Here’s the list of series I’m planning to watch weekly this season, in order of how much I enjoyed the first episode. Last time I said I would watch sixteen series and I’ve also managed to finish sixteen series before the season ended; not all of the series I’d originally planned to watch though. This time it’s only thirteen series, but like last time, it’s quite likely I won’t finish them all before the next season and I may pick up some more as well.
Kuro no Shoukanshi
Kevlin has reincarnated into a fantasy world, but Kelvin bartered the memories of his past life for power, so now he’s a summoner whose first contract is the very goddess of reincarnation that gave him his second chance at life. So far the most straightforward of the half dozen isekai anime this season, with the first episode tackling everybody’s favourite subject, the Adventurers Guild and its ranking system, after which he captures a blue slime. Also, a hint of slavery at the end of the episode, so be warned. Animation and character design is a level above your average isekai series.
Overlord IV
It’s the fourth season of Overlord and it starts right where season three ended. The gimmick of Overlord has the protagonist reincarnated as his villain character, a skeleton ghoul magician, with an army of non player characters created by him and his guild friends in the game who want him to conquer the world. The first two seasons only flirted with the idea of him becoming the Big Bad, but in season three he really settled into his role as villain. The series wants you to both sympathise with him and be revolted by his actions, but I found season three hard to rewatch because of this. Nevertheless I will probably watch this week by week, but it’s not recommended if you’re new to the series. Animation quality and character design is top notch as always.
Kinsou no Vermeil
Alto is a top student at his magical academy, but for one handicap. For some reason he’s a complete failure at summoning a familiar and can’t even summon a simple beetle. When he’s desperately searching through the academy’s library again, fate intervenes as a book on summoning falls on his head. Having nothing to lose he tries to summon whatever it is that the book is about and ends up with a big titted, naked demon lady. Some guys have all the luck. Naturally he also has a slightly smaller big titted childhood friend who takes offence at his new familiar. Personally, I like her character design better; there’s such a thing as too much booba. None of this is very innovative, but it has its charms and the animation is a lot better than you’d expect for a series like this. You’d probably best enjoy it if you too are a fourteen year old boy wanting a demon lady of his very own, but the thirstiness was tastful enough that it didn’t bother me. There’s a lot of nudity but all the naughty bits are covered by usefully positioned tails and the like, rather than crass censorship beams. Alto is a bit of a dweeb, as is traditional in this sort of series,
Warau Arsnotoria Sun!
Twenty minutes of five adorable girls going through their daily lives at magical academia, the high light of which is a tra party in which one of them struggles to open a jar, followed by two minutes of what can only be described as a pogrom. A cutesy setting hiding existential terror is not a new idea, but It will be interesting to see how it all works out. The animation and character design for both sides are excellent. The pogrom is all blacks and angry reds, fires burning everywhere as faceless, hooded knights hunt down and slaughter defenceless civilians. Meanwhile the frist twenty minutes set in the academia are done classic slice of moe style. Lots of pastel colours, cutesy character designs and lovely character animation. The slow sinking of one girl in the cushions of the couch she’s lying on and another girl’s struggle to open that jar being highlights. That this series isn’t higher up is because I did feel myself drifting off during those first twenty minutes which cannot be the intention.
Prima Doll
A girl wakes up in the basement of a cafe, gets told she’s an Automata who lost her memories during a repair, then makes a friend in a young girl hanging around aside the cafe, who is still looking for her own long lost Automata friend. She’s reunited during the episode, but sadly the reunion cannot last… To be honest this plot felt very manipulative to me. It all happened too quickly, before we could actually get to know the characters involved all that well. Meanwhile most of the rest of the cast only got an introduction scene and that was it. The idea that you can rehabilitate war machines like the Automata through performative femininity — the cute girl ones serving as waitresses, the more obviously machine like ones kept in the kitchen — is a bit dodgy as well. On a technical level this is a fairly accomplished anime with good animation and character design, but the story seems to be a string of cliches so far.
Soredemo Ayumu wa Yosetekuru
If you liked Karakai Jōzu no Takagi-san, you’ll probably love this. It’s almost the same setup, but this time it’s the high school boy who teases (mostly unintentionally) the girl he has a crush on and for which he joined the shogi club which she is the only member of. Ayumi you see is very straight forward so keeps telling his senpai Yaotome that she’s cute which tends to fluster her, while her attempts to do the same to him usually backfire. He doesn’t want her to know he has a crush on her because he vowed to defeat her in shogi first, but since he’s so painfully obvious, she tries to trick him into confessing first. Her attempts never quite succeed of course and mostly leave her a blushing mess, but they sometimes come closer than she suspects. Great fun and Yaotome has some lovely embarrassed faces, but this first episode was a bit monotonous. The ending promises more cast members, so that will hopefully liven things up a bit.
Kami Kuzu Idol
I normally don’t like using the English titles of anime, but Phantom of the Idol fits the series even better than the original Japanese one (literally Goddess Trash Idol). Yuuga is an idol, but a not very motivated one, just doing the bare minimum, riding on his partner’s coattails. Their manager is fed up with him and threatens to fire him. No he may actually do the work, something he’s not looking forward to. Mogami on the other hand is somebody who loves being and all the work that comes with it, but who has the slight handicap of being dead. When it turns out she can possess Yuuga, they have a solution for both their problems. To be honest, the episode took ages to get to this conclusion and the actual performance and animation thereof was meh, but this has some potential. You have to swallow the idea that somebody like Yuuga could actually even be an idol in the first place, but if you can this seems like a decent little series. I liked the post-credits scene with Yuuga’s three fangirls discussing the change in his performance and concluding it was a mass hallucination. Bonus points for having all songs in this subtitled already.
Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life
Finally an isekai series that understands you can start in media res and don’t have to explain every little thing about your setting and how your protagonist got there in excruciating detail in the first episode. The hero this time is once again somebody who died of overwork, as hinted at through several flashbacks to his past life. These flashbacks are done in a completely different style from the rest of the show, which is a nice way to show the differences between his lives. As we meet him he’s already overpowered and able to summon various classic D&D monsters like slimes, wolves and dryads. Besides that he also has overwhelming magical powers and skills and he uses them as if they’re computer programmes. That doesn’t make for the most satisfying action scenes but then the real charm of the series isn’t him anyway, it’s the slimes he tamed. Probably the best isekai series this season.
Extreme Hearts
Until I started watching this I didn’t realise how much I’ve missed those Seven Arcs Nanoha character designs, as this series was created by much of the same staff. Set sometime in the future, where there not just sports, but hyper sports! Hiyori is a struggling singer song writer who’s dropped from her contract and her ex-manager suggests she joins the hyper sport tournament for idol groups to make a name for herself instead of, you know, doing actual gigs or setting up a Youtube channel or whatever. Being the persistent, hard working girl she is, she starts training with the help of her one fan and said fan’s childhood friend to join the tournament. But since she’s on her own, with her team mates being “AI players”, she’s losing her first match badly, until… As you might’ve guessed, I really liked the immediately recognisable but somewhat updated character designs. The animation is good too, especially in the sports scenes. Plot and setting is a bit eh, but I’m sure it’ll improve after this first episode, which was mostly setup. Also, it’s extremely gay.
Shine Post
TiNgS can only get better: a 3 girl idol group is told that they will be split up if they don’t completely fill the theatre booked for the first year anniversary. Luckily their producer has a secret weapon for them: a manager burned out by the industry who has the ability to see if people are lying because they ‘shine’ when they do. The idols are respectively a blonde, twin tailed tsundere who calls herself Rio-sama, Kyōka, a dead pan brunette who consistently attempts to ‘prank’ her friends and audience and Haru, the earnest hard working girl who may have the most potential of the three. The manager is reluctant to get involved so most of the first episode is the three girls trying to persuade him. All a bit messy, but there’s a lot of potential here. Nice to see a straight forward idol series with good production qualities.
Chimimo
The three sistes Mutsumi, Hazuki, and Mei live a comfy live together when one day an undefined fluffy puffball shows up at their home. The youngest, Mei immediately wants to keep it but the other two are wary, but agree to do so until its owner can be found. More and more show up untill there are twelve of them. Who promptly summon their demon lord to turn Earth into a new Hell. It doesn’t quite work out that way and he ends up living with them after he got a bath and a proper shave. A cozy slice of moe comedy series made special by the animation style and character design, very different from your average anime. Perfect show to relax to.
Lycoris Recoil
Heavily armed School girls need to keep the peace in Japan by murdering anybody threatening it. Yes, this is egregious fascist nonsense, but the two protagonists are cute so I’ll allow it. A classic cop buddy story. You got one girl who’s extremely stoic and duty bound who gets in trouble for he inflexible attitude, who has to team up with a seeming airhead who hides her extreme competence behind her goofy demeanor. She’s also skeptical about that whole murder everybody who’s a threat and instead uses non-lethal means to subdue their opponents. Their different attitudes to their jobs is demonstrated by the former willing to let somebody be kidnapped to lure out the criminals stalking her and the latter bandaging up these criminals after she shot them with non-lethal bullets. There’s also a cool older Black mentor and other action movie stereotypes as supporting characters. The animation is very well done, especially in the action sequences and it’s all a pleasure to watch.
Luminous Witches
If you know Strike Witches you know it’s about aliens invading Earth in 1939 and the only ones being able to stop them being teenage witches named after WWII fighter aces. Luminous Witches is a spinoff series in which the witches instead of being named after an Adolf Galland or Chuck Yeager are named after Vera Lynn. That’s right, these are the witches that don’t fight at the frontline but are there to entertain the troops. Which seems to have drastically lowered the pants allergy of the main characters, mostly dressed in civvies. The other novelty this spinoff brings is that the Witches here all have mascot animals. The first episode was a bit messy, with what I presume will be the main three viewpoint characters meeting up in London, inter-spaced with short scenes of their assumed squadron mates to be. It all looks to be more of an idol than an action series and I’m all here for it. No real knowledge of the previous Strike Witches series is required. The one disappointing thing about this was that the insert song, Amazing Grace, wasn’t subtitled…
