Roving Thoughts archives

Checking in on the Summer 2015 anime season most of the way through

I almost decided to not write a 'midway' update since I'd delayed it so long and I felt I didn't have anything really to say, but I've abruptly changed my mind. So now it's time to update my early impressions.

Based on my Twitter reading, some people have been feeling that this is a weak season. I don't feel that myself; I've been watching about my typical number of shows and I've been about as enthused for them as usual. But this season has felt slower than usual for one reason, which is that everything I'm watching comes out from Friday through Sunday (and these days I'm watching shows promptly due to APR voting). That leaves the rest of the week basically empty, making the whole thing feel slow.

Great:

• Gatchaman Crowds Insight: This show is saying so much and in such a complex way that I don't really have anything to say about it, not with better thinkers and writers than I doing writeups. After I read their work, anything I have left to say feels relatively obvious (although I did blurt out some thoughts on Twitter at one point).

• Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX: This continues to be very Symphogear, which makes it great for people who like that. Which I do. The latest episodes make it clear that we're going to get a very Symphogear finish too.

Enjoyable:

• Rokka no Yuusha: This turned into a mystery show and I've been enjoying it on that basis (including trying to outguess it). Some people would call it a psychological study of the characters but I don't feel that's really right; we haven't been inside the heads of most of the characters, in part because the show needed to keep the mystery going.

• GOD EATER: This is my nominee for underappreciated show of the season. Yes, it's basically standard shonen jive (tm Evirus) and the art style's unusual, but I've been finding it quite well directed and put together.

  (Unfortunately it seems to have been plagued by production problems and has already missed a number of episodes.)

Things I'm still watching:

• Ushio to Tora: This has remained the distilled essence of 90s shonen, which has both good and bad sides. I'm not sure I'm a sufficient fan of 90s shonen to stick with it all of the way, especially since it's often a 'monster of the week' show.

• GATE: This is not a well written or well made show; the writing is often cringe-worthy and the production is clearly trying to save money. Why I'm still watching is that it's been pretty good popcorn entertainment, at least most of the time. Setting aside the show's questionable politics, it's still kind of amusing to watch the JSDF go to town on bad guys and impress (and scare) people.

  (I cannot watch GATE without thinking of Japan's nasty pre-WWII history in Korea and Manchuria. The show is not directly attempting to whitewash it, but one can draw implications.)

Suspended recently:

• Gangsta: This is technically well made but the more I watched the less actually engaged I've felt. At this point I basically don't care about what happens to the characters, especially since I don't think anything deeply interesting is going to happen in the remaining two episodes.

  (It's interesting to think about how this contrasts with Black Lagoon, but that's an entry for another time. One obvious difference is that Black Lagoon was smart enough to never put forward an existential crisis for its setting.)

I've also sort of started watching Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! because it started this season's big fight. I didn't bother watching the early episodes, I just dropped straight into the fight.

(I regret to report that I haven't been using the slow midweek time to do anything particularly worthwhile as far as anime watching goes.)

Brief 'early' impressions of the Summer 2015 anime season so far

As before, it's time for another set of early impressions for the shows of this season. So far I'd call this season decently good but not deep, in that I'm watching several enjoyable shows but then there's a sharp falloff in my enthusiasm for everything else.

Clear winners:

• Gatchaman Crowds Insight: This didn't start as strong as the original Crowds did but it's been steadily picking up steam as it goes along. How you feel about this will really depend on how you felt about Crowds; for better or worse, this is a continuation. For me this is great (and I think some aspects of the show are deeper and creepier than people are currently giving them credit for).

• Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX: I gave into the boosterism and caught up on the first and second season in order to be able to watch this, and it was totally worth it. So far Symphogear GX is as much fun as Symphogear G, which makes it a pretty large amount of fun. Everything that you'd expect to be happening is happening; there's new opponents, new crazy weird things, extreme stunts, wacky fun antics among the existing cast, and so on.

• Gangsta.: This isn't anything revolutionary but so far it's been a good implementation of its 'modern era badass killers' action show genre. Since such shows are relatively uncommon, I've been quite enjoying it so far. It's no Black Lagoon, but it's stylish and well done enough to do.

  (Gangsta. is clearly trying to be edgy and adult but I don't find it deeply convincing at that. Its version of 'adult' is a little bit to straightforward and cliched; when your OP starts with a bondage sequence, you're trying too hard.)

I'm enthused by:

• Rokka no Yuusha: Again, this is a decently good implementation of the standard 'quest by the designated heroes to save the world' genre. It's popcorn fodder but enjoyable fodder so far, and the setting (modeled on the Mayans and Aztecs) makes it stand out. I particularly like that the show's willing to be subtle and do a lot with action direction, body language, and voice acting instead of telling us outright. Subtlety is unfortunately rare in anime so I treasure it when I find it.

Enjoying so far:

• GATE: I've read better versions of 'modern people with modern weapons go to fantasy' than this, but for popcorn entertainment it's reasonably well done so far (see also). Any number of aspects are better off not examined closely and I suspect that I sympathize a lot less with at least one character than the show feels I should, but if you care about that stuff this is not the show for you. This is unapologetically a show for people who want to see a modern military rattle around a fantasy setting, get into trouble, and wind up shooting things that deserve it.

  (Well, mostly deserve it.)

  Unlike some people, I don't feel that GATE is particularly well made or well produced; if anything, the first episode was slipshod and cheap. I'm enjoying the show despite this.

• GOD EATER: This isn't anything new or novel and it has that LN scent to it (although it's based on a game), but it has one thing down for me; it knows how to be a surprisingly large amount of fun to watch. I think it's doing a decently good job at enjoyable action direction (and interesting directing in general) and I don't mind the unusual CGI-ish art style. At the same time I pretty much expect to get tired of this sooner or later, probably when it settles into a tedious midseason LN cliche based grind.

• Ushio to Tora: This is pretty much the distilled essence of 90s shonen with modern production values. I've been enjoying it so far but I don't know how long that will last, since I've already seen plenty of 90s shonen in its native habitat.

Misses:

• Classroom Crisis: I want to like this show but its writing flaws are too glaring and too slipshod for me. Among other issues, the writing has a definite habit of just having things happen because they're necessary for the plot, not because they actually make sense (money appearing from nowhere, for example, and see also this twitter thread). For me this is a case of potentially interesting ideas and themes that are trapped inside bad writing. I'm not willing to slog through the bad writing to get to the good themes, not any more.

• Aquarion Logos: This simply lacks the gonzo craziness of EVOL or the interesting characters and plot of the original show (which also had its own collection of over the top stuff to help out). The result is a bland and unappealing monster of the week show.

Not for me:

• Akagami no Shirayukihime: I want to like this but I just found it too bland. Shirayuki and Zen themselves simply don't come across as compelling enough characters to make this interesting; I kept finding myself tuning out as I tried to watch it.

• Ranpo Kitan - Game of Laplace: The two episodes I saw were a horror show with a viewpoint character who was clearly insane (I'm not sure I can rightly describe him as the protagonist). I'm not into horror (or uninteresting mysteries) and I doubt the show is interested in exploring his insanity.

Not even considered, sometimes to my surprise:

• Durarara!! X2: The lackluster first cour of this back at the start of the year wound up completely souring me on continuing onwards, never mind my usual completist nature (cf). It feels liberating to do something like this and I should do it more often; past watching and even past enjoyment is no obligation to continue.

• Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz!: Not after my reaction to the second season. Every so often I manage to learn better.

• Prison School: Regardless of Mizushima directing it, the premise alone makes this very much not my kind of thing.

• Monster Musume: Nope. No much people praise this as goofy fun, you're not getting me to take a look.

• Gakkou Gurashi: Horror and cute girls doing cute things at school are both genres that I'm essentially completely uninterested in. Combining them does not improve this situation.

• Overlord: By all reports this is no Log Horizon.

• Charlotte: I might be sort of attracted by the premise but the protagonist is apparently an asshole and so nope.

(I don't have any particular comments on anything else I'm not watching.)

This makes four shows I'm almost certain to stick with, two of which I'm solidly confident of, and I'm likely to keep at least a fifth around. That seems about right. By my standards this isn't a particularly weak season, even if it feels like I may have trouble filling out a full APR ballot in some weeks.