of capturing the sheer, absolute chaos that teenage friend groups can cause amongst each other. Unfortunately, there are two episodes in the back half that truly, utterly suck- episode 9 is completely focused on the creepy pedophile teacher the show thinks is just the most hilarious joke ever, and episode 12 faceplants into romanticizing abusive relationships in a really gross way. So if you're gonna check Horimiya Piece out, do yourself a favor and skip those episodes entirely. Your experience will be better off for it.

Undead Murder Farce: 6.5/10

Pulp is a hard style to define, isn't it? You'd think it would be easy with how influential and popular it's been over the years. Ultimately, though, you just gotta know it when you see it. And Undead Murder Farce is pulpier than a thousand trees being turned into paper at an orange juice factory. It's a Victorian-era serial mystery extravaganza that turns the entirety of 19th-century supernatural adventure literary canon into the backdrop for a rakugo-performing half-oni and a severed immortal head to traipse through solving mysteries as they pursue a larger goal. Over the course of their adventures, they match wits and butt heads with vampires, werewolves, Sherlock Holmes, Phileas Fogg from Around the World in 80 Days, The Phantom of the Opera, Arsene Lupin, Frankenstein's Monster, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. And thanks to the director of Kaguya-sama at the helm, the visual presentation is exactly as gonzo and freewheeling as this brazen OC fanfiction deserves. I enjoyed every second of this goofy-ass show, and I hope we get a second season to see which classic characters our wisecracking immortal detectives rub elbows with next. It's what we deserve.

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 (1st Part): 7/10

It's increasingly difficult to pin down my feelings on Jujutsu Kaisen. On the one hand, it regularly delivers some of the coolest, most lavishly animated punch-ups in modern anime. On the other hand, is that enough to cover for the story's incredible lack of focus and constant zig-zagging between different ideas at the drop of a hat? Like, I might need more than ten fingers to count how many times this show just drops in the middle of building up a status quo to shift gears into something entirely different without giving proper closure to what's come before. On the other other hand, though, season 2's backstory arc finally gave us an actual driving force for the story and a strong emotional framework to understand the stakes at play, except then it almost immediately reverses on that idea by revealing one of the critical characters has been dead the whole time and his story's suddenly over just when it was really getting under way, and... eh. Look, I like Jujutsu Kaisen, and its spectacular action and hilarious character interactions are usually enough to help me forgive its overly convoluted plotting (especially this season with its massive upgrade in directorial flourish and experimental animation). But at some point I'm really gonna start wondering if any of this nonsense will ever amount to more than a slapped-together framework to justify the fights.

Fate/Strange Fake Episode 0: 8/10

It's probably not a good sign that the only anime to really inspire me this season was basically just a prologue for a show that's still being made as we speak. But with how barren this season has been, I'll take my victories where I can. And sweet buttery Jesus, am I glad that Strange Fake is getting a full adaptation. After years of having no interest in Fate beyond the core story, one of these endless spinoffs finally manages to grab me hook line and sinker. And all it took was the author of Baccano and Durarara filtering the concept of the Holy Grail War through his particular penchant for sprawling, chaotic ensemble stories full of truly deranged characters slamming the full weight of their personalities against each other for the sheer fun of it. Add a mesmerizing new visual style from a longtime key animator making his directorial debut, and the result is an epic hour-long masterclass introduction that leaves you breathless for more. This is what Fate/Zero's first episode should have been. And sure, it could still go horribly off the rails at some point, but for now, I choose to remain hopeful. May this promise of better things to come prove a welcome omen as we leave this miserable anime season behind.

Shows I Dropped:

The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses: Dropped at 2 episodes for extreme GoHands over-animation, and just being a painfully cringey male fantasy rom-com.

Atelier Ryza: Dropped at 1 episode for being boring and generic as fuck. Only worth it for the hilariously crowbarred-in fanservice shots and I can just look those up on their own.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Dropped at 2 episodes for some of the most cringe-worthy DeviantArt-tier writing I've ever seen.

The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today: Dropped at 2 episodes for just being boring, even though it's way better than GoHands' other monstrosity this season.

Bang Dream It's MyGo: Dropped at 1 episode for just not vibing with it, idk.

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