== Looking back at the Winter 2017 anime season

[[Once again Fall2016Retrospective]] it's time for my traditional
look back at what I watched in the past Winter season, to follow
up on [[my early impressions Winter2017Brief]] and [[my midway views
Winter2017Midway]].  This time around there is a surprise new appearance,
which is part of why I haven't written this retrospective before now.

Excellent:

* *ACCA - 13-Territory Inspection Department*: Some of the plot
  twists in the last episode were awfully convenient even if they
  had sort of been set up in advance and there were a few aspects of
  the setting that made me raise my eyebrows, but ultimately neither of
  those mattered. What made the show was both the characters and their
  interactions and the sheer atmosphere of the show, and it nailed both.
  *ACCA* was a show that was a lot about style and it had the style to
  make everything work. And I have to admit that [[some of the twists
  in the last episode were great
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/846927779530715138]]. 

  (One surprise given what happened in *ACCA* is [[how little violence
  it had https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/844394739919179777]],
  [[even when it could have
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/839322458708652033]].)

* *March comes in like a Lion*: This didn't conclude so much as more
  or less resolve some ongoing character threads, which is perfectly fine
  since we're getting more later. But even if we weren't, I feel that the
  show picked a good point to pause; it carefully showed us how Rei had
  made genuine progress in moving forwards out of his paralyzed stasis
  ([[cf https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/843313732604383232]]).

* *Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid*: What started out as a comedy turned
  into a show that was very explicitly and heartwarmingly [[about family
  https://twitter.com/Liuwdere/status/856744429562081280]].  Oh, sure,
  there were still funny bits by and in the end, but family was the
  heart of everything going on and the epilogue of the show made it
  explicit. KyoAni did very good work here. In quiet little things,
  I liked how the mood shifted over the course of the show; for example,
  [[Kobayashi stopped exploiting Tohru
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/845354714216706048]], and
  [[the cast no longer staying late at work
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/832459767930982400]].

  (Kanna was a vital part of making things work. Her presence didn't
  create the family as such, but she made its existence obvious. And
  she got a beautiful part of an episode where the point wasn't what
  happened but what didn't.)

* *Kemono Friends*: This is ultimately a kid's show, by which I mean
  that its episodic stories were generally relatively straightforward;
  there was friendship with new Friends (all of whom were nice people),
  obstacles to overcome with interesting but straightforward solutions,
  and so on. This doesn't mean that it was bad, though, or even merely
  ordinary; works for kids and young adults are quite capable of having
  significant depths once you start looking and being extremely good,
  and *Kemono Friends* definitely qualified here.

  Over its run *Kemono Friends* slowly and carefully built up a coherent
  world and overall plotline, built narrative momentum around everything
  going on, and used all of this to create a very powerful climax with
  genuine surprises, an epic title drop that really worked, and a happy
  ending that felt completely justified, partly because it used elements
  the show had been carefully feeding us all along. A lot of shows fumble
  their endings in some ways, but *Kemono Friends* delivered [[one of the
  best ones I've seen in a while 
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855977728448897024]]. The show had
  both heart and smarts (and looking back, always had [[some interesting
  things quietly in the background
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/856230359310184448]]).

  I don't know how *Kemono Friends* happened, especially [[from a staff
  that doesn't seem to have done much before
  https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855993068012679169]], but I hope
  we get something more from this group of people. They have proven they
  can make excellent work even under challenging situations, so I'd love
  to see what they can do with another chance (on *Kemono Friends* or
  something else).

  (I'm someone who is not bothered by CGI if the rest of the show works,
  so I came to accept *Kemono Friends*' CGI even when it was [[pretty
  special https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855260728185552897]].)

  (See also [[how watching *Kemono Friends* benefits from knowing some
  general spoilers KemonoFriendsAndSpoilers]].)

This season wound up being pretty thin on things to watch (since I only
followed three shows during it; I started *Kemono Friends* basically
after the season finished). However, everything I watched was somewhere
between quite good and excellent (*Kemono Friends* is merely good a lot
of the time; it back-loads its excellence as things get really rolling
towards the end).

I do kind of regret that none of my secondary shows worked out for me
this season. In the past I probably would have kept on watching *Little
Witch Academia*, *Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Saga*, and maybe even *KonoSuba*
and *Akiba's Trip*. But these days apparently I'm getting less interested
in watching things I find merely ordinary or marginal, so out they all went
by [[midway Winter2017Midway]].