Hello, hello! First of all, I'd like to wish happy holidays to each of you reading this blog. Regardless of what you want to celebrate, whether it's winter or summer for you, I hope that you all have fun with your free time, get some deserved break from work or school and spend some quality times with your loved ones. Secondly, I'd like to, once more, shout a loud Happy birthday to my fellow admin and a great friend, who turned older yet again just 2 days ago. Man, we sure are getting closer to that age when maintaining erection may become an issue...
Ahem. And finally, to the main point of the blog. As it has seemingly become a tradition, the wikia users get together to discuss anime every season. As shocking as it may sound, we actually do watch things besides Fairy Tail. Obviously, if you've watched anything outside of this season and want to share your insights, feel free to! However, the blog will focus on the Fall 2016 Season.
As far as I'm concerned, I haven't picked up too many anime... Being busy aside, I always loved procrastinating, so if something good came up, I made sure to check it out. But this season... I just didn't find too many opportunities to do so. However, there were still some nice gems to get through and I'm very glad to share what I did manage to get through.
Starting with... well, an obvious choice for those who know me. Haikyuu!! has blessed us with its third anime continuation. While a slight feeling of disappointment may have arisen from the fact that this season has lasted for only 10 episodes, in fact, it was a good thing because I truly wouldn't have liked seeing the source material stretched so much. And I have to say, every single episode was full of awesomness. I just couldn't understand how it was possible for every episode, one after another, be so full of hype. I immensely enjoyed my time following the season weekly. Imagine me having finished my school work for the week (or just moved it to the next week lul), so sitting down on a Friday evening to watch a Haikyuu!! episode was the best reward I could think of. Truly an amazing experience. Coupled with the author's ability to flesh out every character and Production I.G.'s absolute briliance in terms of animation and soundtrack, there just wasn't any room for failure. And for those who are wondering whether to check the series out, I can only repeat my words from previous blogs: it doesn't matter if you're not into sports or watching sports in general, you will like Haikyuu. The characters are extremely likeable, their development thoughout the season is very consistent and enjoyable to watch and the excitement you are sure to feel as you watch them go through the matches is just awesome. Truly, a splendid series to follow.
So what's next on the list? Ajin 2nd Season, definitely. I was actually surprised to how much I ended up enjoying the second season. It turned into a full blown out thriller and man, it was sooo fun to watch things happen. Satou-san, please. It's very hard for me to talk about it without spoiling it for y'all, so I'm just going to say: do check it out if you're up for some bloody action. You see, Ajin are normal looking people who are, in sense, immortal. You shoot them and they end up reviving themselves in mere moments. There are a lot of technicalities to this, that's just the simple premise. I am also going to mention something that disappointed a lot of people at the start of the first season: the animation. Basically, this series heavily relies on CGI as opposed to the classic hand-drawn animation and the results may not always be good enough, so it actually takes some time to get used to what things look like. In spite of that, I think the series looks well enough. The soundtrack is superb, the characters end up being interesting enough, well, some of them at least. It was fun!
And well, I've also watched Yuri!!! on Ice. As the title may suggest, the series is about girls making out on ice... Except it's not. You know, I don't know whether this kind of pun was intentional, but I found it quite amusing. This anime, in fact, follows a young man named Yuri, who is an ice skater. This project was actually quite ambitious, because imagine figure skating: there is a lot of precise movements and what not, and I had a hard time imagining what kind of a budget the anime would have to make this look good. Admittedly, the anime indeed struggles at times, and things don't always look, well, too good, but at the end of the day, I think it was a pretty nice watch. Furthermore, this anime actually develops the relationship between Yuri and his coach, Victor, rather well, without making it too cliche yaoi. And here comes another irony of the title: not only there is no girl-on-girl action, but the series instead goes into man-on-man relationship. All things combined, for many, this anime was quite the hit this season: the release of the final episode actually made Crunchyroll crash. Lol.
The next anime that I had the chance to watch this season is Hibike! Euphonium 2. Having watched the first season before, I was pretty much set on checking the 2nd one out as well. You see, this is actually a pretty nice series, as cliche as the premise may sound: the series follows a school band. And I have to say, while that's not exactly my kind of genre, it was a pretty relaxing watch. The series is completely devoid of your usual fanservice or cliche drama (well, somewhat) as it instead focuses on developing the characters (well, some of them), letting them grow as time goes. Coupled with KyoAni animating this - I mean, look at this!
- it was also a very pretty anime to go through. The second season pretty much follows what the first one did, although I have to admit, the last two episodes were... all over the place. What happened, writers? Still, the series continued to be fun, it had calm moments, it had feels moments. More characters are developed or discovered and I very much enjoyed the focus on Asuka. Yay.
Out of the long(er) running ones, I've got Dragon Ball Super and the Fairy Tail OVAs. For the latter, there is already a blog discussing the Natsu vs. Mavis and the Christmas OVA is still under the spoiler policy, so I'm not gonna talk about those. As for Dragon Ball, I don't have much to say. The Future Trunks arc brought some needed seriousness to the series, as Super is more fun than exciting anyways. Also, this.
So what did y'all watch? Share with us!