Quick Final Thoughts – Atom: The Beginning

This show was scattered in parts, but I definitely really enjoyed it.
The first few episodes sort of danced around the edges of the plot, but once the tournament arc hit, the storytelling turned up a notch and we ended up with a pretty interesting study in the possibility of A.I. in an idealistic sense. It takes a lot of work to make a character without human features work as well as A106 does, and I found him to be very compelling, despite the mixed messages of the final episode. That being said, I don’t think we’re going to get a second season of this so I would have appreciated a more conclusive ending (since they changed a lot for the adaptation, I feel like we could have gotten a better or at least clearer ending.) That being said, it’s still very loving towards the legacy of Osamu Tezuka himself, and given that this has his estate’s seal of approval, I think that should tell you that it’s worth your time.

7/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Tsuki Ga Kirei

Sometimes miracles come from unexpected places, like Studio feel..

Easily one of the most believable romances I’ve ever seen, especially considering that the characters involved are in middle school, not to mention one where I was in tears for pretty much the entire last episode, for the best reasons.

Absolutely gonna review this one fully.

Quick Final Thoughts – Grimoire of Zero

I sort of feel the same here as I did for Alice & Zoroku, but Grimoire at least engrossed me a lot more. I was much more invested here, but the plot of this one leaves something to be desired.

I’ll be explaining my scoring scale when I make my seasonal scorecard, which won’t happen until Atom the Beginning is over, but to explain that in brief here, most of my area of expertise is in plot, so that’s where the majority of a show comes in. If things like music, character design, production value etc. are good enough for me to actually notice, I take that into account. I really enjoyed Grimoire of Zero, which places it above a 5, but not as much as Re:Zero (which I mention specifically because White Fox was also responsible for that) because Grimoire simply doesn’t have as much going on under the surface, so it has to be less than the 8 I gave Re:Zero. I also already said I liked it better than Alice & Zoroku, so it should then be better than the 6 I gave to that show.

So, my opinion on the actual show itself? The character dynamics and designs are very nice, and I like how much more effort went into the petting zoo people than was in SukaSuka, but by the end the plot becomes totally ridiculous and the twists become very predictable. I feel like just saying that muddies my own opinion though, when my instinct is to give it a 7.

So, 7/10. Definitely recommended, despite my own confusion, to anyone looking for a nice classic action fantasy without modern genre hangups. No alternate worlds, no harem nonsense, no RPG levels. If it continues, I’ll certainly keep watching.

Quick Final Thoughts – WorldEnd/SukaSuka

Not even slightly what I expected going into it. I want to write a full review of this show that wasn’t even really on my radar originally, but that’s probably a while away from actually showing up and I want to give this the attention it deserves.

Easily one of the best light novel adaptations I’ve ever seen, and that’s important. It takes a lot to stand out in that crowd, and be something besides what people expect you to be, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a viable action/romance that didn’t devolve into complete garbage. SukaSuka throws a lot of balls into the air really early, and manages to catch every single one of them, and most importantly, it actually ENDS. If we never get a sequel, that’s perfectly alright, because we’re provided with a great conclusion.

I want to say a lot more, but it’s going to take time to collect my thoughts on this one.

9/10, pending further self reflection.

Quick Final Thoughts – Yowamushi Pedal New Generation

I’ll probably eventually give the first season a full review, and my intro is probably going to sound similar to this. Sports anime can be pretty well divided by whether it’s grounded in reality (Baby Steps, Big Windup) or shounen fantasy (Haikyu, Kuroko no Basuke). I’ve greatly enjoyed both, but whether you’ll be able to enjoy the latter category is very dependent on your ability to buy into how incredibly serious the story and its characters are about high school sports.

And Yowamushi is among the damn best.

The ultimate goal of a shounen series (apart from potentially running until hell freezes over) is to present a strong good versus evil story with a protagonist you can root for, and I’ve said before that I’ve never rooted for any anime character the way I do for Onoda Sakamichi. But the thing about Yowamushi is that is really deftly passes that role around to whomever the episode is focusing on. This show has always been great at developing its main cast in such a way that really they’re all protagonists, and Onoda just happens to be the main lead. While he didn’t get a ton of great moments this season due to the introduction of new characters, those newbies were developed and fleshed out beautifully, and even the designated side characters from the first two seasons get a lot of excellent moments of meta character redemption (my biggest highlight goes to Sugimoto participating in the welcome race). And while this show is famous for its drawn-out races, that’s totally fine with the way a lot of people will end up consuming it – binging this show improves its pacing considerably.

8/10. I won’t place it up for Show of the Season because it didn’t present a conclusion of any kind, and in fact the second half of the final episode is mostly setup for the next season, but I can’t wait to come back to these guys.

Quick Final Thoughts – Alice & Zoroku

MAL defines a rating of 6/10 as “Fine”, and that’s the best description I can think of for this show. There wasn’t anything I really disliked about it, and I was never bored, but it also never grabbed me the way I wanted it to. I strongly feel that it would have benefited from a second cour and if it does continue, I will probably keep watching, but what we got was just…Fine.

The director was also responsible for Lostorage Incited WIXOSS (which I also gave a 6) and Flying Witch (8), so I was hoping that we’d get something tonally between the two, and I suppose it did work out that way, but this is the kind of show where I could see decent slice of life episodes breaking up the major story arcs in a 26-episode run, something like three arcs of six episodes broken up by several lighter stories in between.

The show also added more characters in the first arc than were really necessary, as we don’t even see one of the superpowered children for the entire second half of the show and the twins become largely irrelevant next to the main additions for the latter half. It would have been really nice to see everyone develop and then get one last story arc where everyone is involved.

I really don’t know what else to say about the show. I enjoyed it, I just wish there were more to like about it.

6/10