Anime Reports (Winter 2018)

Hello and welcome to my little series I'd like to call "Anime Reports". This isn't about anime news but rather about the anime that I've watched in one seasonal anime and whether or not you should check them or not. Since I'm new to this seasonal anime thing I wanna step forward and experimenting with my new love for anime and so this was born to give you guys my first impression to what anime I watch this season. Now this season seems to be average out to be decent overall with some duds that yes we will get to but overall between Netflix giving us actual great anime, Amazon shutting down Anime Strikes and countless of sequels makes this season kinda great. Now I should address that I haven't seen all anime this season because there's so much anime that either doesn't interested me or are sequels from older series like Overlord, The Seven Deadly Sins and yeah Cardcaptor Sakura as well. But I think I have great amount of anime I can talk about and whether I wanna watch it again or dropped it by episode 2 so let's get started with the crap

Toji no Miko

 

This is just Kancolle with sword like the exact copy, you got the school full of women trained to be samurai and already there's TOURNAMENT ARC! in the first goddamn episode which is still more cohesive than the episode itself, the editing here is a mess, a lot of animation errors and the fact that the first 5 minutes is started out as a monster slaying anime and then slice of life after is insulting. even the CG here is not good. the only good thing about this is that it's original material and normally I would support that but shit like this is why anime studios adapted a lot of light novel because of how messy and directionless this anime is. Skip this.

Slow Start

Every season A-1 Pictures, the studio that made Your Lie In April, Erased and a bunch of anime has tend to just throw stuff into any season and hope that it will sticks to some people. This one isn't stuck to the wall but I found this anime very underrated. Yeah there's some problems with the anime, cliche characters with not that good of a soundtrack, The animation is bog standard even for 4-koma manga adaptation, Kiniro Mosaic these guys are not, and the pacing is generic like nothing new about this anime that will make me jumped out my seat. But oddly that's why this anime worked in a way, the tone are relaxed with great humor and while they're cliche, they were likable and Hana is maybe my favorite one out of the bunch. Look this anime is very light-weight and probably will get a bad rating on MAL but as what it is, it worked well so I'll gonna continue watching this.

Mitsuboshi Colors

Three little kids being a brat but they're just too damn likable that I wanna see them prosper. The animation is standard but I do love that they have some thin outline. Also this has one of the best line ever in anime this year so check this out if you wanna watch some lolis going around planning to destroy the whole world for the greater good.....wait

Pop Team Epic

I...lost for words on how to describe this anime to be honest. Imagine if MAD from Cartoon Network but for anime but still that doesn't really convey the whole show. structure wise is 13 minutes episodes but played twice with some changes in the second half with change of voice actors from female or male to the opposite genders. and the references with 4th wall breaks made this really enjoyable to watch...

except I don't really care about the characters. Let's took an examples of Deadpool, he's one of the icon of mocking superhero characters and 4th wall breaks but everyone forgot how likable his character is with his charm and all amounts of charisma. Here yeah the joke is good but with these two main characters being an asshole with everyone without some self-aware whatsoever, this anime felt like nothing but MAD styled sketches. I don't know maybe if I read the manga I will enjoy it more but the anime itself doesn't make me wanna read it, definitely good but it could've been a lot better.

Karakai Jouzo no Takagi-san

Before I wanna talk about this anime I wanna introduce you to one of the main voice actress that voiced Takagi-san, her name is Takahashi Rie. and I love her so much to the point of stanning her. Her voice is a perfect balance of sweet and light-hearted with some somber mood mixed in and she can adapt to any characters pretty well. You may known her work as the voice of Megumin, a devil crimson witch who's childish on Konosuba or one of the biggest characters of 2016, Emilia from Re:Zero. yeah she's great and this is one of the example why. 

Her performance as a big teaser is fantastic and it does fits her pretty well as does as the main character Nishikata, the jokes are solid and the animation is pretty decent even though the characters do have wide forehead which spawned countless of memes with this and Jacksfilms but I don't care because this is pretty solid anime.

Citrus

You know I actually have read the manga before the anime and I highly recommended it. It's more than you typical Shoujo Ai manga out there because these girls are real genuine characters full of hardship, complicated feelings towards something new, and most of all failures. I've never been so invested in any Manga before but this really gets there. And I'll say that this adaptation is worked really well with great animation blending 2D with CG pretty well, the voice work is top notch and it does captures the manga tone pretty well, yeah maybe a tad too real especially some rauncier scene but hey good adaptation is a good adaptation so I welcomed this.

Darling In the Franxx

I'll be blunt I've never been interested in Mecha anime, sure the genre is really well respected and it does spawned a lot of cult classics but I don't know maybe it's because I've never been interested in the robotic aspects of the genre or for the most part it felt too contrives or the fact that it never do anything interesting with the genre makes me tune out the genre as a whole. Thankfully this season was the turning point for me and yeah I do love this show. the collaboration between A-1 and Trigger studios that should've been a huge pile of boring pretentious garbage turned into interesting dichotomy between human and the robots because the mechanic of the mecha it's weird indeed, you see most mecha had just one person piloting it maybe two for backup but here the activation of this mech is through butt sex. Yep this is the reason why it worked so well because no one hasn't seen this thing before piloting mecha through sex it's very ingenious and my god does the animation here is fantastic. Mixing Trigger fluids animation with the more polished part of A-1 really well. The characters are unique and the stories while leaving a bit vague, still intriguing nonetheless. If I had one gripe to this anime is that I didn't care about Zero-Two motive and some fanservice stuff here is beyond ridiculous. But still when I waiting for mecha series aired on Crunchyroll everyday, something is going right here.

Violet Evergarden

This is the most hype anime if you discount the sequels. This anime has been showed at every conventions ever since the announcement in 2016 and later getting picked up by Netflix for mass distributions and so on until we got here. And the hype is well earned because this is fantastic. KyoAni has been my favorite anime studio and whatever they did you'll guarantee to get beautiful animation, settings and great looking character. But here it's even more cranked up with the beautiful 1920's England or some European country scenery, the best cinematography KyoAni has ever done and the direction they taking is well put together that I thought I was watching a war period pieces, like live action. Speaking of war this anime is about the post war and how people cope after the war and it's rare that any medium, not just anime that talked about the post war situation. Most war movies only focuses on the war itself that it get kinda boring after a while. But here it's refreshing because yeah the war is the money shots and everything like that but what happened to the people after the war is ended and this anime is portraying this situation really well with our main characters Violet want to find the meaning of some words that his general said in the war and I think with episodes to come we will get that answer so definitely keeping up with this anime.

And yet this isn't my favorite anime of the season, that goes to...

Laid Back Camp

In the end I gotta gives this to Laid Back Camp or Yuru Camp you people referred it (even though I love the English title). I don't even know how to begin with this anime it is so damn good. Well if there's something that I love about anime is that it influence me to do something in life and if that happened then it must be something specials and this one is no difference. Legit I wanna just camping alone and absorbing the environment especially in Indonesia where we got abundance of beautiful natural places. Another thing I love about this anime is it's atmosphere, relaxing and it captures the lust forest and lake pretty well especially with some of the scenery of this anime. Also the characters are likable and I think Rin is the best girl of 2018 so far this character is perfect. Also I'm glad that someone remember The Jackson 5 because the OP of this show really reminded me of I Want You Back and that's the perfect way my feelings towards this anime, I want it back indeed for my coping mechanism for a really bad day and that's why it is higher than Violet Evergarden for me at least. 

So that's anime reports for this season and what I'm watching this season, also I wanna mentioned Cardcaptor Sakura Hen for basically spoiling all the first season of the anime and Devilman Crybaby which would've been here if it wasn't that I've saw the last episode by accident.

and for added bonus, here's what I've saw in this season beside the seasonal anime

Amagi Brilliant Park

My Hero Academia

Gabriel Dropout

Houseki no Kuni

Made In Abyss

Shimoneta

A Silent Voice

Nichijou

Nekopara OVA

Well that's it for this season and don't worry my "regular" Billboard ranking is coming soon, See ya maybe at the Chinese new year?