2016-12-09
Checking in on the Fall 2016 anime season 'midway' through
It's time for a slow-moving midway update on my early impressions. This is late enough that shows are generally moving towards their climaxes instead of wallowing in the midway point, but that just gives me a better idea about them (and perhaps more room to get let down in the end, but I don't really want to be pessimistic this season).
Great:
- Flip Flappers: This is my kind of show in the
same way that Kyousougiga was, in part because it's a show that's
whole-heartedly embracing the potential of its media and could
only have been done in animation (and I'm biased towards that). But
as Space Dandy taught me, mere animation firepower isn't enough
to hold my attention; what really matters is the characters and
the story. And that has been compelling and thought-provoking all on its own. This has easily become
the show I anticipate the most every week.
(It's also one of the rare shows that gets me to actively think and talk about it a lot (cf). Mostly I'm a quiet consumer of anime, so a show that I can't get out of my head is unusual.)
Very good:
- Sound! Euphonium second season: This is stuffed with all of the things that KyoAni does so well these days; it is beautiful, full of lovely character touches, loaded with great scenes, and so on. But the story has not (yet) come together with the power and drive that the first season had, with everything sprinting forward to a single destination.
Good:
- March comes in like a Lion: As with my early impressions,
ultimately I continue to just like it. The show's shifted from
painting portraits to moving Rei forward (even while it looks
back to explain him), which is a good and necessary development.
Unlike some people, I'm not bothered by the periodic funny
interludes; if anything, I think that they're an important part
of making the show work as a whole.
I'll wave my hands here, but I think that without these interludes I'd find the show too unrelenting. And in a way they're true to real life, because in real life ordinary and even funny things go on around us even as we go through our own darknesses. March lives inside Rei's head a great deal, but there's more to the world than just that.
- BBK/BRNK: The show remains solid and fun, along with sometimes being beautiful and sometimes surprising me. It can also be exceptionally silly and funny, which is part of its goofy charm.
Popcorn entertainment:
- Brave Witches: Yes, I know, I dropped this after the first episode.
I changed my mind, because apparently I wanted some popcorn
entertainment
this season and this is inoffensively tolerable in its genre beats
(although sometimes it stumbles a bit).
Why this and not Regalia? In part, apparently because flying witches dogfighting CGI aliens is more my thing that giant robots are (even with the no-pants thing).
Dropped:
- Regalia - The Three Sacred Stars: I'm going to wave my hands here, but certainly a large part of it is that giant robots are not really my thing and some of the characters were overly annoying. (I basically dropped this as the result of writing up my early impressions, as I suspected would be the case.)
Part of me still wants to take a look at Fune wo Amu, but I've been sitting on this for most of the season and haven't done anything about it so if I'm being realistic it's probably not going to happen.