== Looking back on the Winter 2019 anime season

It's time (and well past time) for [[my traditional look back
Fall2018Retrospective]] at what I watched this past Winter season, to
follow up on [[my earlier impressions Winter2019Brief]]. I've been
lazy about doing this entry, partly because there is not a lot to talk
about.

Good:

* *Kemurikusa*: In the end, Tatsuki and his crew came through with a
  worthy follow on to *Kemono Friends*. The show started slow and had
  some early speed bumps, but it picked up as it went along and even
  ended up giving us a decent bunch of explanations for things and fully
  sold the love story that orbited through the show. This isn't flawless
  but it was unquestionably good.

Decently okay:

* *The Magnificent Kotobuki*: The show remained perfectly entertaining
  on an episode by episode basis and the last two episodes were really
  something; they were compulsive and genuinely tense in a way that I
  hadn't expected at all. But the show's problems also remained, which
  is that it didn't really have a compelling long-term thread running
  through, although it did develop a plot for the climax. We did get a
  bunch of nice character moments, though, and maybe even a few things
  that could be called character development.

In shows that didn't start this season, I enjoyed *That Time I Got
Reincarnated as a Slime* all the way through; it retained all of its
good virtues as fine popcorn entertainment. However, it wound up ending
with quite weird pacing, where it rushed through portions of the final
storyline (dropping or significantly altering a number of plot elements
in the process), then abruptly slowed down to a very leisurely pace and
outright did a final recap episode. A show that both drops elements
of the original story to save time and then does a recap episode
is a rather odd thing, and I can't avoid some obvious speculations
(although these speculations are often wrong; 'production problems' is
an all-purpose idea that the fandom has and is usually not right).