#and then next Friday I will binge the entirety of s2 all at once like a whalefall feeding frenzy and then I will EXPLODE <3

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

[xtremedespair3d]

Anime Fall 2018 Final Impressions + Plans for Winter 2019

We’re now at the end of the Fall season and 2018 as a whole, but for now let’s focus on the shows I’ve seen this season:

Normally I would write my warning that these lists may contain spoilers but surprisingly they don’t feature spoilers here (or probably haven’t been featured in the previous lists, to be honest). I also noticed there isn’t an ongoing from Summer, so that’s kind of surprising too.

AOTS #1-A: Gakuen Basara: I’m no Sengoku Basara person but I had a good time with this show, the animation is not the best, but the humor was gold. My only complaint is that it was broadcast on October 4 (my birthday), raw torrents were nowhere to be found and I had to wait until the next day and I watch the show on Fridays instead of Thursdays, well, at least I had Zombieland Saga. Despite the schedules and poor animation (like gratuitous CG background people), Gakuen Basara is everything I wanted it to be for a school parody anime since Attack on Titan: Junior High. (Maybe I should binge the Sengoku Basara anime sometime...) 8/10 - Rank: A-.

AOTS #1-B: Zombieland Saga: One of the best original anime I’ve seen yet and a solid birthday anime, and I barely see this as a Cygames IP as I kept watching it. Amazing performances, especially Mamoru Miyano, maybe his character is his best one yet.

I genuinely want a second season, the tease at the end is too good to pass on becoming a full storyline (or subplot), and I don’t care if it’s going to be as shit as Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul, I just want it, already. 9/10 - Rank: S+.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: FIGHTING GOOOOLD!!! Another solid part of JoJo, my only complaint with the JoJo anime in general is that I’m not fond with the voice actor changes, some of them are good, some of them aren’t, the thing is that I’m mostly associated with the games like All Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven, it’s a little weird for me but it’s true. 9/10 - Rank: S.

Goblin Slayer: It may have caused quite a controversy from the first episode alone, but overall, does the anime adaptation even work? Parts of the animation, like action scenes and all, aren’t that great, even Goblin Slayer is animated in CG frequently, but everything else looks decent even by White Fox standards (see Re:Zero, even that one looks way better than this). 7/10 - Rank: B-.

SSSS.GRIDMAN: I’m no tokusatsu person but this was a solid tokusatsu-based anime, and a solid Trigger show post-Franxx, speaking of which, seems like I haven’t seen a lot of hate like it did with Franxx, so I guess the reception for GRIDMAN is positive at best. Also, my Twitter timeline is always full of Rikka and Akane lewds, mostly Rikka’s (but I prefer Akane because I’m a boobs person). 8/10 - Rank: A-.

Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san: This one wasn’t in my radar until I kept seeing tweets of the old man buying a yaoi book for his daughter, that made me watch the show and it’s pretty good. This reminded me why I like going to the bookstore from a shopping mall. 7.5/10 - Rank: B.

Golden Kamuy season 2 (+ overall review): Everyone seems incredibly disappointed and offended with how the Golden Kamuy anime turned out, especially CG animals, but I found it fun and decent to make up for it. 7/10 - Rank: B-.

Senran Kagura Shinovi Master Tokyo Youma Hen: Aside from the fan service (which, not gonna lie, is something I always look for), I felt like I wasn’t a big fan of this storyline but I guess it was alright. 6.5/10 - Rank: C+.

Ace Attorney season 2: I had originally dropped the show at episode 5 but later I caught up until at episode 9 and I kept watching it. It was pretty weird for me to watch the entirety of season 1 but not watching season 2. 6/10 - Rank: C+.

Tokyo Ghoul:re season 2 (+ overall review): This second season is probably Tokyo Ghoul Root A 2.0 but much worse. Even if I haven’t read the manga, I had no idea what the fuck was happening. I genuinely prefer the first season more than this one. Once again, Pierrot fucked up. Season 1: 7/10 - Rank: B/Season 2: 5/10 - Rank: D.

If Sui Ishida were to make another manga (if he chooses to), I hope it could be adapted by a better studio than Pierrot. But to be honest, he seems better off working as an illustrator than a mangaka, just look at some records that the Tokyo Ghoul fan base was wild.

Dropped:

Bakumatsu: I don’t need to explain this one much since it’s a show that came out on my birthday, whatever show I watch, if they don’t convince me enough with the first episode, I’d drop them, and it’s basically what I did here.

Onto the show itself, this genuinely reminded me of Touken Ranbu with the time travel stuff, but everything else, eh... not much of my thing. The funniest thing I can highlight is that the characters have their factions imprinted on their hair lighting.

Honorable mentions:

Angels of Death: ...Yeah, there’s a good reason why do I have to bring Angels of Death like it’s some sort of ongoing, but it’s not actually a two-cour series, it’s actually 16 episodes, the 4 ONAs to end the series.

Honestly, I thought they were going to leave it at episode 12 on the TV broadcast and the final episodes should have been on Blu-Ray but they’re available online or something (They’re called ONAs for a reason...). At least they didn’t shoehorn 12 episodes of rushed story like Pierrot with Tokyo Ghoul.

You can read my final thoughts on the show overall on the previous post about the summer anime shows here.

Hiatus:

Attack on Titan season 3: Yeah, AoT somehow disappeared off the air... until Spring 2019. That’s the most baffling moves I’ve ever seen, but there has to be a good reason for it.

There might have been some sort of production issues or something, but it’s so weird that I’m gonna have to wait a long time to watch the second cour.

Now that the manga is gonna end, either there’s gonna be a 12-episode season 4 or WIT might rush to the finale or make an anime original ending or something.

At least they gave us the weirdest teaser for the second cour ever.

Now, let’s move on with my plans for Winter 2019! (Should really write down what shows to watch and when they’re coming out because I tend to forget some, I’m 19 and I got bad memory...)

The Promised Neverland - January 10th: While I don’t read the manga, I’ve always been following DemizuPosuka for her gorgeous art style, from what I’ve seen from CMs, the art style seems pretty faithful, I’m interested to see how this goes.

Mob Psycho 100 II - January 7th: I’m really happy it’s getting a new season, I wish One Punch Man S2 could have been a Winter anime so I could have a ONE combo but OPM being on Spring and Mob Psycho 100 on Winter is the closest I get to a ONE combo like I wanted.

I wonder if this season will adapt all the way to the finale, but if it’s going to be a one-cour season, I don’t think Bones would skip a ton of chapters and rush the story to the end a la Pierrot with Tokyo Ghoul, it may adapt the middle of it and if it gets a third season, that’s where it would adapt the final chapters. (Hasn’t read the manga at all.)

Kemurikusa - January 9th: With the departure from the Kemono Friends franchise (no thanks, Kadokawa), I wonder what would have been Tatsuki’s fate of making new anime (other than doing shorts and posting them on Twitter), but it seems like they were working on an anime project and it turns out to be an all-new series of the original multi-part web series. One question I’ve always had for a while was if this was a prequel or a reboot of the series, but we’ll find out when we start watching it and go through until the end.

Kemono Friends season 2 - January 7th: This one is either something I’m really not looking forward or cautiously optimistic, either way, I just want to see how will season 2 perform without Tatsuki. Many people are most likely gonna be boycotting this or definitely gonna watch it but for a different reason, being that the animation looks better than the first one (Please, don’t disrespect Tatsuki and the charm on studio Yaoyoruzu’s animation).

As of the writing of this post (Dec.11), the teaser trailer currently sits at 49k dislikes over 5.5k likes and over 8k comments, and at the same time, there was a BTS (Behind-The-Scenes) photo and from what I’ve seen in the replies, the reception is surprisingly positive albeit one Japanese person with the “Bring back Tatsuki!” mood, I do mean it because I thought it would always have negative press, but I think the teaser trailer is its own thing with negativity.

Still gonna watch it, regardless, because I’m on a mission to keep an eye on the future of the Kemono Friends franchise post-Tatsuki, at least on anime like the Japari Park short series, because games, like the Picross game released on October 4th (my birthday. Thanks, I hate it, Kadokawa) for the Nintendo Switch because I don’t own a Switch.

Kakegurui season 2 - January 8th: I’m still baffled how it’s getting a second season after the anime original ending from the first one. I really wonder if they’re gonna follow up from the anime original ending or they’re gonna retcon that ending and redo it with whatever went from the manga from the Yumeko vs Kirari match (Still haven’t read it and I’m lazy to do so).

Boogiepop wa Warawanai - January 4th: So I guess this is Shingo Natsume/Madhouse’s next anime besides One Punch Man season 2, huh? Regardless, seeing trailers of it, looks really nice, but then there were reports that the illustrator of the light novel series wasn’t really happy with the look of the character designs in the anime and it was all Kadokawa’s lack of communication, basically Kadokawa is back doing some property damages but not as scarring as Kemono Friends, so I think things are still gonna turn out alright.

Ikki Tousen Western Wolves - January 3rd: Kind of surreal there’s a new Ikki Tousen in this near-2020 age, as of the writing of this (Dec.10), I need to start binging the series now (even if there’s so many god damn seasons to get through and it’s gonna take me forever).

Manaria Friends - January 20th: This one seems interesting, it was in development since 2015 and it was supposed to come out in 2016 but for some reason it was put on hold, it was originally produced by studio Hibari but now it’s gone completely reworked by a brand new anime studio from Cygames called CygamesPictures. I never actually followed the news of Manaria Friends, so learning about it now feels kind of cheated.

I always thought it had the Rage of Bahamut in the title but it must have been removed (or maybe moetron always tweeted with the Shingeki no Bahamut title with it).

Regardless, after Rage of Bahamut: Genesis and Virgin Soul (the latter which is the most hated, I’m still confused why it is the worst season if I can even process what did I just watch, whateverl, like I care), Manaria Friends seems like it’s going to be a better Rage of Bahamut anime, I may be exaggerating but it could really be. (I’m not really a RoB person so can’t say...)

W’z - January 5th: This is GoHands’ next anime project, it’s going to either make or break as much as Hand Shakers. After the HS flop, I ironically want GoHands to succeed with new ideas and stuff besides the K series. Also, how the fuck do you pronounce W’z?

Mini Toji - January 5th: Thought I’d give up on Toji no Miko after the base show? Apparently not. This one’s a chibi spin-off and it’s going to feature the characters from the game, so it sounds interesting. At least this one is going to be 11 episodes long, instead of two-cours like the base show.

BanG Dream! season 2 - January 3rd: This one’s 50/50 because, first of all, I’d love to watch a new Sanzigen anime because I need more Sanzigen in my life, second of all, Bandori isn’t much my thing (I’m lazy to binge the first season and I got other anime to binge too).

...Despite what I just said, I think I might really consider watching it, after all and the third season in October, I don’t really need to watch the first season, I guess. (I lied, I might binge the first season now)

The thing about Bandori S2 and S3 being full CG is like a Monster Strike situation where the first season was 2D hand drawn and the second season went full CG, but the third season came back to be hand drawn with a bit of CG, it’s weird and inconsistent for Monster Strike, at least Bandori will remain CG.

Virtualsan Looking - January 9th: Okay, what the fuck, I did not expect this to exist out of the blue. I genuinely never expected an anime centered on VTubers, particularly centered on known names like Mirai Akari, Siro and others would one day exist and that day is here (No Kizuna AI and Kaguya Luna here, strangely).

On December 18th, the trailer, a preview of the opening and the website were launched (see thread by moetron). As for the opening, I felt like they could have chosen the hand drawn animation as shown in 5 seconds because I want to see a full series with the VTubers fully hand drawn animated, but oh well, maybe they would be faithful to their 3D appearances (but Tsukino Mito is kind of Live2D-ish but she was turned into 3D at some point).

Speaking of the trailer, it doesn’t show what the story is about or anything, it just focuses on the VTubers featured in it.

I mean, the concept of a VTuber-focused anime is a good idea and something I didn’t know I desire, but this one, even with its vague teasers, it has potential, could be fun or could be hot garbage, just saying.

Lupin the 3rd: Goodbye Partner - January 25th: I genuinely forgot this existed after it was revealed last month, but hey, there’s a new special happening. I still want a new season of Lupin the 3rd, hopefully as good as this year’s season or even better.

This concludes the list of what shows did I watch this Fall season and what I’m looking forward next season, in the next post, my New Year’s post, I’ll address my overall list of my personal best anime of the year, stay tuned and happy New Year.

Twitter: @HKomaeda.