== Looking back on the Fall 2018 anime season

It's well past time for my [[traditional look back
Summer2018Retrospective]] at what I watched in this past Fall season,
to follow up on [[my early impressions Fall2018Brief]] and [[my midway
views Fall2018Midway]]. This past fall season was unusual because I
passed on *Bloom Into You* during the season and then became [[very
taken with it Summer2018Retrospective]] when I watched it all just after
the end of the year. Since I watched it so close to the season (and
before I started the Winter 2019 season), I'm declaring it a Fall 2018
show for the purpose of this retrospective (and my eventual 'best N in
2018' entry).

(This entry has been delayed mostly because of laziness.)

Somewhere between excellent and amazing:

* *SSSS.Gridman*: The show started out being decently good and only got
  better from there, climaxing as an excellent if not amazing
  show. [[I had things to say in the aftermath of the last episode
  SSSSGridmanEndingTweets]]. Although *Gridman* starts out looking like
  a giant robot/kaiju show, it almost immediately becomes really an
  increasingly good character drama (interspersed with kaiju fights,
  which become necessary for the character drama). And as a character
  drama, it's excellent and affecting all through. The presentation
  is top-notch, with great directing and [[very interesting sound
  design SSSSGridmanSoundscape]].

  *SSSS.Gridman* is not flawless, but despite its flaws it's quite a
  lot my thing.

Excellent but effectively unfinished:

* *Bloom Into You*: This is a great show, beautiful, dramatic, full of
  small touches, and many other things that drew me into it. It's that
  rare thing, a high school romance that wholeheartedly works for me;
  it's almost become my new gold standard for that (taking over from
  *Toradora*). It only has one unfortunate flaw, which is that the
  story is in no way finished and the show has to just stop abruptly.
  *Bloom* is adopting an ongoing manga and apparently there is just no
  good pause point so far; the show picks an okay one, one that shows
  off character growth and so on, but it is forced to leave all of its
  big plot threads just dangling. I finished the show very much wanting
  a a second season (or perhaps to read the manga).

  That *Bloom Into You* has to stop so abruptly means that it really
  isn't a standalone work in the way that *SSSS.Gridman* is. In my opinion
  *Bloom* is better and less flawed than *Gridman*, but *Gridman* tells
  a whole story and *Bloom* does not, and it turns out that I care about
  that too.

Good fun entertainment:

* *That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime*: Above all, *Slime* is a
  cheerful, good-hearted show that is out to make us smile. If you want
  conflict and challenged characters and so on, this is not for you;
  it's all about Rimuru solving a succession of problems and running
  over a succession of obstacles as they build a home and make friends
  with people and various great character interactions go on. The show
  fundamentally likes pretty much everyone, and almost every enemy
  gets a chance at redemption. In an ocean of grim shows where terrible
  things happen to people and certain sorts of characters are walking
  cliches that are used only as the butt of jokes, *Slime* is a breath
  of fresh air.

  *Slime* is not flawless, and in a certain way it's boring. But I
  always enjoyed it and it reliably brought a smile to my face when
  I watched a new episode.

Not as good as the first season:

* *Thunderbolt Fantasy S2*: This was a good wuxia puppet show with
  various sorts of interesting things going on ([[and one stinger in the
  ending https://twitter.com/vestenet/status/1078476775947161601]]),
  but I'm not entirely taken with some of the
  things that Urobuchi wrote into the story ([[cf
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/1077320268081778689]]) and it can't
  (and doesn't) measure up to the first season. The original *Thunderbolt
  Fantasy* was amazing; this is merely a good adventure show with fun
  dialog and some amusing things going on.

  Looking back at the story structure in retrospect, I can't say that
  I'm entirely surprised by this; it would be very hard to duplicate
  the things that made the first season so special. We're unlikely to
  get that sort of revelations and twists and character developments
  again, because we've already had them once.

I feel satisfied with this season as a whole. Two shows were basically
amazing (counting *Bloom* and ignoring the non-ending), one was solidly
pleasant, and one was at least reasonably entertaining.