Roving Thoughts archives

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 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).

• Fairy Gone episode 1: That was a solid introduction and first episode. It had a certain amount of exposition, but it didn't explain everything, it had a bunch of action and progression, and it did some nice work. I'll watch the next episode. →

• Apparently I was not in the mood for One-Punch Man S2's first episode's story this night. I will probably take another run at it another time, since I skimmed the rest of the episode to see where it was going. ♯

  Spoiler: I did not try to watch the episode again, partly because in reading the ANN preview reports for it I discovered that there had been major staff changes (and a decided drop in the amount of interesting animation, which matches my vague feelings from what I did see of the episode).

• Wise Man's Grandchild episode 1: This was perfectly okay, but it is no Slime or Knight's & Magic and this episode was all setup. I'll watch another episode to see if it gets more interesting once it's actually doing something. ♯

• Demon Slayer episode 1: That was a strong, well done start that makes me want to watch more even though I can pretty much predict it's going to get mired down in the usual slow-paced way sooner or later. For now, it's exciting and appealing, and that's enough. ♯

• Sarazanmai episode 1: That simultaneously made perfect sense and very little sense, which is probably more than I expected. I have no other coherent short term reactions except that I'm definitely going to watch the next episode. →

• [...] In theory I could watch Fruits Basket, but in practice I saw the first version years ago and I don't remember loving it so much that I want to basically watch it again (although it was a decently nice show). ♯

By this point it seems unlikely that I'll watch any other first episodes. Carole & Tuesday has been getting some good reports, but it doesn't seem like my kind of show and my results with Shinichirō Watanabe's past shows have been decidedly mixed, with me bouncing off Kids on the Slope and Terror in Resonance.

Looking back on the Fall 2018 anime season

It's well past time for my traditional look back at what I watched in this past Fall season, to follow up on my early impressions and my midway views. This past fall season was unusual because I passed on Bloom Into You during the season and then became very taken with it when I watched it all just after the end of the year. Since I watched it so close to the season (and before I started the Winter 2019 season), I'm declaring it a Fall 2018 show for the purpose of this retrospective (and my eventual 'best N in 2018' entry).

(This entry has been delayed mostly because of laziness.)

Somewhere between excellent and amazing:

• SSSS.Gridman: The show started out being decently good and only got better from there, climaxing as an excellent if not amazing show. I had things to say in the aftermath of the last episode. Although Gridman starts out looking like a giant robot/kaiju show, it almost immediately becomes really an increasingly good character drama (interspersed with kaiju fights, which become necessary for the character drama). And as a character drama, it's excellent and affecting all through. The presentation is top-notch, with great directing and very interesting sound design.

  SSSS.Gridman is not flawless, but despite its flaws it's quite a lot my thing.

Excellent but effectively unfinished:

• Bloom Into You: This is a great show, beautiful, dramatic, full of small touches, and many other things that drew me into it. It's that rare thing, a high school romance that wholeheartedly works for me; it's almost become my new gold standard for that (taking over from Toradora). It only has one unfortunate flaw, which is that the story is in no way finished and the show has to just stop abruptly. Bloom is adopting an ongoing manga and apparently there is just no good pause point so far; the show picks an okay one, one that shows off character growth and so on, but it is forced to leave all of its big plot threads just dangling. I finished the show very much wanting a a second season (or perhaps to read the manga).

  That Bloom Into You has to stop so abruptly means that it really isn't a standalone work in the way that SSSS.Gridman is. In my opinion Bloom is better and less flawed than Gridman, but Gridman tells a whole story and Bloom does not, and it turns out that I care about that too.

Good fun entertainment:

• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Above all, Slime is a cheerful, good-hearted show that is out to make us smile. If you want conflict and challenged characters and so on, this is not for you; it's all about Rimuru solving a succession of problems and running over a succession of obstacles as they build a home and make friends with people and various great character interactions go on. The show fundamentally likes pretty much everyone, and almost every enemy gets a chance at redemption. In an ocean of grim shows where terrible things happen to people and certain sorts of characters are walking cliches that are used only as the butt of jokes, Slime is a breath of fresh air.

  Slime is not flawless, and in a certain way it's boring. But I always enjoyed it and it reliably brought a smile to my face when I watched a new episode.

Not as good as the first season:

• Thunderbolt Fantasy S2: This was a good wuxia puppet show with various sorts of interesting things going on (and one stinger in the ending), but I'm not entirely taken with some of the things that Urobuchi wrote into the story (cf) and it can't (and doesn't) measure up to the first season. The original Thunderbolt Fantasy was amazing; this is merely a good adventure show with fun dialog and some amusing things going on.

  Looking back at the story structure in retrospect, I can't say that I'm entirely surprised by this; it would be very hard to duplicate the things that made the first season so special. We're unlikely to get that sort of revelations and twists and character developments again, because we've already had them once.

I feel satisfied with this season as a whole. Two shows were basically amazing (counting Bloom and ignoring the non-ending), one was solidly pleasant, and one was at least reasonably entertaining.

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.