Fall 2015 Final Thoughts

- WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS -

Welcome back for the conclusion of the fall season. I did not watch a whole lot this time around, but as a result there is a lot more space for me to go through the shows. Additionally, I picked out anime that I expected to be exceptional this season, making it much less tedious and painful for me.

MyAnimeList
Fall 2015 First Impressions

This Season:
Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka??
Haikyuu!! 2
One Punch Man
Owari no Seraph: Nagoya Kessen-hen
Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru
Taimadou Gakuen 35 Shiken Shoutai

Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?? (12)

I Rate: 7.1/10.0
One Sentence: Second (and hopefully last) installment of the acclaimed moe series, consisting of gooey and cutesy girls leading idealized lives in a cute and small (did I mention cute) town.

It requires a tremendous amount of patience and boredom to watch GochiUsa 2 in an engaged manner. For me, I needed to be doing something else while watching, whether it be eating, participating in a conversation, or playing something on mobile. What I am trying to get at is that GochiUsa 2, while still cute and all, is essentially the same as the first season. You could watch all the episodes (from both seasons) in random order.

The content, while not exceptionally exciting, is sufficient for the purposes of a moe SoL. If there is to be praise given to GochiUsa 2, it is in the art. The colours were bright and vibrant, and definitely fit the mood of the anime, along with the moe style. Not much to say in the sound department, asides from nice voice acting and average opening and ending themes.

Worth watching if you have a lot of free time and you don't mind episodic plots, however there are other shows out there that do the same and are better. Needless to say, if you were a fan of the first season, you will be a fan of GochiUsa 2.

Best Girl: Rize has come out on top


Haikyuu!! 2 (ongoing, 13/25)

I Rate: 8.4/10.0
One Sentence: "SEASON 2 HYPE HERE WE GO BOYS ALL ABOARD THE HAIKYUU TRAIN CHOO CHOO VOLLYEBALL." - MrRhyce's Anime List

Absolutely love this season of Haikyuu!!, where we've been thrown right back into the action. The new dynamic of the team and their development has been portrayed amazingly, and it would be neat to see another sort of arc where each player is focused on.

The general tone of this season is this is our last chance, and all these episodes have done the job of hyping the ending. It may be just me, but it feels as if there are a lot more games in Haikyuu!! 2 (which is definitely not a bad thing). The progression of the story is well-paced, not shoving too much in at once nor drawing out unimportant events.

In terms of character, there has been loads of development with Hinata and Kageyama, while the other characters have their respective mini-arcs. The one thing that I did notice was that two prominent side characters in the first season, Sugawara and Yamaguchi, have seen little screen time, however I'm sure that they will get their spotlight later on in the season.

Art and animation look superb as usual, and the OP and ED get you pumped up and excited. If you haven't watched the first season yet, do yourself a favour and treat yourself. And if you have, you're probably already watching Haikyuu!! 2 as well.

Best Girl: nothing wrong with a little Hitoka


One Punch Man (12)

I Rate: 8.2/10.0
One Sentence: All it takes is one punch (and a lot of indifference).

One Punch Man was an anime that I picked up later in the season, in fact, I decided to try it out when it was on episode 8 or something. I was not actually sure what was going on with all the frenzy and commotion around the anime, and if I was going to do a half-decent season wrap up, I needed to cover this hot anime.

It is a bit of stretch to say, but One Punch Man is a hilarious and light-hearted satire on the hero stereotype. By poking fun at the passionate and virtuous heroes who fight long and hard battles against evil, the anime becomes funny in that aspect itself. Our main character, Saitama, is a "hero for fun". Nobody knows who he is, however it's ironic because he is the strongest hero out there. The whole anime is about Saitama going around and decimating enemies with a single punch, enemies who cannot be defeated by other heroes. You would think that having every fight being decided by one punch would get dreary, however the interesting parts become how the other heroes try to handle the situation.

OP and ED are vastly different, but both have their charms. As for animation, Madhouse really outdid themselves with One Punch Man. I'm not a huge fan of the art style, but I would be lying if I said that the animation wasn't good.

Most of the other characters are heroes, each with their own quirks, which made them either easy to like, easy to laugh at, or both. Certainly there's not a whole lot of development going on, but that seems like a waste of time when considering that we are talking about One Punch Man. One thing that I did notice was that Genos' backstory was never fully fleshed out, and there could have been a really interesting arc about that, but...

The show did end in an open way, making the transition into any possible second season much smoother, so now all that's left to do is wait and hope. Glad that I came around and started watching what came out to be one of the best this season.

Best Girl: tsundere Tatsumaki


Owari no Seraph: Nagoya Kessen-hen (12)

I Rate: 6.9/10.0
One Sentence: Great at a few points, unbearable at a lot of points, and everything else can be overlooked as average.

For all those looking to experience the terrible loss of potential in the first cour of Owari no Seraph, I have some good news for you; the Nagoya Kessen-hen cour will also disappoint those with high hopes. Riddled by poor timing, cliches, and over-convenient plot devices, what was originally a good start has come out as a messy, terrible, contorted mess.

Let's start off by recapping what happens in the Owari no Seraph's second cour. The first three episodes are completely dedicated to character development on the Shinoa squad. Yuu and Kimizuki both gain advanced powers from their Black Demon weapons and overall the group looks much more cohesive and stronger. Episodes four to ten serve as the thick of the plot, the actual battles against the vampire nobles in Nagoya, however it turns out to be more focused on the battle against the noble trio of Crowley Eusford, Chess Belle, and Horn Skuld. From then on, the last two episodes are a climatic and massive fight, with much infighting on the side of the humans, and the reveal that humans have been developing a weapon of mass destruction (appropriately dubbed Owari no Seraph).

Now it's time to break this all down. The first three episodes and the few that followed were the strongest and most concrete of the whole cour. We can see that there has been an obvious change in the atmosphere of the Shinoa group, and it's good development. After that point, the first few battles against the nobles were interesting, and the content remained solid. However once the battle against Eusford and company began, the cour began to dip in quality. A lot of overused devices came into play and the arc didn't seem unique. An example of a convenient device was the fact that Kimizuki's demon just happened to have the power to somehow reverse Yuu's transformation into a demon (I thought this transformation would have been great). The last episodes were action packed, but lacked any depth to them.

Unfortunately in this second part we don't see a whole lot of the other characters, asides from Yuu, Shinoa, Mika, and Guren. There's a lot of small development going on for pretty much everybody else, but nothing substantial enough.

The consistency and quality of the art and animation carried on from last season, and were pretty good. When it comes to the soundtrack, the ending theme has lodged itself in my heart, and the opening, while somewhat unfitting for the style of Owari no Seraph, is nice.

tl;dr: If you haven't watched the first cour, Owari no Seraph: Nagoya Kessen-hen isn't worth it (hell, it might not even be worth it if you didn't enjoy the first cour). The performance and showing of this second cour isn't enough to warrant a watch of the first cour either, so maybe you're better off not watching either.

Best Girl: HYPE HYPE SHINOA (tbh, Asuramaru almost got the spot before I discovered that he was a guy)


Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru (12)

I Rate: 8.0/10.0
One Sentence: Loved this show for its new and fresh quality, definitely hoping that a second season will become a thing.

The fall season brought to us another mystery anime, and Sakurako-san has been one of the more recent of its genre to showcase something worth watching. Featuring episodic mysteries, the show focuses on the strange relationship between a woman named Sakurako and an adolescent boy named Shoutarou.

As I've briefly mentioned, there isn't too much to see here if you're looking for cases that span longer than two episodes at the least. However, I can say that there is never a dull moment in the anime. We're constantly kept on our toes with new mysteries and for the most part, they're all engaging and fresh. In terms of story line, only the last few episodes have anything that can be counted as moving the plot along. When it is discovered that most of the cases that Sakurako and Shoutarou have been working on are linked to a man named Hanabusa, that's where the only progression happens.

Sakurako as a character is original and captivating, with her uncanny obsessions with bones. She comes off as indifferent with her raw and unfiltered style of life, however, with the right people, she shows a more caring and affectionate side. In comparison, Shoutarou plays the very stereotypical young-male-keeping-girl-detective-in-check. He can't help it, it's just the way that it has to be. The side characters (ex. Kougami, the teacher, and the officer) are neat in their own aspects, but none of them carry as much depth as Sakurako (naturally).

One undeniably good part of show was the animation and art. The usage of the colours set up the perfect mood and atmosphere, and the art was well done. Animation was fluid and realistic, and one recurring and beautiful scene was the transformation of Sakurako into detective mode. I personally found the OP much better than the ED, but both pieces were good, at the least.

If you're into mystery and you don't mind episodic stories, then I highly recommend you try Sakurako-san.

Best Girl: good ol' Sakurako


Taimadou Gakuen 35 Shiken Shoutai (12)

I Rate: 7.0/10.0
One Sentence: Turned out unexpectedly alright for your typical anime set in a magical academy, although it should be noted that the CG is awful.

Looking at the lineup season, I saw a lot of the usual "magical academy" type anime, however it was on a whim that I decided to watch Taimadou Gakuen 35 Shiken Shoutai. All that happened was that I saw it in the featured panel of Crunchyroll and thought that the art looked nice (which, by the way, it does... at times).

For plot, it's pretty much the usual. MC-kun (this time, played by Kusanagi) has some sort of weird quirk, but loves to get involved and save the people dear to him, and he'll go to any length to do it. There are a bunch of fights, a bunch of accidental (and not so accidental) skimpy scenes, and then some sort of giant fight that eventually culminates to nothing and effectively brings all the characters full circle (except for the fact that MC-kun's harem now have raging feelings for him).

Characters: they're... enjoyable? Even though they all represent classic archetypes of girls in any harem, most (ahem, Usagi) of them are actually pretty likable. While none of them contain any depth and will always remain two-dimensional, they made the show bearable.

One strong point of the show was the art... kinda? Everything looked pretty, and I enjoyed it a lot. Animation seemed to be decent enough for the simple scenes, but when it got to the heavy-duty scenes, CG was used... and it was atrocious. It really took away from any quality that the show had, and reminded me of KanColle (unfortunately). Asides from that, the music had an electro theme and was pretty good for the most part.

Overall, skip it rather than watch it. Probably right in the middle of the pack when it comes to its genre, seeing as there's nothing memorable about it.

Best Girl: ...let's go with Lapis