It is fall at last. Okay, so it’s not my favourite season of the year (that would be spring), but it always seems like good shows come out in the fall anime season…or maybe that’s just me and my own experiences with the shows I choose to watch. Also, I think a fewer amount of silly shows come out in the fall too; not only to reflect on the climate, but to reflect on the school kids returning from summer break. Okay, so that was deep.
I’m only choosing 5 shows this time, but I know for a fact that I made the right choice on at least one of them.
Hibike! Euphonium 2
Begins: Thursday. October. 06.
I couldn’t not cover this!
If you’ve read TheOASG since before we got our own domain, you might know I covered season 1 of this, and just fell in love straightaway. I loved how the atypical KyoAni school comedy was just pushed to the back row, in favour of genuine drama and heartbreak. Also, it features what has now quickly become one of KyoAni’s most-loved yuri couples: Kumiko Oumae and Reina Kousaka.
As for what will be in season 2: they managed to get the gold medal they desperately wanted, but the club still have more competition to do. Here’s some speculation I have: new characters (club advisors, I think) will be introduced, and there will be much more focus on the third-years, who didn’t have as much coverage as they deserved in the first season.
Probably, the show will still have that ‘season 2’ aura over it, like the one other KyoAni sequels have. So far, only K-on! and Haruhi Suzumiya (save for the Endless Eight) have had good (or better) quality sequel seasons, so will this? Hope so.
Brave Witches
Begins: Thursday. October. 06.
The Strike Witches spin-off that was announced like, years ago, has finally arrived. I honestly think that we’ll just see more of the same kind of thing we saw in the original shows and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
I’d followed this franchise since the beginning, and I was hoping that this spin-off would cover the very first light novel, in which a highly talented witch from the Fuso Empire (aka Japan) is unexpectedly transferred to Suomus (aka Finland) to help a squadron with little combat experience, and zero self-confidence. Maybe they still will…you know, to keep the franchise going. Either that or do a third season of the original girls.
I can’t honestly tell who is to be the main MC out of all of them (unless it’s made deliberate that the 10 of them are to be covered equally); hell, I have no idea what kind of story this show will have, so I’m going into this one blind, pretty much.
Sangatsu no Lion
Begins: Saturday. October. 08.
My favourite studio, SHAFT, are back doing an actual show, in-between their Kizumonogatari movies and their mysterious new Madoka Magica project that we still know next to nothing about.
It would be easy to say that they are choosing to adapt a non-generic manga/light novel, as that’s precisely what SHAFT are known for. The world wouldn’t have heard of Nisio Isin (creator of the Monogatari novels) or Ume Aoki (creator of Hidamari Sketch and character designer for Madoka Magica) if it weren’t for them. Although saying that, Sangatsu no Lion will be another one of the studio’s lesser-known shows, which I have no problem with, as I really like a lot of the shows by them that aren’t as famous as Madoka Magica or Monogatari or Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei are.
This one concerns Rei, a high-schooler, who already funds himself by playing professional shogi. However deep down, he is a very immature guy, and with no birth parents to guide him, he has to rely on his shogi career, his adoptive family, and three sisters who welcome him into their home. It sounds like a very interesting coming-of-age story, and I don’t think it’s something SHAFT has ever done before.
Of course I’ll be playing SHAFT bingo (head-tilts, baseball, sudden change of art style, plaid, outlandish OP themes, etc).
Also the new style of artwork seems not as bold and in-your-face this time but there’s something else too; I only recently found out that this is to be a 2-season show, meaning it’ll go on through into 2017.
[I can, and would, write an entire dissertation on SHAFT, by the way.]
Long Riders!
Begins: Saturday. October. 08.
I really don’t want to call this a mash-up of Yowamushi Pedal and Bakuon!, but those two shows just come up straightaway when I thought about covering this. Long-distance road racing, pretty countrysides, forming cycle teams, moe girls…well let’s just say that I’ve only just started Yowamushi Pedal and it’s actually the first sports show I’m really enjoying.
Outside of the cycling theme, and that the main characters are all college graduates with a lot of spare time on their hands, I don’t know much, as the PVs didn’t give that much detail about the show. I hope this isn’t going to be Yowamushi Pedal with moe girls.
Occultic;Nine
Begins: Sunday. October. 09.
Ok, I might need a lot of help on this one.
I know nothing about this show, and pretty much only chose it because the character designs look cool, and paranormal science has always been something that has interested me; call it a closet interest. Now the first Chaos;Child adaptation was terrible (there is to be a second one next year), I can’t judge Robotics;Notes as I haven’t seen it, so I think a lot of people will be comparing this to the runaway success of Steins;Gate…and will probably be very disappointed as I don’t think this is going to be anything like that.
So was my only motive to covering this the theme of high-schoolers (that looks not unlike the Persona kids) forming a hipster club that investigates paranormal science? Maybe. Well it was either this, or the harem sports show involving girls on tiny platforms using their ‘assets’ to push each other off.
Yeah. I think I made the right choice on that one. I don’t need any more shows where I end up screaming at the screen in sheer rage.
—
I think I let myself go a little off-the-rails in the summer season; covering both Danganronpa and Rewrite was tough, as I had mixed feelings over both of them, and I had begun to get seriously confused over how dark season 4 of Prisma Illya had suddenly become compared to its ecchi-filled predecessors. This time I’ve chosen 2 slice-of-life shows, 1 science-fiction/military show, 1 school drama show and 1 show that…umm…I’m still not sure what it’ll be about. Despite how much I hate it, I seem to find my comfort zone in slice-of-life shows (when before it was magical girl shows), and I’ve chosen sequels/spin-offs of shows I love too.
No more cons to go to until next year. All else I have to look forward to is Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian in a few months 🙂