So, we are now three weeks into the summer 2018 anime season. And there are a lot of new anime out, to the point where it can get overwhelming. So, to kick off the blog, I'm gonna talk to you about what I'm currently watching and what my first impressions are. Please note, I'm only going to talk about brand new shows here, since anything that's still going on from last season, you've probably already made your mind up about if you like it or not. That being said, the shows from Spring 2018 that are still ongoing that I'm watching are My Hero Academia Season 3, Lupin the 3rd Part V, Major 2nd, and Captain Tsubasa. All are good and worth watching. Also, while these new shows are mostly only two or three episodes in at this point, you can still expect slight spoilers.
Angels of Death
First on the list, we have Angels of Death. This story follows a young girl named Rachel Gardner who wakes up in a strange warehouse-type building with no memory of how she got there. As she tries to find her way out, she learns that each floor above her is home to a murderer who is holding the key for her to move on. If that sounds like a crappy video game, that's kinda because it's based on one.
I've never played the game myself, but I can tell you that the anime is interesting. Rachel isn't much of a charismatic protagonist, but the narrative keeps hinting that she might be just as messed up as the other murderers in the building. After a while, she decides that she wants to be killed and makes a bargain with the scythe-wielding serial killer Isaac Foster. If she helps him escape, he'll kill her. Though that does raise the question of why she doesn't just kill herself or just walk up to another murderer and get killed by them instead, the show does a good enough job using music, animation, and voice acting to establish an atmosphere that gets me sucked in.
Angolmois: Record of Mongol Invasion
Next up we have Angolmois, a historical action series based on a manga by Nanahiko Takagi. Here we follow a group of criminals exiled from mainland Japan to a smaller island, where they are forced to fight as soldiers against an imminent invasion by the Mongol Empire in exchange or be executed.
There's not much to the story in Angolmois so far. Characters are kind of basic and archetypal to a fault, to the point where you pretty much know who they are and what they're about a minute after they're introduced. Whether or not the story decides to play with those expectations to make the characters more unique remains to be seen. And if not, a simple setup isn't necessarily a bad thing either. As shows like Afro Samurai have shown us, doing a simple story really well is sometimes all it takes to have a hit.
Angolmois is no Afro Samurai. But it is leaning heavily into style like Afro did. The animation is very clean and everything is covered in a filter that makes it look like traditional paintings. The filter can be distracting at times, but it usually adds to the effect and creates an illusion of watching historical footage of real events instead of a fictionalized account. I have a good feeling about Angolmois, and I hope I'm not disappointed.
Cells at Work
Up next we have Osmosis Jones Cells at Work. This comedy anime, based on a manga by Akane Shimizu, is about life in the blood vessels of a human body. Our two main characters are anthropomorphic characterizations of a nameless red blood cell and a nameless white blood cell.
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| Though the internet seems to think that the platelets are the main characters. |
This is an action-comedy that leans heavily into the comedy. Every episode follows the cells as they deal with a new crisis that the body is facing, such as a scrape wound or influenza. Those crises are treated more as an afterthought by the show, however, as it's much more interested in showing characters' over the top reactions and silly antics. I jokingly compared this show to Osmosis Jones earlier, but aside from the premise of anthropomorphized body parts, they really aren't that similar. Osmosis Jones is a buddy cop parody that features the humans they live in as active characters in the narrative. Cells at Work, meanwhile, is a pure slapstick show in the vein of things like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that focuses solely on the cells. It's also very interested in teaching the viewer, frequently taking breaks from the story so that a narrator can drop a boatload of biology lectures on you. I think I can do without that part, the show is good enough on its own without trying to send me back to school.
Hanebado!
Hey, look, a sports anime. I love sports anime! They tend to have a bit of a negative connotation among anime fans, and I never understood why. Do weebs just not like sports? Whatever, Hanebado is a badminton anime based on a manga by Kosuke Hamada. Unlike most sports anime, which feature bright-eyes newcomers or child prodigies in love with their sport of the day, Hanebado chooses to focus on burned-out veterans going through an identity crisis and trying to find their lost love for the game. It's all very melodramatic and I love it.
What I also love is how pretty this show is. This might be the best animated show that I talk about today. The very first scene shows an intense match between our two leads, and every single shot made my jaw drop. Individual drops of sweat are flying off the girls, there are shots of a beautifully rendered CG shuttlecock in slow motion, the movements of the players are so fluid that it almost looks more realistic than actual real life badminton. And the rest of the currently three episodes at this time of writing, while not as visually stunning, are all just as technically well done. Not to mention that it's just nice to have a sports anime about female characters that isn't all about fanservice.
Harukana Receive
Hey, look! A sports anime about female characters that's all about fanservice! There's not much going on plot-wise in Harukana Receive. We got our main girl Haruka moving to Okinawa and making a beach volleyball team with her cousin Kanata (Haruka+Kanata=Harukana). That's about it.
There's really not much to talk about with Harukana Receive. The show is bright and colorful, the effects used on the water and sand are very nice, and the soundtrack is decent, but the story and characters are just a little bit lacking. This is a show that's less interested in telling a story and more interested in creating a laid back experience with pretty girls and volleyball matches. And I'm okay with that. It's nothing special, but it's nothing offensively bad either.
Island
Now, this is offensively bad. Island is supposed to be a mystery about a man named Suzuka who washes up on the shore of an island with a very isolationist community. He has amnesia, but he claims to be from the future and that he has someone he needs to kill. Sounds like a compelling enough mystery to me. Too bad there's all this garbage getting in the way.
Why does anime always have to go out of its way to fetishize little girls? It's uncomfortable and wrong and I can't stand it. And even if they didn't try to objectify these girls, none of these characters are interesting. Suzuka alternates between being a snarky jerk and wandering around like a lost puppy, and neither characterization works for him. The girls are all annoying and trying to be mysterious, cute, and silly all at the same time, and it just leaves me counting down the seconds to the end of the episode. And the actual art and animation is so bare bones that there isn't even anything to look at while listening to this terrible dialogue. I dropped this dumpster fire after one episode.
Planet With
I have several questions. Firstly, Planet With what? How do you get a title that just stops halfway through like that? It makes me think that someone spilled coffee on the proposal documents and the stain obscured the rest of the title or something. Second question, why does it feel like this is a sequel? I mean, it isn't, it's a brand new original story, but it just sort of starts in the middle. The main character Souya has amnesia and is somehow living with an anime maid and a giant cat. Then out of nowhere, there's a giant flying teddy bear with teeth on its ears, human ears where arms should be, and five human arms where legs should go. Then seven random superhero characters with mechs show up with no introduction or build up and start fighting the teddy bear. Then the maid tells Souya that he has to hunt down the superheroes and steal the source of their power. And that's all the first episode.
So, naturally, my third question is what are they smoking over in Japan to come up with this stuff? Because this is bananas. I can't say that it's very good though. The production values are through the roof, with the animation and sound teams pulling out all the stops to make this a great spectacle. But the story so far is just nonsensical, even with the second episode taking a break to explain a little bit of what's going on. If the storytelling catches up to the animation and soundtrack, then this could be amazing. But right now, it's just a pretty-looking mess.
And that's it! Seven new anime, plus the four I mentioned before that are carrying over from spring, plus a few older anime that I missed and am watching for the first time (Sanrio Boys and Seven Deadly Sins) plus One Piece (which has been airing nonstop since 1999) minus Island because Island is terrible means I'm currently watching 13 anime. Overall, this summer season feels a bit lacking compared to the high quality winter and spring seasons we just finished, but there are still some shows worth watching. At the moment, I'd say that Cells at Work and Hanebado are currently neck and neck for Anime of the Season for me, but Angolmois and Planet With have the potential to surprise me. Let me know what you're watching and what you think about them. Maybe you've seen something really good that I missed.
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