Fall 2020 Anime Season
September 19, 2020 7:17 AM - Subscribe

Anichart. MyAnimeList. It's not like there's anything else going on in the world.

A lot more shows scheduled for fall than there were over the summer season (over 40 new and continuing series, contrasted with barely 20 over the summer); either studios have come up with new safer office environments or they've decided eff it, we were going to work to death anyway.
posted by ardgedee (12 comments total)
 
I haven't read many of the series descriptions yet but so far it seems like there are more romance stories than usual.

It makes me wonder whether there had been been a backlog of series halted in early production and studios/TV channels have decided that the current zeitgeist calls for fluffier shows. Even some of the adventure stories, like Danmachi and "Kimi to boku no saigo...", are at least as much (if not more) focused on harems and star-crossed romance (respectively) as about kicking asses.

Of the adaptations I recognize, "Kuma kuma kuma bear" and "Kami-tachi ni hirowareta otoko" are this season's isekai. Neither are gross towards women so they might be watchable, but lord knows what a determined animation director can do if they try.

"Mao-jou de oyasumi" is a very silly, fluffy manga; I don't know how well it will work as full-length TV episodes but might be worth a try as long as they don't infantilize the mc even more than the manga does.
posted by ardgedee at 7:28 AM on September 19, 2020


Haikyuu, of course. It's time for the big match against Inarizaki - get hype!

Taiso Samurai looks interesting - I'll watch the first few episodes at least.
posted by mogget at 1:39 PM on September 19, 2020


The When They Cry series has long been one of my favorite franchises. I still can't get used to the Monogatari-style character designs, though. Deen's horribly (and often hilariously) distorted moeblobs really did do a great job of creating a horrific feel.

I'm guessing part of the impetus for a remake is to create a more accurate (or at least not plot hole filled) adaptation of the VN. Hopefully it can do that while still presenting a great horror/thriller.

For those who don't know, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is considered by many to be one of, possibly the, best horror anime. If you have the stomach for it. And can get past the pedo-bait bullshit. Hopefully they'll tone down that last part but I don't have my hopes up.
posted by charred husk at 6:15 AM on September 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


Seconding all of that. I also enjoyed the Higurashi and Umineko anime as explorations of dynamics and character psychology of video game savescumming.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:34 AM on September 29, 2020


> I also enjoyed the Higurashi and Umineko anime as explorations of dynamics and character psychology of video game savescumming.

Can you elaborate on that? I read a big chunk of the Umineko manga (while barely getting halfway in) and I gathered there was some kind of intention to the endless repetition-with-minor-variations but it got too tiresome for me to want to puzzle out.
posted by ardgedee at 11:56 AM on September 30, 2020


Welp, at least we have Golden Kamuy.
posted by pwnguin at 9:56 PM on September 30, 2020


Can you elaborate on that?

At least in Umineko, it is kind of like this: The family and servants go to the island and become cut off from the world by the hurricane. They enter "the Witch's Darkness", so to speak. When the world can see the island again, everyone is dead.

Think of each iteration as being a conjecture about what might have happened on the island, utilizing what is known and possible about the incident itself and often focusing on different aspects of the mystery. The last four story arcs go into this with more detail about why it is being told this way that would be too spoilery to discuss.
posted by charred husk at 9:08 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


That makes sense. The Re:Zero series does a halfway-similar thing although since the story is focused on a protagonist with (a) plot armor and (b) harem trope personality, the stories ignore the interesting ramifications of returning to savepoints after death in favor of a pretty straightforward heroic narrative. For that matter, they have to actually make the hero a screaming idiot in order to rationalize some of the reset events they want to impose for dramatic value; if you're not in it for the moeblobs there's not much left for you.
posted by ardgedee at 5:32 AM on October 9, 2020


So apparently we're got a New Game + going in Higurashi. This explains why they reran the whole series as a leadup to this one in Japan.

For speculation that might be a spoiler since it was just two brief flashes in the OP, hover here.
posted by charred husk at 6:13 AM on October 9, 2020




> Anime Feminist's premiere digest is up now.

Thanks! As usual, any disagreements I have with it are pretty minor.
> By the Grace of the Gods (Episode 1): The problem is, almost nothing happened so there’s nothing that really makes this praiseworthy nor deserving of condemnation.
Hee! Yeah, that's captures it pretty well. "nothing happened" is more or less the point of the story, though. The manga is mostly about good people doing good things for each other, the occasional baddies that crop up are usually dispensed with more quickly than the dilemma over what kind of slime to tame next. I think it's meant to be one of those healing animes, whatever the term for that was.
> I’m Standing on a Million Lives (Episodes 1-2): Video game isekai that challenges the male lead’s terrible traits and contains minimal fanservice.
This is little trickier. It's a trivially minor spoiler to say that the point of the story is to watch the MC improve from his current shittiness into a better person (it's in the title, albeit obliquely), but unlike a lot of manga, the MC actually does improve rather than maintain most of his original identifiable traits while the characters around him remark on how much better a person he is. The story even confronts -- somewhat -- the problematic aspects of setting up an entire world of people to exist for the psychological and spiritual development of some highschoolers. It's not the most deftly written thing but I want to give the authors credit for avoiding most of the easy ways out of the problems they set up, and for not praising themselves through proxies for doing so. It will probably be a tedious watch but unless the producers take too many liberties with the story it shouldn't a bad one.
posted by ardgedee at 4:40 PM on October 14, 2020


Also "Sleepy Princess" and "Wandering Witch" are the shows I'm most eagerly anticipating each week. They're both well-produced and maintain the spirits of their source materials.
posted by ardgedee at 4:48 PM on October 14, 2020


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