Anime Sunday: Winners of Winter 2017

Hey all! This Anime Sunday I’m back with my pick of winners for the previous season of Anime, and yes this post has been highly delayed. Sorry about that, but circumstances and my decision to post on an every other day schedule for a while have only let me do a few Anime Sunday columns since I started posting again. Anyways it’s my Winners of Winter 2017!

Youjo Senki: This was a great show to watch and I highly enjoyed watching a villainous protagonist. Sure it might have been a tad too gory for my tastes, but it was a fun show to watch nonetheless.

Dragon Maid: This was an absolutely hilarious show, and I enjoyed watching it thoroughly. If you enjoy some off beat comedy, Dragon Maid was the highlight of the season in my opinion.

ACCA-13: This was a surprisingly fun show to watch, with plenty of political intrigue and drama. It’s art style was also pretty neat.

Honorable Mentions:

Tales of Zestiria the X: The second half of the Tales of Zestiria adaptation, I never got to watch it, but I’m happy ufotable was able to create something that took the story of both Zestiria and Berseria and wove them together.

Naruto Shippuden: This had it’s final episode in this season, and while the “sequel” has started with Boruto, it still deserves a mention.

That’s it for this week’s Anime Sunday!

Anime Sunday: Winners of 2016

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering the best of last year’s Anime. It’s my Winners of 2016!

GATE: I’ve enjoyed watching GATE an episode at a time with my Aunt every few weeks and having ended in Winter 2016, it deserves this spot for the wonderful story it showed me and her.

Boku no Hero Academia: Boku no Hero was an awesome show to watch for all of us who at one point or another all wanted to be a superhero.

ReZero: ReZero wowed the world in 2016, and if you haven’t watched it yet you are truly missing out. This might just have been the best show this year.

Yuri on Ice: Yuri on Ice pushed the boundaries of animation and storytelling this year and stunned viewers with your beautiful choreography. YOI impressed even Olympic skaters. This is the big contender for best of the year with ReZero in my books.

3-gatsu: 3-gatsu shows the story of a boy who deals with depression in a way even the most dense person can understand. Just for that it deserves a spot on this list, the fact that it has an awesome story as well is icing on the cake.

Honorable Mentions:

Tales of Zestiria the X: Animated by my favorite studio ufotable, ToZX was an awesome show to watch, but it also included story and characters from the yet to be released in the west Tales of Berseria, so I can’t give it a formal spot because of that.

That’s it for this week’s Anime Sunday!

Anime Sunday: Most Anticipated Winter 2017 Anime

Happy New Years All! This week’s Anime Sunday is looking at the coming season. It’s my Most Anticipated Winter 2017 Anime!

Yojou Senki: This is apparently a very well done Light Novel series, but I’ve never read it, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out. Given that it’s had a collaboration with Overlord this should prove to be a fun, if slightly evil series.

Kuzu no Honkai: Also known as Scum’s Wish, this will be a series I intend on watching as I enjoy the Manga quite a bit. Since the series will be finished by the end of the Winter 2016 season, I’m hoping they won’t try to squeeze the plot into too few episodes and cause pacing problems.

Tales of Zestiria the X Second Season: Seriously, I loved this game, and while I did stop watching the first season midway through due to not wanting to spoil myself for Tales of Berseria, I still will end up watching this series, hopefully by the end of February at the latest. This is after all being animated by ufotable, the best studio out there.

Hand Shakers: This is produced by the same people who brought us the K series, a series I’m very fond of. So I’ve got high hopes for this new series by the same people. Hopefully it’s just as excellent as K.

CHAOS;CHILD: This is adapted from a Visual Novel that is apparently very excellent, so I’m looking forward to watching this. Hopefully it sticks to one route only, otherwise it’ll turn out like many other VN adaptations.

Konosuba 2: This was a pretty funny series, and it’s getting a second season this season. I’ll be watching it if only to try and forget the horrible year that was 2016.

ēlDLIVE: This is an adaptation of a Manga by the creator of Reborn, so I’m looking forward to this if only for the art style as I’ve always enjoyed his art style.

Honorable Mentions:

Masamune-Kun no Revenge: This is a Romcom, something I tend to stay away from, but after 2016 I think we can all use some more lighthearted moments.

Fuuka: I stopped reading the Manga a while ago, but Kouji Seo always does romances pretty well, so this gets an honorable mention.

That’s it for this week’s Anime Sunday!

Anime Sunday: Winners of Summer 2016

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering my favorites from this latest season of Anime! It’s my Winners of Summer 2016!

ReZero: ReZero has proven to be an absolutely fantastic series from start to finish, and I’m really sad that the current Anime is over, although considering that it just overtook the Light Novels (but not the Web Novel) I’m not too unhappy. Maybe we’ll get another season of this wonderful Anime in the future, because we could all use more of Rem the Best Girl.

Qualidea Code: I really don’t like this Anime’s first episode, but like I mentioned in my first episode impressions a few weeks back I really advise watching the first four episodes (including the credits) before making any judgement.

orange: I enjoyed this series quite a bit, and while it’s not at all action oriented or even really exciting I was pleased with the way it went down. Besides if the original source material was an award winner among thousands of other entries, than it has to be good.

Tales of Zestiria the X: I want to mention this series as it definitely had the best art quality, although ReZero came really, really close. ufotable is my favorite studio for good reason and Zestiria’s Anime adaptation was another trophy in their case already packed with them. I do want to mention that I didn’t continue watching the series past episode 3, because it ends up touching upon Tales of Berseria, a pre-sequel set in the same world as Zestiria and since it hasn’t come out in the West yet I won’t be watching the rest of this series until I finish playing the game to avoid spoiling myself. Also I heard that the ufotable will be animating more seasons of the Zestiria so I’ll probably wait till they’re all out as well.

Honorable Mentions:

Love Live Sunshine: I didn’t enjoy the Anime, but the music of the multimedia project is always fun to listen to when I’m bored or doing something that requires me to use the writing or reading portion of my brain.

Masou Gakuen HxH: For being taken off the air; This was due to it’s risque material that was too much even for a certain Japanese Broadcasting Company. You have to try really hard to do that, and that’s also why I never covered it during the season in my columns. I didn’t want to get into trouble with my Editor at GiN. I could’ve probably worked something out, but I just didn’t want to spend the time on doing so when I could cover a series like Qualidea Code.

That’s it for this week’s Anime Sunday!

Anime Sunday: Zestiria Episode 00 Impressions

This week for Anime Sunday I’m going to cover my most anticipated series’s first episode. It’s my Tales of Zestiria Episode 00 Impressions!

Plot: I’m not going to do a synopsis as I included one in my review of the game and I’ve linked it above. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I have to say that I was really impressed by ufotable’s decision to cover something that isn’t covered in the game. This episode, and the episode after, cover the events leading up to the first fifteen minutes of the game. It’s great to see what happened to Alisha to bring her to Izuchi and we got to see my favorite character in the game for a few seconds. As for plot pacing I’m not at all concerned about it skipping over important details, if anything I’m worried that the entire game might not get covered in this adaptation. We may end up getting later seasons to complete the story, after all we have two more letters after the “X” in the title, so I’m hoping I’m guessing right. Either way though the pacing is excellent.

Characters: We really only get introduced to Alisha and Lunarre in this first episode, although we get a few cameo’s from other characters (including a very surprising one in the opening animation sequence at the end of the episode). I don’t like Alisha as a character all that much, but it’s good to see the reasons why she was where she was at the start of the game. We haven’t gotten introduced to the rest of the cast yet, but trust me when I say that it will only get better.

Art: The art of this first episode reminded me of the game with every shot and it’s very hilarious that it does because I specifically said back in my review of the game over half a year ago that it was like playing a game animated completely by ufotable. This single episode portrays all the reasons why I consistently say that ufotable is the best Anime studio out there, bar none. Not even Ghibli can come close to the action sequences that ufotable animates almost always flawlessly.

Music: In addition to the music reminding me of the game at every shot, every track in the score did as well. As for the new material, the opening and ending themes, they are both excellent as well.

Overall: An amazing adaptation of a Video Game, something that is so very rarely done properly. Definitely a must watch for any Anime fan.

For those who like: Action, Adventure, Drama, Tales of Games, ufotable, Excellent Plot, Amazing Cast of Characters, Fantastic Artwork, Stupendous Music.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, but how can you hate all of that?