Roving Thoughts archives

Checking in on the Spring 2018 anime season 'midway' through

Increasingly, these midway entries are where I'm put face to face with what I'm actually watching and what I'm enjoying, and I have to admit to it (either in public or to myself; the latter can be harder). If I was still happy with everything in my early impressions, this wouldn't amount to much, but as you might guess from me writing this, I'm not. In fact this season has been especially bad.

So it's time for me to face up to some awkward things and admit them, by talking about what I'm watching and not watching.

Fully enjoying:

• Sword Art Online Alternative - Gun Gale Online: This has stayed a great entertainment watch all through, with plenty of twists and turns that have basically all been fun. LLENN is a great character, as is basically everyone around her, and the result is something that I look forward to each week.

• Hisone and Masotan is a solid mix of genuine fun and interesting, sometimes touching developments. The overall plot has turned out to be an interesting mixture of genuinely interesting things and pure fun craziness, as have various additional characters who've been slowly accumulating.

Suspended and probably dropped if I'm being honest:

• My Hero Academia (#46): The show is pretty much the same as it always has been; I've just basically run out of enthusiasm for its shonen jive (to borrow a term from Evirus).

• Megalo Box (#9): The episodes are fine by themselves but the characters have been a bit too iconic to really engage me, and it is ultimately a sports drama, which usually doesn't work for me. I'm pretty sure there's a plot twist coming in the next episode that I'm not going to enjoy, so I'm just sitting on things.

• Darling in the FranXX (#19): It's not that the show has done anything worse than usual, it's just that I've been feeling less and less enthused about its usual as episodes have piled up. FranXX has had some good stuff, but it's also had a lot of things that don't have the impact that the show's wanted. I agree with Evirus's view on the whole, but I don't think I appreciate what it's trying as much as he does.

  (I used to call DarliFra popcorn entertainment and it still is in a way, it's just that Gun Gale Online does it so much better and I don't really need to spend my time watching anime that I'm meh on.)

It's possible that I'll watch more of any of these three, but at the moment, having actually written this down, it feels unlikely. I'm not really on the edge about any of them; I just haven't been willing to admit it. And there's a bit of me that whispers that I've already watched so much of both MHA and FranXX so why not see them through.

Dropped:

• Golden Kamuy (#5): As usual there's nothing wrong with the show, it's just that I wasn't particularly enjoying it and I didn't care about all of the plotting and machinations going on. I guess that I'm not that into bloody adventure stories, even if Asirpa had good faces and various characters had fun interactions in general.

• Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory (#3): Oh, this one hurts. But somewhere in the decade or so since the last FMP and this one, the magic all leaked out for me, and after a while I became willing to admit it to myself. Plain and simply, I found I had no interest in watching the fourth episode and I didn't feel like I was missing anything by walking away.

Given my final comments in my early impressions, I apparently had the feeling that things were going to turn out this way basically from the start. Now that I've managed to admit that I'm only really watching two shows and I've probably dropped everything else, I find that I'm fine with the situation. If I really wanted to watch more anime, there are old shows I have waiting. In the mean time, there's plenty of other things to do.

(My resolution for next season is to drop things faster if I'm not genuinely enjoying them, no matter what I may feel. The sunk cost fallacy is dangerous, especially when it comes to something like Darling in the FranXX.)

Brief impressions of the Spring 2018 anime season so far

As before, it's time for my relatively early views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. At this point I've seen anywhere from three to five episodes of the shows I'm following (or two for one special case), and that gap says a lot about how I seem to be feeling this season. There are a couple of shows that I enthusiastically follow, and then a big gap to a bunch of things that I'm watching without much drive. As a result, this season I'm using a different rating breakdown than before.

Eagerly watching immediately:

• Sword Art Online Alternative - Gun Gale Online: If you'd told me before the start of the season that a SAO show would be one of the top shows I look forward to every week, I wouldn't have believed you. But GGO is almost nothing like regular SAO (for example, it's completely Kirito-free), and the result has been pretty sharp and definitely enjoyable. We're not getting deep or complex storytelling, but it's a fun ride and the show pulls off it straightforward story well.

  (In other words this is pretty much a popcorn show, but it's a great popcorn show so far.)

• Hisone and Masotan: Unsurprisingly, the show didn't manage to stay quite as manic and stunning as the first episode, but what we've got since then is still quite good (although I wish the show would stomp on one particular thing). I'm not sure we need an overall plot, since what I'm really here for is all of the characters interacting with each other, but I suppose it gives the show an excuse for that to happen.

Backlogged on:

• Golden Kamuy: This has all the ingredients to be a show that clicks with me but it hasn't so far. It's fun to watch, though, and genuinely tense and compelling on a moment to moment basis when it wants to be (as well as periodically funny). I just can't bring myself to care about all the maneuverings and goings on yet.

• Megalo Box: This has done various things that I really like and it can be quite good on a moment to moment basis, but right now I'm an episode or two behind so it clearly hasn't grabbed and compelled me. I wish the artwork didn't look as blurred as it does.

• Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory: It's been so long since the last Full Metal Panic! show that my feelings for these characters have grown distant, and unfortunately the show did basically nothing to rekindle them before throwing us into the press of various events. The result is something that feels not so much unnecessary as if its time has passed, and that makes me sort of sad. I feel that I should love this, but I don't.

• My Hero Academia: I think I may be burning out on this long-running shonen show. Everyone says that the latest episodes are really great, and maybe they will be once I watch them, but at the moment (when I'm not watching) my reaction is muted. I've seen a lot of these characters already and I know that nothing big is going to happen, because that's the nature of long-running shonen works.

  (Possibly I'm wrong about the 'nothing big', because MHA has had character development for many characters, but still.)

I'm also backlogged on Darling in the FranXX, which continues to be very itself for both good and bad.

Suspended and pretty much dropped:

• Hinamatsuri (#3): It's reasonably charming and funny but it's not Alice & Zoroku, and in practice I haven't been able to summon enough enthusiasm to watch more.

• GeGeGe no Kitaro (#2): Sadly, that it's a kids show is a bit too apparent for me to get pulled into this. It's nice and I'm sure it's quite watchable, but apparently 'quite watchable' is not what I'm looking for this season.

Dropped:

• Lupin III Part V (#2): I think that The Woman Called Mine Fujiko has basically spoiled me for most Lupin TV series. This was perfectly okay but it didn't leave me with any burning desire to see the next episode.

• Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These (#2): I would have to call this 'ponderous'. If you're already sold on the franchise and the characters, I imagine that this is a good version of it, but I'm not and I've read enough science fiction that does this sort of stuff better (or at least in ways that keep me reading it).

I'm really enjoying my two anticipated and watched as soon as I can shows, and otherwise I'm hoping that something will re-ignite my interest and enthusiasm about the other shows, even to the extent that I stop putting off watching them. Perhaps my gut is speaking to me here, but only watching two shows this season would be a really big change (and I do want to see where Darling in the FranXX goes, even if it winds up being a trainwreck).

Looking back at the Winter 2018 anime season

Once again it's time (and past time) for my traditional look back at what I watched in this past Winter season, to follow up on my early impressions and my midway views. In general this has been a reasonably good season, with some very nice high points.

Excellent:

• Laid-Back Camp: This stayed the course all the way through and then gave us a great epilogue at the end of the last episode, one that showed how both our protagonists had developed. Rin was always the heart of the show and I'm glad that the show respected her and her independent ways, while still gently involving her in the Outclub's activities.

As it ever was:

• March comes in like a Lion: As I pretty much expected, this didn't come to any particularly definite conclusion but instead just sort of found a good ending point in the last episode, one that emphasized how time had passed and characters had changed.

Good but could have been much more:

• The Ancient Magus' Bride: Despite showing flashes of more in the ending couple of episodes, I can't get over my feelings that this doesn't measure up to the manga and was in the end a merely ordinary adaptation. As an ordinary adaptation it's not a bad thing, it's just what I wanted more.

Dropped:

• Violet Evergarden: After writing up my midway views, I decided I was done. I don't regret my decision.

In ongoing shows, Darling in the FranXX is ongoing and remains essentially a popcorn show for me. It's a nice looking popcorn show with good production values, but I'm not really expecting anything from it any more. In Netflix shows, I have yet to finish A.I.C.O. - Incarnation but I probably will at some point.

Finishing only three shows this season (and with a fourth one continuing) feels like it's below par but probably isn't all that far out of line with my general trends in anime watching, where I've steadily become more selective and grumpy.

(Also, I actually finished five shows if I count Devilman Crybaby and B - The Beginning, which I really ought to, since they took up their own share of my anime watching time. When I put it that way this isn't such an unusual season any more.)