Final Thoughts – AFTERLOST

I’m sorry, Madhouse made this? This trainwreck of the medium?

Backing up a bit, AFTERLOST is based on what is apparently a very popular mobile game, which I would not have guessed based on this premiere, and I’ll give it credit for that…but that’s about it. I learned my lesson last year from ReRideD, and I’m not gonna give the next sci-fi thriller a shot just because of my own optimism, particularly when this looks several orders of magnitude worse.

AFTERLOST is attempting to tell the story about a universe where a city has up and vanished along with several hundred people, leaving just a crater in its place, but apparently life around the crater goes on as usual. The plot – a girl is rescued from her government captivity by a man who has taken on the job of escorting her into ground zero, where her father, who was supposed to have died in the LOST event, is apparently waiting – makes no sense whatsoever. If anything, it sounds like a really unimaginative take on Made in Abyss, except with none of the worldbuilding or atmosphere or effort.

Seriously, I’m shocked that Madhouse could make something that looked this awful, and the sheer gall of airing it in the same season as One Punch Man’s long-awaited followup (a project the studio was originally working on) is just…This studio’s got some nerve.

Premiere Impressions – Midnight occult civil servants (sic)

I mean, the thing it reminds me of the most is The Morose Mononokean, and I was just saying that I wanted more out of that, so…

For real, I genuinely enjoyed this premiere – it’s like Mononokean meets Psycho-Pass, albeit not with the same ambitious production afforded by a class-A studio like Production I.G.. LIDENFILMS certainly gave it a shot, though, with this premiere filled with crowd shots of angels and tengu swarming around Shinjuku, and what they have to offer works for the premise, which seems pretty clearly to be a fairly personal chosen one-type story.

As for said story, this is the tale of a government agency tasked with keeping supernatural creatures from disturbing the peace while they’re active in the night hours – hence the title – and that idea certainly can give way to a decent episodic show that builds our understanding of the world week by week, and so far, Midnight occult civil servants has decent enough character frameworks in place to keep me invested for such a show.

Premiere Impressions – Kono Oto Tomare!: Sounds of Life

Club shows are really starting to reach for ideas, but at least they’re getting more nuanced at the same time?

If not for the prominently-placed girl on the poster, I’d think that Sounds of Life was preparing to give us a queer-subtext baitfest for the ages, but evidently the fact that the first two introduced club characters (who do have a pretty solid romance-novel setup) are male isn’t as telling as it usually is. That being said, I do like the angle of the delinquent character being the descendant of a master, and the fact that he is not the prodigy mentioned in the summary (that’s the nerdy uke boy who runs the club) is already pretty interesting.

I’m totally willing to give this one a shot, but I will say that the pacing of this premiere was kind of odd in a different way from Mix – it sort of blazed by and felt like a ton was happening, so we’ll have to see how that holds up in future.

Final Thoughts – We Never Learn

Yeah, I’m sorry, this just isn’t my kind of show.

Which should be pretty obvious – harem shows are not designed to have any appeal for guys who aren’t into women – and I’ve certainly seen worse setups than this, but it’s so obvious where things are headed here that I just can’t get especially invested.

I did like some of the characters, but our hero is just not at all interesting – he’s a very Standard Milquetoast Harem Protagonist, whose one character trait is that he’s smart. Combined with the also very standard girls he’s met in this premiere, this is not a formula for any success outside the target demographic of horny thirteen-year-olds, and the production doesn’t really help – everything is bathed in so many color gradients that it’s more distracting than pleasing to the eye, and the most impressive animation involved is the expected Gainaxing.

So, yeah, pass.

Premiere Impressions – MIX

What a weird, weird show.

I’m pretty impressed by Funimation’s guts, given how badly they’ve been burned before, to license a baseball show, but I don’t know that this is going to be the comeback hit they’re clearly looking for. For one thing, it’s a distant sequel to a show from the eighties (and boy does it act like it), and for another…It’s a weird, weird show. Despite being a current publication, if you’d told me the source manga was from the early nineties, I would have said “yes, sounds legit.” It’s got the weirdest pacing I’ve ever seen, where every moment has just a little too long to land and the jokes aren’t particularly funny.

I will say that the production looks good – I’m rather impressed that OLM has the resources to do this while still making Pokemon, because the animation is as fluid as expected from their efforts on Sun and Moon. That being said, the show in general has a rather plain and boring aesthetic, so the lack of detail helps the animation department pretty handily.

All in all, I’m willing to give this another two episodes and see if I can wrap my head around it.

Premiere Impressions – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

ufotable hasn’t made a television anime in two years, and if that was enough time to make something as lavish and awesome as this premiere, I judge the wait to have been worth it.

Demon Slayer is one of the most anticipated shows of the season – the manga was licensed in the U.S. last year and has been flying off the shelves – and the fact that ufotable, which hasn’t made a show since 2017′s Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu because the Heaven’s Feel films have been keeping them busy, was the studio to take it on only fueled the fire. I was floored pretty immediately, because, well…

This is exactly what I wanted from Golden Kamuy. I wanted a show that treated itself with the seriousness of its gruesome premise and leaned into heavy fantasy melodrama while subverting my expectations. I’ve seen plenty of setups that start this same way – oh, the hero’s sister is his only family left but now he has to kill her despite his hope that there’s a cure for her Zombie-Ish Disease – but I’ve never seen one where the protagonist has to follow through on his intentions rather than murdering her for the sake of becoming a grizzled hero. This idea is impressive in its sheer novelty, being essentially a show about the origin of Michonne from The Walking Dead, and I’m pretty instantly excited for what Demon Slayer is going to do from here.

Oh, and a soundtrack from Yuki Kajiura isn’t going to hurt things, either.

Premiere Impressions – Fruits Basket (2019)

Having recently rewatched a few episodes of the original with some friends, it’s crazy how improved this retelling of the story is in just one episode.

Granted, you have to make some concessions to the original series – the manga wasn’t finished yet, anime was just getting on board with using computers for production, and the relatively average popularity of the property meant that the adaptation went to Studio Deen rather than somewhere it would have gotten more love.

But the entire project has just aged so badly at this point that simply starting over was the right call, and I even fully support bringing back the majority of the voice cast now that they’ve had two decades of additional experience to give a little more nuance to the performances, in addition to recasting a few problematic original choices (looking at you, Kimberly Grant).

This update looks phenomenal (the production finally matches the heavy popularity this property has attained even at this point), and the only thing I really need from it is not to do what Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood did and speed through the material already covered by the previous adaptation, and just hope that the audience still has emotional attachment to the original show not to notice that the pacing blows.

I’m expecting this to be a Long Show, so it’s gonna go on that list for now. It’s not been confirmed yet but the original was two cours, so I’m expecting at least that if it intends to cover the entire manga.

Final Thoughts – Mob Psycho 100 II

Now here’s a good sequel.

In fact, in light of the instant backlash to the upcoming sequel to its sister show, this second season of Mob Psycho kind of displays just why people are so upset about the fall of One Punch Man – here’s a long-awaited followup that improves on the already-good first season in almost every way, and more immediately, it looks marvelous. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to predict that Mob Psycho 100 is going to be the best-looking show of the year, and I doubt many are going to fight me on it.

Which is why it’s even more amazing that it’s such a crazy-deep show that matches in meaning what it’s got in looks. The story behind Mob has so many layers that it’s no wonder the internet has come to love even con master Reigen so much – we know so much about his character that his blatant lies are more endearing than anything else – these characters are so fleshed-out that the defining trait of Shigeo’s foes is their humanity. Mob Psycho is effectively a show about Clark Kent trying to save the world without his powers, knowing that being the strongest man in the world isn’t fulfilling if nobody likes you.

Look, I don’t have a lot of deeper analysis here because this show does a brilliant job of telling you everything it wants to say, much like its protagonist. Frankly, in a season as ‘meh’ as this one, Mob is the hero we truly need.

10/10.

Final Thoughts – Kaguya-sama: Love is War

The best romantic comedy since Gamers.

You’ve heard people raving about Love is War all season, for very good reason. The cast are great, the jokes are hysterical, and the premise is comedic gold. The production is also excellent, easily one of A-1′s most creatively-made projects (interestingly, romantic comedies seem to be treated well by the producers), so I’m pleased to say how many comedic extra details from the manga are carried over into this adaptation.

The one thing I can’t quite get over is the fact that the premise hinges on there being no actual progress of any kind in the story – the two of them already know they like the other, but the moment they begin a relationship, the entire concept of the show goes out the window. In a world where this is likely the end of the adaptation, it would have been nice to get some closure, rather than just an assurance that the hijinks continue from here, but I also know how weirdly toxic people are about anime-original endings, so…Shrug.

Nevertheless, it’s easily funny enough to get past the fact that not much happens, and the final episode contains one of the most heart-wrenching romantic displays I’ve ever seen in anime, so…It’s great, I’d say go watch it, but you almost certainly already have.

8/10!

Final Thoughts – The Morose Mononokean II

A good followup to a good show from which I was hoping for a little more.

The Morose Mononokean is not a particularly ambitious show, but one that has solid execution of good ideas. I wanted a little more than we ended up getting out of this second season. Like ClassicaLoid’s second season, it does a better job of spreading its plot out rather than dumping it all at the end, but it loses a little of the charm it built up in the first season.

I do, however, want to specifically mention the ending theme, because it’s a great idea paired with a great song that I didn’t skip a single time. Set to the very bubbly “1%” by Wolpis Kater is a series of images taken with the effect of a 360-degree camera, of the cast enjoying a day off. It’s an idea that I don’t think I’ve seen executed this well in drawn form before, and it’s simple, but it works, much like the show it’s attached to. It’s hardly, like, “Kakatte Koi Yo” amazing, but it’s a cute little idea for the low budget the series is working with.

Oh, and a funny note – on MyAnimeList, this second season is the second highest-rated production in the history of Pierrot Plus, which speaks less to the quality of Mononokean, and more to the historic fall from grace of the Tokyo Ghoul adaptation project, since Pierrot Plus handled both seasons of Re. I’m just saying, it’s funny, I don’t have a lot to talk about here.

7/10.