2017-07-22
Looking back at the Spring 2017 anime season
Once again it's time for my traditional look back at what I watched in this past Spring season, to follow up on my early impressions and my midway views. I could say that nothing really changed from the midway, but that's actually not quite true; I think that two shows actually picked themselves up at the end (WorldEnd and Alice & Zoroku).
Pretty much excellent:
- Eccentric Family second season: Okay, however painful it is for me to admit this, I will; Eccentric Family's second season is not as compelling as the first season was. That doesn't make it bad; the show was still great, beautiful, periodically both touching and scary, and funny, and it's clearly the best show of the season for me. But however intellectually interesting I found what I think is its broad theme, it's probably not going to stick in my memory and my heart the way that the first season did.
Very good:
- WorldEnd: The show fully nailed its ending and in the process
become one of the rare shows that made me like what is basically
a tragedy. The characters were well drawn and great, the twists
stayed pretty interesting, the show is solidly structured,
and although I initially thought that the scope of the
plot was unnecessarily big, I wound up changing my mind.
See my Twitter reactions to the last episode.
- Alice & Zoroku: This show is simply a treasure; it's a show that focuses on children and makes it work (see @iblessall's article for more here). Looking back, everything drove Sana's story even when it didn't entirely seem to, and her character arc was a great one. Everything I said in my midway views still applies.
Alice & Zoroku is probably objectively better than WorldEnd, but WorldEnd is more my kind of show than A&Z is so it's got a slightly higher position in my heart.
Good:
- My Hero Academia: The second season of MHA has handily eclipsed the first one, not necessarily because the material is better but more because the show has worked out how to make its relatively slow pace work for it instead of against it. Since the basic material has always been compelling, removing this road block has turned a show that I liked despite itself into one that is genuinely interesting (despite structural problems like a sports tournament, which is fortunately over now and the show's moved on to more interesting stuff).
Still on the edge and maybe dropping off:
- Re:Creators: Each episode usually is just good enough to get me to watch the next one, but it pushes closer and closer to the edge almost every time. It doesn't help that some recent events have made me feel that a room full of smart characters are missing one obvious thing, and that I'm even thinking about plot holes means that the show isn't fully engaging me.
I solidly enjoyed the first four shows here and found myself pretty much satisfied with the season as a result. Would I have liked more good things to watch? Sure, but unlike in some past seasons I didn't feel sufficiently bored to go searching out other things for popcorn watching and so on.