== Brief early impressions of the Fall 2015 anime season so far [[As before Summer2015Brief]] it's time for another set of my early impressions, this time supplementing [[my first episode takes Fall2015FirstEpisodes]] after I've watched some more of the shows I'm actually following. Clear winners: * *Subete ga F ni Naru - The Perfect Insider*: This is still not really showing its cards, but on the other hand I love how the characters interact. It's a grown up show with flawed characters who are too smart and too smug for their own good. * *Concrete Revolutio*: It's now clear that the show's big theme is the moral ambiguity of super-powers (and how attempts to see the situation as black and white are a terrible mistake). On the one hand, this is nothing new to readers of American superhero comics over the past couple of decades (from roughly *Watchmen* onward); on the other hand, *Concrete Revolutio* is a good show and I'm enjoying it even if I don't expect it to have anything much new to say. I really like that the show is aggressively not spelling things out and letting us draw our own conclusions; it favorably reminds me of [[*UN-GO* BestNIn2011]]. (The creators have apparently explicitly said that they were inspired in part by *Watchmen*.) * *One-Punch Man*: Anime comedies that I find genuinely funny are rare, so I treasure them when one shows up. One of the things that makes *OPM* work for me is that the show generally doesn't overplay its jokes by having the characters actually react to them. I'm enjoying: * *K - Return of Kings*: In the end I quite liked the first series. It's great to see all of our old friends back and the changes are nice, but at the same time I wish the show was moving faster and being crazier the way the first season was. * *Utawarerumono - Itsuwari no Kamen*: I haven't watched the original series (my notes say I dropped it after 3 episodes), but fortunately you don't have to in order to enjoy this new one. While it took a few episodes to get me genuinely enthused about this, I'm now rather enjoying how the characters rub against each other. Kuon and Haku are an especially nice combination. * *Gakusen Toshi Asterisk*: At one level this is a standard LN show of the 'people fighting in high school' sub-genre and there's nothing particularly new or novel. What I'm enjoying is the execution, which I find refreshingly competent and well done. It has energy and a refreshing lack of annoying or outright offensive (to me) cliches. * *Owarimonogatari*: At this point I'm too invested in following the Monogatari series to have a really objective opinion on this; the odds that I wouldn't watch this despite grumbling about it were always close to nil. In general it's enjoyable as usual, and it's nice to see Araragi repeatedly shoved off balance. But boy I wish it'd move faster; as things stand it feels like the show is deliberately filling time with rambling dialog. (Honestly, *Perfect Insider* is basically doing the Monogatari dialog thing much better than *Owarimonogatari* itself.) They're okay so far: * *Mobile Suit Gundam - Iron-Blooded Orphans*: This is a Gundam show so [[I'm kind of predisposed to not be deeply enthused SaiMecha2012Noms]]. With that said, it's a pretty good example of its genre and it may yet get me fired up with solid enthusiasm. I'm certainly enjoying it more than I expected so far and I rather like a number of the things it's doing, even if I know that most of the cast is probably doomed and it sometimes does characterization with a large paint roller. * *Heavy Object*: This is another typical LN show, this time of the 'how will the protagonists manage to pull this one off' fighting genre. [[It's not great https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/657814827499442176]] and it's definitely quite LN, but I've been enjoying it in a casual popcorn way. I'll probably drop this after a while. (If you're going to watch *Heavy Object*, you absolutely can't think very much about the logic of what you're seeing. HO is full of things that happen because this is a LN, not because they actually make any sense.) Misses: * *Noragami Aragoto*: In retrospect the only *Noragami* character I really care about is Hiyori, whose fundamental role is to be a bystander. Yato is an irritating putz most of the time (his alleged charm points mostly aren't), Yukine's continued suffering and angst leaves me unmoved, and the show's never given me a reason to care about Bishamon. Once I realized all of this I decided that show wasn't compelling enough for me to bother continuing this season, not when there was already a fair amount of stuff that I liked a lot more. (Yes, this walks back [[my opinion from the end of the first season Winter2014Retrospective]].) * *Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru* aka *Beautiful Bones*: This was not bad as such, it was just uninteresting. I've already read a lot of mystery stories, most of them much more interesting than this show, and there's plenty more out there if I feel like I want more in the genre, plus I'm pretty sure that there's better mystery anime out there that I haven't watched yet. * *Comet Lucifer*: Another show that turned out to be uninteresting. I gave it two episodes and it gave me no particularly compelling reason to watch anything more. * *Garo - The Crimson Moon*: The first episode of this had basically none of the things that made the first *Garo* interesting and unusual, and a certain amount that made me sigh (like the 'funny' kid sidekick). * *Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry*: As many people have said, this is basically the same show as *Asterisk* in many ways. But at least for me this is generic and not particularly good in a way that *Asterisk* isn't. I kept watching it to have an informed opinion in the debate between partisans of the two shows, but [[then I flamed out at episode 3 https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/655517477070327808]], which I found unwatchable. (I very rarely abandon episodes partway through watching them. This was an exception.) One of the big debates this season is between *Asterisk* and *Rakudai*; in many ways the two are almost the same show but many people have strong preferences. As you can tell I come down on the side of *Asterisk*. To condense my views, I think that *Rakudai* is doing [[some potentially interesting things with Stella and Ikki https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/654475069943607296]] but it's otherwise loaded with [[terrible tropes https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/652950632500998144]] and bad or merely clunky execution (like clumsy and eye-rolling writing). *Asterisk* isn't as potentially exciting but its execution is far better and more interesting (and far less cringe-inducing), and I don't trust *Rakudai* to deliver on its potential anyways. (And *Asterisk* has [[its own vaguely novel bits https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/658015547393744896]].) The really short way to summarize this is that in theory *Rakudai* has more potential but in practice *Asterisk* has much better execution. Not for me: * *Osomatsu-san*: This combines a bunch of genres that almost never work for me, as it's both a comedy and [[an ordinary life setting OrdinaryLifeSettings]]. As a result I've opted to skip checking it out, even though it gets a fair bit of praise. Not even considered for various reasons: * *Young Black Jack* * *Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon*: It's yet another LN show like *Asterisk* and *Rakudai*, but apparently even worse than *Rakudai*. Nope. * *Lance 'n Masques*: Apparently epically bad. Someone I follow on Twitter is watching this and tweeting the terrible art and shots, of which [[there https://twitter.com/uncreativecat/status/656722853312622592]] are [[many https://twitter.com/uncreativecat/status/656727490606436352]]. The one show I haven't seen and would like to is the new *Lupin*, which appears to be basically unavailable over here. I've seen [[the opening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvaosZlQqrY]], which is pretty cool. This makes three shows I'm quite happy with so far and several other shows that I expect to watch all the way through, plus stuff that I'm enjoying so far but don't necessarily expect to have staying power. By my current metric of 'do I have enough things that I actually have to think about my [[APR ballot http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/category/animepowerrankings/]]', this is a reasonably good season and it may become an excellent one. Heck, *Iron-Blooded Orphans* could surprise me and earn a place alongside [[my favorite Gundam works GundamsInGundam]]. (Right now, how excellent the season turns out to be depends on how well *Perfect Insider* and *Concrete Revolutio* hold up. Both are very early so far so they could both fumble things, or they could really come through.)