2020-01-22
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2020 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).
- BOFURI #1: I rather liked this, but I was biased towards it because
I've enjoyed what of the manga I've seen. I'm scoring it solidly
entertaining in a deliberately silly way; Maple is gleefully (but
unknowingly) breaking the world in her own fun way.
→
- Eizouken episode #1: That was a bunch of fun and a paean to animation,
and I like these kids. I definitely hope that this show is going to
go interesting places; I'll find out next episode.
→
- In/Spectre episode #1: This is my kind of stuff in general so I'm
biased, but this was sharp, interesting, nicely done, and with all
sorts of lovely touches in dialog and action. And I like these two
(I can't call them 'kids', all things considered). They bicker well.
→
- Magia Record episode #1: That was a decidedly interesting start, often told in an interesting way that I liked. Iroha is an intriguing person with undercurrents, the whole show looks good (and had some decent action), and I want to watch more. →
This pretty much covers anything that I feel likely to watch. I've heard good things about the story of Infinite Dendrogram, but from all reports the implementation in animated form is not particularly impressive. There's also Heya Camp, but two large parts of what I loved about Laid-Back Camp were Rin and the actual camping and I understand that neither of them are in these shorts, which doesn't make me very enthused.
(There's also sort of Dorohedoro, but it's apparently so mired in what is sometimes called the 'Netflix jail' that it wasn't even covered in the ANN review of this season's first episodes.)
2020-01-03
I ended up abandoning the Fall 2019 anime season
It's time (and past time) to officially note this. In the end, after my first episode reactions, I wound up effectively entirely abandoning the Fall season, eventually watching no shows. I explicitly dropped everything except Fairy Gone, and while I didn't officially drop it I haven't watched more than the first two episodes. I may finish it (or watch more) at some point, because I was reasonably enthused after episode 14, but somehow that never translated to spending 24 minutes to watch episode 15.
This marks a low point in my anime watching; I haven't been this inactive for a very long time. I think that Winter 2020 will be better (there are certainly more promising shows in it), but I'll have to see. I don't think I'm burned out, but I'm definitely distracted by various things.
2019-10-28
My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 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). There aren't many this time around, and I haven't been watching them very fast.
- Make My Abilities Average episode 1: This was one part ordinary
overpowered isekai and one part interesting in a meta way because of
where it starts the story. It has potential as popcorn entertainment
for me, so I'll watch it until I get bored.
→
- Assassin's Pride episode 1: This was rather melodramatic and over the
top, but at least it was conscious of it. Probably the tone fits the
material. But this was setup and we don't know much about what the
rest of the show will be like.
→
- Fairy Gone episode 13: I question re-starting this with an episode full of relatively slow flashbacks, but at least we have a bit more context now. And Suna turns out to have been about as superstition-ridden as you'd expect in its situation (ie, a lot). →
At this point it doesn't seem likely that I'm going to watch any more series this fall (as you can tell from how delayed this entry is; some shows are airing their fourth episode). There are a number of quite good series (as reported by people), but they're all in settings or genres that almost never work for me, so I've not felt the energy to check them out just in case lightning strikes this time around.