Winter 2015 Overview

Time once again for a season review!  Overall I'd have to say this was a strong start to the year, although a few series did stick out like a swollen, pus-oozing sore thumb.  So, without further ado, here are my thoughts!

Aldnoah Zero

I guess this was a halfway decent stab at yet another Gundam-inspired show, but for me it fell short of those heights and landed around the Code Geass level. Great designs and action, but the characters could be just insufferable, especially main rivals Inaho Kaizuka and Slaine Troyard. Both are hard to root for, Inaho because he's perfect at everything while showing no emotions, and Slaine because he's so oblivious to his gradual corruption. Yet we're supposed to be invested in their clash of wills. Also, just about everything with Urobuchi's name attached tends to have a couple annoying plot twists, and this is no exception. However, if you have a weakness for overwrought melodrama, this may just be your ideal junk food.

Gundam: Reconguista in G

Christ. Just read my review in the previous post. I can't do this again...

Parasyte: the Maxim

Remember last season when I implied I'd definitely buy this show when it was released? Well, this season gave me second thoughts about that. Not that Parasyte turned awful, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it did slow. Waaaay. Down. The Tamura Reiko and government infiltration arcs introduced a lot of characters who really weren't very interesting, and took away from the Shinichi/Migi dynamic, easily the best part of the show. Even those two weren't quite as fun to watch as before, as by now they'd smoothed out most rough edges in their relationship. Still, I can't deny that it is a great series with tons of effort put in. There's just a sizable stretch of episodes in the middle I can't really see myself revisiting.

Shirobako

What a treasure this show is. I was a little worried the second cour would be a rehash of the first, but nope! They still found plenty of new things to explore about the anime industry, this time focusing on adapting a pre-existing work instead of producing original content. New characters were fun and interesting, and new depths were revealed in many old ones. I can't recommend this show highly enough.

Ronja the Robber's Daughter

There are actual emotional stakes introduced in this cour, and characters do grow and change to some extent. Granted, the show still has a snail's pace, and all conflicts are of the most basic sort, but not bad for a kid's show. I actually think that Ronja herself makes a halfway decent role model by a certain point. The biggest drawback is sitting through the lump of nothing that is the first half, and the animation, which will probably never look anything less than jarring.

Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei Bu Love!

I expected more laughs from the director of Daily Lives of High School Boys, and I think I know why there weren't as many here: he was too constrained by the Magical Girl formulas. His previous comedy work dealt with finding stupid, dry humor in everyday occurrences with everyday people. It was fun to see a bunch of bored boys pretend a stick was a sword, and really fun to see how far they'd that simple joke. Here? You know someone will get turned into a symbolic monster of the week, and they'll get defeated the same way each time. The personalities aren't nearly as interesting; one of the magical boys' characters revolves around liking money, and another's around liking girls. The highlights would definitely be the show's beginning and ending, because of the boys' reactions to the concept of Battle Lovers and to the eventual “shocking” revelations. The sight gag with their unfortunate teacher is hilarious every single time. Also, some of the aimless conversations that occur are sometimes funny, as well as the puns that result from them. But overall the genre isn't being skewered in the new, creative ways I'd hoped it would be.

Sailor Moon Crystal

Pretty much more of the same with this one. Glad there's only one cour left, because nothing's sucking me in here.

Tokyo Ghoul Root A

A distinct improvement over the first season, in my opinion. Despite being basically another shonen action series, I consider this show a cut above most standard fair from that genre. Sure, there are too many characters and most of their arcs aren't as fleshed-out as I wish, but Tokyo Ghoul isn't afraid to go dark, and it isn't afraid to go quiet. Also, not only are the fight scenes well-animated, they are constant; don't worry about going long stretches without action in this show. I definitely want to see where the story goes from here.

Yuri Kuma Arashi

I was really expecting more from this show based on the director's previous work. My opinion of this show hasn't changed much since I last posted on it, and I can't really shake the feeling that Ikuhara wasn't really trying hard. Here's hoping his next effort is less repetitive and has more to say.

Death Parade

This show fought a long, hard battle to win me over. I disliked the Death Billiards short that inspired the show; it forced us to watch uncomfortably extreme emotions without revealing enough at the end to justify this, sort of a melodramatic cocktease. At first I thought Death Parade would be more of the same, but it added a compelling hook: the Arbiters' system of judgment is flawed, and our eternal souls are probably getting fucked over after death. I warmed to the show as it revealed itself to be competently done; there was nice variation to the games and one-off characters, animation was great, and the aforementioned hook was built up gradually rather than always shoved in our faces. Episode 11 won me over completely, because I've never seen an ice skating sequence depicted so lovingly. Not only that, but it did wonders for a major character's development, and didn't even include any dialogue. How many twenty-three-minute shows have the balls to gamble that their viewers will be that engaged with the onscreen proceedings for a whole five minutes? That was impressive as hell, and I'm really glad I gave this show the chance. It still doesn't give us easy answers by the end, but in a good way this time.

Assassination Classroom

There was a lot of hype for this show, but it still blew away my expectations. Not only do the jokes have a high hit ratio, but nearly every new character introduced (and there are a lot) is funny and endearing to some degree. Plus, in spite of the palpable respect for students and teachers alike, there's some brutal criticism here against certain teaching methods. Definitely looking forward to developments next cour, though I'm curious how they'll end this since the manga is ongoing, and unlikely to stop soon given its massive success.

The Rolling Girls

If you've read the write-up I did on this show a while back, my opinion hasn't really changed. If you missed the review, I didn't hate the show, but wished I liked it. Imagine taking an extended road trip through a string of neat, beautiful locations with a bunch of companions who kinda piss you off. Does the exceptional animation and music make up for the lackluster characters and plot? The choice is yours, but for me they more or less canceled each other out.

Maria the Virgin Witch

Really torn on this one. On one hand, it has some ballsy commentary on religion you don't see a lot of, commentary I happen to agree with. On the other, it gets preachy, which I tend to dislike. This show sometimes feels like the reverse of some preachy Christian movie; you know, the ones that always include some borderline miracle of a coincidence that we're supposed to interpret as divine intervention? Here, you see people getting mercilessly killed in battle right after expressing faith in God's protection, and it rings just as false. After all, the director can show whatever they want onscreen, but that doesn't mean it's an accurate depiction of how religion or faith works in the real world. Also, it's a little insulting in that it presents Maria's worldview as the 'right' one that most of the smarter characters get 'converted' to. Apart from these complaints, I was quite impressed with how many of the characters had a fully-fleshed story arc; remarkably few were dead weight. I'd recommend this because at the very least it gives us all food for thought (and that beautiful Production I.G. Animation).

Yatterman Night

This show was stronger than it had any right to be considering it's geared for kids, but I still don't think it reached its full potential. While the switching of hero and villain roles made for one of the season's best premises, some of the reveals towards the end can be seen as cop-outs. On top of that, the final episode's battles were some of the worst-animated I've seen in a while, screw what Anime News Network's reviewer said. Really not sure how they could've missed the prodigious use of repeated footage, and the choreography was incredibly hard to follow. Overall, though, the show was a fun jaunt into a franchise I've always neglected to examine.

And that's it!  Anything good that I missed?  Let me know in the comments!