Leaderboard

Summer 2016 Final Impressions This is the last of these I'll be doing, mainly because school is taking up all of my time. I was lucky even to have this finished on time for today. All in all, this season was one of the best in recent memory. There were a lot of very good shows, and only a few that were disappointing. 1. Mob Psycho 100 What starts off looking like a budget version of OPM quickly turned into one of my favorite anime of all time. The animation is the best I have ever seen in a full series anime (not exaggerating, I’m serious when I say I think it’s the best). It’s consistent from episode one to episode twelve, with no dips or drops in quality. The artistic directing is far better than anything in OPM as well. The story has some surprisingly amounts of depth and the characters are endearing. Only downside is that the humor is still similar to OPM’s, so in my opinion not too strong, and the music is also a tad lackluster, aside from the opening song. Still, anime of the season right here, potentially year. 2. Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Every year there’s that one anime that’s so popular, it’s apparently not as good as everyone on the Internet says it is. Well, Re:Zero is that anime for 2016. It’s been one heck of a ride, and all in all I really enjoyed it. While I personally felt it peaked after the intro arc and during the beginning of the second arc, that’s not to say that everything that happened afterwards was bad. It was all right, just not to my taste. The animation is good, and occasionally exceptional when it needs to be. The story itself is far from finished though, so the conclusion naturally doesn’t feel like much of a conclusion at all (hoping for a second season eventually). Worth checking out even if just for the hype. 3. Amaama to Inazuma Last season was a season of disappointing slice of lifes, while this season was a season of very good ones, the best being Sweetness and Lightning. Between this and Shokugeki no Souma, I was virtually always hungry this past summer. This show has lots of sweet (and sometimes strained) dad and daughter antics going on. It touches upon themes of family, though nothing too heavy or complex. The cooking portions are adorable as well. Honestly, I probably only liked this as much as I did because of best girl Kotori but shhhh no one has to know… Decent animation, average music, but too dang cute not to like. 4. Amanchu! What a gorgeous show. I didn’t expect to relate to a show about diving as much as I did. The themes of trying new things, friendship, memories, and love were so poetically and beautifully woven into this seemingly episodic, mindless slice of life that spent more time on high school than on diving. But it somehow works, and it’s everything Flying Witch wishes it could have been. The key frames are just vividly detailed and appealing, even if the animation itself was, for the most part, average. Also, the music during the diving/swimming sequences (two times in particular I recall) were some of the best compositions I have ever heard in an anime. 5. Tales of Zesteria the X Ufotable proves once again that they’re the only studio that would probably be able to faithfully adapt Game of Thrones into an anime. Not that something like that would ever happen, but still. While Zesteria’s characters and plot were bland, the animation and CGI integration was far better than it was with the recent Unlimited Blade Works adaptation, if you can believe that. Gorgeous scenes, paired with one of the best and most varied soundtracks I’ve heard in an anime made for some ridiculous moments of simultaneous eye and ear-gasms. To be fair, I think the music was ripped directly from the video game soundtracks, but it doesn’t change the fact that the score was phenomenal. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 6. Shokugeki no Souma: Ni no Sara There’s not much difference between this season and the first season, apart from this season only being single cour. Only reason it wasn’t as good as the first was because the majority of the season was spent on the tournament arc, which was kinda fun the first few times but started feeling stale and repetitive halfway through. What made the first season so great was getting to know and bond with the massive cast of characters through other activities, not just one vs one cookouts. Still, the animation was good and the cooking was still over-the-top crazy, so it was a fun experience, just not what I was expecting. 7. Kuromukuro It’s a shame not many people paid this anime much attention, because it was pretty good. It reminded me of Robotics;Notes (both in terms of atmosphere and music, as well as in terms of how it was received). It’s a mecha show that focuses less on mechs and more on slice of life high school antics. The animation is clean and the character designs are very endearing. The conclusion left enough room open for a second season, though it’s self-contained enough to work as a standalone. There were a couple of soundtracks, a few during the fight scenes and one during an emotional scene, that were notable very good. For an anime original that lasted for two-cour, I found it pleasantly surprising. 8. Orange Animation quality took a huge dive after the first episode, which never recovered unfortunately. Aside from that, the anime was decent if not a bit predictable. Some parts could have been better if not for the distractingly bad animation, which can really take the drama or tension out of a scene. The characters were alright for the most part, though the two MCs were a tad too dense to really connect with them. Music was decent as well, and the character designs finally grew on me. In general, this wasn’t a bad show, just overhyped by the manga readers and not given the adaptation it deserves. Props to the studio for extending the last episodes by a few minutes as to not rush the ending, that was nice at least. 9. 91 Days This is near the bottom of my list, but only because this season was so fantastic. Seriously, in any other season this show would be at the middle, but such is the luck of falling in the summer 2016 timeslot. 91 Days started really well and ended really strongly, but had a weak middle. A lot of anime originals seem to face this problem, as most writers have the beginning and end of a story mapped out before the middle. If more thought and effort had been put into the journey between point A and point B it would have been a far more compelling show, but otherwise it sits at average. Fantastic opening song though, probably my favorite of the entire season, even with Tales of Zesteria the X’s two fantastic openings. 10. Ace Attorney This anime started as it ended: not at all good for those new to the series, but decent fanservice for those who’ve already played the games. I’ve already talked at great length about this in previous posts, and my opinion hasn’t really changed. Only watch it if you’ve played the games, otherwise stay away. 11. Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 3rei!! You were the chosen one, Silver Link! It was said that you would destroy bad animation, not create it! This was the biggest disappointment of the entire season. I was really looking forward to the fourth season of this series, since everyone said that this is where it got good. As far as plot goes, yeah it was pretty good. But god damn, did it look fugly. The penultimate episode, the one which was supposed to cover the biggest fight scene in the entire series yet, was hideous. Like, Tokyo Ghoul Rout A levels of bad, and that was baaddd. It ruined the atmosphere and really ruined a lot of what the season was leading up to. FeelsBadMan. At least the flashback movie will be better, I hope. 12. Rewrite /r/im14andthisisdeep: The Animation. Nah, but in all seriousness, I appreciate what this anime tried to do, but its themes are just, really old and pretentious. They might have been good in the early 2000s when environmentalism hit a feverish peak, but today it just seems silly and childish. It’s like a mix of all the bad things about the Nasuverse and the Keyverse mashed into one silly mess. Fan service juxtaposed with “deep” philosophy of people’s impact on the environment just doesn’t make for a compelling premise anymore. Will I watch the second season? Yeah probably. -- And for the record, ReLIFE would have been the second best anime of the season (between Mob Psycho and Re:Zero). It was only left out of the list because it released all of its episodes simultaneously and I had already given my full thoughts on it in a previous post.