2015 was the year I put my mouth to the spigot of seasonal anime, opened the throttle and drank deep.
Rolling Girls was one of those done in one series that did what it had set out to do and didn’t need anything more. As I put it a few years ago, it’s basically a bunch of mob characters on a road trip. By now it has become a bit of a cult favourite, but I think for the longest time people didn’t know what to make of it because it didn’t fit neatly in any particular genre. The protagonists remained more bystanders than heroes and was all a bit messy. The same could be said about Junketsu no Maria, about a virgin witch wanting to end the Hundred Years War between France and England, opposed by God himself. Again, not a series you knew what to expect of going in. For another series in the same season, Yuri Kuma Arashi (“Lesbian Bear Storm”) the unexpected was the expected, directed as it was by one of the Revolutionary Girl Utena and Penguin Drum creators. I hate the first episode of it so much that it took me years to finish it, once I understood what it actually tried to do.
Koufuku Graffiti was a cute slice of moe show about a middle school girl who loves to cook, having learned to do so from her grandmother. It all sounds and looks very cozy, with her making friends through her cooking, but that’s only on the surface. In the first episode we find her living alone, her grandmother having died some time before, her parents doing “important jobs” halfway round the world not bothering with their child and she herself pretty obviously clinically depressed. It’s only through a distant cousin visiting her that she learns to rediscover the joys of cooking and eating and slowly manages to get out of her slump. The worst thing about all this is that I don’t think the series itself understood how depressed she was or how shitty her parents were. Ending theme is very cute though.
Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata on the surface seems like just another typical otaku bait show: obnoxious teenage nerd makes dating game together with a group of girls all much more talented than he, who for some inexplicable reason are all attracted to him but he’s too dense to see it. He even has a muse that inspired him to create this game … until he discovers his muse is his very ordinary classmate Megumi, who just doesn’t behave like a proper game character. All the other girls are well defined stereotypes, but she insists on being vague, undefined, difficult. Megumi is what makes the series work, deeply sarcastic, easily looking through the absurdities of otaku life and our nominal protagonist’s pretensions, but kind enough not to shatter his illusions too quickly. It’s still a celebration of otakudom, with the highlight being the clip above, but it’s smart enough to recognise its fallacies.
Noragami Aragato was the first sequel to an anime I’d seen already that I watched on a weekly basis. Liek the original, it was a good fantasy action show and it could’ve done with a second sequel. Peeping Life TV Season 1?? was a strange improv/sketch show using all kinds of classic anime characters like Astro Boy. Everybody loathed Himouto! Umaru-chan because the protagonist was a hideously entitled lazy otaku moeblob, but I liked her. She calmed down after the first couple of episodes and the friendship between her and her friends (a shy country girl, a tsundere with a scary face, a rival/princess character) was great.
Go! Princess Precure was the first Precure series I’d finished after I’d watched the original and I would still argue it was the best. Most people like Heart Catch Precure best, but I think this just is slightly better. There’s some gorgeous animation in the later episodes.
What else did I like? Kekkai Sensen was an urban fantasy/superhero show set in a twisted version of New York. Show by Rock!! saw a shy girl isekaied to a world of funny animals where she became a member of a rock group and may have found love with one of its members. Hibike! Euphonium saw KyoAni pushing the boundaries of tv anime again with its depictions of band concerts. Ore Monogatari!! was a very sweet romance anime. Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo was a romcom where the two leads swapped bodies. Shokugeki no Soma had people orgasming after eating good food. Death Parade was a good, quirky fantasy series but its first episode initially put me off with its nihilism. Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka had the busty god Hestia to recommend itself.
The Statistics: 179 series registrered in my library, 119 watched. Autumn 2015 was the first season I watched week by week, though there were two series from the Summer season I’d also watched week by week: Wakakozake, about an office lady having a nice meal after work and Monster Musume, about a hapless nerd having to take care of an ever increasing menagerie of monster girls. The first was cute, the second horny without being creepy. the best series I watched in Autumn was One-Punch Man, the first anime I saw that made me buy the original manga. Other than that I followed no less than four different Magic School Battle Harem series (Asterix Wars, Rakudai Kishi No Cavalry, Lance N` Masques, Taimadou Gakuen 35 Shiken Shoutai, a tiddy show (Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid) and even some acvtual good shows (Concrete Revolutio, Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru.
This is day seven of Twelve Days of Anime 2019. Tomorrow: 2016: motto motto anime.
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