Spring 2019 Anime Season
March 26, 2019 12:20 PM - Subscribe

MyAnimeList. AnimeChart. Besides the second season of One Punch Man, what looks good?
posted by ardgedee (28 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
It's not airing in the upcoming season, but--you guys saw where Oregairu is getting a third season, right? Will no one make shrill noises of excitement about this with me?
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:24 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


One dark horse for me might be Isekai Quartet, which has the key characters from Re:Zero, Overlord, Konosuba and Youjo Senki sharing a classroom. None of these are my favorite anime or manga (Re:Zero might be the best of the lot but even then the hero is a literal screaming idiot; I started to feel more concerned for the voice actor than his character), but maybe recasting everybody in a lighthearted high school comedy might be good for some yuks or a hatewatch.

Kenja no Mago might be good. I like the manga adaptation of the LN. It's a by-the-numbers power-trip fantasy but the characters are sympathetic and the humor stays light without getting in the way of a pretty good yarn.

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san is one I'm inclined to punt on. The manga is a sweet iyashikei about a fox spirit who settles in a man's apartment to comfort him when he's home from his horrible office job. But it's also not too subtly about a woman's subservience to her man, and for some reason I find it easier to gloss over that sort of thing in manga than in prose fiction or onscreen.

Am I imagining it or is the Spring lineup this year threadbare compared to years past? MAL lists 69 weekly half-hour shows for Spring 2018, but only 44 for Spring 2019.
posted by ardgedee at 5:45 PM on March 26, 2019


>Isekai Quartet, which has the key characters from Re:Zero, Overlord, Konosuba and Youjo Senki sharing a classroom.

Ha! That sounds fairly entertaining. Konosuba is a pretty passable comedy IMO--and Youjo Senki didn't go anywhere, but the MC's conversation with God in the first episode absolutely blew my mind; that is just the kind of weird stuff I watch anime hoping to see. I rage-quit Re:Zero when the show started being pointedly horrible to Rem, and there's nothing in Overlord I find even slightly interesting, but those four shows in a blender sounds like an interesting mess.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:26 PM on March 26, 2019


Sarazanmai will represent my first time having to watch an Ikuhara show while it's actually airing--I was able to binge-watch Utena and Yurikuma Arashi and Penguindrum, and I honestly don't know if I'm going to survive to the end of the season. So, you know, if I vanish off Metafilter, that's probably why. I haven't really looked at much else to know what else I'm going to be watching, at this point. That, Carole and Tuesday, not sure what else. I'm still behind on a ton of stuff from last season because my usual watch group has been suffering from scheduling issues. I don't know about sheer number of shows, but I'm guessing there's going to be more than enough to keep me busy.

Watch group also invited a new person not long ago so we're trying hard to indoctrinate her on the shows we talk about constantly so there won't be spoilers, so I think I have at least a rewatch of Samurai Flamenco coming up pretty soon, and I might be as pleased about that as anything on the actual seasonal schedule.
posted by Sequence at 11:54 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


> I rage-quit Re:Zero when the show started being pointedly horrible to Rem

I'll trim down a very long rant about everything I found wrong with Re:Zero to say that the main character redeems himself, more or less, by the end of the series, but a lot of what he does before then seems really unnecessary.
posted by ardgedee at 7:03 AM on March 27, 2019


>the main character redeems himself, more or less, by the end of the series,

At the risk of appearing to be overly partisan, when he rejected Rem he was dead to me. :D

In fairness to the show, I also seem to have been gradually developing a preference for anime in which nothing much really happens. Re:Zero is not a good show for people who are wondering if they really require dramatic tension in their lives.

>I'll trim down a very long rant about everything I found wrong with Re:Zero

Not on my account, I hope... I'm always up for a good rant.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 3:40 PM on March 27, 2019


Nah, it’s that at some point while spewing I realized I could sum up what bothered me with the show without having to get spoilery.
posted by ardgedee at 5:11 PM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


My "greens" so far are 1PM S2, SnK 3/2, Sarazanmai, and Fairy Gone.

Lately, I've been going into every season with a lot of maybes, and more willingness to drop shows. I guess that's a consequence of having less time to watch TV in general.

I have reasonable hope for Kimetsu no Yaiba, since you know that ufotable will at least make it pretty . And, I'm taking flyers on Gunjou no Magmel and Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin.

And, while I never read the original Fruits Basket, everyone who's into it is so totally bonkers about it, that I figure it must be worth something.
posted by Citrus at 9:51 PM on March 28, 2019


>you know that ufotable will at least make it pretty .

I just saw where ufotable is currently being investigated for tax fraud.

>The report alleges that portions of income from certain stores was not transferred to the company’s bank account, but taken directly by Ufotable president Hikaru Kondo in “bundles of cash.”

>A former Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau investigator was quoted as saying, “I suspect the investigation will go on for about a year, but there is a very real possibility of prosecution and arrest.”

So, who knows whether or how much this will affect what they're working on, but things might be a tad messy over at ufotable for the next little while.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:49 PM on March 29, 2019


I got a good laugh out of this Reddit comment:

I am the evasion of my taxes.
Greed is my body and money is my blood
I have faked over a thousand receipts
Unknown to Accounting,
Nor known to Government.
Have withstood payments to create many frauds
Yet, those banks will never hold anything
So as I pay, Unlimited Budget Works.

posted by needled at 6:02 PM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


Getting back to Spring 2019 anime, the following look good to me:

One Punch Man 2
Bungou Stray Dogs 3
Carole & Tuesday - it's from Studio Bones, of course I'll give this a shot.
Sarazanmai - the trailer does make it look awfully like a Penguindrum sequel.
7Seeds (Netflix)
Ultraman (Netflix)

Maybe category:
Kimetsu no Yaiba - I lost interest in the manga, but wiling to see how the anime adaptation is handled
Kono Oto Tomare! - Koto club drama! I enjoyed the manga when I read it a couple of years go, so will watch at least the first couple of episodes.
Namu Amida Butsu - it's a game adaptation, but still, battling Buddhas!

Winter 2019 leftovers:
Dororo
Karakuri Circus

And Netflix will start streaming Neon Genesis Evangelion on June 21. To help you get ready:
Young boy, become a legend!

Have some Utada Hikaru, too.
posted by needled at 7:04 PM on March 30, 2019


Netflix had a website with a counter, counting down to the time when they were going to announce when they were going to start streaming Evangelion. Don't miss the announcement of the announcement! They should have had a trailer for the announcement of the announcement. And then instead of saying, "It's LIVE NOW!", they said, "you can see it in three months". Really? It's a 20-year-old show, it's subbed already, just put the fucking thing up. They ham-handed the announcement so hard that now I'm annoyed about something I was excited about.

And I watched the first 15 minutes of Ultraman, and I will not be watching the 16th minute. It's just a clunky action movie with bad, poseable-action-figure CGI characters. Utterly lacking in weird genre recombination, weird inappropriateness, humor, romance, charm, cheap titillation, or anything else you might have liked about anime. I'm having one of my grumpy-old-person feelings that this is The Future Of Anime, and no sir, I don't like it.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:50 AM on April 2, 2019


> They should have had a trailer for the announcement of the announcement.

They did.
posted by ardgedee at 11:57 AM on April 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


> It's just a clunky action movie with bad, poseable-action-figure CGI characters.

Just curious, how familiar are you with the Ultraman franchise? Heh, except for the CGI part, you're pretty much describing the live action TV series.

I grew up with Ultraman - Ultra Seven is my favorite from the Ultra clan - so there's still a soft spot in my heart for all its clunky cheesiness. The Netflix anime is an adaptation of the current Ultraman manga, which has been controversial amongst the Ultra fandom because of the way it's played fast and loose with some of the established canon. And of course because as far as we know so far in the manga, Ultraman doesn't grow to gigantic size to fight gigantic kaiju! I'm still looking forward to watching the anime because of Ultra Seven. Now if I can just remember to re-activate my Netflix membership ...
posted by needled at 5:43 PM on April 2, 2019


>how familiar are you with the Ultraman franchise? Heh, except for the CGI part, you're pretty much describing the live action TV series.

When I was a kid--we're talking early 70s here--Saturday morning was the cartoon smorgasbord. Sunday morning was a bit of a letdown after that (though not as much of a letdown as going back to school the following day), but there were a couple time slots for movies on Sundays. If you lucked out you might get Destroy All Monsters (good), or a Gamera flick (slightly less good), or an Abbot And Costello monster movie (considerably less good). And if you got a Western or something else totally unacceptable, you could sometimes find Ultraman on another channel. All of which is a long-winded way of saying I'm not COMPLETELY unfamiliar with the TV series, but I'm not sure I ever really sat through a whole episode. I had a friend who claimed he saw one where the guy who was Ultraman thought he was holding his transforming-device, but he'd just come from the cafeteria and he was holding a fork instead, which he tried to use to turn into Ultraman. My friend thought this was about the funniest thing he'd ever seen.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:11 PM on April 2, 2019


Carole & Tuesday - it's from Studio Bones, of course I'll give this a shot.

It's not just from Bones, it's by the director of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:19 AM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Watched Gigguk's stream of previews yesterday and aside from a bit of tooth-grinding and a few hours of feeling like cishet men are all garbage, with apologies to those present, like 25% because of him and 75% because of the chat, I did at least get to clarify a few more things I definitely want to see--at least giving a three-episode try to Fairy Gone, RoboHachi, Midnight Occult Civil Servants, and the koto club one.

I have just been flat out told by friends that I am watching Fruits Basket, which I trust them on, and King of Prism, which I'm pretty sure they mean for us to do while seriously intoxicated, possibly just in one binge night rather than as it airs.

Everybody seems to be a bit disappointed in how the next season of One Punch Man looks, but I'm still working on watching S1 with an eye towards being able to watch S2.
posted by Sequence at 7:48 AM on April 4, 2019


S1 of One Punch Man was something else... I really don't think anybody could make S2 in the same way with the same quality except for Shingo Natsume.

Breaking Down One Punch Man's Incredible Animation [Part 1]
Breaking Down One Punch Man's Incredible Animation [Part 2]
posted by Pendragon at 12:11 PM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


Apparently Shingo Natsume went wildly over budget on One Punch Man S1 and Madhouse only found out after the fact. Despite decent sales the studio was not able to turn a profit on One Punch Man and was left in financial trouble. Rumor has it that's why Madhouse (and many other animation studios) passed on S2.

The videos linked to pretty much explain why it went so wildly over budget - a dream team of freelance animators and action specialists from Studio Bones.
posted by needled at 6:13 PM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sarazanmai has rocketed to the top of this season's must-watch list. Even by the standards of Kunihiko Ikuhara's ouvre, this is pretty wild. Expect GIF captures of some of the segments in the first episode to become insta-memes.
posted by ardgedee at 5:30 PM on April 11, 2019


What did I even just watch. How was that on television. Where do I get the drugs Ikuhara takes.

Three times. I watched the first episode of Sarazanmai three times tonight. So, yeah.
posted by Sequence at 10:43 PM on April 11, 2019


Carole and Tuesday's first ep, watched fansubbed because ugh Netflix doesn't know how to do simulcasting, but it was gorgeous and the music is really good and I like it so much so far. With friends who're very into the boy idol group anime, I have literally had a running joke about how I needed a girl singer-songwriter show, and oh my god so far this is exactly the show I wanted it to be. Fruits Basket, also really great.

A lot so far is still kind of "might be good but need to see more". RobiHachi left me thinking that it wasn't exactly good but that I was probably going to enjoy it anyway. A few things--Namu Amida Butsu feels very much like it's there to catch people who might be getting bored of Touken Ranbu with a new mobile game, more than like it has much of its own plot. And most of the "cute girls" stuff this season... very short of characters who're compelling in their own rights. Senryu Girl's gimmick wore thin before the first ep was even done, for me, unfortunately.
posted by Sequence at 11:41 PM on April 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


Premiere thoughts:

You know, I actually thought that Sarazanmai was more comprehensible than I was expecting. Maybe I'm just used to the schtick. Maybe it'll get an order of magnitude weirder, and they're just ramping us up. Anyway, so far, it seems like we have a two-dimensional alignment consisting of "unchecked desire == bad" (represented by a heart with a weasel or something grabbing something), and... not that (represented by "ア"). Much simpler than, "Who has which half of what apple now?"

Other likes:
* Fruits Basket is kind of refreshing. I think I think that every time a watch a show with a Shoujo-first mentality.
* Fairy Gone is fun as far as action thus far, with good fight choreography. My only complaint is that the thought/dream/flashback pauses seem too long for the timing of the situations.
* 1PM S2: Love. :) This King thing could be hilarious. I hope it meets its potential.
* Kenja no Mago has plot holes just from the exposition episode. But, it's just self-aware enough as an isekai that I can get a good smirk out of it.
* Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin: This is awesome so far. The over-the-top silliness of dealing with the unseen-by-most supernatural, mixed with the culture of how Japanese civil servants operate - this just tickles me.

Drops:
* YU-NO. It's both bad and boring. I can wait out one for a few episodes, but not both.
posted by Citrus at 8:19 PM on April 16, 2019


> Anyway, so far, it seems like we have a two-dimensional alignment consisting of "unchecked desire == bad" (represented by a heart with a weasel or something grabbing something), and... not that (represented by "ア").

I can't be sure whether it's "unchecked desire == bad" or maybe "being dishonest about ones desires leads to expressing them harmfully". Which would be hella freudian, not something I'm used to seeing in anime. Anyway, the kappa trio are wrestling with analogous problems in their own ways, and the old kappa seems to be a therapist/guru as much as a mentor. The kappa vs. otter factions seem to have clarified in the latest episode; beyond that it's hard to discuss the show without spoilers.

Crunchyroll just added a few shows some time between Tuesday and today, including Isekai Quartet and Kenja no Mago (they're calling it 'Wise Man's Grandchild'), backfilled to the start of the season.
posted by ardgedee at 6:42 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Is Sarazanmai a thing that actually warrants a thread? I think there are actually several of us reliably watching it as it comes out? And I have Theories, man.
posted by Sequence at 8:40 PM on April 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Sarazanmai thread? Um, yes please! :) (Also, I'm psyched that Jacob Chapman is doing ANN's reviews.) Also, I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't recognize an otter for being an otter. Because otters are awesome.
posted by Citrus at 10:36 AM on April 26, 2019


Kenja no Mago / Wise Man's Grandchild... oh man. The director has decided to drop some plot points and character motivations in the original story arc in favor of screen time for fan service and and dumbing-down the women. It's not like the source material is brilliant stuff, but it was at least self-aware of the ridiculousness of its premise, and leaned into it in an entertaining way, and wasn't as sexist. Oh, and the character animation is amazingly inconsistent; head shapes distort and mutate every time the camera angle changes, and they just replaced the production-art closing credits with an extremely cheap 3D animation that looks like it was screen captured from a dance idol game. This show has become a hatewatch. Maybe it would be more entertaining if I watched it while drunk.

Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin / Midnight Occult Civil Servants is turning progressively darker as the season continues. I kind of miss the lightness of the earlier episodes but the current storyline is intriguing me.
posted by ardgedee at 6:14 PM on May 17, 2019


I'm falling behind on Occult Koumuin. It sounds like I should catch myself up.

I'm kind of sad that Kenja no Mago isn't doing the right things here. I never read the source material, but I can feel the kinds of things that are missing. Also, I can't get over the fact that the love interest is named after a failed processed meat product that was advertised relentlessly during my youth. And, I have no idea what was up with that ED, it's like a bad dream after playing too much Fortnite.

Wishing 1PM would move a just little faster plotwise, but I remain impressed with how much if the awesome they've managed to retain, despite having a more reasonable budget.

Still loving a movement and art style of Fairy Gone. I wish that the up-front plot made more sense. The 90% development time spent on worldbuilding is fascinating, but I think that the main characters need better motivation than, "Got to keep chasing these fake books, because one of them might be the real thing!"
posted by Citrus at 6:47 PM on May 25, 2019


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