There’s a lot more to this one than just cute owls and sex jokes.
Reviews
Rule of Three Review: The Rolling ☆ Girls – Episodes 2-3
Rule of Three Review: Death Parade – Episodes 2-3
Rule of Three Review: Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! – Episodes 2-3
Panning the Stream: Sequels and Carryovers Edition (Winter 2015)
Hello Ikebukuro, my old friend.
There’s a flipping mountain of sequels and carryovers this season, so I won’t spend a ton of time on them all, but I did want to touch base with the shows that came back, and let everyone know what I will and won’t be watching (at least for the time being – if the new winter shows prove disappointing, it’s not impossible that I’ll finally get around to trying out Log Horizon or Fafner, but I wouldn’t put any bets on it).
Familiar faces below the jump!
Panning the Stream: Maria the Virgin Witch, World Break, Samurai Warriors
So scratch my last comment about there being no “middle-of-the-road” series this season.
Because this season is so heavy on sequels and carryovers, we’re actually pretty close to the end of the (licensed) new premieres, and I was finding myself with a lot of shows that were pretty much locks and very few that were hanging out in limbo. I’d still say that’s mostly true, but we do have one hard “maybe” this time around, worthy of a meet ‘n’ greet but definitely a series I’ll be playing by ear in the coming weeks. Past that there’s a big N-O and much smaller one, as we quietly close the curtain on the first week of the winter season.
Panning the Stream: Death Parade, The Rolling Girls, Gourmet Girl Graffiti, Fafnir Unlimited
Now that’s more like it!
This season is shaping up to have very little in the middle-of-the-pack range, as it seems that I either like a premiere a whole lot or pretty much hate it, with very little middle ground. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you: It makes it easier to know what to keep and what to drop, without having to give a bunch of series 2-3 episode trials run beforehand.
The good news is that this batch has a pair of premieres I really enjoyed, which is about the only thing they share – well, that and their own unique sense of style, I suppose. They’re a breath of fresh air from all the cookie-cutter series out there, and I can’t wait to tell you all about ‘em.
Panning the Stream: Assassination Classroom, KanColle, Testament of Sister New Devil, Saekano
Well, one of out of four ain’t… okay, actually, yeah. It’s pretty bad.
I’m watching Death Parade as soon as I add this post to my queue because I suspect (hope!) it will warrant a full meet ‘n’ greet, too, but since that first day of Magical Boy and Bear excitement, the trickle of new winter shows has been pretty uninspiring. Fortunately we’ve got some good sequels and carryovers, or I’d be getting downright depressed.
In this post, we’ve got one ball of strangeness with some potential to at least be pretty fun (and possibly more than that), and past that a whole bunch of generic, fanservice-y bores. But let’s start with the potential, so we don’t all feel too depressed going into our weekend.
Panning the Stream: Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Yurikuma Arashi, Absolute Duo
Well, the Winter Season certainly wasted no time in making an impression, did it?
As a reminder, I watch every licensed premiere and do at least a brief writeup about them. I’ll do full meet ‘n’ greets for shows that caught my interest enough to warrant it. Everything else gets a blurb explaining what I liked, didn’t like, and why the show might not or didn’t make the cut.
So here we go! Magical boys, magical bears, and a boy named Thor. Oh, anime. For better or worse, this is why I love you.
Glancing Upstream: Fall 2014 Retrospective and Review
Fall is at an end, but that doesn’t mean its best shows have to be.
We saw two forms of storytelling make a welcome comeback this season: The high fantasy and (perhaps even more importantly) the long-form anime series. As anyone who’s been watching simulcast anime over the past few years will know, one-cour shows have become the norm, and anything longer a happy exception. This season, though, a whopping nine of the 13 shows on my watchlist ran longer than that, and seven of them will be continuing into the coming seasons. So there are a ton of “midseries” reviews in this bunch – and hey, what better time to catch up on some great shows than over the holiday break?
Overall it wasn’t the best of anime seasons, full of shows that fluctuated dramatically in tone and quality (Fate/stay night, Gugure! Kokkuri-san, Your Lie in April), one that shot itself in the foot (Yuki Yuna is a Hero), and a few that suffered to varying degrees from not getting more episodes to tell their extensive stories (Rage of Bahamut, Laughing Under the Clouds). But hey, no season with Mushishi will ever be a total failure, and there were two incredibly consistent, solid, just good old-fashioned well-told stories to round out the Top Three. So let’s focus on those first, starting with one of the great masterpieces of anime, back for its (sniffle) final round of episodes.
The Josei Next Door 