2015-10-24
Looking back at the Summer 2015 anime season
Once again it's time for my usual look back at the shows I watched this past season to see how my early impressions and my midway views wound up in the end.
Excellent:
- Gatchaman Crowds Insight: In the end the show didn't give us any
really easy answers, which is not unexpected; the issues Insight
was dealing with aren't problems you can solve easily. Sadly the show
felt it had to explain itself to people who might not have gotten it
in the last episode, which I wish we could have done mostly without,
but on the whole I really liked it.
- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime: This was a late season pickup for me
and it wound up totally surprising me with how much I liked it.
I wound up writing an entire entry on my views on Shirayuki-hime.
- Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX: It didn't finish as strongly as it started and Hibiki's father is still a putz, but it definitely delivered the Symphogear experience (complete with a surprise or two). The finish wasn't as epic as the first season's, but it would be hard to top that and I enjoyed what we got.
Okay:
- GOD EATER: This was nicely made and I enjoyed what I saw of it,
but it never had anything particularly deep or compelling about it.
Its production problems were unfortunate, but the delayed remaining
episodes have made me realize that I probably don't care enough about
this to watch them whenever they wind up coming out.
- Rokka no Yuusha: I don't want to go so far as to say that this was
an epic troll, but it kind of was. I liked some of the things the
show did and it did play pretty fair with us with the mystery (there
was not so much clues as foreshadowing periodically), but I think it
misstepped with one story choice and the whole thing just moved slowly.
(And the second half of the last episode sure had a quality collapse.)
I don't regret watching Rokka but I have no interest in a second season.
- Ushio to Tora: This remained burning 90s shonen and I enjoyed that part of it. Unfortunately that comes with side orders of periodic bad writing, not enough budget to do the fights really well, and the usual slow moving plot. As a result I've opted not to continue with this after this season; although I generally enjoyed watching it, I didn't enjoy it enough to carry forward into a busy new season.
I finished it:
- GATE: It didn't end so much as stop mid-show, because it's being
continued in a season or two. If I'm smart I won't continue it then.
- Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz!: As mentioned in my midway report I picked this up once the fights started. Well, they finished and so did the show. My verdict is that the fights were okay but certainly not up to the standards of episode six of the first series.
The top three shows this season were good (once I picked up Shirayuki-hime) and I think that I'm going to be satisfied with that. I only really watched one thing out of boredom and I more or less knew what I was getting into with it anyways.
(In fact, looking back at my spring views I think that this season was better overall than last season. Last season only had Sound! Euphonium to be consistently great, while this season had three shows I always really enjoyed watching.)