Last season's top 3

[neflight86]

A bit of a backlog slowed this season’s recap

3. Shoujo shuumatsu ryokou: Sleepy little post-apocalyptic slice of life series that followed two young women on their tread cycle through a dilapidated cityscape. Almost meditative, with some soothing musical score and child-like naiveté to compliment the honestly derpy looking character designs. Actually an average show with an above average production and a strangely satisfying ending squeezed this into third place.

2. Juuni Taisen: It is actually a feat into itself that something as hyped as this still managed to make the second spot after such a string of disappointments throughout its run. You want fights? You get talking. You want an unpredictable death game? You get a pattern in the second episode. You want a grandiose finale? You get a moody teen being angsty about making a wish for the last episode. I sound harsh, but the premise and execution of this overwrought killing game (aside from the dragon/snake being both 4chan surrogates and boring) was still generally very entertaining.

1. Shokugeki no Souma 3rd Plate: The old standby got a much needed shot in the arm this season. After the somewhat lackluster Autumn Election tournament continuation in the second season, I was brought back in by the mini stagiere ‘training’ ark that brought the focus back to the real star of shokugeki: the food and its enjoyment by regular people. Bafflingly, an important scene bridging the second and third seasons, the formal introduction of the elite 10, was relegated to an OVA that many didn’t know to watch, causing flashbacks to the scenes to seem woefully inadequate in explaining the current climate of competition. That aside, the first portion of the season, the showdown of the festival sales against the 8th seat was delicious, if you’ll excuse the pun. Bringing back the out of the box business thinking and returning characters with an impact really set up for a good climax. It is at the second half, the introduction of evil chefs, that opinions are divided. On one hand, I can sympathize with the author feeling pressured to raise the stakes by adding an organized oppositional element to our polar star heroes, and gourmet cooking, being an inherently noble task, is not so simple to vilify its participants in so doing. On the other hand, though; evil chefs cooking evil-like makes me chuckle, and could only be entertained in a show where tasty food is taken this seriously. I, personally, am willing to acquiesce this direction to provide the tension that will fuel future conflicts within the show. I looked forward to nothing more.

As I’m sure all (none) of you are waiting for, it is time for the special awards!!!

The ‘teeth grinding’ award (and dental bill) goes to Fate: Apocrypha: I’m still getting a handle on what kind of shows make me sorta angry while I’m watching them, because it happens not very often. Ask anyone who watches mediocre seasonal anime and they can tell you much of it is largely isekai (going to another world) or disposable niche pandering that is genuinely entertaining at best, and kinda boring at worst. So why did this production put me in a foul mood most episodes? I’m not a mega Fate fan, but I liked the Ufotable series from the past years, so what gives? In theory, this shouldn’t be that different, except I feel that modern (bad) anime tropes were in full effect here. I hated the main character, the circumstances around him, and all of his interactions with the other heroes. Blind idealism from a character with all of the world experience of 2 weeks in a European countryside should not decide the fate of the world in a story that postures to have depth and nuance. The battles, while animated with some panache, seldom actually felt dangerous as few actually died in them. The character motivations were fuzzy at best, and half of one team didn’t even get scenes with dialogue from its masters. The deus Shiro felt tacky, as did any reference to the old fate series, but I kind of liked the necromancer duo. At least the series lived up to the name “apocrypha”.

The ‘Where are the heroes?’ award went to Inuyashiki. It’s so seldom that I find a scene hard to watch, but the murder scenes in Inuyashiki had me silently hoping for a hero to save the innocent, which usually didn’t come. Some may dismiss this series as a showcase of misery for its own sake, but in that environment I found that the good deeds of the main character with his new powers were that much more impactful knowing that the powers themselves could easily be used for evil. The crux of the ideological conflict (warning: pretention alert!) seemed to be that one treated his powers as having been given to him by God, while the other saw his powers as making himself into a god. The latter became quite a contemporary power fantasy by the end, hunting down internet trolls, fighting the police, and being somewhat redeemed by the self-sacrifice for his few friends. The most powerful scene this season for me this season goes to the two CPR scenes (especially the second one) that really made me feel for Inuyashiki’s character. Not for everyone, but very entertaining for me.

The “I actually don’t even” award does not go to Animegataris (in spirit of the award itself): I’m told that plenty of older anime did this frequently- set up a series as being one thing, and then make a hard 90 in the final few episodes to shock the audience into watching just to see how it pans out. Recent examples include Samurai Flemenco and Mayoiga. That happens here in a sort of creepy, “you see signs but nothing goes off the rails until a few episodes later when we get a sudden save the world plot” kinda way. The twist plot is so inane in hindsight that I would recommend actually stopping after the school festival arc to preserve the best possible memory of this show. The early episodes do actually feel like they ‘get’ anime fandom, and are fun to watch as slice of life.

The “lightning won’t strike twice” award shocks Re:Creators: ‘High Concept’ is maybe a bit generous a descriptor, but I think it suits what this show tried to do. A somewhat nuanced take on an interesting idea: how would characters from fiction, if they were real, react to their world’s intelligent design that was steered by a desire to be interesting, even if that drive caused misery and mayhem for its inhabitants? A reverse Isekai, one could argue. Yes, hoops were jumped though (games and anime only, please- we have to make the meta-narrative commentary as approachable as possible to anime audiences) to restrict the scope, but the premise is strong enough to warrant the tradeoff. That’s where my ultimate problem with Re:Creators comes in. It stirred in me a desire to see this concept explored even better… possibly across more media genres. I can ignore the fluid logic of how the rules worked and the other plot contrivances during the final battle, again, due to the strength of the premise. I fear that, because the setup seemingly requires a certain amount of effort and writing chops to pull off satisfactorily, we may never get another series that explores these ideas, much less better, and that’s a shame. Another odd thing was that the writers seemed to deliberately avoid having the author characters ever deflecting the blame directed at them by their creations with the most obvious answer of ignorance. No one fathomed that the worlds they created could be real, and shouldn’t have been expected to, yet no one mentions this that I can remember; just justifications like ‘it made the story better’ that felt a bit forced in the absence of common sense in that respect. Also, I dislike whiny characters like the MC boy and was glad that his role was diminished as the story went on.

The “Train Wreck Twins” awards have been forcibly split between Evil Live and Ou Sama the Game: I usually don’t find myself watching a single anime that looks completely amateurish, much less two during the same season, but here we are… Imagine the smallest budget you could justify to put 24 frames on screen for ~22 minutes a week and then imagine that you were told to do it for half. I hope these were produced by some ‘fledgling animation industry workers’ program, because woof. The only thing that comes close to how sparsely these are animated is Saiki, but that has established gags as the central draw. Both shows share the premise of young people trying to overcome an unfair adversity, but one goes into gore/tragedy porn (that became comical in its absurdness), and the other… didn’t commit to a single idea for more than two episodes. Not recommended.

The “Shoulda finished that one” award should go to Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau: Everything here was ripe for the watching. Something just didn’t click in this curious show about the doomed nomads aboard a travelling island. The whole thing felt kind of Ghibli-ish in the loss of innocence and intrigue. The good news is that the power of the internet makes anime essentially eternal, so I can pick it back up at my leisure. Kekkai Sensen season 2 was also a contender, but that I have definite plans to binge watch.

The “This is how you make bad animation work” award was scribbled out to “Just Because”: Pine Jam is a newer studio who’s animation has yet to prove itself to me because both this and Gamers make Konosuba look high budget in comparison. In spite of this, the coming of age story here manages to not annoy me, which is about the highest praise I can heap on these kind of “Do you think she knows that I think I know that you like me too” teenybopper love shows. In, out, done. It worked and I was surprised.

“Best Character” has to go to the otaku erogame writer from Re:Creators. To immediately propose marriage to a fictional character of your own creation on first sight requires a kind of degeneracy I find infinitely amusing.

Overall, a weaker, but more consistent season, as I struggled to designate a top 3, but also questioned in any of the final picks would have made it in last season. Oh well. The never ending march of Anime continues…

**Edit: The 'snubbed by a nub' award goes to "Ballroom e Youkoso": I totally forgot about this show (because I'm an idiot), but it should have been number 1. I couldn't follow the technical aspects of the dancing at all, but the strength of the artwork, music and direction had me by the throat pretty much every single week. Thanks, future posters, for reminding me of it!