So I’ve stuck with quite a few shows this season. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have a blog and like writing about stuff I don’t enjoy, I’d have taken a break from anime in order to marathon the good seasons of The Simpsons or really get into Assassin’s Creed 4 or something. I know I complained about the Spring season last year, but I don’t see myself turning around on any of these shows the same way I did for Ping Pong. At least that show was chock-full of substance that just wasn’t clicking with me at the time – something I can’t really say for anything here…
Blood Blockade Battlefront
I’ve said my piece on this show’s current progression already and there’s not much for me to add until I see more, though I sincerely doubt future episodes will perform said additions. Blood Blockade Battlefront’s main problem is that it’s so wrapped up in showing off that it hinders plot progression and none of what it’s showing off is intriguing or exciting in any way. For something that’s ten times as fast as most shows – never mind Bones’ output – it’s barely ramped things up since it started. Where’s the adrenaline?
Plastic Memories
Oh f*ck me this show is terrible. Worse than that, it’s so lacking in imagination that it’s pathetic. I usually make it a rule to not put more effort into criticizing a product than the developing team did with the actual product because I don’t want them to get discouraged by some random Internet stranger on the off-chance they read my blog and have really low self-esteem, but my god. The first sentence of this description has more thought put into it than the writing, direction, animation, and characterization in Plastic Memories combined. That’s how bad a show it actually is. Couple that with the fact that only ten percent of the runtime is actually dedicated to anything resembling a plot and this show should have been knee-capped before it reached the greenlight.
Oregairu S2
This would be a good show if it wasn’t so dry and slow with its subject matter. I mean it’s taken a season and a quarter to get to the point where the main characters actually experience something resembling real conflict and even then, there’s little imagination being put into the scenarios. Everything is just spelled out for you and what it’s spelling out is a whole load of “yeah I get it. *Sigh*”. I guess there’s a little irony to the fact that I’m bitter about a show whose main appeal is to be bitter, but whatever.
Sound Euphonium
The only reason I’m watching this show is because of Cillian Murphy up above. He is funny, and I will not hear anything to the contrary. The rest of the show isn’t terrible or even really bad because there’s a plot, everything is focused on the music, and it’s even critical about everything that made up K-On with its main message that you can’t waste your life on meaningless things if you want to succeed. And I like how even though the show has a main protagonist, it devotes time to the other band members’ own lives separate from Kumiko without sacrificing plot progression – although that doesn’t change the fact that overall plot moves pretty slowly. That’s nice to see in regards to a story about a large band.
But at the end of the day, Sound Euphonium is just not my type of show.
Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches
I never wrote about this one despite the fact that it’s based on a popular manga whose live-action drama was also received decently because the only reaction I could summon towards this show was complete apathy. Seriously guys? This series is supposed to be fun and charming? Then how come it hasn’t gotten a single laugh out of me? And if it’s not supposed to make me laugh, then what else is there? A story about a delinquent learning how to appreciate life by living someone else’s? Yeah, we all know that Yamada-kun isn’t going to go that direction.
Seraph of the End
This show is occasionally funny in how generic it is, but most of the time, it’s just really boring and mundane regarding its vampire premise. It also doesn’t help that as the show introduces more concepts and characters, it ironically winds down way too much in terms of bombastic energy. I was never a fan of Wit Studio to begin with, but with the number of shows they’ve got this year along with the number of failures resulting from it…well let’s just say it’s a good thing A-1 Pictures exists to take most of the heat that KyoAni got in 2013, White Fox got in 2014, and Shaft just gets in general. Although maybe Araki’s next thing with them will be good.
– By the way, I found some of the manga at my local bookstore and skimmed through the future volumes. All I can say is I am prepared for the epic snorefest that is to come.
Arslan Senki
As I’ve hinted with the title of my post, my main problem with most of the anime this season is that they refuse to ramp things up from their initial starts in a way I find satisfying, and most of them didn’t even start off all that well to begin with. Arslan Senki is the one exception to the rule in regards to how the first three episodes setup the tragedy that would jumpstart our main hero’s journey (as well as the scale of said tragedy) with the following episodes progressing said journey at a nice pace due to how it utilizes its characters. The only problem? It’s a straight-up medieval fantasy show, and anyone who reads this blog will know that I don’t do that kind of show. As such, I watch this anime the same way I watched Legend of the Galactic Heroes: fast-forward through the relatively straightforward political dialogue and sit through the actually entertaining scenes like that painter dude clobbering a bad guy with a plate.
Ore Monogatari
Okay, there’s another show that ramped things up to the right level this season. Thing is, I think it blew its load way too early and now it’s just kind of futzing about. Not that I want to sit through another Kimi ni Todoke, but as I’ve stated before, I don’t want to sit through another Kare Kano either, and Ore Monogatari isn’t even doing that very well. The main girl never appealed to me in terms of personality, the cost-cutting animation is pretty distracting at times, and that latest episode was just so boring and predictable in regards to its story and punchlines. Add to the fact that this is going to be twenty-four episodes long, along with manga readers assuring me that there won’t be a new satisfying story for me to sink my teeth into ala Paradise Kiss when the main couple got together in that, and I decided that my Wednesdays will be anime-free.
Knights of Sidonia 2
One more show that ramps things up alright. It’s not great at show elevation because it’s pretty much going at the speed of Euphonium with the only difference being that I actually enjoy the substance aside from the shitty “anime slapstick” that’s incredibly out of place in an other serious sci-fi show. However, underneath its many problems, Sidonia has a good core story, interesting concepts, a decent sense of world-building whilst making sure to actually progress things, and a tense atmosphere, which is why I continue to watch it. I probably should check the dub on Netflix, but since the show isn’t a favorite of mine, it’s hard to summon the enthusiasm to rewatch the thing. Maybe when the entire second half gets on.
Punchline
I’ll try to get back to this one later. Before yesterday, I was going to say Punchline was mildly entertaining in terms of what it does right and wrong, but where it f*cks up majorly drags the show down too much to be really captivating. However, the latest episode pulled the equivalent of Steins;Gate’s well-loved halfway point and I need to see if it can capitalize on that development the same way Steins;Gate (almost) did before I start making any real judgments. Still, even before that happened, of all the shows on this list, this is the one I’m most excited to watch week after week. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I guess we’ll see for ourselves.
Ninja Slayer: From Animation