Anime Sunday: Most Anticipated Fall 2018 Anime

This week for Anime Sunday I’m back with a look at the upcoming season of Anime, and sorry it’s a bit late in coming. It’s my Most Anticipated Fall 2018 Anime!

Seishun Buta Yarou: Normally I try to stay clear of Romantic Comedy series, but this one caught my attention with the supernatural genre tag. Hopefully it doesn’t devolve into some of the worse romantic comedy pitfalls, as I really want to like this series.

Tensei Shittara Slime: This is an adaptation of an Isekai/Tensei novel series and it actually gets pretty intense despite the comical nature the art series depicts. I’m hoping the Anime doesn’t rush the pacing and we get more than a single cour.

Index Season 3: I’ve always loved the Toaru series, although the fact that Touma is incredibly obvlious to the affections of the girls he seems to attract like crazy is more than annoying. The fact that there’s an in-universe explanation that actually makes sense for that phenomenon is part of why I love this series though as it’s series that makes you think and has logical, if supernatural, reasons for just about everything that happens. Maybe we’ll get to the big war arc in this season, though I’m doubtful of that.

Radiant: I know only one thing about this series, and that’s the fact that this an adaptation of a Manga written and drawn by a Frenchman. Due to the highly isolationist nature of Japanese culture anything that can make them include a foreigner’s work into one of their bigger markets is always noteworthy and I’m looking forward to checking this series out. If I’m disappointed I won’t be too upset, but I hope that this series proves to be good.

Honorable Mention:

Sword Art Online III: This is the third season of a popular series, but hugely overrated in my opinion. I’ve heard it will last 52 episodes (4 Cours worth of episodes), and given that the Alicization Arc that this is supposed to cover in it’s entirety is like 8 volumes long and the longest arc in the series to date, I wouldn’t be at all surprised for that to be true. I’ll probably binge watch the entire thing once it’s completely done, but until then this only gets an honorable mention.

Goblin Slayer: This is a Dark Fantasy series, and I tend to stay away from those these days, but I can hope they do a good job adapting the series from the Light Novels.

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

TNT: Upcoming Anime Adaptations of Light Novels

This week for Translation Necessary Thursday I’m back with a quick look the towards future. It’s all about Upcoming Anime Adaptations of Light Novels!

Arifureta: Color me really surprised, but yeah Arifureta is getting an Anime. Hopefully it isn’t absolute crap, but the storyline is actually pretty amazing, and I’ve read the entire web novel and a bit of the after story. Whether the adaptation is any good will remain to be seen.

Shield Hero: Again I’m really surprised this is getting an Anime, considering the absolutely horrid things that occur to Naofumi in the first few chapters.

Sword Art Online Alicization Arc: Not surprised at all that this is getting an Anime, with how huge a hit the first two seasons were. I’ll admit I’m partial to the GGO arc of SAO, but the rest is a bit too lighthearted overall for me. Alicization though shouldn’t be that lighthearted and I fully expect it to take the entire two cour’s worth of episodes to animate the entire thing, if not possibly 3 cour.

Toaru Index Season 3: Once more a suprise announcement, it’ll happen sometime in the future. Eventually.

Shout outs go to both Overlord and Death March for their adaptations happening in the Winter 2018 season. Hopefully Death March’s won’t be absolutely terrible.

Wish List Adaptations I’d love to see happen in the second half of 2018, but incredibly likely that they won’t happen:

Fate/Strange Fake and Fate/Prototype Fragments: Both are really interesting series that haven’t really been translated yet, so I’d love them to get some love from my favorite studio ufotable. Of course I’d also like a Fate/Extra Caster Route with Hakunon by ufotable as well. Hell get everything Nasuverse related done by ufotable in the future TYPE-MOON! Seriously though, a match made in heaven.

That’s it for the first Translation Necessary Thursday of 2018, come back next week for a more regular sort of post.

Anime Sunday: To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering a spin off series to one of my favorite Light Novel series of all time, To Aru Majutsu no Index. It’s time to be stunned by To Aru Kagaku no Railgun, or A Certain Scientific Railgun in English.

Plot Synopsis: In the futuristic Academy City, which is made up of 80% students, many of which are espers possessing unique psychic powers, Mikoto Misaka is an electromaster who is the third strongest of a mere seven espers who have been given the rank of Level 5. The series focuses on the exploits of Mikoto and her friends; Kuroko Shirai, Kazari Uiharu, and Ruiko Saten, prior to and during the events of A Certain Magical Index.

Plot: Like it’s stated above, the series revolves around Mikoto and her exploits in Academy City. Touma, the main protagonist of Index, shows up occasionally but isn’t the hero of this spin off. I really enjoy the look at the scientific side of this universe because it’s often centered on the magical side in the main series. It may also help that Mikoto is one of my favorite female characters of any medium of story telling.  This series may start off with a slightly lighter tone than Index does, but like Index it quickly becomes very serious. Expect plenty of action.

Characters: Mikoto has enough flaws to make her an interseting lead, and it certainly helps to show that she isn’t a typical heroine. The rest of the main crew that helps Mikoto is also fairly interesting, although Kuroko can get annoying with her one sided devotion/stalker tendencies towards Mikoto.

Art: The art for this series is great, nothing spectacular, but not terrible either. I really enjoy the Opening and Ending sequences.

Music: The music is amazingly well done, and the opening themes are sung by fripSide a musical group I like quite a bit.

Overall: If you like plenty of action performed by a kick ass heroine, you need to watch this series.

For those who like: Action, Brainy characters, Amazing musical score, Kick ass heroines, The Toaru series.

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

Light Novel Thursday: To Aru Majutsu no Index/ A Certain Magical Index

This is one of my favorite Light Novel series, and is one of the most popular ones in Japan. So I figured I’d do my first Light Novel Review on it.

Summary: A high school student named Touma Kamijou is living an somewhat peaceful life in the City of School, Academy City in Tokyo. He meets a strange nun and thus begins his life in the War between Science and Magic.

Plot: While each book is a separate story for the first few volumes, it quickly becomes necessary to have read the entire series to not get lost with all the different characters who show up. That out of the way, the series takes a great look at all the different myths from around the world and incorporates them into the story very well. It also takes into account pretty scientific theories, which while I’m not really that brainy, they all sound plausible to me.

Characters: Well to start with Touma is pretty fun to read about, but beyond him we get loads and loads of characters in this story with each new volume that expand the world building into new and unexpected ways. Needless to say It’s not all about Touma and by the end of the first half of the series we have 4 big heroes that the story follows, with one of them being one of my favorite female characters of all time, Misaka Mikoto.

Length Per Volume: Pretty short for me, at around 200 pages per volume this is a pretty short read for me.

For those who like: Mystery, this series has lots of weird stuff going on. Alternate world fantasy mixed with Urban Fantasy. Kick ass heroes, and an Author who never forgets anything.

Not for those who don’t like: Japan, Fantasy and battle scenes. Lots of death of random goons.

Read before you die?: Yes if you like anything I listed above.

Can’t stand reading, but like watching Anime?: Good news because this is one of the most critically acclaimed Anime Adaptations of a Light Novel series! It even has a spin off series on my favorite heroine, Misaka. The anime covers the first 13 volumes, but it ends on a pretty serious note, so if you are curious you totally should read the rest of the series.

How should I go reading it? Thankfully the amazing people at Baka-tsuki light novel project have you covered, you can download free english translations of the series in helpful .PDF files! Here is their project page for the series.