Final Thoughts for Summer 2015

Man oh man, 2016 better be better than this.

2015 so far has been a mess of forgettable and poorly produced shows, with myself and Joe getting the brunt of it. ISUCA is already on my worst anime ever seen list in the top ten, while Joe has just been shafted all season. Summer may have been the weakest point so far, with the disasters being truly disastrous. Spring and Winter were on the weak side, but not nearly this bad. Fall's looking even worse, with buzzings of light novel adaptations that take place in magical schools, hard sci-fi with otaku sexual fantasy wank, and a general lack of high profile shows besides the obviously going to be amazing One Punch Man.

But still, the good stuff was damn good this season regardless. I mean, we got Prison School, Ranpo Kitan, Ushio and Tora, School Live, Classroom Crisis, and a show from Key that was apparently good (though I don't believe their lies for a second). The problem is a lack of in-between stuff, with a lot of shows we were incredibly mixed on (besides Prison School, because there's no way we wouldn't be mixed on that). Some of the more promising releases suffered production problems or never really came together the way they should have, making this season more of a slog for a lot of us.

Speaking for myself, I still have twelve episodes to watch as I write this introduction (which I'll hopefully be done with before this goes up), not to mention the continuing cours and seasons I'm watching on my own time. It was hard to get enthusiastic after awhile, but the best was still damn good, and the worst was thankfully almost entirely pushed on Joe.

Sorry Joe. But don't feel sorry for him next season, he volunteered for the crap he's going to watch, just as I did with ISUCA. It's like poetry.

Now, let's put this Summer in lock up for being a filthy perverted degenerate, starting with the crap none of us could be bothered to finish. And Aoharu X Machinegun. I finished that. Maybe someone finished GANGSTA? I don't know. Shame that was the show that killed Manglobe. But that's life for ya. You take the good, you take the bad, and there you have ...our dropped shows.

Don't worry, I've already slapped myself for that one. Dropped shows!


Dropped Shows

Aoharu X Machinegun
David O'Neil

Aoharu x Machinegun wasn't all bad. It had a great OP, some neat action scenes, and even some fun characters. At times I did find myself quite enjoying it, and at some point I may even consider finishing it. But as a show to watch weekly, it just didn't draw me in enough, nor sell me on its tone or story enough to keep me coming back. Although the show sometimes sported a more fun, tongue in cheek tone, at other moments it seemed to take itself far too seriously. Rival characters stared each other down with piercing blood-lust, trying to make everything seem as deadly serious as possible, in a show where the biggest threat was getting hit by plastic pellets. In addition, the show moved too slowly for a series which didn't have characters or story strong enough to carry a more slow-build plot. I just started to get bored, wishing they'd move things along quicker to get to the interesting stuff. And it didn't help that the show was one of the less visually impressive recent series to come from Brains Base, which, despite some dynamic action, featured some very stiff, lifeless animation. The show wasn't all bad, but had too many issues and didn't give me enough to motivate me to continue it. Four Episodes: 5/10

Bikini Warriors
David O'Neil

I'm going to be upfront: I don't even want to write about this show again. I already had to write about it two more times than I would ever possibly want to. I barely even remember it. I tried my best to burn it out of my memory. I remember a dog licked a girl's naughty bits. There were some tentacles. They were tied up once. I was very unhappy all the time. They wore bikinis. I remember that part. It's in the title. Bikini Warriors. I mean, at least they were upfront too. Even if they were upfront about producing a series of five minute shorts that were utter garbage in nearly every way. So yeah, I think that's about all I have to say. Bikini Warriors: Shamelessly upfront, utter garbage in nearly every way. Don't watch it. Really, it's not even worth it. Four Episodes: 1/10

Danchigai
Stephanie Getchell

Out of all the shorts that I've seen in recent years, this one is one of the stronger ones. This is really because of the more episodic nature rather than the attempt at plot that shorts like Pupa and Rainy Cocoa have tried to do in the past. While the series is a breath of fresh air, it's also a rather simple slice of life show that eventually became extremely difficult to talk about from week to week. It's always simple in premise and characters with the situations and stories we see being rather cliched, every day life kind of scenarios we've seen numerous times. Because it wasn't trying anything new or different, that's what made talking about it difficult and causing me to drop it after six episodes. This is one I plan on returning to some time in the future for a quick little marathon since it was that little bit of fresh air among the rather crowded and slightly lackluster summer season we've had. Six Episodes: 6/10

GATE
Jonathan Kaharl

I cannot begin to describe the sheer hatred I have for this piece of imperialistic propaganda. This right wing wank fantasy is right up there with Mahouka on my shit list and represents everything wrong with Japanese politics. This dumbass fantasy meets the real world epic is episodes upon episodes of might makes right, but ONLY if you're the Japanese because their military is righteous and blah blah blah. It's basically an otaku's Call of Duty with slightly less war crimes, and even then, it fails at basic storytelling, like failing to give us an actually imposing antagonist or giving depth or reason to the actions of other nations beyond the most cartoonish bullshit. This is straight up propaganda, and the worst part is that it's good at being propaganda. I'm amazed how many people have been suckered into this trash, and I honestly worry this piece of discarded army sperm is going to poison a few people's ideologies. This show isn't just bad, it's downright harmful ...and apparently IS STILL WORSE THAN THE ORIGINAL NOVELS! They changed a female soldier's design to make her more attractive to viewing audiences! And did I mention the novels endorse torture as an interrogation method? Seriously, fuck this show. Three Episodes: 2/10

GANGSTA.
Jonathan Kaharl

I was actually pretty stoked to get this one, and then quickly started to realize that I had made a terrible mistake in requesting it. GANGSTA is the show that ended Manglobe, it seems, which is pathetic. This isn't a bang, but a whimper from a dying kitten. The series thinks it has a lot to convey about the lives of criminals and those at the bottom of society, but it's all stuff we've heard a million times before in these crime drama series. All the quiet starts out stylish, but eventually becomes padding for a complete lack of substance or depth. It downplays its few interesting scenes too much, and all the interesting things it does have no impact because of how empty the rest is. The show almost manages to become this really stylin' urban drama, but ends up a pile of gray sludge. If this was the last Manglobe had up their sleeve, I wish they would have ended with Samurai Flamenco and at least ended on a high note of unbridled genius insanity. Six Episodes: 5/10

Million Doll
Stephanie Getchell

There were a lot of things about this series that I wasn't too fond of, and made me drop it so early on. One of the obvious ones was the really weird animation style and CGI use that was worse than other recent shows like Heroic Legend of Arslan. Yeah, that's how bad it was. The other, and more larger, problem I had was the fact that it turned boring rather quickly. Much of the plot elements and potential story lines seemed to be rather underwhelming compared to everything else I was watching at the start of the summer season. There was really only one piece I found mildly interesting, however there was no way it was going to be able to help my enjoyment of the series. It's generic, boring, and doesn't even have the proper budget to get decent quality animation. And, let's not forget that it's rather forgettable. I even had a hard time trying to talk about it one more time because I don't even remember what I had watched! Yeah, this one was certainly a no go. Two Episodes: 3/10

Sky Wizards Academy
Danni Kristen

The very first shot in Sky Wizards Academy was a swarm of giant, magical CG beetles. It only went downhill from there. Nevertheless, I challenged myself to watch it at least through the first seasonal installment before using one of my drops. That way, I could at least try to find anything good in it. Without further ado, here's the complete list of things I liked from Sky Wizards Academy: (1) The dramatic ice cream scene (2) Nothing else. The simplest way I can explain what made this show so bad is that it's a light novel adaptation in all of its terrible glory. The protagonsit is a cardboard cutout badass loner teen dude who is super powerful and an outcast. He's thrust into a position that pits him close to three cute girls who will probably fall in love with him. Along the way he owns them all with his awesome powers and also sexually harasses them. Pretty much half the first episode consists of situations that end with him either groping one of the girls or standing in front of them in nothing but boxer briefs and thinking THEY are the weird ones for making a big deal out of it. However, by far the biggest offense Sky Wizards Academy committed is that it put a girl in a maid outfit and made me hate every second of it. Up until now I had considered such a thing impossible, but Sky Wizards Academy managed to make it a creepy enough moment that not even the existence of a maid could comfort me. Light novels must die. Three Episodes: 2/10

Final Thoughts

Actually, I Am
Danni Kristen

Oh, anime romcoms, why must you keep disappointing me? All I want is to see one in which something actually HAPPENS with the relationship. But no, you say. We have to leave it open-ended so that you'll fund a season two by buying our BDs and maybe next season someone wil lactually confess to the other. Maybe. I understand this logic. Many shows are doomed once the will-they-or-won't-they couple actually gets together. When it comes to romcoms, the whole show revolves around the will-they-or-won't-they couple. If they get together, it means the show's ending. Producers don't want their show to end. So, I get it. I really do.

It's just so. Damn. FRUSTRATING.

Watching anime romcoms reminds me of being in middle school and high school crushing on whatever girl I currently had a crush on. I would think about my crush all the time and imagine what it would be like when we were together. I wanted that resolution so badly. However, I never once actually confessed my feelings to any of the girls I ever crushed on. So, all my schoolyard romances ended the same way: I eventually got bored of waiting for something to happen and just gave up. So, I guess in this way anime romcoms are pretty true to life for me. I, like nearly every anime romcom protagonist ever, never actually made any advances towards my interest and was perpetually stuck in romantic limbo. I don't like it when anime reminds me of how scared I am of rejection. Give me wish fulfillment fantasies, dammit!

Actually I Am had its far share of problems. The cast wasn't a very strong one, aside from the devil Akane. It had a fair number of sexual jokes that ranged from borderline to full-on harassment. Production issues over the course of the season became glaringly obvious in the animation quality, which wasn't top-notch to begin with. Additionally, I never was able to figure out why every single character had a different version of the school uniform. My main issue with Actually I Am, though, was the ending. We were literally moments away from a confession of love, but they suddenly bullshitted their way out of it. There was no real conclusion to the story because pretty much nothing changed at all over the course of the series. That bugs the hell out of me. It felt like a huge cop-out on the writers' part. By keeping the will-they-or-won't-they thing going, they successfully managed to avoid writing a story with an ending.

Regardless, I wouldn't say it was a bad show. It had a lot of funny moments, and watching Kuromine and Shiragami play off each other is incredibly cute. However, it left me with a sour taste in my mouth over the ending. It's not a bad show, but there are far better romcoms out there already that left their romances unresolved. I highly recommend watching those instead.

Final Score: 5/10

Aquarion Logos
Joe Straatmann

It's weird to have disdain for something so harmless. Aquarion Logos simply wants you to have a happy fun time with its seemingly likable team of coffee shop performance artists who are secretly defending language from being destroyed by the owner of a social network. Hearing all of that, it sounds like something so crazy and stupid that it just might work, right? The rub is this show isn't as crazy as its initial effort would lead one to believe and its dumbness is forced, coming off instead as people who are smarter than the show intentionally working on something beneath their talents. It seems solid enough with a good look, character designs, and style accompanied by decent music featuring an opening from first Aquarion series composer Yoko Kanno, but the foundation is severely cracked with simple-minded characters and battles that rely on decades-old formulas without anything to spice it up.  Something like Logos needs someone who's mad, a genius, or a mad genius.

The Aquarion franchise has yet to capture my imagination. The first one spent so much time on the bickering between two supposed reincarnated lovers that I dropped it before the halfway point, and Evol didn't even interest me enough to watch it. Logos seems to go a different direction altogether in giving into the complete silliness the franchise had only flirted with before. Our heroes work for a cafe called Shirobaco (Ha... ha....) where the workers also perform theatre that makes poetry slam night look like Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. The audience for the performances generally eat it up except when the plot tells them not to, but this is very much a case of an anime saying one thing and showing something else entirely. This isn't their real job, though. They're actually pilots of transforming ships called vectors that can combine with each other as well as combine the minds of the pilots involved. They go into the realm where words exist and fight corrupted words before they spread their virus enough to destroy language. The person spreading the virus is Sougan Kenzaki, a social media mogul who wants to do all this because verbal and written communications is what has caused humanity to decay. He dresses up in his fanciest silly hat and cloak and goes into a room where all words are (that for reasons can't be guarded by the good guy) and injects one and episode with purple stuff that causes it to corrupt (Why he can't just inject them all at once and overwhelm the heroes is... fair play?).

Oh, I'm sure there are reasons I've only glossed over because there always are, but there are quite a few issues where I'm not willing to give Logos the benefit of the doubt. Let's start with our hero, Akira. He doesn't begin as a member of Shirobaco, but joins after rescuing cafe member Kokone's purse from a motorcycle snatcher. He follows her to the cafe and literally walks into the vector facilities and can immediately pilot them. Why? Because he's the savior. Why is he the savior? Because he says he is. Any attempt to divulge more information ends with disappointment. When your main character is solely defined by circular logic, it skips trying to make lightweight entertainment and falls into the category of horrible writing.

Am I being too hard on just one thing? Okay, another example. In his first encounter, Akira is able to capture and recruit Sougan's vanguard Maia over to his side, a teenager who has been completely isolated from the world until now. Due to a vector connection where their consciousness melds, they become important to each other even as they argue incessantly (This is apparently Aquarion's "thing").  Their relationship greatly upsets Kokone who is actually in love with Akira and it all comes to a point when the word love gets corrupted. The solution is a three-way... a vector three-way where they all combine their vehicles and their conscious thoughts with each other. The triangle is not really resolved after that, but it's never really an issue again, either.

It's that kind of indifference which continually frustrates the show. It really has a nice, unified visual style, taking the basic premise of language and going nuts with it. The character designs are simultaneously out there and accessible at the same time. Hayoto is a budding politician who mixes nerd glasses with a bolo tie and it totally works. Vector fighting has an incredibly neat mechanic where the pilots use the symbols that make up their names after combining and create an attack using a new word or phrase. Yet the battles are sluggish and stuck in ancient monster-of-the-week tropes where the heroes are hit with an unexpected attack and must find the magic plot development that allows them to destroy it.

Aggressive apathy is the best phrase to describe my response. I really don't care about most of what goes on here and their pitiful efforts to get me to do so trigger minor rage. Occasionally they hit on an idea, like making internet flames turn into real flames. Most of the time, though, it snuggles up with half-hearted goofy antics mixed with purely formula-fueled action. I have determined myself the savior by the rules of Aquarion Logos, and my first act is doing as much as I can to keep you from watching this dreck.

First-Cour Score: 4/10

Castle Town Dandelion
Stephanie Getchell

In a season full of ups and downs, many of the summer anime seemed to stick with either up or down consistently. Castle Town Dandelion, on the other hand, has been very up and down throughout and, seemingly, ending on a rather high note compared to previous weeks! In case you've forgotten what the series is about, or are reading Rainy Day's seasonal report for the first time (end of a season is not the best place to start, by the way), Castle Town is a slice of life/comedy that focuses on the Sakurada family, who's father is the king of the country. Looking to decide on a successor, the king decides to hold public elections in order to let the people decide who the next king should be. Throughout the entire series, we follow the nine Sakurada siblings, yes nine of them, as they vey for votes in the coming election.

What made this series rather up and down, for me, was the story and characters. While there were plenty of cliches and troupes thrown in, it did have some fresh elements to it since this is a royal family who lives rather normal lives. It's an odd little twist, I know, but it does make things a little easier to handle. While the main plot line was the upcoming election, every episode was split into two parts (sometimes three) in order to give each member of the family ample time to vey for the viewer's attention in the same way that they are trying to get votes. Some may not think that this kind of approach was the best part of the show, but I disagree. Splitting the time up each episode and having little spurts of story actually made things go by much quicker rather than focusing on one set episodic plot line and unnecessarily stretching it out. This kept it from getting too boring and gave it a much more steady pace to work with. Believe me, I and much of the staff here can tell you that it can be bad when you stretch out your story a little too long for a one cour series. That's because, eight times out of ten, it ends up getting rushed in the end. I'd have to say Tokyo ESP is a huge offender of that one.

Character wise, because of the extremely episodic nature of the series, there was more than enough time to spend with each sibling in one way or another. While there were siblings that got handed much more screen time than others like Akane, Kanade, Shu, Aoi, and Hikari; the characters that didn't have as much time did still give us enough to go on for both development and motivation. We clearly understand why Misaki wants to be king and why Haruka wants to support her. At the same time, some pieces of these characters and personalities can make you do a couple of face palms. Granted, this is more for the comedy of the show, but it's still a little irritating. For example, during the final episode, why couldn't Shu, the sibling with the teleportation powers, just teleport the damaged blimp? Good grief... We also get the resolution we've been asking for for each of the major siblings including Akane's fear of being in the public eye and Kanade's desire to be king for Shu's sake. It does fairly well to explain itself, albeit rather late sometimes, but we still have the chance to learn a lot from these nine siblings and figure out what kind of king they wish to be.

Castle Town is both consistent and inconsistent at the same time. It's consistent in story and characters, but what makes it inconsistent are how well those episodes are executed. While the beginning and, especially, the end are rather good, the middle portion had a good amount of moments where it would drag and do fairly poorly. It's not the best out of the three remaining series I've had to cover for Rainy Day, this season, however it still manages to do enough to keep my attention and smile through both the good parts and sometimes even the bad. Though I wouldn't put the series high on my potential rewatch list.

Final Score: 6/10

Chaos Dragon: Sekiryuu Sen'eki
Joe Straatmann

I'm guessing many saw this as a fantastic concept on paper. The minds behind many of the good anime and light novels got together, played some table-top RPGs, and then wrote the results into a series of light novels. The light novels get made into an anime and with a pitch of the main character forced to sacrifice his friends to save his country, you've got the potential for a winner. Most will agree the resulting anime is a failure, but how much of a failure it is depends on how much you were expecting. I was on the lower end of expectations since I had no idea of its history before going in, so I may be one of the nicer people to run it through the ringer for whatever comfort that may bring.

It's pretty easy to see what's wrong with Chaos Dragon from the get-go. The opening imitating a crane shot in a flash forward to the climax limps around with iffy frame rates and horrific CG. Then we're settled in with the main character Ibuki, a deposed member of the royal family in the nation Nil Kamui who now lives in an orphanage after the country was overtaken. To explain the circumstances of the world, the orphanage just happens to have a map in the kitchen the animators can zoom into. As the episode wears on, we get introduced to the other members of the main party on an expedition to see/fix/kill the Red Dragon of Nil Kamui depending on which character gets their way. The party includes Sweallow, a dim-witted fellow who is nevertheless well meaning, and Lou, a female assassin who serves a talking sword that constantly demands blood. There will be attempts to give more definition to these characters and some of them will be good, but they will never be able to shake the general impressions of their characters because they overpower everything else. Sweallow is extremely dumb as to be a sponge for exposition and Lou will be constantly self-serving and deceptive. At the end of the initial episode, it is discovered Ibuki has devastating powers directly connected to the Red Dragon which can save his country, but he has to sacrifice a person precious to him to activate them. It's a plot device you think will lead to moments wrought with sadness, but its effectiveness dissolves as soon as the next time they go to the well.

This first episode gives you a solid idea what to expect for the entire series. It putters about in this realm of mystical, feudal Far Eastern meets magical Western medieval meets the industrial revolution and none of it ever gels. Its character get dramatic backstories and a heavy doses of twists and turns, but it doesn't matter. The most touching, exciting, and stirring action sequence happens with a minor supporting character barely featured in the anime is the crux of the experience sacrificing herself in a blaze of glory for the greater good. That scene hits while the rest of Chaos Dragon thrashes around trying to drum up political intrigue, deep internal sorrows, and gut-punching melodrama to barely any reaction. That scene is also where all the music budget went outside of the opening and closing credits. It is the only part where the music has any kind of impact on the project.

I apologize if this review is choppy, confusing, and not particularly interested in dissecting what happens, but it's a somewhat accurate reflection of going through the series itself. I could look at my research and tell you which character is which person's creation and what their character says about their viewpoint, but seriously, it doesn't matter. For crying out loud, there is a merchant in a steel suit armed with a gatling gun named Kaguraba who eventually joins the party. He has a CAR. You'd think he'd be a game changer to the entire world, but again, IT DOESN'T MATTER. Aside from using the cameras in his palace to spy on people, his technology as well as his attitude as a neutral wild card leads to very little in the long run. Guns get nerfed by the same magic mumbo jumbo that affects almost every fantasy setting, his advanced technology is not particularly well utilized, and Kaguraba is one of the straightest arrows the story has to offer. The opportunities to build something get toppled at every turn! Most developments are dramatic dead ends. Even when Ibuki's thought-dead sister shows up to turn the second half on its ear, everything is telegraphed so it's easy to tell what's really going on within five minutes. Chaos Dragon has a severe problem with shooting itself in the foot. Granted, it's with a fantasy world gun, so it doesn't damage it all that much, but still....

Even through this mostly negative review where I've had to struggle to say something nice, I have to say I don't hate this series. While it's obviously not good and squanders its potential, I didn't go through my viewing sessions filled with pin and dread. It was something that entered and left my life with no particular joy or injury. It's not an anime Titanic, snapping in half, bouncing a poor guy off its propeller, and dramatically sinking into its grave. It's just another plain ol' bad series with a few ideas stunted by shoddy execution. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Final Score: 5/10

Charlotte
Stephanie Getchell

Going into this final report, and being behind on Charlotte for five episodes, excuse me for just a second..... *ahem* S**T JUST GOT REAL, BRO! The series did a serious tone shift from what it had been doing since the beginning. I mean, I know when one character dies we have some tone shift, but this is really insane! And I really really wanna talk about it, but I don't want to go too far into spoiler territory for the sake of people who may not have been following the show or haven't finished it yet. Also because there's a lot that goes on in these final five episodes that it's kinda nonstop action and story. What's funny is, it doesn't feel too rushed or suffer from sloppy pacing; which is something I tend to harp on in these types of situations during a one cour anime. It's more than likely because it knew how to play at my funny bone as well as my heart strings, cause I cried a lot today! But how has the series done as a whole?

What this all comes down to is the writing and execution. The writing actually works really and manages to pace itself decently compared to a lot of one cour shows. It also gives you the right information at the right time, though, occasionally, it does go a little towards left field in order to get there, but that's the nature of the supernatural elements and the humor Charlotte has. This actually isn't uncommon since Jun Maeda, who wrote the series, also wrote similar ones like Angel Beats and the well known Koyto Animation Trinity of Air, Kanon, and Clannad. As someone who hasn't seen these other series he's written, I just got my first taste of Maeda's style with good old Charlotte! It's good at bringing you up in order to just crush your little heart and then bring you up again just to break your heart even more. Believe me, it was one hell of an emotional roller coaster ride to get through and not just with marathoning the five remaining episodes that I had! I ended up becoming so invested in this series because of the good writing, which is very difficult to do in a small amount of time. True, there were some small things here and there that made me raise an eyebrow and question it, but it's so good at manipulating your emotions that you just kind of forgot all about it! The characters and animation helped enhance this even more, surprising me for all the right reasons! And, honestly, it's hard to come up with much else to say because it just blew me away and knew how to hit me where it hurts the most. It's like some kind of strategy was made when making this series... CURSE YOU MAEDA!!!

Out of the five series I originally started coverage on this season (Castle Town Dandelion, Charlotte, Danchigai, Million Doll, and Rampo Kitan), Charlotte is my favorite of the bunch! It gave different highs and lows in emotion with a story that actually didn't feel rushed or lacking. The characters also develop rather nicely, for the right ones anyway, and gives relatable stories that we can attach ourselves to..... Minus the whole superpower thing, though. It's wonderfully written, which isn't surprising considering the work that Jun Maeda has done, and does just enough in order to really stand out among a season full of disappointment and sadness (mostly cause a lot of these series need more episodes to do anything...). For what the series is, Charlotte is wonderful and is probably one of the best from the summer season, in my opinion.

Final Score: 8/10

Classroom Crisis
Jonathan Kaharl

After awhile, I wasn't quite sure where this one was headed. Starting off as a long and wordy critique of the capitalist system, Classroom Crisis won me over with its understanding of the subject and almost difficult to watch pacing and dramatic tension. But then it started to shift. A-TEC, the titular class and our young heroes (with matching idiot savant teacher) found a comfortable place with proper funding, and focus shifted into developing its four main characters. Brilliant doof Kaito, his sister Mizuki, ace pilot Iris, and despicable director Nagisa. Each of the four changed from being an example of a fixture in the business world to characters with their own arcs seemingly unrelated to the original commentary (outside Kaito).

Nagisa was revealed as a man who lusted revenge on his adopted family, Iris ended up recovering lost memories somehow relating to Nagisa, Mizuki and Nagisa started to fall in love, and Kaito basically became the much needed father figure for Nagisa. Comedy also became more common, there was an episode with both Iris and Hattori fighting terrorists on a spaceship, Nagisa became the punching bag for A-TEC. It felt like the series was losing its focus, but that wasn't exactly accurate. The series was revealing its actual focus, and the capitalism commentary didn't disappear, simply became more subtle. Those starting episodes were laying groundwork for the characters and defining the world, allowing the rest of the show to shine without exposition overload.

It didn't really click for me until the final two episodes. The brilliance of this show is how it humanizes the cogs in the machine, using familiar archetypes to build strong and memorable characters. Iris and Mizuki are especially generic at their most fundamental level, but I found myself caring far more for their fates because of the strong conflicts set up for them, the slow revelation of their feelings and thoughts, and the big pay off given to them at series end. Nagisa became a complex and tragic anti-villain, Kaito grew mature and fought through a system designed to use him without a second thought, and the family drama between the two founding clans ended up not being a major plot point, but instead a way to build up the complex emotions stirring in those involved. The major villain remained a fixture of the capitalist system, politics became central to it all, and the clashing values of the old and new business worlds ended up becoming the setting for a much more personal story. Something large became central trimmings for a more powerful, smaller story about a bunch of turbo-nerds trying to find freedom to create for the people in a system that would toss them away for the more profitable option.

Classroom Crisis pulled a great bait and switch, reeling me in with biting commentary, and keeping me there with unexpected strong character writing. And yet, the commentary was still there, as the business world around the cast shaped them through its many challenges. Out of every show this year, this was probably the most classically good. It's just great entertainment in the end, but rewards the viewers that pay attention and read more into everything its set up and created. You don't see that too often anymore, and it's nice to see it done right here. Definitely one of the season's best, though it has a lot of strong second bananas to deal with for a spot in the year's top ten.

Final Score: 8/10

God Eater
Joe Straatmann

Go Shiina is an exceptionally undervalued composer. The man known as the OTHER composer of the Tales of... games strikes a certain verve and excitement in an entire project his counterpart Motoi Sakuraba may only limit to a few select tracks, leaving the rest to floaty atmospheric pieces. I say this because he's pretty much the band-aid stopping the bleeding mess that is the first half of God Eater. Oh, it improves in a variety of ways as it tries to escape the pit of game adaptation hell, but it's the music that gives it a level of emotion the cast, action, and plotting simply can't pull off at the beginning and puts it in watchable territory until the other elements catch up. I can't quite tell you if this series is worth sticking it out to the end because massive production delays have moved the final four episodes to the winter, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about where the story's going with all of this.

The show is a 50/50 prospect. While it was another game adaptation which generally rank from banal to putrid, the crew seemed solid enough. I may not be the audience for ufotable's bread and butter Fate/stay series, but I did watch the Garden of Sinners movies and found them quite good. At the helm here is Tarayuki Hirao who directed by far the best film out of those, Paradox Spiral. Early on, the series suggested it was going to be a handsomely mounted version of every mediocre video game adaptation mixed with every by-the-numbers action movie. Our main character is Lenka, a young loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules and serves the PEOPLE rather than follows orders. He has a commander in the busty Tsubaki Amamiya who constantly wants his guts for garters. However, in this post-apocalyptic world where genetically modified and constantly evolving monsters called the Aragami have taken over the everything and mankind is fading, Lenka is one of our only hopes. He's a New-type, a kind of warrior who can wield one of the few effective weapons against the Aragami, the God Arc. So, because of his potential, he is put into one of the elite units of Aragami fighters because that's what you do with problem recruits. To the series' credit, when Lenka screws up, the costs are more extreme than a simple tongue lashing from the chief.

Stylistically, the show is mostly pretty great, but the first few episodes try WAY too hard to capture the aesthetic of early 2000's action movies. Think Man on Fire, 300, or the like. The trick to trying to emulate Tony Scott is realizing the man's style in his later years was, "TURN DOWN FOR WHAT?!" It wasn't merely a couple trademarked visual choices, but a lifestyle of acid trip dissolves and relentless movement. If you don't have the massive budget required to simulate all of that in animation, don't try it. The half-assed use of a hyper edit to transition from night to day or sudden slow motion randomly kicking in as Lenka runs down a hall are silly and do nothing to accentuate the excitement. It misses the reasons of why these things are used in the first place and just tries to look cool, which it doesn't really need. The character designs capture a balance between realistic and anime to handle both the heavier themes the show tackles and the superhuman action. The detail work is insane and the colors of the sky can be striking when it wants to be. I imagine the production delays at least helped in forcing the pointless flair to be severely downgraded.

Which reminds me, the delays. I have no idea what happened, but this show has had FOUR special/recap episodes in place of actual episodes during its initial run. That is almost unheard of in a production not stricken with bird flu outbreaks or a natural disaster. If I had to guess, the look was probably insanely difficult to maintain, but we'll never know until the day somebody wants to talk about it. What it did do was cast a deep shadow over an anime that actually made efforts to fix itself as it went along. The first four episodes are as standard as they come, even with a battle 20,000 feet in the air with New-type Alisa strapping on a bungee cord and fighting on the underside of a jet. Alisa's the seemingly cold professional with a vulnerable secret, by the way. That battle lacks the awesomeness to make one forget basic logical questions like why isn't there even a slight breeze on the outside of a jet going hundreds of miles per hour. There's even an episode about hunting for items only specific monsters drop. Yup, one of the episodes is a gathering quest most people hate playing through, much less watching.

If you can get past those, the plot twists get more interesting, the people have better interactions than standard responses to everything, and it continues its one decent strand of Lenka constantly underestimating how much he's unprepared and how borked the world truly is. Some of it is ridiculously stupid. Let's just say if you're going to have a man-made island that's supposed to save humanity loaded with secrets, perhaps put some security countermeasures other than loud alarms and cameras if someone decides to sneak in. Yet even when the final twist before the break is laughably idiotic, the series is at least somewhat compelling. Here's where the music comes into play.

In theory, music shouldn't be commanding the emotion but underlining it. Theory goes by the boards when you're adapting a video game and everybody talks like they're in a rogue detective movie and someone's badge is at stake in the next 48 hours. Go Shiina's work manages to capture every single mood the show is going for, whether it's barely audible under the anime going about its business, a full string ensemble, or the band I suspect was assembled just for this show called the Ghost Oracle Drive (Man-made Oracle cells are the reason the world got to its sorry state). The group sounds like a Boom Boom Satellites cover band if such a thing could exist, but they're surprisingly diverse with their monotone, electrically-altered voices, delivering heart-pumping action tunes as well as somber, reflective tunes. It's mostly great stuff and it's used about as well as it can be. With that said, even the greatest hits of Led Zeppelin couldn't save some of this.

One of the centerpiece episodes features Lenka and Alisa in the aftermath of a battle where they bit off more than they could chew. It's supposed to be a desperate struggle for survival and it'd easily be the best episode if it pulled it off, but it edits around anything that could pose difficulties for the writer. Lenka has a hole the size of his head in his abdomen thanks to being gored, and he not only can survive a long fall and hanging out in water rife with disease, but he call also carry Alisa into a Russian-style apartment complex and up a few floors. The jump cut 50 feet away from the building to an apartment bed makes it possible! The rest of the episode is like that. New-types can heal quickly, but this hogwash is simply the makers magically teleporting away whatever corner they put themselves in.

Perhaps it's the bad company it's with given the series I've had to watch this year, but I can't really be mad at God Eater even when I can't recommend it. You know what? Whatever decision you make is likely the right one. If you want to completely skip this because it's seems like a waste of time, you're probably right. If it looks intriguing enough to for you to tough it out through some underwhelming episodes, it'll probably work out. If you want to just Youtube the soundtrack, I wouldn't blame you (Though the author cannot officially endorse the copyright violation involved). For the backhanded compliment that truly explains where this production mess sits, it's sort of one of the better gaming adaption anime out there.

Nine Episode Grade: 6/10

Himouto! Umaru-chan
Danni Kristen

At the beginning of the season, I expressed my apprehensiveness over whether or not Himouto's premise would be able to last the season without wearing out its welcome. After all, it's an adaptation of a simple gag manga about a beautiful, talented girl who acts like a spoiled brat at home. That premise could certainly last a full season if it were a short, but each episode of Himouto was a full twenty-four minutes. Without an actual plot, would it be able to go a full season without making everyone sick of jokes about how bratty Umaru is? I'm glad to report that at season's end, Himouto managed to be one of the best comedies this year.

Himouto's success can largely be attributed to the studio behind it. Doga Kobo thrives when animating comedies, as evidenced by their production of both Yuru Yuri and Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, two of the funniest shows in recent years. The animation style utilized in Himouto suits its humor incredibly well. Animation isn't incredibly smooth, but it never needs to be. Some of the best jokes in the show are delivered via motion smears or slow, lazy movements. Visual comedy such as this is delivered wonderfully throughout the show. It also provides us with hilarious faces and cheeky references to popular games, anime, and manga. It's non-visual jokes are a lot more hit-and-miss, but they land well for the most part.

One of the most surprising aspects of Himouto! Umaru-chan was the amount of character development that Umaru underwent over the course of the season. Through the course of the season, she becomes closer friends with multiple girls in her class. As she spends more and more time with her friends, she starts to care about and understand them more. Gradually, she begins thinking less of herself and more of others, making her less and less of a brat. It's a subtle change, but by the end of the season there'll be moments where Umaru seems like a totally different person from the brat she was in episode one. Don't expect too much, though. Umaru is still Umaru. Though she may have begun thinking more of others, her character still has frequent moments of selfishness, laziness, and self-indulgence. These moments can either be funny or irritating as hell depending on who you ask.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how wonderfully entertaining the cast of Himouto is. Umaru's gradual time spent more with her friends grants the audience with peaks into their private lives so that we too may get to know them. Each character held a unique personality that contrasted well against Umaru's, and segments focusing on them provided a nice change of pace from Umaru's harassment of her older brother. My favorite of the cast was easily Tachibana Sylphynford, who looks and acts as though she came from a different anime. Though she's always trying to be Umaru's sworn shoujo manga rival, her unwavering cheerfulness and optimism make her incredibly kind and endearing. She's easily my favorite anime character this year. Though I can't say that Himouto! Umaru-chan is one of my yearly favorites as well, it's nevertheless one of the year's most solid, well-written comedies.

Final Score: 7/10

Monster Musume: Everyday Life With Monster Girls
Jonathan Kaharl

I've already reviewed the manga, so I came into this one knowing what to expect. Normal guy with hilarious expressions meets monster girl who really wants his dick, except two who just want to play, all of them accidentally nearly kill the guy, rinse and repeat. What I decided to mainly judge was how the anime adapted the gags of the manga, and the result is very mixed. This harem comedy mixes things up by making all the girls monsters, which results in some really inspired and fun slapstick, creating one of the most fun trashy manga I've seen in awhile. The anime adapts everything up until the end of the D arc, definitely a good place to end, and tries to use the animated medium to breathe new life into the material. The problem is that this is also a sex comedy, and anime generally has a problem with trying to both arouse and entertain audiences.

The big problem is that there's a loss of pacing. The sex gags go on way longer here and overstay their welcome, and they weren't that welcome in the first place. It breaks up the rapid-fire pace of the manga, made worse by the awful music playing during these scenes. Do not play porn music during an ecchi scene, it only distracts, just ask Testament of New Sister Devil. The entire mood just feels wrong during these bits, distracting from the actual gags and the elements that do work. Only Rachnee's scenes really work despite, as her thing is bondage, which is easy to portray quickly and without need of censoring the scene any.

Though, the visual gags get an upgrade. There's a lot of great use of lighting for atmosphere, lots of little details and going-ons in the backgrounds of some scenes, and a general sense of energy in the animation. There's a good few parts where a lot of more experimental techniques are mixed in, mixing more fluid styles more commonly used in theatrical works or erratic web cartoons. This adds a lot to the carefully crafted panels of the manga, really making the show stand out as its own thing, especially in the final episode. The voice acting is also fantastic, with everyone getting a chance to steal the show. I think my favorite of the cast was Natsuki Aikawa as Cerea, really bringing energy to every scene she's in with an exaggerated method of speech.

I think the manga works better on the whole, but there's a lot of interesting parts in this production as well that make it worth a watch. At least I can say that Monster Musume is worlds better than the large majority of ecchi works out there. It's no Prison School, but then again, what else can be Prison School? This is one of the most popular shows on Crunchyroll to boot, and honestly, I'm glad this is the show that got up there. It kinda represents everything about this hobby. It's gross at times, but there's an unexpected amount of passion and care thrown in there, and it can surprise you when you least expect it.

Also, Suu is best girl. There are no further arguments.

Final Score: 6/10

My Wife is the Student Council President
Joe Straatmann

I didn't think there would be a more brainless show this year than Unlimited Fafnir. It simply shouldn't be possible. They had a hot springs episode in the middle of the ultimate climax to save mankind because they hadn't had one yet! You get any more lazy and I doubt you'd find a committee to give you five bucks to make a 20-page flip book! Yet here we are at My Wife is the Student Council President. I at least can understand how this got made. It's a sex comedy with actual, uncensored nudity you don't get to see often in unless you buy the DVD/Blu-ray.  So it speaks to how much this show fails that the only decent parts are the portions of the broadcast episodes used to cover up the nudity. Almost everything here is a void in which your precious time is sucked away–one 8-minute short a week–into some mirror universe, given instead to your evil twin's scheduled goatee trimming.

The setup is as basic sitcom as they come. Hayato Uzumi is given the surprise of his life when student council president Ui Wakana starts living with him and declares herself his wife. You see, she promised herself she'd be Hayato's wife ever since they were little kids and their parents (Who are conveniently overseas most of the time) decided to go ahead and arrange the marriage. Hayato is of course defiant about all this, but when completely contrived circumstances shove his face into her chest, he relents for a bit. Ui is also big on free expression of love in school that in no way is a part of her character and only serves to bring in Rin, the disciplinary committee head. Rin wants to keep order at school because her large breasts caused rumors that she was a slut when she was younger and she wants to smash all doubt about her reputation. Really, that's her motivation.  She forces an investigation into Ui which could possibly reveal her untoward situation, so Hayato has to lie through his teeth, going as far as claiming he crossdresses when women's underwear is found in his apartment. Everyone has the IQ of a sea cucumber, so of course this works. The true purpose Rin serves is to bring an unneeded harem into this. She falls in love with Hayato and so does her sister Kei and her minion, Mato. It should be noted the last one looks and acts like a little child all the time, punctuated by moments of wetting herself. You read that correctly.

This is the definition of an Idiot Plot. An Idiot Plot is a story that could be solved very easily if the characters would just be reasonable people for five minutes, but the writing insists instead that everyone be dumber than the people in informercials. I'm pretty sure the writing on the manga this was adapted from started with the idea of whatever lewd thing the author had in mind and then doing as little writing as possible to get to it. For example, Hayato, Ui, and Rin get into a heated debate that is interrupted by a rainstorm. Hayato and Rin duck into a building without checking to see what it is. It's a love hotel. Instead of waiting in the lobby or checking to see if Ui is still outside, they rent a room. Instead of keeping a friendly distance away from each other, they each get in bath robes and Rin decides to spill one of her deepest secrets. And instead of feeling something enter her hot button, a vibrator attached to the bath robe Rin's wearing she was unaware was there just happens to kick on. That is a LOT of hiking through pure stupidity to get to one ingot of potential humor.

 Maybe it would mean something if I liked these characters at all. Hayato is a spineless character who can't be honest with anyone, can't have an actual conversation with anyone, and then woes his fate being surrounded by women confused by his circumstances because he can't do the bare minimum of explaining things. Ui is very vaguely outlined and behaves extremely inconsistently, sometimes perfectly okay and overly trusting with Hayato being around other women, but also sometimes extremely paranoid and competitive. Even down to their look stolen from the generic character design graveyard, they feel like two self-insert characters as romantic leads. There are a few people out there with this fetish, but dammit, they're going to find them!

Don't let the picture fool you. There is no laughter to be found here. The uncensored version, anyway. The censored broadcast version has a a feature called "Wife Theatre" that kicks in whenever something that can't be shown on TV happens. These are skits, usually annotated with a stream of consciousness scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes, the stream of consciousness talks about what they've been up to, sometimes it's cheeky commentary on the event going on, and sometimes it just wants to know how your day is going. It's bizarre, but it's 30 seconds that had thought put into it and has the potential to be entertaining week-to-week. So yes, if someone threatens to murder your entire family if you don't watch My Wife is the Student Council President, I'd actually recommend the censored version over the uncensored version.

Like Unlimited Fafnir, this show is too terrible to be the worst series of the year. It doesn't give enough of a damn to actually lead up to any sort of payoff. This anime just ends at its contractually-obligated length with no sense of conclusion or even any kind of climax to begin with. It just stops in the middle of everything, Wife Theater tells everyone they're going bye-bye, and the series awkwardly leaves the room. Talk about not giving a damn.  My Wife... hangs out in its slum at the bottom of the barrel waiting for somebody so desperate for its brand of grog that they'd dig down for this batch of stomach-melting horridness. It doesn't deserve infamy. It simply deserves to be completely deleted from mankind's consciousness. Go get yourself some porn. The character building is better and I guarantee you the plot will be more believable.

Final Score: 1/10 (Uncensored), 3/10 (Censored)

Overlord
Jonathan Kaharl

What a mess of a show. I don't mean this entirely as an insult. In the world of light novel anime, Overlord is a bizarre anomaly. It has very familiar ideas and plays with a lot of similar story beats and world building, but it also tries to put a new spin on the whole gamer in a fantasy world thing. We don't follow heroes, but an all-powerful villain and his minions, his evil persona and true human nature creating a strange being that's equal parts fascinating, terrifying, and hilarious. The minions are all similar, representing different aspects of their creators and the villain's former friends, while all having ridiculous moments mixed in. The first two episodes promise something different, the next two make do on that promise, and then it all zig-zags from there. Overlord keeps switching around, going from incredibly interesting, wildly amusing, and obnoxiously self-indulgent, and the end result is something I only want to recommend parts of.

Momonga is a legitimately interesting character, partly because of what we do hear from him and what we don't, as his human side and lich side conflict and create a new persona equally capable of kindness or brutality. Unfortunately, the series constantly focuses on his relationship with his old friends, which is either touching or idiotic. An entire episode dedicated to him bragging while being sad and a bunch of new time adventurers wanking his ego does not make for entertainment or engaging character development. The minions, on the other hand, are all static, but display moments of unexpected depth, like Albedo (the best character) putting more trust in Momonga after seeing his resolve, which is completely different from her insane obsession with him played for comedy (and she would totally be a good mom, probably open minded if her kid was LGBT). It brings up interesting ideas of the relationship between an artist and their creation, challenging what is good or evil, a main character co-existing as two very different beings, and all sorts of stuff, yet annoyingly also stops for unfitting comedy that goes all over the place and author ego massage. What is it with light novels and their writers working out personal fantasies?

But then there's the show's other aspect: BLOOD RAINS ON THE BATTLEFIELDS OF THE SKELETON WARS. The action in this series is constantly one sided, but it's always entertaining just from sheer stomping the villains get by a villain even badder than them. Momonga completely gets into making his victims mess their pants before giving them a hellish end, and a lot of his magic does nasty stuff, like turn corpses into skeleton hell knights that go around decapitating people, or curse people with a banshee cry. The villains are always some nasty fuckers too, especially the serial killer with a smile Clementine (the second best character). Her death is downright horrific and has to be seen to be believed. The final battle of the series is also pretty great, lacking that ridiculous dark edge, put finally putting Momonga against an enemy equal to him in power, requiring him to use those planning skills from his many hours gaming to completely turn the tables. I also have to give credit to the CG animators, they did a surprisingly strong job with how characters move and zag in fights.

Overlord is frustrating to me, because it's constantly on the cusp of being something incredible, yet there are so many problems that come from that one common source of awful light novel tropes. But man, when it's good, it's one of the most immensely entertaining things out there and made this slog of a season far more bearable in those moments. It has very low lows, and ridiculously high highs. But honestly, despite how slow it tends to be, Overlord is ultimately more good than bad, even with that terribly uneven adventurer arc. But man, it's definitely not something for everyone. So when's season two? Does Albedo finally get a bone? Get it!? Cause she wants to have a skeleton's baby. She already has clothing up to age five knitted, and is making back-up plans if the child has both sexes or none at all. As I said, best character.

Final Score: 6/10

Prison School
Jonathan Kaharl

If my staff pick didn't get released this season, this would have been the best show of the season, bar none (though School-Live is a close second). I also kind of expected it. I read up a good deal of chapters before this adaptation came out, and I was surprised by how good the series was in spite of its raunchy material and ridiculous premise. What I didn't expect is how good this adaptation would be. I guess when you get the director of Shirobako to handled your show, you're in good hands, but this may be one of the best directed shows I've ever seen. It's dripping with visual styles and atmosphere and it perfectly captures the incredible artwork of the manga without a single dip in quality.

It's also one of the single most interesting things ever produced.

Born from a man's spite by the audience that ignored his award winning horror series, Prison School came into being just to give the disgusting pigs what they wanted and make something so awful there was no way they could like it, attacking those same readers with his satirical main characters. But then the terrible thing he made become popular. Really popular. Try as he might, the guy couldn't make a bad series, even when trying, and so he decided to just make this vile thing work. Prison School is a story about idiot boys who think mainly with their wangs getting what they deserve, and then far beyond that as the girls who find them disgusting take things too far, creating a war of the genders between the dimmest members of those genders. It should be absolutely awful with all its gratuitous nudity and cheesecake, even reaching near porn levels at times, but the writing is just too perfectly structured.

Every nasty joke becomes plot important or the basis of major character building. Absurd scenes from far earlier in the series, like a grown man burying his collection of ass pics or a girl getting peed on by accident, end up becoming radically important. A guy messing his pants becomes a character defining moment. An entire episode based its tension around arm wrestling that became decided by how distracted those involved were by the bodies of the other (be it the nipple or a weird hair growing from the nipple). All of this works. It works perfectly.

None of these moments are treated as jokes by the characters, and the direction tries avoiding that as well. The sheer ridiculous atmosphere of these things being seen as momentous events deciding the futures of the characters becomes not only the source of the majority of the humor (mainly in a "DID THAT JUST HAPPEN" sort of way), but it also makes these scenes involving. You find yourself caring about the characters and the relationships between all of them, and there's so much pay-off from so much build up. Every time I've looked up reviews and opinions of others who watched the whole way, this became a general agreed thing. The direction, script, plot, and animation all work together in such unfitting unity that the end result is a bizarrely memorizing thriller, with the stakes mainly being a guy not being able to go on a date or see a wet t-shirt contest.

Prison School is going to be the fifth best of the year, as long as there's no unexpected surprises this coming Fall (or if One Punch Man shits the bed at some point). It's something special, and we are never going to see anything like it ever again. Until season two. There better be a season two. I demand the student council arc. I DEMAND ANDRE BEING RIDDEN LIKE A HORSE WHILE COMPLETELY NUDE. I DEMAND IT.

Final Score: 9/10

Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace
Stephanie Getchell

Throughout the summer, I've had the chance to get a little bit of an educational experience into the world of Rampo Edogawa though Rampo Kitan; mostly in the way of Edogawa's style of mystery even though this is a very loose adaptation of his work. Normally, I'd go into what the latest episodes did and, in Kitan's case, give a bit more context as to where the series got it's inspiration. However, I don't want to spoil you on the finale, so I'll just avoid doing so for this last time. Just know that the final two episodes more or less use short stories and essays from Edogawa as well as call back to a good amount of the stories I've mentioned in previous seasonal reports. Story wise, the final two episodes do wrap of the series well, giving us backstory in one and the conclusion in the other, ending in as natural a place as it should. Now, one question remains, how good is the series overall? I'd say above average, but not outstanding; with the story and characters being some of the glaring problems.

Story wise, the series has it's ups and downs. It uses the material from Edogawa's work really well to it's own end, however this also creates a problem for those who may not have read any of his work before, like me. Going into the series without prior knowledge of the mystery author made it a bit of a struggle in order to completely understand the story and the background of some characters and their relationships. For example, let's take Black Lizard. For the entirety of the series, we see her locked away in a jail cell and we know right away that she has very strong feelings towards Akechi. That's about it. We don't know much more detail into Lizard and Akechi's relationship prior to the series, leaving a bit of a hole in the timeline of the story. Readers of Edogawa's work, however, can go into the series fully aware that Black Lizard and Akechi had a rather close, and almost intimate, relationship with each other thanks to the novella The Black Lizard. This isn't the only piece that needs context, as there are plenty of other story elements that lack exposition or context if you're a fresh face to the world of Edogawa. And, if you were to just see the series having not read any of Edogawa's work, the story can seem a bit disoriented and lacking.

The characters are another interesting piece of the puzzle. While the surface level is easy to figure out, it's the complexity underneath that seems to jump in at the most odd of times. Remember how I've been having some problems with Hashiba's character since starting this series? Guess who has their little bit of backstory revealed in the final minutes of the last episode? And it's this little bit that tells us his entire motivation for being Kobayashi's friend! ...... *sigh* Do you understand my frustration? It's like they needed to squeeze that little bit in at the last second so we don't have Hashiba sitting on the sidelines and, instead, turning him into a developed character. However, I do see the other side as to why this was important to do. During Akechi's story about his relationship with the original Twenty Faces, a clear parallel was drawn between Akechi and Twenty Faces to Hashiba and Kobayashi. During those last few minutes of the eleventh episode, with Hashiba's small motivation info drop, the parallel suddenly becomes flipped around. Even though this was a last minute piece, it was a rather clever one. Seeing as how throughout the series there wasn't too much to go on for Hashiba's character, it made the realization, in my mind, all the more sweeter as I sat there with this "Ah ha!" moment and a smile on my face. This series can be clever, it really can, and this little bit helps show that.

As a whole, Rampo Kitan is a decent mystery series with beautiful (and albeit symbol heavy) animation, good story, and decent characters. That is, if you're new to this world. If you've read Edogawa's work, then Kitan is a good companion series to go along with it, acting as a love letter, of sorts, to Rampo Edogawa and his work. Those with previous knowledge will be able to go into the show with a better idea of the stories that are adapted as well as the relationships between the characters compared to those without it. In my case, it's been an interesting experience. It got me to look more closely at Edogawa's work and what kind of stories and themes Kitan decided to use. While some parts still flew way over my head, I think it does well as a mystery series. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some Edogawa work to find and read.

Final Score: 7/10

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers
David O'Neil

The final stretch of Rokka: The Brave of the Six Flowers was certainly a ride, even if not always in a good way. In the end it not only highlighted some of the series' greatest strengths, but also many of its greatest weaknesses. And when it was all said and done, once all the action had ceased, once the big mystery had been solved, and once the show had ended on the sort of anti-climactic note I've come to expect from light novel adaptations I was left feeling somewhat conflicted, so I'll try my best to sort out exactly why. The lead up to the final episode is by far the highpoint of the show. All the theories, accusations, and betrayals culminate together into a thrilling climax that I can only describe as "edge of your seat" material. This large influx of action does mean the show's unpolished visuals are also more prevalent than ever. It was polarizing, being drawn in by the clever writing and brisk pacing only to be drawn right out when a character punches and suddenly becomes unrecognizably off model. Despite this, the characters still all get their time in the spotlight and it was excellently paced while still making me second guess my theories surrounding the mystery.

Then came the big final reveal, everything the show had built up to, who the seventh brave is, and the final twist was in the end: was alright. It was fine. Which is half a compliment and half a critique, on the one hand it did feel justified. I'd thought up countless ways the series could totally cop out the audience and pull something out of thin air, but aside from one overly convenient piece of evidence it all made sense, and the method as to "how they got away with it" was genuinely clever. But it was also a bit underwhelming. After all that build up and mystery the reveal less made me gasp and more nod my head and say "yeah, alright". It lacked any sort of dramatic punch or unexpected realizations, it just put the puzzle pieces together and presented it as it was, which is fine, but left me far from shocked.  It also didn't help that the second half of the final episode, which acted as something like an epilogue, left a sour taste in my mouth. Not only did it end with almost no sense of conclusiveness, going for the usual "read the rest of the novels/pray for a second season" ending that just kind of stops rather than tying up lose ends or trying to bring any narrative conclusiveness to the story, but in addition it threw in one last twist that was so jarring and shameless it almost bordered on being downright hilarious. In the light novels maybe it made more sense, but here it almost feels like an infuriating "screw you" to the audience that served no purpose whatsoever.

Despite these complaints in terms of how the show ended, along with the constant production issues throughout, I can still say that as a whole I enjoyed Rokka. It did an excellent job setting itself apart from similar fantasy light novel material with its mystery tone, unique setting, and clever writing, and I was consistently invested in the mystery, and by the end had grown very fond of the characters (well, some of them at least. Especially Hans). Rokka has some missteps along the way, but it was still an interesting, and often exciting mystery adventure that I'd love to see more of. Though chances are looking slim in terms of that ever actually happening.

Final Score: 6/10

SCHOOL-LIVE!
Danni Kristen

For those who went into SCHOOL-LIVE unaware of its secrets, it was easily the most unexpected premiere of the season. What appeared at first to be a generic show about a school club ended up being a dark, emotional story set in the zombie apocalypse. Despite some hiccups and questionable plot decisions, SCHOOL-LIVE ended up being one of the best directed and most memorable shows this season.

You can be forgiven for seeing the word "zombie" and becoming uninterested. The zombie apocalypse has become such a common trend in media that just about any possible story that could be told about the zombie apocalypse has been told already. However, it's worth noting that zombies as a phenomenon are largely based in Western media. The standard zombie as we see it today rarely shows up in Japanese media, so a show like SCHOOL-LIVE is a rarity for that fact alone. To make it even more unique, it's a zombie show that utilizes tropes popularized in high school club shows in such a way that they come across as sad and twisted rather than happy and care-free. As Yuki plans club events and struggles to decide what she should do after she graduates, she remains blissfully unaware that the human race is on verge of extinction. Nearly all of her friends and family are dead, and she escaped into her trope-filled high school club world to run from that awful truth. Whether or not the others should confront her with the truth becomes a debated topic as some wonder whether they're trying to protect her or use her to cheer themselves up.

I mentioned a few hiccups in the show before. One of the most glaring ones is pacing issues midway through the season. Between the prequel and finale arcs there were a few episodes where not much of anything happened. These episodes usually had some dark edge to them somewhere, but they were mostly episodes that played up the moe tropes. In my opinion, these are the weakest episodes the show has to offer. Another complaint I had with the show was the unexplained fact that the school was somehow connected to the research laboratory that apparently caused the zombie virus to spread. However, the more I dwell on SCHOOL-LIVE I begin to view plot points such as this in a different light. In my opinion, I don't think SCHOOL-LIVE is a simple bait-and-switch show that pretended to be generic high school only to be about zombies. I also don't think it's merely an attempt to subvert the average moe high school club tropes. Rather, I think there's some deeper thematic material in SCHOOL-LIVE that provides criticism of Japanese school/work life and commentary on the effect it has on youth. Delving into those themes here would take too long, but I'd like to write on them eventually, possibly in a future article. Overall, I think SCHOOL-LIVE was an impressively directed show that's well worth your time.

Final Score: 8/10

Seiyu's Life
David O'Neil

I wasn't expecting much in the lead up to Seiyu's Life. Sure, Shirobako had proven shows built around anime industry insight can work, but it'd been a while since studio Gonzo had put out something worthwhile, and I worried a somewhat glamorized aspect of anime like voice acting (well, in Japan anyway) may not have the spine to actually portray it at all believably. With that in mind the show was a pleasant surprise, a funny, well made slice of life comedy that provided an interesting and grounded look into the world of anime voice acting.

One of the show's biggest strengths was its humor, the characters all bounced jokes off of each other very well providing tons of laughs throughout. Clever dialogue, good slapstick, and crazy faces made for an entertaining time that always managed to make me smile. It really helped that the show's strong visuals often did a great job pushing the humor to even greater heights. Gonzo is a hit-or-miss studio, but this is one of their best animated works in recent memory. The show is brimming with lively animation that goes perfectly with the show's humor, creating a cartoonishly over the top tone that adds to the fun, while also on occasion providing some genuinely good character acting animation that helps express the character's emotions. It can be a bit inconsistent, some episodes will feel more static, while others are filled with movement, but for the most part the show manages to hold up well visually. The show also provides some interesting insight into the world of voice acting, with tons of little factoids on how the job works and what its like. Sometimes the show was a bit too upfront with the delivery of this information, especially whenever had its little stuffed animal mascot spell things out for the audience rather than working it into the dialogue or character's actions more naturally. I was really glad they weren't afraid of showing some of the less appealing aspects of the occupation, its highly competitive nature, or the fact new seiyu's typically need to work part time jobs just to get by.

The show did occasionally tackle drama as well, with mostly positive results. It never quite tugged on my heartstrings, but it managed to balance the over the top humor well with some more down to earth, and often emotionally engaging moments on how things in life can go wrong, and how to overcome those struggles to achieve your goals. I did feel towards the end the show got too repetitive for its own good. At a certain point I was able to see nearly every plot point of an episode coming simply because the same formula had already been recycled multiple times. One of the characters runs into some emotional hurdle, it affects their ability to work, they get sagely advice from a famous seiyu cameo, learn and important lesson, and move on. It never ruined the show for me, but after a while I did start to wish they'd mix things up more. But overall, Seiyu's Life was an enjoyable slice of life comedy with likable characters, while providing a neat look into anime voice acting.

Final Score: 7/10

SHIMONETA: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
Joe Straatmann

It is the perfect bow on this season that the most classically solid series is about porn terrorism. If you think about it, Shimoneta has plenty of interesting dynamics. We have the main character whose father was imprisoned by a government with draconian censorship and shamed by society, so he wants to avoid that life and become the exceptional citizen enough to win the girl who is the embodiment of exceptional citizens. He's pulled into terrorist acts by another girl who wakes him up to what a terrible mistake the government's made and he himself finds out what a horrid funhouse mirror love has become under this government. It just so happens that the evil government is about banning expressions of sexuality and the way they show what a terrible idea it is is by having the main character's love interest stalk him incessantly with a never ending flow of her "love juices" behind her. Wanna' go for a ride?

If the Internet has not briefed you on Shimoneta, it tells the story of a future Japan where pornography and discussion of sexual acts is banned to the level where citizens have devices around their necks which can detect lewd language and even can tell when your hand is doing something it shouldn't (All references to current or debated policies by the current Japanese administration to whitewash the country's image before the Olympics are INTENTIONAL). In the middle of this is high schooler Tanukichi Okuma who has become a good enough member of society to be in the student council of the most moral school in the country despite his checkered past. One day, he is recruited by Ayame, the head of the group called SOX (Its logo emphasizes the O like a censorship symbol). Their goal is to restore healthy sexual relationships between brainwashed teenagers through burst releases of contraband material. Tanukichi is at first resistant to the idea because he wants to be the perfect man for Anna, the student council president and daughter to the woman who brainstormed the entire societal reboot. Soon, he realizes how bizarre people have become (Think the ear sex episode of Family Guy multiplied by ten) and eventually settles into the the role of co-conspirator, plotting drops of nude material over assemblies and finding lost storehouses filled with the greatest hentai ever conceived.

There's no one thing I can point to and say this is what makes Shimoneta work so well, but it starts by creating something that would be at least a serviceable story if told straight and then builds the jokes on top of it. Tanukichi is not only a straight man who steps into other people's madness, but a person who's taken his blows in life and has serious decisions to make after getting on the right path. It creates a reasonable vision for the future and asks questions. Artist Saotome comes into the mix and solves the conundrum of how you can make potentially obscene art when you can't use your hands. How do you make sex aids when they're banned? The show will give you an edible recipe.  One of the best characters, Fuwa, is the science club president hilariously trying to decipher how reproduction works without knowing anything about sex. It takes the concept and runs with it fairly well.

J.C. Staff creates a visual style that's kind of perfect with constant censor circles even when not necessary (Because, as a government worker later tells them, even basketball can be taken the wrong way), a landscape abloom with visual metaphors, and all sorts of little details of too much information hidden away in too little information. This is a perfect example of how having a vision for a project can really make up for minor shortcomings. The animation isn't great, but it really doesn't need to be since the project knows exactly what it is.

That's not to say Shimoneta completely "nails it." The second half makes characters more targets for weird running gags than they were before, especially Anna who turns from a symbol of innocence and goodness into someone who can't stop her hormones.  I get flipping a switch on her to show how seriously warped people have become under this system, but her acts of potential sexual assault are played for laughs. The climactic showdown is a little stilted at times, introduces a transparent and annoying character to the protagonists, and doesn't feel like a real climax even though it surrounds itself with all the trimmings of one. Parts of the finale are still pretty great, but as a whole, it fits in with the underwhelming endings the Summer was filled with. Extending the problem is the penultimate episode should've been the last one. The actual final episode is a lot of meandering to get to a more logical stopping point than the emotional ending point that came before it. It plays like the extra episode you get with a purchase of the Blu-ray rather than putting the finishing touches on a season.

Regardless, this is the most surprised I've been at the quality of a show in awhile. It's smart, it has a stout harvest of comedic ideas and timing, and it never lets the fact that its about something get in the way of having fun and vice-versa. Shimoneta punches "proper" society in the face and then does a lap dance in front of it while it tries to clean up its bloody nose.

Final Score: 8/10

Snow White with the Red Hair
David O'Neil

If someone were to ask me if I liked Snow White with the Red Hair, I would proudly and excitedly proclaim "YES" without a second thought, but this statement would likely come paired with the caveat "But the show is NOT for everyone". It a appeals to a very specific kind of taste (and I don't mean that in a pretentious way I swear), one that's willing to put up with sluggish pacing, one that's able to get over some silly plot contrivances, and most of all, one that can get unreasonably excited over two adorable characters making a small step of progress in their relationship. It sets out to accomplish something small but admirable, and does so wonderfully from start to finish.

The thing about Snow White with the Red Hair is that it is slow. It is quite slow in fact. There are occasionally little bursts of excitement and tense situations, even a few brief action scenes scattered throughout, but as a whole the show mostly just passively trots from plot point to plot point with some mundane every-day hijinks and character interaction in-between. How much you enjoy it will largely come up to how much you like the characters, how much you're willing to put up with aforementioned pacing, and how much you enjoy low-key romances, but if you fill these requirements the show is filled with charming moments, a relaxing atmosphere, and a heartwarming romance. It's a show I'd just sit back and watch happen, taking in all the sights and sounds, getting all giddy whenever a big romantic moment happened between Zen and Shirayuki, and overall just having a pleasant time. Sure it's corny at times, very much so, but at the same time it can also be remarkably genuine and engaging in how it develops the relationship between its two leads. It also helps that the main lead, the red haired Shirayuki, was one of my favorite new characters of the season. She's funny, strong willed, and endlessly likable. Her dreams never go far beyond growing closer to Zen and staying by his side through her own power, but I really cared every step of the way because she was so sweet, fleshed out, and believable, so much so that I really wanted to see her succeed.

It was a big help that the show is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The animation is always consistently polished, along with occasional cuts of truly great key animation that stands out at certain points, but it really shines through in the show's attention to detail in the visuals. Director Masahiro Ando is fantastic at making every scene and every shot look as pretty as possible, from the lighting, to the shot composition, to the colors, everything works together just right to look as visually impressive as possible. It also helps that the show has some fantastic background art, along with great music from composer Michiru Oshima. The top notch presentation of the show compliments the lovingly crafted romance at the center of the show perfectly, and while the show may be a bit too laid back for some, beyond its slow pacing is a refreshing romance show that's as beautiful as it is enjoyable, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

First-Cour Score: 8/10

Ushio and Tora
David O'Neil

From a story perspective, Ushio and Tora really has very little to offer so far. Aside from a few nice character moments every now and then, the plot itself pretty much aligns with countless other supernatural battle shonen stories out there about an ordinary character who turns out to be the "chosen one", and has to solve the mysteries of some greater conflict and discover their own reason for fighting while battling monsters along the way. Episodes follow a pretty straightforward structure, a lot of the side characters aren't all that interesting, and a few too many of the battles eventually boil down to a damsel in distress situations.

And yet, I have an incredible amount of fun with this show. A large part of this is because it nails that classic action show tone that perfectly balances goofy comedy, deadly serious drama, and a passionate sense of pure and simple fun when the action comes around. One minute the characters are yelling at each other in chibi form, the next they're tackling a major emotional conflict, and the next they're battling a giant snake xenomorph atop an airplane and it all just works. While the writing isn't especially strong it manages to make all these different tones flow together wonderfully, and nothing ever feel jarring or out of place. But by far the show's biggest strength is the fantastic chemistry between the two title characters, the Beast Spear wielding teenager, Ushio, and the powerful spirit who had been trapped by that very spear, Tora. It's a perfectly executed love-hate relationship, they can't stand each other but through their interactions and battles together they slowly begin to respect and even appreciate each other in a way that feels natural. Any time they exchange banter it's an absolute blast, and over time they help each other, learn from each other, and it starts to feel like they truly become comrades. In the most recent episode, a character confronts Tora as to why he hasn't killed Ushio yet despite having multiple opportunities to, and while he admits to not being entirely sure why, the best answer he can come up with is "I'm never bored when I'm with him," and I think that sums it up about perfectly. The two complement each other incredibly well, and the show is never boring when they're together.

From a production perspective the show has remained mostly consistent, if not especially impressive. the show excels more at making action feel exciting through presentation and framing rather than actually doing all that much animating. It's comparable to David Production's work on the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure anime, there isn't actually that much movement in the action but it just feels exciting because the direction is so stylish and dynamic. Sure, it mostly just cuts to a character attacking, float in mid air, then cutting to another attack, but it sure looks cool. There are occasional cases stand out animation, the most recent episode actually featured possibly the best, most movement-heavy action scene the series has ever had, but for the most part it's polished but stiff. Overall though, I had a great time with Ushio and Tora. The story doesn't offer much new, but it has a remarkable sense of energy and two leads that go together as well as peanut butter and jelly. It's old fashioned action fun that I'm looking forward to continuing.

First-Cour Score: 7/10

Wakaba*Girl
Danni Kristen

There are only a few things we can be sure of in life: death, taxes, and that every anime season will have a hefty serving of LN harem and 4-koma moe adaptations. It's safe to say that Wakaba*Girl is at least one of those aforementioned constants. It's premise may be somewhat original in that the protagonist is a rich girl who has always dreamed of being a regular high school girl. However, the setting is cliched as hell, being about a group of four girls who go to school together. Wakaba*Girl doesn't make much effort in its introduction to this situation, either. The first episode begins with the girls sitting down on the first day of high school and deciding they should all be friends because their seats are close together. Out of sheer coincidence they all end up getting along perfectly and become best friends pretty much instantly. No set-up needed here!

Though it's apparent not much thought went into crafting an original scenario for Wakaba*Girl, it at least manages to be a fairly entertaining show. Wakaba and Moe are interesting an fun characters to follow, but Shiba and Mao can be rather boring to watch together. Thankfully, moments where the main cast are split up are rare, and they manage to play off each other well as a group. The jokes are usually good for a chuckle, though there were some gags that managed to make me laugh out loud, particularly one involving Wakaba's not understanding the difference between a cell phone and a cordless phone. The visuals were good as well. Backgrounds were somewhat simplistic, and pretty much everything in Wakaba*Girl is brightly candy-colored. The visuals often reminded of illustrations that would appear n a children's book, which makes sense thematically. Wakaba views her high school life with a special kind of childlike innocence and wonder. Being the protagonist, it makes sense that we'd the world around her would be illustrated the way it is.

Wakaba*Girl makes a nice short, but I don't think it could last as a full twenty-four minute show. Eight minutes per week was about all I could take of Wakaba and her antics. While it's all very cute and fun, it's almost a little TOO cute. This is an extremely moe show. It's so moe, one of its characters is actually named Moe. Wakaba*Girl is like icing on a cake. It's good, but it is intensely sweet. A good cake keeps a healthy portion of cake to balance out the icing. Wakaba*Girl is almost pure icing. There's hardly any cake to balance out its tooth-rotting sweetness. However, its portions are small, so it remains edible. If you're looking for something incredibly cute and incredibly vapid to spend your time on, go ahead and give this show a shot.

Final Score: 6/10

Wakako-zake
Danni Kristen

I'm gonna come right out and say it, Wakako-zake is one of my favorite shows of 2015. I'll admit, that's an odd honor to bestow upon a show that did nothing more than depict a working woman eating various foods for ninety seconds every week. While it may not have been as thematic as Yuri Kuma Arashi, as emotional as Blood Blockade Battlefront, or as absurdly hilarious as Prison School, it may very well have been the most charming show this year.

If nothing else, Wakako-zake was a nice breath of fresh air. I spent most of my time this season watching shows that included zombie-fighting schoolgirls, bratty little sisters, and dramatic acts of self-defecation. While I enjoyed those aforementioned shows immensely, Wakako-zake was a much-welcomed break in-between these emotional highs and lows. Usually when I say that nothing at all happens in a show, I mean it negatively. However, Wakako-zake managed to deliver a great show precisely because nothing happened. Every week Wakako sat down at a new restaurant, ordered a new dish of food, and provided us with satisfied commentary of her meal. Before long watching this show made me feel like I was grabbing dinner with a friend. I'd come home exhausted from either class or work and launch the latest episode where I was met immediately by Wakako, who shared my discomfort. During our brief meals together, Wakako would excitedly comment on the dish she had chosen for that week, though sometimes as an aside she'd rant a little about work. She'd finish her meal and we'd go our separate ways. I finished every episode feeling more relaxed than when I'd begun watching.

Wakako-zake's surprising charm can largely be attributed to its protagonist. Wakako is an extremely lovable woman whose main goals in life seem to revolve around eating good food and making it through work one day at a time, which makes her quite relatable in my opinion. The fact that she's voiced by the talented Miyuki Sawashiro doesn't hurt, either. Additionally, Wakako-zake's visuals are incredibly relaxing and easy on the eyes. Characters are drawn and animated somewhat simplistically, the color palette is subdued, and the backgrounds are soft and often watercolored, All these aspects blended together well with a number of neat touches to create one of the most surprisingly entertaining shows this year.

Final Score: 9/10

Second Opinions

Actually, I Am

Jonathan: Pretty fun but irrelevant show on the whole. The characters are really funny and manic, the jokes rocket across constantly, and the expressions are all top notch. Still, where the series fails is trying to go with that rom-com route when its best moments are divorced from those elements. There's nothing clever done with misconceptions or love triangles, just obnoxious will they or won't they drama that's strangely played straight (outside Shiragami being so incredibly, inhumanly dense). If there was more focused on the principal screwing around with everyone and wacky stuff like that, I would be giving this a far higher score, but all the rom-com bits and hard drama feels shallow compared to better entries in this genre, like My Love Story and Nozaki-kun. You're probably better with just reading the manga (which has far superior expressions), but there's some fun to be had here. Final Score: 6/10

Aoharu X Machinegun

Jonathan: I seriously could not stand more than two episodes of Snow White due to how utterly generic it was, yet I sat through the entirety of Aoharu, which is arguably just as cliched with two different flavors, sports drama and shojo romance. That should have been a sign for bad things to come, but the series came together just right. The characters are incredibly likable, making up for how melodramatic some of the conflicts got (though Matt's gets a fantastic resolution), and the series style is one of the most interesting of the year. It uses a lot of atmosphere distortion, heavy shadows with bright, unnatural lights, and a lot of contrasting colors mixed with blurring. The series just looks wonderful the majority of the time, outside a few spots in the middle where the animation suffers. I'm glad I stayed for the whole ride, and I really hope to see another season. Final Score: 7/10

Classroom Crisis

David: Okay, first off: I really liked Classroom Crisis. As flooded as anime is with shows about schools, this one managed to take the concept in a really unique direction, mixing it with a workplace comedy, politics, corporate espionage, spaceship construction, and even some wacky space adventures here and there. That's a lot of genres to juggle, but the show did so remarkably well, creating a consistent, fun tone for the show that I really enjoyed. BUT, I actually didn't finish the show. I didn't even get very close to the end. I guess a large part of it is it simply isn't a very good show for weekly viewing. It moves at a fairly slow pace, and rarely left me with much driving me to move onto each new episode. And it's definetly not that the show got worse, it actually improved as it went on, just not drastically enough it ever fully pulled me in to its character's struggles. It didn't help that I felt the side characters were too often treated as afterthoughts to the four characters fully focused on (which I understand, but I would've like at least a bit more characterization and development for the other students). But still, what I saw was a lot of fun, and I do want to see more. Just not right now. Eight Episodes: 7/10

GANGSTA.

Stephanie: Gangsta is one of the series that has been pretty up and down all season long. While it does have some interesting plot elements and characters, the writing of the story can have a lot of moments where it's underdeveloped or poorly written. You have to admit, seeing a deaf character played out in an anime is very different and new, making Nicolas a character I love for that reason as well as his slightly dorky nature. Also, props to both Kenjirou Tsuda and Brandon Potter who voice Nic in the Japanese and English respectively. That's certainly a huge challenge to take on and both have done an outstanding job given the circumstances. But now comes the extremely glaring problem with the series: it does not have a proper ending. It is in desperate need of a second season thanks to the ending point of episode twelve. With all hell breaking loose because of the arc we're smack dab in the middle of, Gangsta clearly has not ended. What makes this even sadder is that another season will probably never happen thanks to the recent news of animation studio Manglobe filing bankruptcy in late September. Unless another studio decides to take on this series, similar to Spice and Wolf II going to Brains Base after Imagin did season one, then I hope you're ready to be disappointed in the end of the series and are able to pick up the manga. I know I'm going to be from this point on. Final Score: 7/10

Himouto! Umaru-chan

David: Himouto! Umaru-chan comes from studio Dogakobo, who have lately made a name for themselves with their tradition of well animated comedy series overflowing with energy and charm. And similar to their past works such as Yuru Yuri, Love Lab, and Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Himouto is a zany load of non-stop fun. Nearly every characters is likable and memorable, the jokes are funny, the animation is cute, and the situations the characters are put into always cleverly work off their unique personality traits. If I had any complaints it's actually in relation to the main character, Umaru. While at times she can be a great, hilarious character, at others she can border a bit too much on just being an unlikable jerk. I feel the show got better at walking the fine line between funny and obnoxious, but early on it did seem to have a bit of trouble. The rest of the cast is pretty much perfect though. Ebina is adorable, Kirie is awesome, and I don't even know how to put a description of Sylphynford into words. It's a lively gag comedy show done right, always was able to make me laugh. Final Score: 7/10

Jonathan: Way better than it had any right to be. For an adaptation of a gag manga with a paper thin premise, they get a lot of mileage out of Umaru's hedonist nature, and even mix in some surprisingly well handled character development. Umaru does change through the series because of her interactions with the supporting cast, and they all play a role in developing a different part of her personality. I wasn't expecting that, or for all of them to be hilarious (especially Sylphy and Kirie). Lots of great jokes, but a lot of nice little emotional bits mixed in too. Out of the hard comedies I've watched this season, this is definitely the strongest overall. Final Score: 7/10

Monster Musume: Everyday Life With Monster Girls

Danni: This show is bad and I feel bad for enjoying it. I've never been a fan of harem shows, but I've always been a huge fan of monster girls. When I heard there was going to be a monster girl harem show, I had to at least watch one episode. In the end, I watched the whole season and found myself loving it. Regardless, it had a wellspring of flaws. A good number of its sexual scenes and jokes were exploitative and creepy. An entire half of one episode was dedicated to a creepy man trying to film Papi as she laid an egg. Cerea getting groped or having her breasts exposed in public was another all too common occurrence. There's also the fact that when Suu got thirsty, she got thirsty. It's a trashy show. I won't try to defend it. However, it's one of the few harem shows with a protagonist who I could actually stand, so it wins some points there. What really sells it though is the girls. They're all wonderfully lovable and play off each other well. The one thing I'd suggest to improve the show, though, is add more Tionishia. She's the best girl and no one can convince me otherwise. Final Score: 6/10

Stephanie: This series is one I honestly did not expect to enjoy, and yet I did. Granted there were are some moments throughout that made me cringe ever so slightly, however it was still a hilarious and fun time! In a way, it kind of pokes fun at the harem genre and is pretty self aware of what it is and what it wants to achieve. Our lead character may be harem magnet but he's a much more likable character who also doesn't take advantage of this situation and just wants to treat his house guests are regular people, something the ladies of this anime greatly appreciate. Actually, he kinda deserves a lot of credit for dealing with a lot of crazy things he gets thrown into. While you may see much of the story and characters as your classic harem troupes, again, it breaks the mold of the average harem by extreme amounts of physical and sexual comedy that it comes pretty close to becoming more of a parody of the genre. Personally, I have terrible luck watching harems and tend to distance myself from them. In the case of Monster Musume, I really enjoyed the energy and fun it had. This is a rare one for me to say, it's not a bad series. Final Score: 7/10

Overlord

Stephanie: This series has been one that I've had mixed feelings on. It tends to draw itself out and be rather slow at points, and yet it's also fun when it becomes faster paced and has some interesting world building to it. The characters are a fun mix of personalities and, occasionally, classic troupes that we have seen before but in a fantasy/RPG form. However, it's clear that Madhouse is hoping to create another season from here. There is a large set up that eludes to this, as well as some unanswered questions and areas that need to be explored further. Particularly the guardians, as they seem to know more then they let on and aren't telling Momonga about it. The set up is there, but whether or not that second season will happen is the bigger mystery. We'll see what the coming months hold. For what it is right now, Overlord is a fun addition to the MMORPG anime subgenre despite some of the glaring flaws that it has. It's leagues better than Sword Art Online, but, then again, it doesn't take a lot for an MMORPG series to be better than SAO. Final Score: 6/10

Prison School

Danni: I can honestly say I have never seen anything quite like Prison School. Never in my life have I ever expected to love something as shamelessly raunchy and perverted as this show. It is way better than it has any right to be. It's a perfect adaptation of already great source material and definitely the best directed show this season. The pacing of the show is incredibly fast, which somehow works perfectly for Prison School. It leaves it so shit just keeps happening and happening leaving you with no time to react to whatever the hell just happened before something even more jaw-dropping is thrown in your face. Prison School is incredible, and I need a second season now. Final Score: 10/10


SCHOOL-LIVE!

David: Right out of the gate School Live was the biggest surprise of the season for me. While I knew where it was going from the beginning, I never expected it to handle the genre in such a unique way, let alone do so with such tactful execution. Though I worried the show wouldn't be able to hold such a high bar of quality, it did stay tense and often heart wrenching all the way through. It did suffer from some pacing issues, while the opening and closing stretch of the series were a mix of great character development and edge-of-your seat horror, the middle of the show dragged on quite a bit. It put too much focus on the slice of life comedy aspects of the show, even though said aspects worked best when complementing an imminent, ever present sense of doom. The swimsuit episode in particular felt totally useless and out of place, like it was carried over from a different moe slice of life show without any thought put into whether it would fit the tone of the show. But it made up for these shortcomings with a perfectly realized finale that brought everything together wonderfully, and had me rolled up into a puddle of tears by the end. Anyone looking for an unconventional mix of comedy, horror, and psychological drama should definitely check out School Live. Final Score: 8/10

Jonathan: I am sad I did not have time to finish this one, because I can only watch it in small spurts because I fear my soul will be destroyed by marathoning. This was easily the best surprise of the season and a contender for one of the top ten best of the year. It has fun comedy, but it uses that brilliantly to make far more engaging drama. It's also the first zombie related thing I've seen in a long time to actually make zombies utterly horrifying. Only letting us see little bits here and there, but just enough to reveal the advanced decay of the shambling masses, every single zombie in this series is pure nightmare fuel, and they're always, always a major threat. I'll be finishing this one later, but damn, what I've seen so far is masterful. Nine Episode Score: 9/10

Seiyu's Life

Stephanie: You know, as a last minute addition to my summer watch list, Seiyu's Life turned out to be one of my favorites of the season! It's a fun, upbeat, series that gives me a little bit of light heartedness in a season full of ups and down.... Though mostly downs.... It can be seen as a fairly accurate interpretation of what a seiyu actually does, but just with some comedy added in to keep it from getting too serious and depressing. The addition of real life seiyus as characters in the series also made for some great learning moments for our three main characters with Hiroshi Kamiya and Yui Horie making the most appearances and having some really amazing insight! This is just the kind of series I needed in a rather lackluster summer. I loved this one a lot! Final Score: 8/10

Snow White with the Red Hair

Stephanie: From the very beginning, we knew this series was both a classic fairytale but wasn't at the same time. The romance between Shirayuki and Zen blossoms naturally, while the societal norms hold their happiness back. This is something that works pretty well, as those norms are slowly breaking down by the time the couple decide to really become one by then end of this first cour. Then there's the characters themselves, because they are what make this less of the classic fairytale story. Both Shirayuki and Zen are capable individuals that wish to achieve their goals with their own effort despite the push back they may receive. This gives a different spin compared to previous fairytales many of us have encountered and it's something I know will be carried over into the second cour come this winter. The secondary characters such as Mitsuhide, Kiki, and Obi also bring in qualities and fun interactions with our leads, giving us a chance to explore the many sides of these characters and their world. And let's not even get started on Bones's animation because this is just some stunning work from them! Overall, the first half of Snow White has been a beautiful story and a new twist on the fairytales that I grew up with. It's one of my favorites from this season, and it's one of the ones I'm most excited to see return this coming winter. First-Cour Score: 8/10

Ushio and Tora

Jonathan: Definitely one of the best shows of the season, and a great example of how to adapt an older work. Where as Parasyte tried to touch up on the cosmetic aspects and somehow made the actual story more regressive (seriously, how do you write something more sexist that the gory action/horror comic from the age off fridged women?), Ushio and Tora doesn't update a damn thing and just straight adapts material it clearly loves. It's not accuracy that is important for most adaptations, but respect for the material, and that's definitely here. It's all goofy 90s fun with additions from modern digital techniques, and it's just a lot of fun, with brutal and exciting action. But most importantly, the series focus on understanding and empathy is refreshing in a very cynical landscape. It's something we need more of from our shonen action stories. All the amazing expressions we can probably thank MAPPA for are just icing on the cake. First-Cour Score: 8/10

Staff Picks

Gatchaman Crowds: Insight
Jonathan Kaharl

Fun fact: Before this season begun, I was a tad wary of a second season of Gatchaman Crowds. The first season was already damn incredibly and I felt it could stand on its own two feet as one of the best works Tatsunoko has ever put out. I had this nagging feeling that Insight was going to let me down and tarnish the near perfect work that had become before it.

And then after two episodes, I caught on how this season would validate itself. It was going to completely eviscerate the message of the previous season. And it did. And it was incredible.

The first season of Gatchaman Crowds was all about the potential of new technology, both for creation and destruction, and how everyone had the capacity to be heroes through it. Our lesser base nature could be overcome in the end, and the world could truly be a better place. Insight, however, took a step back and decided to look at what it really means to have more power in the hands of the average citizen by including a new villain born of this Earth. Calling himself an extremist working for peace, his organization of red crowd users completely upset the balance, creating fear of crowds and a growing discourse between the people on what to do. So, our two newest members of the team, Tsubasa and Gelsadra, decided to work towards making people more unified.

What resulted was a nightmare dystopia where monsters born from human emotion devoured anyone who went against the climate of the culture. Where season one was about the violent and angry people on the edge of society that poisoned it in spurs, Insight was about a far more terrifying concept: the atmosphere. Popular opinion, cultural norms, and a desire to see everyone as unified created a wave of organized madness, crushing anyone who couldn't read the mood and needing the most violent outside the box solution the team could come up with to combat it. This wasn't just those on the fringes, but all of us and our tendency to go with the flow and not think on our decisions or viewpoints. Our destruction didn't come from some super weapon or military power, like the original Gatchaman had to fear, but our own tendencies to avoid conflict for the sake of the good feeling within the larger group. It even compared this phenomenon to the patriotism that flows during wartime and turns even the most sensible people into soldiers for the country, yet finding themselves in a conflict they had no true desire to fight.

I've never seen this very real fear or concept explored before in any media, outside the viewpoints of those already on the edge of the greater culture or with a very focused look at a particular flavor (usually patriotism), and Insight deals with it all masterfully, with a finale that left my jaw on the floor and a hole in my heart. Season one choose to see the best in us, but this season became cynical and seething with loathing. Yet, it kept that hopeful optimism and left with a message we all have to take to heart. Don't just go with the flow without thinking it through. The consequences for your actions are far greater than you can imagine, and your answer should be one that you came to on your own, not from the influence of others. Eventually, we all have that moment that destroys the sense of unity, an event so shocking that we can't get drunk on the common culture. Insight wants you to think about those moments, and it wants you to grow on your own accord. It's shockingly similar to some of the ideas from Yurikuma Arashi, now that I stop and think about it, but instead of being about the politics of modern Japanese lesbian culture, it examines how we react to the larger culture around us.

Culture is an intoxicating thing, and we're almost never aware of it. Insight is aware, and wants everyone else to be aware as well. All the great production, fast pacing, and the impressively twisting plot are just icing on the cake of a brilliant little political drama disguised as a superhero yarn. The second to last episode even finally gives everyone the cape punching they've been complaining wasn't there in season one, only to show how utterly horrifying that concept can be. Don't go along with the crowd, don't do the expected, do what you see is right. It's the only way we're going to grow as a species. Stop and think, reflect on what you experience, and don't just listen solely to your gut. That's important, but not the end all of what defines you.

In a world where Donald Trump is a viable presidential candidate, this is a message we all need to take to heart.

Final Score: 10/10

Symphogear GX
David O'Neil

Symphogear GX is the latest entry in a series I have a strong, yet difficult to explain affection for. Even now, I find myself struggling to find the words to describe it. It's like if a magical girl show, an 80s B-action movie, an idol show, a mecha show, and a super sentai show, were all mixed together, which in concept sounds like a mess. A jumble of concepts and ideas like that sounds catastrophic, but in Symphogear it's all wrapped up in a tone and story so senseless and moronic yet relentless in its never ending passion, effort, and dedication to the delivering exhilarating entertainment chocked full of personality that I enjoy ever second of it. Symphogear is something truly special.

The latest season operates on the same basic formula previous ones have, there's some big evil force that wants to destroy the world, and it's up to the super-powered transforming idols to fight, sing, and overcome internal struggles of their own resolves in order to beat the bad guys and save the. The plot is thin, and at it's core basically a repeat of a lot of the previous season, yet Symphogear has never quite been this well executed and tightly paced. The character development is more pronounced than ever this time around, and while it's far from an extensive character study, it adds some much appreciated depth to the already likable cast. No character is fighting without reason, every single one of them has their own set of ideals, goals, and motivations that make the characters all the more sympathetic and believable (well, as believable as a show about idols who increase the power of their song-based mecha suits by holding hands can be). And unlike previous Symphogear seasons, which had a tendency to drag on in the middle with the souring high points being the beginning and end, GX does a much better job managing it's time so it stays consistently engaging from beginning to end.  There are lots of twists and turns in the story to keep things interesting along with big, cheer-worthy moments for fans of every character. Add in the most impressive fight scenes and production values from the series thus far makes it easily the best season of Symphogear yet.

At times I worry about overselling people on Symphogear, while at others I wonder if such a thing is even possible. It's by no means perfect, but puts its unique sense of pure concentrated fun above all else, and never wavers from that admirable goal. Around every turn Symphogear pulled me in and never let go, making me care about it's goofball characters, nonsense story, and over the top action because it presented it in a way so genuine and bombastic I can't help but get swept up in all its ridiculousness. As long as you can learn to turn down your brain a bit and accept all its dumb quirks and gaps in logic, Symphogear is an insanely enjoyable show, and Symphogear GX is the best it's ever been.

Final Score: 8/10

Hetalia: The World Twinkle
Stephanie Getchell

I'm back to my usual habit of taking my Staff Pick and featuring a series that hasn't really gotten much attention this season. While there, honestly, weren't many series going into a second season, except the leftover ones from the spring, that I was watching, it left only one option for me and that was to talk about the new season of Hetalia, because why the heck not? If you're wondering if there's anything new in the world of Hetalia then the answer is not really. It's just the same fun antics that the various world countries get into, however what's been odd about this season so far is that it took attention away from the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) quite a bit. Instead, we've had a few episodes where the micro nations and Nordic states are explored and spent a little bit of time with America and England. Hell, France doesn't even pop in until the twelfth episode, something that the character even acknowledges in his grand fashion.

This is actually my first time seeing the new animation style Hetalia sports since I've only seen the first season, Axis Powers, in its entirety. I haven't seen World Series or Beautiful World, where this new style comes in. It's a fun change for the show, however I still am fond of the original animation which played more with comedic aspects rather than showed off it's budget; something I kinda think World Twinkle is doing here. The comedy is still there, but the nice bright animation style kinda holds it back, honestly. And while the episodic nature of the story remains tried and true since the beginning of the franchise, it also has other little moments that really captured my attention with episode eleven being the larger one. The episode involves a little America befriending a man named Davie and the relationship they shared. It was one of the more sad episodes that I had seen the franchise go towards and it actually works rather well. Sure it comes from left field, but nearly everything in Hetalia comes from left field. It's a different side of the series that I had yet to see and it was something I appreciate... Then again if World Series and Beautiful World had anything similar to this than I'm sure I'd change my mind once I actually watched those shows.

When talking about series with smaller run times, I've stated Hetalia as an example of a good way of using this to your advantage. Having seen a decent amount of shorts these past couple of seasons, it's really great to come back to Hetalia and see that it's still got what I had loved about it. One of my major complaints I've had with shorts such as Pupa, Rainy Cocoa, and Milion Doll is that it's extremely hard to have a story in such a short amount of time. The small run time doesn't give much wiggle room for something like that, but it can work for series with no story and just some every day antics; which Hetalia and this season's Danchigai have managed to do rather well. On the flip side of it, what Danchigai fails to do in order to really stand out is grab the viewer's attention for more then just a few episodes. You have five main characters that we see every single time and see them go through mundane tasks. Hetalia has a whole slew of characters with varying personalities and stories that it can go in an infinite number of directions and still be rather successful because of it! As a short comic to begin with, it works rather well as a short series. You don't need a story, you just need to have some fun characters get into some crazy adventures as they fight amongst themselves.

Here's where everything on the North American end is about to get a little tricky. We all know that Hetalia will get a dub later down the line. With this comes a little bit of controversy due to recent news. By now, we've all heard about voice actor Scott Freeman having plead guilty to child pornography charges. This controversy has already been felt a tiny bit with the casting replacement for High School DxD Born as Josh Grelle stepped in to takeover Freeman's previous leading role. At the time, there was outrage but more because no one really knew why and it was believed to be scheduling problems (Freeman wasn't the only one replaced for the broadcast dub). Now that the news of the charges has fully come forward, and FUNimation has permanently cut all ties with Freeman, this now leaves another recurring role Freeman has held open; that of Hetalia's England, which is arguably one of his most well known roles. For those who may not yet be aware of those charges on Freeman, I'm sorry, but they're true. This individual committed a crime and is going to be punished for it no matter what we do or how much we wish it wasn't true. FUNimation did the right thing by cutting their ties with him and whatever backlash they end up getting once we hear who will take over as England will be natural for those who are unaware of the circumstances. If you're reading this, do me a favor, when you see those comments don't add fuel to the fire. FUNimation is going to be having enough trouble as it is to try and step away from the situation. By starting huge arguments and causing trouble, the problem will never rest. Just let it be and let both the company, as well as the many voice actors that Freeman has previously worked with, move on. The circumstances are bad, but life goes on, as mean as this makes me sound. I believe whoever becomes the next voice of England will do well with the role regardless of controversy and will create a new version of the character that we will all get to enjoy!

Hetalia, despite skipping a couple seasons, is still as fun as I remember from seeing Axis Powers. While the first half was a little bit of an odd start, I'm mostly chalking that up to those two seasons I have yet to see. Otherwise, it's still a fun little show that manages to take advantage of it's small run time and it's vast amount of characters including some new ones! I am going to go back and see the other seasons, but it's been a nice breath of fresh air in this rather crowded summer season. More Hetalia is always a good thing!

First-Cour Score: 7/10

Charlotte
Joe Straatmann

Hoo boy, P.A. Works went on both sides of the spectrum for this and last Summer's Glasslip. Glasslip had absolutely nothing happen for long stretches at a time, characters with powers they do nothing with, and was serene to the point of triggering narcolepsy. After a certain twist which will not be revealed by me, all hell breaks loose on Charlotte. It begins with a basic enough premise of teenagers with supremely flawed superpowers gathering to keep themselves from being discovered and dissected by scientists, but it keeps doubling down with every turn to be bigger, more tragic, and more warped at every twist. It's an adaptation of a Key product, so you know deep sadness is in the forecast of even this supposed comedy where one character runs extremely fast speeds at the cost of head wounds Wile E. Coyote never had to consider. [Editor's Note: This is an original work by Key staff, not an adaptation] However, even if you were spot-on with predicting the first plot twist, you'd be hard-pressed to guess what's next and what's after that. It's a fun watch, but it will be a candidate to be revisited and reevaluated in a year or two. For now, the series is like its opening music theme: Almost awesomely epic, but it lacks a certain something that keeps it earthbound.

The problem is likely the main character. Yuu Otosaka–even being the guardian to his little sister Ayumi–is a bit terrible, especially when left to his own devices. We're introduced to him as a person who can control other humans for five seconds, and his first major act is to go as far as taking over a guy driving a garbage truck and making him crash in order to jump in and save the girl he has the hots for. I'm all for people with flaws and this is close to what an average high school guy would do if he had special powers, but this is kind of reprehensible. Thankfully, this is a show about a team of people with slightly off super powers and team leader Nao Tomori is not one to indulge his crap, promptly sobering him to the reality that if he doesn't stop, some doctors will start poking around until he can't use the bathroom by himself anymore. Nao and Yuu work well with each other. She gives Yuu purpose and diection while he gives Nao back a certain bit of humanity she lost when researchers got their hands on her brother. But Yuu goes his own way a couple more times throughout the 13 episodes, and during those times he picks fights he shouldn't and has a rather unappealing self-righteous attitude. If the measure of a person is what they do when nobody's watching, Yuu fails this test miserably.

Easily the best part of the anime is within the first half. Yuu teams up with Nao's student council who in reality exist to find students with powers in the area and shuffle them off before they draw too much attention. The team includes Joujirou who can run incredibly fast with the cost of nasty injuries and eventually Yusa, a pop idol who can channel the dead but mostly channels her sister Misa, a street-tough and gruff girl who can summon fire. Though Joujirou's idol worship of Yusa gets annoying at times, the main group has great chemistry with each other. The episodes themselves have a breezy confidence, capturing the glee of using superpowers while also having the imagination to see how normal people would use them, like a telekenetic pitcher who uses his abilities to put an amazing bend on his pitch.  P.A. Works' animation has fluid action for a project that isn't really an action show. Their backgrounds aren't as nearly drop dead gorgeous as they usually are, but that is a very small nit to pick. The light and fast feel also manages to keep Key's emotional wrecking balls in without feeling like they're trying too hard to hammer in the eventual waterworks.

The second half is a different beast altogether. Tragedy strikes, the veil is lifted, and all sorts of unexpected revelations come to light. The material is incredibly difficult to discuss because even revealing one is doing a disservice. Even saying why the show is called Charlotte ruins a little bit.  You will not see what the show's endgame is, for better or worse. It is at times wickedly exciting to see the bends the plot makes towards the goal, but it is super reliant on revelations over character development as it goes on. This is why this series probably needs to be reevaluated sometime down the road as the shock value is solid, but what happens when it's watched again knowing everything? Whatever the case, the final episode has its heart in the right place, but is severely mangled by almost completely abandoning part of the premise, relying on a Japanese speaker talking very muddled English ("If you move, you fire!"), and the feeling that much of Yuu's motivation comes off as a little bit selfish. It doesn't derail the entire project, but it feels like such a different show that if it wasn't for the last moments, it would be a sour final serving that would be hard to overcome.

Being far superior to Glasslip is no big feat, but even with its glaring issues, I had good times with Charlotte. Snagging laughs and tears while keeping the tone consistent is a difficult task and P.A. Works mostly succeeds. It's likely not going to last in the public consciousness enough to talk about a couple years down the road in a much-needed second viewing, but it's at the very least entertaining enough to deserve a first one. It has fun with superpowers not many like to have and when Yuu has a support system, the characters are enjoyable. It's only good, but I will take good in a season that has found new and stunning ways to hurt me.

Final Score: 7/10