Roving Thoughts archives

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2019 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• Boogiepop and Others episode 1: That was okay, I guess; it certainly wasn't actively bad, but I don't feel terribly inspired by what I saw. Stuff happened. Some things made sense; other things might be deliberately obtuse. There's a lot of mystery and little reason to care. →

• Kemurikusa episode 1: That was a pretty decent start with a bunch of solid stuff, but I would be much less worried about where it's going if it had not added a boy. It's also pretty much all setup and lacks the propulsive push forward that really compelling shows have here. →

• Girly Air Force episode 1: That was generally decently fun and I especially liked the research boss; he's an enjoyable character. It's no Sky Girls, but I like the genre in general and I'm willing to watch more to see what happens next. →

• Dororo episode 1: That was perfectly well done and it definitely believed in 'show don't tell', although maybe it went a bit overboard on it; I would have been a bit lost if I hadn't known the premise. But it may not be distinct enough to keep me; it feels pretty generic action. ♯

• Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka episode 1: This could have been interesting, but it has middle of the road aesthetics and mostly came off as kind of ridiculous and over the top (not in a good way). There were some decent bits but on the whole it felt entirely too lazily calculated. →

• Endro! episode 1: That was reasonably decent and reasonably funny, as people have said, but unsurprisingly it wasn't funny enough to keep me watching the next episode. (Anime comedy almost never works for me, so I expected this result.) ♯

• The Magnificent Kotobuki episode 1: Now that's how you do a first episode that nails me to my seat. Not just fun and thrilling along with subtle storytelling that showed instead of told, but also decent introductions to a bunch of fun characters. →

I won't be looking at Kemono Friends 2, not after what Kadokawa did to the scrappy little team that completely unexpectedly turned dross into gold. Anyway, early reports are not positive, which doesn't surprise me at all under the circumstances (I'm sort of surprised that Kadokawa found anyone who was willing to work on KF2 for them). The creative team behind Kemono Friends (the original and only real version) is doing Kemurikusa this season, so watch that instead.