The schedule. Madhouse (again) decided to make a 2 cour Clamp adaptation that had like 2 published volumes by the time production would have needed to be locked in with Cardcaptor Sakura - Clear Card-hen. Meaning that both Madhouse and Clamp again continue to show that their best days are long gone. Gakuen Babysitters and Hakumei to Mikochi are going to be almost wroth watching, almost. Basilisk Ouka Ninpouchou lastly won´t work if the novel´s manga adaptation is an indication due to it being a mess of gore + boobs and nothing else.
On to the promising shows:

B: The Beginning has nothing strong going for or against it at first. Neither IG nor the Netflix anime brand are sure signs of quality but this may be the first anime series to release simultaneously, so that´s something. I´ll check out the pilot in march and the future of anime distribution may look like this.

DARLING in the FRANKXX I am tired of waiting for Trigger to make a show that´s quality from start to finish. The director (he is primarily a character designer) and especially the writer don´t have me wowed either but i will keep an open mind.

DEVILMAN crybaby I can´t stand Go Nagai to put it mildly and the Devilman franchise peaked with the solid if unfinished 80s OVA. The director Masaaki Yuasa is also loosing his tough, as i found his latest movie infuriating but there is no reason why this has to suck. We need more hard-R apocalypse/horror anime and i for one hope that this mad mix can succeed just to get more such endeavors. Like Castlevania by Netflix.

Itou Junji: Collection I find the titular horror mangaka to be overrated but he knows atmosphere and a few interesting shorts may come from this. Studio DEEN isn´t the best company for the job though.

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san is a curios case. It started strong but the episodic will they or won´t they tales became repetitive. The author´s decision to also make a spin-off and an inferior ongoing sequel at the same time further burned me out for good. A 1 cour and done adaptation will thus work and anything else won´t. Still, throwing in the vapid spin-off Ashita wa Doyoubi into the show is already a mistake.

Koi wa Ameagari no You ni is likely the show of the season and the manga never dipped in quality, unlike many first promising romance/slice of life tales. So i hope that the adaptation stays faithful and get´s to adapt the still ongoing manga to completion one day.

Attack on Titan is getting a 3rd compilation movie and Code Geass is continuing it´s feature length summary series. Who asked for a 2nd run one of these though?

This is a somewhat interesting season so far and the highlight show will likely enter my top 5 shows of the years. That alone is enough for me but the movie/OVA side is more than barren.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 12:23 pm, Jul 1 2018

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

I take back that i would have been ok with Devilman sucking if it would lead to more horror anime. Even the source material is better and I will never again binge a Netflix original just to see where it goes. I am looking at you B: The Beginning. Go for the superior Amon manga or the unfinished 80s OVA if you need to know what the franchise is about. Or stick to ep. 7 and 8 only. Dat OST though, it nearly elevates the show. Speaking of something properly irredeemable. A roommate decided that we should watch the latest fit for TV Josei hentai after I told her that these exist. She found 25-sai no Joshikousei as worthless as me. Who is the target audience if even a legit fan of erotic novels can´t get behind this? On to the cream of the crops and Trigger again misfired as DARLING in the FRANKXX should have been a satire.

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san I expected to repeat the usual starts good and will soon go nowhere stuff but this doesn´t quite work in animation to begin with. The pacing drags, the mood is weirdly surreal and only the VA of the female lead stands out. So try the How I met your Mother manga instead and skip the spin-offs. 6/10, sadly.

Koi wa Amaagari no You ni is as expected the show of the season. I could nitpick that Hiroaki Hirata should have put on a deeper voice and I could have used less bloom effects (ditto for the whole season!) but Wit did good overall. I further noticed how well done the adapted manga pilot is, as a lot of future plot-lines are set up here, sometimes even wordlessly. I also need to note that noitaminA, who I sadly love to ridicule, is turning things around. This, Inuyashiki and their next 2 shows should all have something to offer. It´s as if the mid 00s returned for them. 8,5/10

Pop Team Epic reminds me of the golden days of Robot Chicken and Family Guy. Just on acid and the anime is better than the manga due to how well paced the editing is. The problem is that the 2nd ep. turned out just ok. The gag of repeating the whole show again after the first 10 min. doesn´t work too. Especially the 2nd time around... At least we get the choice between male and female VAs for the girls like that. I choose the middle aged men. ?/10 and ep. 3 will show if the pilot is a fluke or not.

Violet Evergarden is a 2nd Plastic Memories, only that the creators skipped the quality of that pilot and already stepped down to middling stuff that came next. I have no idea where the anime is set, what the war was about and who Miss Scissorhands actually is. Almost nothing happens in the present day too while an entire season worth of story happened in the flashbacks. It´s if Netflix indeed aired the wrong ep. The female protagonist has enough backbone to stand out on the other hand, the show looks nice and the source material is short. I will stick around if the next ep. has more cohesion but me and Kyoto Animation haven´t seen eye to eye for a decade by now. The Punisher S01 this ain´t all in all. 6,5/10

Only 1 show may be good enough to follow till the end but next season will be better. Oh well.
Ongoing for me are 3-gatsu no Lion and Osomatsu-san S2.

Also: DuckTales, Justice League Action, Star Wars Rebels, Teen Titans Go, Steven Universe and The Simpsons (no good eps. so far). The Scooby-Doo & Batman film was lastly solid and the R-rated Gotham by Gaslight is only days away.

Edit: Violet Evergarden unsurprisingly fell apart in ep.2 and Urobutcher´s new Godzilla film was as tedious and pointless as expected. Why do i even try with him... so i won´t bother completing the trilogy.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 12:13 pm, Jan 18 2018

________________
I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

I'm personally (very much) looking forward to the second season of Saiki Kusuo no Ψ Nan, though I'll admit I'm kind of confused about it now given the article I saw on ANN saying it had been announced/listed as being 24 episodes......dunno how that's going to compare to the first season, it was all short episodes of around 5 minutes long (at least the version I saw) with like 100+ eps.....so yeah, now I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be when/if a subbed version shows up O_o