Winter 2015 Watchlist and Fall 2014 Recap

I am very excited about the next two anime seasons.

First, the second season of Durarara!! begins this Saturday, January 10. I confess that I rewatched the final two episodes of the first season the other day, since for some reason I couldn't remember how it ended. So now I'm refreshed and ready to return to that wild and woolly ward of Tokyo - Ikebukuro!

And to acquaint myself again with that funny mismatched couple...

... What? You didn't think I meant Celty and Shinra, did you? XD

This second season of Durarara will be played out in three cours. The series starting this Saturday is only the first cour. The final cour will air in winter 2016. So basically - it's an entire year of Durarara in store for us all.

As of this moment, Crunchyroll still hasn't announced their license for the biggest dog of the winter 2015 season:

I'm not getting nervous exactly, but let's just say I'll be glad when Crunchyroll finally announces that they got Kuroko's Basketball S3. =D

Of course I will always try out animes that feature bishonen samurai.

Samurai Warriors fits that bill nicely.

Finally, there was an anime called Death Billiards a while back. From the same team now comes Death Parade, a supernatural story set in a bar.

I'm honestly not sure what to expect from Death Parade, but it sounds intriguing enough to try out.

So I have two obvious choices, Durarara S2 and Kuroko's Basketball S3, and two new ones - Samurai Warriors and Death Parade - on my winter 2015 watchlist.

It's about all I can fit in - because I've got four series carrying over from fall season: Sailor Moon Crystal, Shirobako, Parasyte and of course Naruto Shippuuden.

A brief recap of fall 2014 for me - I was busy with work and other obligations, so I couldn't pick up as many series as I wanted to. I did finish the following series though.

Psycho-Pass S2 was good, but it didn't live up to the brilliance of the first season. It was a case of following the patterns of the original season too closely and not innovating or giving the audience any new surprises. The world and setting of Psycho-Pass is dark and deeply atmospheric, and like the anime it's most often compared to - Ghost in the Shell - its heavy stylization is almost another character in the story.

All the acting was excellent and Tsunemori the main character showed a lot of development. But somehow this second season was predictable right up to the ending, and the team that produces this series should've done better than that.

Well - there was always a bishonen merman I could watch instead...

Thirteen episodes later and I still don't know what Orenchi no Furo Jijo was supposed to be about, though one could argue with four minute-long episodes should it really matter?? A young man comes home one day and finds a beautiful merman in his bathtub. Soon, an attractive octopus and a tiny green-haired bishonen in a mollusk shell come to join them. That's it.

The main attraction of Orenchi for its fans was another series altogether - Free. The seiyuu who played Haruka and Makoto in Free play the young man and the octopus in Orenchi, so each week at Crunchyroll the comments were full of, Did you see Haruka stroking Makoto's tentacles? and Makoto and Haruka just belong in water, don't they? Squee!

... Yeah. Moving along to the final one:

The delightful I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying was entertaining all the way to the end, and a second season has been announced for spring 2015.

I Can't Understand was a surprise find and much fun to watch. I'm looking past winter to the spring season not only for it, but for an anime that has been gone for too too long...

Yes! Yes! A thousand times Yes! The mighty Gintama will return for another season starting this spring. I've been waiting for what feels like forever for Gintoki and his friends to come back and give us another round of Meiji Era insanity.

The big dogs of anime are out in force this winter and spring. All hail the big dogs!

Fall 2014 Watchlist

I've cobbled together what I think might be my fall 2014 watchlist. I say might be, because my work schedule recently got a lot busier and I've barely had time to try out the fall shows.

However, I can make good guesses based on my usual tastes. So, without further ado, from the most definite picks to the maybes...

Psycho-Pass S1 was an amazing series, so I'm in for the second season despite some main characters from the first season looking like they're missing and having to watch it on Funimation's frustrating, creaky streaming site.

I watched the first episode of Parasyte, which I found kind of creepy/funny/creepy again. It's one of the most-hyped shows of the season, which usually (but not always) means it's worth watching. I haven't read much about it, so the plot should surprise me no matter what direction it takes.

My surprise find this season is Shirobako. I always watch animes about the manga industry, but I've always really wanted to watch animes about the anime industry, but there aren't any. Until now.

I've only seen the first episode so far and the opening gave me pause, since it shows the four main characters about to graduate high school? college? It was hard to tell. It was the typical cutesy high-voiced moe kind of scene and I thought, uh-oh.

But it was just a flashback. The next scene jumped to the main character now working at an anime production company in Tokyo, and it was great. I've always wanted to see what anime production in Japan is like behind the scenes, and this series looks like it will show it all.

The final one on my list of definitely-watching shows:

What can I say - Orenchi no Furo Jijo is a series about a merman who lives in a bishonen's bathtub. =) Also, the episodes are four minutes long. I watched the first one, and the funniest thing about it was completely unintentional. The episode was four minutes of silly fluff, but the opening credits were completely 180 degrees different from the episode that followed. It was dark and noir and seemed to show somebody drowning(!?). A commenter on Crunchyroll said it best:

Wow, that OP seems kind of... out of character?

So who knows where this little show is headed - but I'll certainly give it a whirl.

And last of all - the maybes on my list. I'm going pretty much on what I've heard/read about these shows only.

Terra Formars is a dark action series about killing mutated cockroaches on Mars. Apparently it's being shown heavily censored and people are complaining. But I'll probably give it a try.

I seem to recall hearing before my blur of a work schedule began that World Trigger features some of my favorite seiyuu. So I'll try it out.

And the most maybe-maybes on the list... Akatsuki no Yona is a shojo series in a historical setting that has an intriguing-sounding plot, so I'll watch at least the first few episodes if I have time. Fate/stay night is the latest series in a very popular universe. I watched the first few minutes of its hour-long prologue episode and I have to say it didn't particularly hook me - but I may give it another chance.

And Rage of Bahamut: Genesis is getting all kinds of love from reviewers, but I read the plot synopsis at ANN and it just left me cold. It's the least likely one to be added to my watchlist, but I've been surprised before, so who knows. ;-)