Season 1 Episode 1 Anime Reviews

Hi, all. I decided to do something a little bit different this time around. Because I’ve been combining several first impressions into each post, I thought it might be a good idea to post a master list of links to the locations of each specific series for individuals who are looking for a certain review. I’m also taking this opportunity to rank series by their first episodes in three categories – series I’m enthusiastic about, series that I might check out if I have time, and series I’m not interested in. I’ll also include some follow-up thoughts on each of those.

Just as a reminder, unless stated otherwise, these are based only on the first episodes I watched for the First Impressions reviews of the material. There are many cases where I may not have thought the first episode was that great, but might watch some more of the series anyway because something or another intrigued me about it. The various episodes are not otherwise ranked within the categories.

Ah, well here we are are the end of this season’s premieres (barring Netflix premieres… which I just can’t bring myself to break the Netflix late-cast embargo to review). It’s definitely been an interesting season, though I honestly could say the same for just about any anime season. After this I plan to post a Winter premiere wrap-up with links to all series first impressions (since they’re combined into various posts with one-another and aren’t as easily-searchable) as well as my own rankings based on those opening episodes.

I just found out about the anime OBSOLETE, and while it’s technically outside the purview of this particular season (it started airing in early December on YouTube) I decided to include it to help round out this post a little bit. Symmetry is pleasing to me (as I expect it is to a lot of people). I’ll also plan to include a post about some of the shorts airing this season, though in a couple of cases they’re not being officially streamed anywhere so I’ll have to improvise if possible. With that said, onto the post!

It’s always a bit of a struggle trying to decide whether to review sequel series or not. Typically I don’t; either I didn’t watch the original series and don’t know enough about it to say much, or it feels pointless to talk about something I’ve already written about. That said, if there’s a compelling reason to go against that inclination I’ll usually take that into account. I heard elsewhere that the new Show By Rock!! anime series features new characters and is a completely different story, so I added it back into the mix this time around.

After this there’ll only be a couple of shows left to write about (aside from Netflix series… which I’m still torn over how to handle despite my desire to support legal streaming here). It’s amazing to me how many new series there are each anime season, and how quickly the rush of new episodes flies by.

I do most of my writing on the weekends, and I feel like this most recent weekend has just been a marathon of consuming tons of anime even though it really hasn’t been that much (and most likely won’t seem like that much to readers, since this will be getting posted later in the week). It’s not the “watching” part of the equation that’s so much work for me, it’s all the writing that comes afterward. While I’ve changed my process quite a bit from how I was writing first impression posts previously, I still have to work diligently to write something I’m personally happy with and which encapsulates the feelings I want to express. I’ve found that if I slack off, even for a little bit, it becomes very easy to justify slacking off even more… which is why there are still several anime seasons where I’ve never completed the full set of reviews. I’ve been lucky that I’ve had some convenient days off during the last several weeks, so I haven’t had to balance the workload from my day job with that from my hobby.

Note: Some language and imagery related to Interspecies Reviewers is NSFW. That review appears last in this group.

One thing that’s fascinated me about the anime localization process, especially now that almost every series is simulcast, is the truly awkward translation machine that results in mangled titles constructed of barely-coherent English. While the show’s actual subtitles might be grammatically competent, the officially-licensed title, the words that are supposed to attract viewers to a series, are sometimes nearly incomprehensible. Generally the Japanese license-holder is somewhat to blame for this, as they have the final say in any translation and might opt for something that’s literally acceptable but which doesn’t feel natural in English. I had my suspicions about Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it, and thought I could absolutely come up with something less awkward… but reading the Japanese title, that’s basically what it says. I might steal a little bit from the subject matter of the series and rephrase it to be something like “When Scientists Fall in Love, They’ll Look for Proof,” but that’s not really any better. Maybe I should just leave things to the professionals and keep my 15-years-removed college Japanese skills out of the equation from now on.

I think this is possibly the longest title I’ve ever had for a blog post, and probably one of the more confusing. I saw an amusing video recently on the seeming propensity for light novel (and, by associate, anime) titles to be extremely long, and at what time in fandom history that started to become the case. This tendency can be frustrating when you’re trying to keep new and unfamiliar series straight in your own mind, especially if you’re not also familiar with the agreed-upon shortened versions of the titles. I think that using more words to describe something isn’t always the most successful manner of doing so; it’s why I have, however unsuccessfully, attempted to make my writing more concise over the years. But I suppose when something’s literally called I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed-out my Level, you at least know what you’re likely to get out of the experience.

Well, I’m continuing to plug away at premieres, although I’m finding it difficult to keep from watching the second episodes of series that I’ve liked (news flash: as of finishing this post, I’ve watched some of those episodes! I blame it on a friend visiting who hadn’t yet seen the first episode of Eizouken). While some people are able to keep things better balanced for themselves, I’ve found that it’s too easy for me to get distracted from the task at hand if I start watching ahead. It’s almost as if I consider finding out more of the story to be a reward, and one that I only deserve to indulge in if I’ve finished my “obligations.” I suppose that might be a little bit unhealthy, come to think of it, since it turns writing first impressions into a chore after which just watching anime for fun becomes the reward. Unfortunately, that’s the set-up that seems to work for me a lot of the time, so I suppose I’m locked-in for the near future.

We’re finally into a batch of new anime series about which I didn’t have any prior expectations. In a way, those can be the most fun to watch, because aside from how I might feel about the subject matter in general, I’m not forced to navigate around the baggage that expectations provide. That said, reading a blurbs and plot summaries in the process of preparing to watch something can sometimes create their own sort of expectations. Most genres have their own strengths and weaknesses (depending on how much one personally aligns with their tropes). Is there really any way to go into a viewing completely unmuddied by prior knowledge? It’s possible that by attempting to keep up with anime news I can’t ever go into a viewing without having some kind of reaction already waiting in the wings… but that doesn’t mean that watching the actual material can’t still provide its own surprises.