The good anime seasons keep a-comin! This spring brings yet another batch of good stuff to watch.
There's one obvious "this is the quality series" choice, one insane choice, and two adult-focused choices (not in that way - I just mean for adults rather than kids). And also, a few possible series to add in later if I have time.
So let's get into it...
How is it possible that I didn't even know Hiromu Arakawa was coming out with a new anime series?? I know I haven't been keeping up with anime news lately, but seriously, a new series from the master mangaka who brought us Fullmetal Alchemist is an event.
Daemons of the Shadow Realm sets up the story immediately. It involves what looks at first like an old Edo-period setting and a young man who occupies a special position in his mountain village. Until it's revealed that this village is in fact not in Japan's past, but in the modern world. It's just been shielded through magic from the big city in the valley below.
This young man, Yuru, has a twin sister. Or so he thinks... Actually, he does have a twin sister, but the one the village elder has been telling him is his sister isn't her. His sister Asa was in fact raised in the modern world, and she breaks through the village's magic seal to rescue Yuru.
I'm not really spoiling anything, since all of this happens in episode 1. It's Arakawa so the characters and their situations are compelling right off the bat. It's the clear must-watch of spring season.
My next favorite watch so far is The Drops of God.
In recent years I've yearned for more adult-focused stories. I still love shounen but I find I'm drawn to series where the characters are more settled in their personalities and life situations, more settled than teenagers anyway.
In The Drops of God, Shizuki's father Toyotaka Kanzaki, a world-famous wine expert, passes away. Instead of outright inheriting his estate, Shizuki must compete with Issei Tomine, a wine expert treated by Toyotaka as a kind of second son, to identify the world's 12 greatest wines.
Shizuki never studied wine, having seen his father's passion as something that took him away from him as a boy. Issei is a stranger to him and his initial reaction to him is one of shock.
However, when he was a boy, Shizuki's relationship with his father was different. His father taught him how to sense the qualities of foods and the natural world, so although it seems he's at a disadvantage vis-a-vis Tomine, he really isn't. He's just got to learn wine very quickly. ;-)
Tomine is a pompous, smug guy. He's also pretentious, as can be seen from his double-breasted suit jacket (lol).
You can already see the ending from the beginning. The two men will come to grudgingly respect each other and somehow the estate will be shared by them in some way. But there’ll be a lot of good scenes to enjoy before we get there.
This one, Eren the Southpaw, is on my watchlist because I'm partial to artist stories.
From Crunchyroll: The story follows Koichi Asakura, a designer for an ad agency who works hard but receives no recognition. After being dropped from a project, he visits a place from his past, where he met Eren Yamagishi. Eren, meanwhile, is recognized as a genius left-handed graffiti artist in New York, while enduring the struggles that come from her own path in life.
I find Koichi a little irritating, but the Eren character feels fresh as an unconventional young woman who keeps fighting the system, as she tries to find her place as an artist in the greater art world.
If I have time, I might try Marriagetoxin, Always a Catch!, and An Observation Log of my Fiancee Who Calls Herself a Villainess. I got a late start on watching this season, so I might not get around to these.
Okay, so Rilakkuma is a series featuring the famous brown bear and his little friends. If you’ve seen Japanese plushies anywhere, you’ve seen Rilakkuma. I've always thought he looks a little depressed, but that's neither here nor there...
I added Rilakkuma to my Crunchyroll watchlist but didn’t think I’d actually sit down and watch it. Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t difficult to binge all the episodes that’ve aired to date, since each episode is... one minute long.
LOL. Took me less than ten minutes. It’s cute. Not much more to say about it...
And finally, something that is almost as zany as Gintama. A profane exploration of a hero who happens to be...
Yes, it's a hero story of a rooster. Well, he's no ordinary rooster. He has super powers and can defeat enemies that are a zillion times bigger than him, as astounded humans look on.
The role is played dead serious, which makes it even funnier. Keiji is a wanderer who doesn’t want to be tied down, so he journeys from town to town and... hen to hen.
It’s actually not for kids, since there is some hot rooster-on-hen action, so be forewarned. Rooster Fighter is definitely not for everyone, but if you want something completely different, it may be for you. ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment