2019-02-18
Brief impressions of the Winter 2019 anime season so far
As before it's time (and well past time) for my views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. The short version is that it is not a good season for me so far (for various reasons) and as a result of that I am a week or two behind on the two shows from this season that I'm still watching.
Decently okay:
- The Magnificent Kotobuki: This is a perfectly entertaining show on
an episode by episode basis; every episode is generally funny and well
crafted, with various subtle touches. However I have realized that one
of my problems with the show overall is that there is nothing there to
pull me from one episode to the next other than the pure entertainment
value. After the four episodes I've watched so far, there is no real
ongoing plot or continuing developments, just episodic shenanigans.
If I want to feel entertained, watching Kotobuki is a decent option. But it turns out that I have a lot of ways of entertaining myself and Kotobuki has often not been the most compelling one.
Uncertain:
- Kemurikusa: On the one hand, there is some good stuff here (it's quite atmospheric, for example). On the other hand, after four episodes I continue to find the show to be slow moving overall and Wakaba remains irritating as the genki idiot (cf), and some apparent subplots involving him annoy me by their very existence.
I have dropped everything else from my first episode reactions for an assortment of reasons, including Boogiepop and Others (cf), which makes me a bit sad. I have decided not to write those reasons up because they'll just consist of me being grumpy.
(I have been watching people watch Endro! on Twitter and it seems like a pretty entertaining show on the whole, even if it didn't work for me.)
I continue to fully enjoy That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime as fine popcorn entertainment. The goings-on of Rimuru and friends never fail to bring a smile to my face and it's the only show I'm current on this season.
2019-01-14
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2019 anime season
As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).
- Boogiepop and Others episode 1: That was okay, I guess; it certainly
wasn't actively bad, but I don't feel terribly inspired by what I
saw. Stuff happened. Some things made sense; other things might be
deliberately obtuse. There's a lot of mystery and little reason to care.
→
- Kemurikusa episode 1: That was a pretty decent start with a bunch of
solid stuff, but I would be much less worried about where it's going
if it had not added a boy. It's also pretty much all setup and lacks
the propulsive push forward that really compelling shows have here.
→
- Girly Air Force episode 1: That was generally decently fun and I
especially liked the research boss; he's an enjoyable character. It's
no Sky Girls, but I like the genre in general and I'm willing to watch
more to see what happens next.
→
- Dororo episode 1: That was perfectly well done and it definitely
believed in 'show don't tell', although maybe it went a bit overboard on
it; I would have been a bit lost if I hadn't known the premise. But it
may not be distinct enough to keep me; it feels pretty generic action.
♯
- Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka episode 1: This could have been
interesting, but it has middle of the road aesthetics and mostly came
off as kind of ridiculous and over the top (not in a good way). There
were some decent bits but on the whole it felt entirely too lazily
calculated.
→
- Endro! episode 1: That was reasonably decent and reasonably funny,
as people have said, but unsurprisingly it wasn't funny enough to keep
me watching the next episode. (Anime comedy almost never works for me,
so I expected this result.)
♯
- The Magnificent Kotobuki episode 1: Now that's how you do a first episode that nails me to my seat. Not just fun and thrilling along with subtle storytelling that showed instead of told, but also decent introductions to a bunch of fun characters. →
I won't be looking at Kemono Friends 2, not after what Kadokawa did to the scrappy little team that completely unexpectedly turned dross into gold. Anyway, early reports are not positive, which doesn't surprise me at all under the circumstances (I'm sort of surprised that Kadokawa found anyone who was willing to work on KF2 for them). The creative team behind Kemono Friends (the original and only real version) is doing Kemurikusa this season, so watch that instead.