The halfway point - What should you watch of the anime Winter Season 2017

Well, this week most anime of the current season have reached the halfway point. So let's have a quick look at what I'm watching at the moment.

So if you ask me: "Do you love this winter season's anime?", my answer is as follows:

Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid - Surprise hit of the season

• Genre: Gag anime, Supernatural slice of life.
• Studio: Kyoto Animation - Directed by Yasuhiro Takemoto
• Legal stream: Crunchyroll & Funimation (worldwide)

Probably the surprise hit of this season. Ms Kobayashi is a 20-something IT'er who incidentally invites a dragon over to stay at her place. Now Ms. Kobayashi has to train her dragon to fit into society... by dressing the dragon up as a maid. Did I mention that Ms. Kobayashi is an otaku?

It's charming and hilarious. Also, the lead is a female IT'er. That's already rare enough in reality, so seeing this in anime is something to cherish.

Recommendation: Definite must watch!

Full review: Here

KonoSuba Season 2

• Genre: Fantasy Comedy
• Studio: Studio Deen - Directed by: Takaomi Kanasaki
• Direct continuation of Season 1. Read my review of season 1 here
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll (US only)

Season 1 was amazing, this one is great as well, although the typical Deen lack of constant quality is showing itself more in this season than in the previous one.

Recommendation: First season is a must-watch. If you've seen that, this is a must-watch as well.

Blue Exorcist - Kyoto Arc

• Genre: Shonen action with supernatural elements
• Studio: A1 Pictures - Directed by Koichi Hatsumi
• Sequel to: Blue Exorcist (2011)
• Legal Streaming: Hulu & Daisuki (worldwide)

Never thought I'd see a sequel happen to an anime that's over five years old at this time. But here it is!

Readers of the manga have pointed out that the Kyoto arc is the most interesting story arc from the Blue Exorcist manga, so I'm glad we actually get to see it become animated after all.

Also, this gives hope to other anime that ended years ago to possibly get a sequel (wishful thinking). We'll first see how this goes.

On a side-note: Yes, it IS necessary to first watch the original run. You'll miss out on too many story elements if you haven't watched the original.

Recommendation: For those that have seen the original, this is a must-watch sequel.

Youjo Senki (The saga of Tanya the Evil)

• Genre: military action, with supernatural elements
• Studio: NUT (yes, you can apply your "deez nuts" jokes now) - Directed by Yutaka Uemura
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll, Funimation (worldwide)

The title literally translates to "The Military Chronicles of a Little Girl". While both English titles are technically correct, they are still a bit off. A correct title would be: God Vs Tanya - "Yes, I know you exist. But still: F**K YOU!"

Story goes as follows: A salary-man gets killed by a fired co-worker, but "god" gives him a second chance in a different world where magic is a thing. God's catch: he is reborn as a little girl in this universe's Germany just prior to World War 1. God isn't going to stop punishing Tanya until she admits belief in him, while she just waves her middle finger and gives a psychotic smile.

Interesting story, amazing Opening and Ending Song (the best I've heard this season).

Recommendation: Yeah, a must-watch

Full review: Here

ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection department (ACCA 13 in short)

• Genre: Military slice of life?
• Studio: Madhouse, directed by Shingo Natsume
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll, Funimation (North America only)

The daily life of Jean Otus, the second in command of the inspection department. His role is supervising and visiting all 13 districts of the DOWA kingdom (which is weirdly enough shaped like a pigeon that's pooping).

This anime probably has the greatest soundtrack this season. It's jazzy and aloof; much like Jean himself.

The story however is a bit lacking. There's lots of story potential, but most of it just sizzles out on a low note, which is making many people hate this anime.

I personally am going to keep watching it, just in case it gets better. But I have low expectations.

Recommendation: You can easily skip this one.

Full review: Here

Koro-Sensei Quest

• Genre: Gag manga, short anime
• Studio: Lerche, directed by Yoshito Nishouji
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll, Funimation (North America only)

As a fan of Assassination Classroom, I was fascinated by this gag spin-off. But oh, dear. How do I put this?... It's just not funny.

The characters are reduced to one comedy trait. The problem is that most of those traits got tiring by the end of the original series, and thus they're tiring to watch here.

Karma has bad luck, Nagisa looks like a girl, Kaede has a flat chest, Isogai is a poor man's knight, and so on... The jokes just repeat themselves over and over again. They were bad the first time you saw them and remain bad every time they repeat them (and boy, do they repeat them A LOT).

A few unexpected jokes made me chuckle, but that's about it. Most of the time I'm just staring blankly at the screen, thinking about better things I can do with my life.

Recommedation: SKIP IT! Forget it exists. Rewatch Assassination Classroom instead or so.

Full review: Here

Shouwa Genroku Rakugou Shinjuu Season 2

• Genre: Drama
• Studio: Deen (no, really!), directed by Mamoru Hatakeyama
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll (North America only)
• Direct continuation of Season 1. Read my review of season 1 here

It's good, but not an easily accessible anime. If you're more into typical shonen action series, you'll probably find this boring.

It's like a typical oscarbait movie. High quality story, but rejected by the masses. Season 2 is a direct continuation of season 1 but is set in the current day era instead.

Recommendation: If you liked season 1, watch season 2 as well.

Onihei

• Genre: Samurai "police" series
• Studio: M2, directed by Shigeyuki Miya
• Legal streaming: Amazon prime (worldwide)

Somebody named this: CSI Samurai and I found it very fitting. It's a typical "police" series, but it's set in the Edo era. The episodes are kind of stand-alone. The tone is dark and realistic (not in a good way, though).

The first episode was a miss, though the following episodes kind of grabbed my attention again. The animation is great. The stories are... okay, I guess?

Though you notice that this was created for a tv drama first. It breathes live action more than it can say "anime".

Recommendation: if you like Samurai series and/or police series like CSI, you can give this one a watch.

Yowamushi Pedal: New Generation

• Genre: Sports
• Studio: TMS Entertainment, Directed by: Osaku Nabeshima
• Direct continuation of Season 1. Read my review of seasons 1+2 here
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll (worldwide)

This new season starts shortly after the second season (Grande Road) ends. We get to see how our characters handle the period of time post the inter-High Road Racing Tournament and this includes the shift of our main cast from first-years into their second year.

Yes, this means saying goodbye to the third-year senpai's and introducing new first-years. All in all, it makes you wonder how everybody will do in the inter-high without the trio of Kinjou, Todoroki and Makishima.

My recommendation: Watch the first two seasons (the in-between movies can be skipped) before watching this one. You will miss out on certain things if not seen.

Fate/Grand Order: First Order

• Genre: Action, supernatural fantasy
• Studio: Lay-duce, directed by Hitoshi Nanba
• Legal Streaming: Crunchyroll, Daisuki (North America only)

This is a special that came out around new Year's eve (so technically this winter already, I guess). While studio Ufotable is busy with creating the Heaven's Feel movies (#hype) and studio Silver Link is busy with the Kaleid spin-off (which is meh), the studio behind the Sinbad anime and Classroom crisis now tackles the Fate franchise. This incarnation is based on a mobile game released in 2015... in Japan only (a hit and miss).

And this anime is... okay. It's too short to be anything but an intro to something more. There's a rumor that at least one more special will follow later this year. And that will be necessary, because as it stands this anime is forgettable (while it does have nice production value).

My recommendation: Wait until more specials come out, then watch them together. If not, then skip this.

Plan to watch somewhere this year:

• Little Witch Academia: Recently saw the first short movie and absolutely loved it (the animation! So amazing). May watch the rest later on.
• Tales of Zesteria the X: Quite positive reviews. Some say it's even better than the game it's based upon (really?) I liked previous "Tales of" series, so I might pick it up somewhere this year.
• Gintama.: Rumored to be the last season of Gintama (we'll see. Knowing Gintama, that might be a prank). Will watch when I finally catch up to the rest of the previous seasons.
• Yowamushi Pedal New Generation: Lots of sports anime are quite good. May pick this up somewhere later this year. But I'll have to watch all the previous Yowamushi Pedal's first I guess.
• Scum's wish: Widely praised for portraying toxic relationships in a serious manner. May watch this.
• Interviews with Monster Girls: While not initially interested in this, it got good reviews throughout. May pick this up later.

Will NOT watch:

• Hand Shakers: This anime has earned the label "Total Trainwreck". EVERYTHING about it sucks. So a definite no-go. Although there's that passion of watching anime that are so bad it's good...
• Akiba's Trip: Enemies who can be defeated by ripping the clothes of their bodies... and most characters are female, and it's set in Akihabara. So total fanservice anime with little substance (that's based on a game). SKIP!
• Chaos;Child: Sequel to Chaos;Head, which wasn't very good. I might be wrong, but this one doesn't really trigger my "must watch" bone.
• Masamune-kun's revenge: Rated "garbage. Yeah, not touching this one.
• Seiren: Rated "forgettable, bland and quickly dropped by those who bothered reviewing the first episodes. Not worth it.
• One Room: Otaku Pandering at its worst.
• Fuuka: Started of generic and bland. Slowly devolved into worse.
• Super Lovers 2: Nobody understood how this got a sequel. Rated as the worst sequel of the season.

Afterword

So that's the anime I have watched (or plan to watch). Have to admit, I'm quite pleased with the current line-up. Didn't expect much, but quite a few good hits.

Did you watch these anime? Do I need to watch more? You can always let me know.

Until next time, V out.

Updates

• 17/02: Small edit: Added legal streaming availability.
• 23/05: It was on my "planned to watch" list, so I've finally watched and thus added Yowamushi Pedal New Generation.

V Reviews Konosuba - Slayers anno 2016

After receiving some recommendations, I've been watching Konosuba. And I've got to admit. It's been a while since I've been laughing my ass off with a series like this.

Comedy in anime is something that either works or doesn't. And with this anime it works wonders. It was colorful, had a few unexpected twists that were funny. And heck, even the hooks that were predictable were still funny in its execution. Yet, it all has some sort of familiar feeling I couldn't shake... until it hit me.

This anime is heavily influenced by the Slayers franchise. And I don't mind it one bit.

V reviews - KonoSuba: God's blessing on this wonderful world

Let's dig into the Backstory

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! (which is usually abbreviated as KonoSuba) is a web novel written by Akatsuki Natsume in the period of 2012-2013.

In 2013 the web novel got officially released as a light novel series, with the 10th volume being released last November.

It also spawned a few spin-offs with similarly colorful titles that translate to: "Give Explosions to This Wonderful World!" and "Consulting with the Masked Devil!"

And since the novels got so popular (already selling over 1.5 million copies), it spawned a manga incarnation that has been running ever since 2014 and a radio drama that was released in 2015.

So it was bound to happen that an anime would be made as well. In early 2016 we finally got a short first series of 10 episodes, 1 OVA (to promote the 9th novel of the main series), and a second season airing at this very moment!

FYI: If you want to stay posted on the releases of her novels, Akatsuki keeps a blog (in Japanese, obviously) where she occasionally post status updates on her franchise.
Link: http://natsumeakatsuki.blog.fc2.com/

The Story:

Our protagonist Sato Kazuma is a shut-in gamer who dies on the one day he decides to pick up a new game. When this death scene at first seems like a rip-off from Yu Yu Hakusho (even to the point where the character is confronted by this universe's Botan: Aqua), the follow-up on this situation comes out of left-field and leaves you on the floor laughing. And that is just a small example on how this anime joyfully plays with expectations. If I'm being vague, that's because the humor works best if you don't know what is going to happen.

Botan, err, I mean the goddess Aqua gives our hero Kazuma a choice to either go to heaven (which is described as boring-as-f**k), to be reincarnated as a baby (and thus a full reset) or to be "spawned" into a dangerous fantasy world with the task to defeat the demon king, with all of his memories intact.

Kazuma chooses the fantasy world and (in a twist of fate) forces Aqua to come with him.

Yeah, she likes that idea. Go for it!

But bringing Aqua along with him is something he regrets nearly immediately. Why? Because Aqua is virtually useless as a companion. She ironically has little to no knowledge of the world she sends Kazuma and other adventurers into and her only real skill is that she knows healing magic (and occasionally remembers that she can use water magic too).

But as a consequence for forcing Aqua in his adventure, Kazuma has entered this world without either equipment nor money (and neither does Aqua). So our two heroes need to find a job as adventurers with basically nothing (which surprisingly is harder than they expected).

Sorry i ain't got no money, i'm not trying to be funny...

What follows is a series of comedic adventures of our heroes struggling to get money to live while doing odd-jobs and quests to obtain experience, equipment and new skills.

When this "amazing duo" realizes that certain quests are virtually impossible to complete on their own, they try to gather some allies. But to Kazuma's surprise, the people that end up joining their party (a mage called Megumin and a paladin-like warrior called Darkness) are both highly classed, but also very, very useless in their own rights.

"Yes, my eyepatch IS fake. Amazing, right?"

The rest of this story focuses on this (useless) party of four going on quests and taking on certain challenges (of which the are often the root cause of).

But even if they somehow win big quest money, they have reaked so much havok that the repair cost leaves them virtually broke or in debt. There's a reason why they spend most of their time sleeping in a horse stable.

Yes, that IS horse shit. Why do you ask?

Characters

	Sato Kazuma: The protagonist. He's a bit of a scumbag, but we easily forgive him due to the way he's being portrayed. He is the only competent character of his party and is able to guide his useless party of four to an uncertain victory. But he also has good enough leader skills to find the best use for his team mates and allies in order to survive their battles.
	Aqua: One of the most selfish and lazy goddesses out there. She's probably the strongest character on the team in terms of abilities, but when push comes to shove she's dumb as f**k and very, very dense.
	Megumin: The dark mage. The perfect incarnation for the term "glass cannon". She knows incredibly strong magic, but can only perform it once per day. And since she's a die-hard fan of explosion magic, she refuses to learn anything else.
	Darkness: The Paladin-like warrior who wants to "protect" everybody with her body. She has a few serious screws loose and an incredible accuracy of 0% on all her hits.

Animation & Sound

Okay, let's address the elephant in the room. This series is animated by Studio Deen. And yes, the animation of the first season and OVA are very good!
This may sound weird to you if you're not familiar with animation studios or if you're just getting into anime. But Studio Deen is kind of infamous when it comes to animation, especially when trying to keep up a certain level of quality animation.

There's a reason why this became a meme...

So for average Deen standards, this level of quality is surprisingly good.

The second season however somehow started on a lower note in terms of animation quality. I can only hope this first episode of S2 is an odd ball out and that the quality will increase from here on (wishful thinking?). Cross your fingers and hope for the best!

Don't make this a recurring thing... please.

In terms of sound & music... it's okay. The music isn't bad per se. The opening is good enough to not skip it and ending is chill enough to listen to. But for the rest of the anime, it often feels like I'm listening to typical generic royalty-free music from a random youtube channel. I sincerely doubt that's the case, but that is just how it feels. So that's a bit of a downer.

Inspired by Slayers?

If you are a long-time anime viewer, you may have some familiar feelings when watching this anime. No, I'm not talking about how the opening episode is a parody on the first episode of Yu Yu Hakusho. I'm talking about how the entire series feels like I'm watching Slayers all over again.

But while Akatsuki makes sure her characters and story isn't a carbon copy of Slayers, there's no helping that some of the personalities of the Slayers characters can be found back in many of the KonoSuba cast (both main and supporting cast).

• Lina Inverse can be found back in both Aqua and Megumin. Megumin is the Dark Mage with her own kind of Dragon Slave Magic who only loves explosions and massive destruction. Not to mention that a lot of Lina's looks are projected onto Megumin. Aqua on the other end has lots of Lina's personality and big mouth.
• Gourry can mostly be found back in Darkness. Darkness is the Paladin-like warrior who wants to protect her allies and is a straightforward idiot. She also generally looks like a gender-swapped Gourry (which isn't that strange since he was forced to cross-dress from time to time).
• Wis is a lot like Slayer's Sylphiel, even to the point where the person with Lina's character (Aqua) does not like Sylphiel's character (Wis).
• Yunyun (who appears in the OVA and in season 2) is a fusion of both Naga and Amelia
• Kazuma actually is the most difficult to pinpoint to one or more Slayers characters. If anything, he sounds a bit like a fusion of Zelgadis and Xelloss, but in general he feels like the most "original" character of the group.

So yes, a lot of similarities. But is it a rip-off?
No. I think it's just very difficult to write a fantasy comedy without any references to anything that happened in Slayers. Slayers just had that much of an impact on both comedies and fantasy stories.

Cut episodes?

In terms of negatives, the only thing I can think of is the feeling that some episodes have been scrapped from the original planning. This should've been an anime with 12 episodes, but we somehow only ended up with 10.

Why do I think this? Well, three reasons:

• There's the awkward introduction of Wis. She's just there and we're told very shortly how our heroes encountered her "before". But there is an immediate animosity between Aqua and Wis that required a voice-over explanation in that episode.
• Then there is the lack of Yunyun, even though she appears in the opening theme. Yunyun does appear in the OVA, but in the OVA there is a need to voice-over on how our heroes encountered her before. And since the OVA was a promo piece for the 9th novel, I don't really know where this story fits in with the story canon.
• Also, the last episode ends on a weird cliffhanger which is resolved in the first episode of S2. A comedy like this doesn't really need cliffhangers, so this was kind of a weird way to end your first season on.
• Oh yeah... and the fact that it was announced at the start that the first season would be 11 episodes + 1 OVA. So yes, at least one episode definitely got "lost" on the cutting floor.

Yes, I exist. But not in this season!

Personal opinion & conclusion

Overall, I give this anime an 8/10. It's no masterpiece, but it doesn't need to be. It's a comedy that's 10 episodes long that will leave you laughing A LOT (11 if you count the OVA), so it's easy to sit through.

Final conclusion: If you like comedies and anime in a fantasy setting, give this anime a watch. You will not regret it.

Until next time,
V out.