User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 427: Pitched Underground Battle, Review and Commentary/@comment-4449950-20150409060645/@comment-3987368-20150409073016

Glad to see that you went ahead with this post, Carrot. I didn't watch a large variety of anime this season, just whatever piqued my interest and seemed easy enough to get into at first. As I said once before, watching 12+ anime in a season was getting cumbersome and almost pointless where only one or two would be great, two to three would be bad and the rest mediocre at best. After reading reviews is when I'll probably go for anything that finishes at the end of the season, since it'll all be complete and I'll have a better idea of what I'm getting into. As a result, I'm already planning on Akatsuki no Yona and Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, mainly cause of yourself and other users like Misk. As I mentioned on Tumblr though, I recently finished Aldnoah.Zero, and though I liked it, people seem to be making it out to be the 2010's answer to Eureka Seven, which I'd have to disagree with. But I will be checking out Aldnoah.Zero Season 2 at some point, really just to get conclusion to the story. Anyways, I only watched three anime from this season and here they are:

Best:


 * 1) Death Parade: This was the best of the bunch this season in my opinion. I liked how each episode changed up its guests so that we could see a different set of interactions between them, ranging from the married couple in episode one, to the people with their views on criminals in episodes nine and ten. As expected from MadHouse, their production values don't disappoint, because everyone looks good, and the entire season is animated nicely, with each scene looking appropriate to the mood, changing its color tints where necessary, or even going into action appropriately to really increase the intensity of certain actions, like the stabbing scene in episode ten. The only real problem I had with the show is that it seems to be trying to do to much and thus leaves a lot of things up in the air, mainly the existence of (or therefore lack of) this "God" entity mentioned by the old man. The line can be considered throwaway, sure, but I think things like that in a show about depth can warrant exploring, or at least explaining. There're a couple other similar issues, but at its core, Death Parade is a series where the flaws don't detract from the strengths and so I would say that if you want a series from this season, this'd be the one.

Average-to-Good:


 * 1) Assassination Classroom: Assassination Classroom is a bit harder to tell how I feel about it since I was reading the manga almost two years before the anime premiered, so I knew basically everything that was going to happen a very long time before it did. The biggest problems it in its story has are mostly logic fails that carry over from the manga, such as Bitch-sensei's attempt on Koro-sensei's life. On the other hand, the author really does a good job of otherwise dealing with the problems the characters face in their personal and school lives, prime examples being Karma's in the anime so far. For animation, this series is serviceable so far. Nothing is really great, but it is nice and bright, with thick outlines a-la Attack on Titan. I think the biggest problem with this series in terms of characters, both anime and manga, is that the class is so big that its hard to differentiate and develop the characters enough. Even after all this time, for me, only six students really stand out from the crowd: Nagisa, Kayano, Kanzaki, Terasaka, Itona (who himself joined late in a big way) and Karma. I still say the anime is very much worth watching, but I'm curious about how one would feel about it if they hadn't read the manga. Note that this anime is a two-cour series, and it's gonna carry over to Spring 2015, so it's not yet over. This is just an opinion on the first half.

Worst series:


 * 1) Isuca: God this series was just so bad. In terms of animation, there's nothing to say here, because it's just "eh". There's also a pretty bland set of character and monster designs. No character looks particularly good and no monster looks particularly scary. They don't look bad per se, but they're nothing special about them at all. In terms of its internal themes, one of the first concepts is monsters pleasuring their soon-to-die victims and this is almost instantly forgotten the moment that the main character and heroine team up, showing up again perhaps 2-3 times at most during the remainder of the show. The main villain just sucks as well. Every single encounter with her has her reiterate over and over how much she hates the main clan of the family and how she wants them destroyed and all I as the viewer can say is "I got it already: you hate them and want them dead. Fucking do something about it." The plans she comes up with are, at best, the generic monster of the week plan, with the usual hapless victim thrown in. At one point, we can feel she has a strange connection to the main heroine, but this goes pretty much nowhere of interest by the end. I won't spoil it but it is kinda obvious an episode or two after she appears. And oh god the fanservice. I have zero problem with fanservice itself, but when it gets all up in your face, it's just distracting and irritating. We have about as many shots of the heroine's crotch as we do of her face (exaggeration, but the point remains). And honestly, even if it is irritating from time to time like Fairy Tail has been in the past, at least Fairy Tail's art is of a high quality, so this is somewhat negligible from time to time, but when the art isn't even that good, the excessive fanservice is more of a turn-off than a turn on. So, yes, this was my pick for worst anime this season, and I advise everyone not to watch it.

Best Opening:


 * 1) I gotta give it to Death Parade here. Isuca's OP was just "meh" and Assassination Classroom's could have been good, but it's squandered by its visuals.

I'm not gonna give an opinion on the Best Ending for this season, since none of them really stood out to me.

As to the current anime season, this is what I'm watching so far:


 * 1) Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu: Mainly watching this cause I'm a big fan of the original series, the movie, and Kyon in particular. I think he's one of the most realistic anime characters ever created. The first episode of this anime was...merely ok. I have no problem with what actually happened, but it never really motivated me to watch more. Of course, I am going to watch more, but it is clear that this anime is for those with an interest in the Haruhi series. Anyone who isn't is gonna be instantly bored.
 * 2) Shokugeki no Souma: I've been reading the manga for this, but for some reason, the anime's first episode didn't really appeal to me. I may be in part because I don't like the voice they've given the main character, but otherwise, I think I was just expecting a bit more than they wanted to give. J.C. Staff hasn't put out much impressive work as of late, so I guess this shouldn't be a surprise. At this point, I'm just gonna continue cause I want to see how they do the rest of the characters.

Intent:


 * 1) Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo: So, I actually tried getting a lot of people to read this manga back when I first found it around September 2013, and back then, it was really good. The characters were fun to watch, the story was decent, though not great, and the art was rather good (the mangaka was Hiro Mashima's assistant years ago) and I found the concept of the witch powers in the series to be rather amusing. However, as of the latest chapters, I've dropped the series because I see it as continuing needlessly rather than ending where it should have. However, the early part of this manga is good, roughly 100 chapters worth. As such, an anime adaption of this is very much within my interests to check out. As of this post, there're still a few more days for its premiere, however.
 * 2) Plastic Memories: This is an original anime and I have little to no idea about it, barring whatever I've read about it in reviews of its first episode. However, virtually all the reviews were positive and the art & animation look decent, so I plan to check this out.
 * 3) Digimon Adventure Tri: For some reason, this anime hasn't even released a trailed even though April has already arrived. Some are saying it has been delayed to Summer 2015, but I've yet to see an official source verify this. So far though, it's one of the few anime of this season not to have a specific day of release revealed. As to the series itself though, this isn't an anime I would recommend to just anyone. It's clear that, given that we're returning to the cast from the 1999 anime as high school kids, this is something that only people who grew up watching the original series, would really enjoy. I myself watched Digimon up to the end of Frontier (4th), and nostalgia value is really the only reason I plan to watch Tri. Anyways, I do hope that it isn't delayed.

So, that's my take on things. I haven't seen a lot from this season, but if I were to go on what I did, which is not much at all, I'd have to say it was overall ok at best. The worry of having a small number of good shows, a slightly larger number of bad shows and a large number of mediocre shows seems to be the case, from what I have heard. But given the good things I heard about Yona and 'KimiUso, I will be checking them out based pretty much on recommendation and hype only. Here's hoping they hold up for me.