But that's enough stalling! Let's get started.
Double Decker: Doug and Kirill
(Studio Sunrise, Directed by Joji Furuta, Original Work)
First up we have the bizarre buddy cop show Double Decker. Presented as a spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed show that I never watched Tiger and Bunny, Double Decker started a week ahead of everything else I'm gonna talk about today, so I have two episodes to review instead of just one. So, real quick: In episode 1, Kirill is an idiot beat cop who dreams of being an idiot detective. After helping actual detective Doug resolve a hostage situation involving the fantasy drug Anthem, Kirill is recruited to be Doug's partner. And in episode 2, Kirill's idiot boss reveals that he wasn't supposed to hire Kirill after all. After scrambling to prove his worth so he won't get fired, with Doug not letting him arrest anyone if they aren't on the fantasy drugs because that would be out of their jurisdiction, he manages to catch an escaped convict that used the fantasy drug as a steroid in the jailbreak.
This show is just pure, dumb fun. The story might not always make a lot of sense and the characters might be almost entirely morons, but the jokes are funny more often than not, the color palette is unique and striking, and the soundtrack is awesome. I will say that episode 1 was a little more enjoyable for me than episode 2, but I'm still having a good time so far. Doug's mysterious backstory is intriguing enough to keep me interested, but I'm worried that anything serious will not fit with the show's goofy tone.
Run With the Wind
(Production IG, Directed by Kazuya Nomura, based on a novel)
Oh, look, a sports anime. Bet nobody's surprised to hear that I like it. In episode 1, broke college student Kakeru shoplifts food from a convenience store. But because he runs really fast, his fellow college student Haiji offers to pay for the food and invites him to live at an empty room at the cheap apartment college for students he lives at. But it turns out that Haiji is a sneaky bastard who has been using the cheap rent as a way to blackmail students into forming a track team with him to run a super long relay race. What a great guy!
When Production IG is making a sports anime, you can expect it to be pretty (this is the studio that gave us Kuroko's Basketball and Haikyuu, after all), and this first episode is no exception. From the very first time I saw Kakeru run, I was transfixed. And while it's usually a risky move to introduce a bunch of characters right in the first episode, the residents at the track dorm are all fun and distinct with their own nicknames to make remembering them easier. The welcome party they throw for Kakeru was just plain sweet and I already felt a real sense of camaraderie between them. I'm hoping that Haiji will get called out for blackmailing people soon, though, because that's really not cool.
Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary
(Studio Deen, Directed by Hiroshi Watanabe, Based on a Taiwanese RPG)
So, a quick heads-up before the episode summary. There were so many characters in this first episode that I couldn't remember any of their names and I'm going to be using nicknames here.
Okay, in Episode 1: so much stuff happens that my head spins. An evil empire invades the peaceful countryside with dopey looking mech-golem-things. Two sisters are forced to survive as traveling stage combat performers while their childhood friend is enslaved and forced to assist the imperial engineers in creating more mech-golems. Slave boy secretly tinkers with scrap metal while everyone else is asleep, and the toy he makes helps him befriend the child empress, which saves his life after the chief engineer defects and joins a rebellion and the military suspects him of being a spy. Child empress even gives slave boy a promotion and names him chief engineer. Meanwhile, the traveling sisters get attacked by some demons or whatever and only survive when the older sister finds a magic sword and a summoning scroll, giving the girls a guardian and the audience another goddamn character to try to keep track of. But none of the characters are aware of the show's greatest evil: ugly animation.
This was just plain bad. Ugly CG for the mech-golems is one thing, but even the normal 2D animation isn't good. Meanwhile, the story is just unfocused. It's okay to have a story with a lot of different characters and plot threads that come together to form a greater whole, but the audience needs to be eased into that sort of thing. There's a reason that Fullmetal Alchemist starts with a self-contained story of the Elric brothers fighting Father Cornello and doesn't also try to introduce Mustang's squad, Winry, Scar, and the Briggs soldiers at the same time. Even the voice acting was bad, and I didn't think bad voice acting was a thing in modern anime anymore. But I still like the designs of the mech-golems and the stage combat scene was neat enough that I am willing to give this show at least one more episode. But I'm probably gonna drop it soon.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai
(Studio Cloverworks, Directed by Souichi Masui, Based on a Light Novel)
And the award for dumbest title of the season has a clear front-runner. But at least it's not as bad as "No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular," "Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, or my personal favorite "What Will You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?" So, that's something. And yes, all of those titles are real.
In episode 1, ordinary high school student Sakuta randomly sees a girl dressed in a sexy bunny girl outfit at the library. Bunny Girl is just randomly getting in people's faces, but only Sakuta seems to be aware of her presence. Turns out, Bunny Girl is a classmate and former child star named Mai, and she is somehow invisible to almost everyone. Sakuta suspects that the mysterious disease Adolescent Syndrome, believed to be a myth by most, is responsible. Sakuta and his sister have also been infected with Adolescent Syndrome, with cuts randomly appearing on their body and giving Sakuta a sexy scar on his chest. Now, Sakuta and Mai have to figure out what is happening to them and how to reverse Mai's invisibility.
This is a neat mystery, though the fact that this story is meant to be a metaphor for puberty and high school social structures is not subtle at all. I'm willing to let this slide, though, since the idea of puberty as a disease isn't something I've seen that often before. Sakuta and Mai are fun characters with excellent chemistry and witty banter, and the animation is much better than a show in a visually mundane setting needs to be. It's also amusing that Bunny Girl is Studio Cloverworks second exploration of puberty through a fantastic or supernatural lens this year, after their debut anime Darling in the Franxx last winter. I look forward to Bunny Girl following the same pattern of getting ridiculously over-hyped before the final few episodes get so weird that the fanbase turns on it and I'm left alone thinking it was good all the way through but never truly great.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
(Studio 8bit, Directed by Yasuhito Kikchu, Based on a manga)
Another season, another isekai. Will Slime break the usual trend and join Overlord in the ranks of modern isekai anime that I actually like (note: I have not watched ReZero or No Game No Life yet, but I have heard good things), will it join Konosuba in the Halls of Meh, or will it join the vast majority of modern isekai anime in the Sword Art Online Dumpster Fire? Is this title dumber than Bunny Girl? Let's find out!
In episode 1, Satou Mikami is your average salaryman. While his younger coworker is introducing his new girlfriend, a random crook comes out of nowhere, stabs Satou, killing him, and just disappears in the crowd, with apparently nobody chasing after him. Satou is then reincarnated in a fantasy world as a lowly slime (hence the title), but he still retains his intelligence and has the unique skill to store the materials of objects he absorbs for later usage. He then meets a dragon that was sealed in the cavern where he woke up and the two become friends. Back on Earth, Satou's coworker honors his last request and throws his late mentor's computer (monitor included) into the bathtub in order to make doubly sure that his weird fetishes will not be known to the wider world. I swear I am not even joking.
Isekai anime get a bad rep, since the genre has become so over-saturated with bad and mediocre shows over the last few years, many of which just follow the trends of the already terrible Sword Art Online. But the premise of being transported to a new parallel world and becoming a super badass is an appealing one, and it has been done right before in shows like Overlord and a few pre-SAO shows like The Vision of Escaflowne and MAR. And when I heard that our protagonist was going to be turned into a slime, I thought that this might be a cool way to subvert expectations and give us an actual underdog isekai protagonist. But this first episode seems to imply that Satou is going to be just as overpowered in his world as Kirito is in SAO, so that's disappointing. But the show was overall pretty amusing (especially the completely random way Satou was killed), and the dragon's hint that Satou isn't the only one to come from another world is intriguing enough to keep me interested for a little while longer.
Between the Sky and Sea
(TMS Entertainment, Directed by Atsushi Nigorikawa, Based on a Japanese mobile game)
Are you ready for a weird episode summary? In the not too distant future, all of the fish on Earth have disappeared. Humanity now maintains monster fisheries in space, hunting them with mechs that are powered by sentient AI deities controlled with a smartphone app. After the passing of equal employment opportunity laws, female space-fishers are hired in bulk, but institutionalized sexism is still a major problem for them. When New Girl (I can't be bothered to remember anyone's names) gets lost on her way to orientation as a space fisher, two other girls drag her along on a space fishing expedition so they can have the regulation team of three and stick it to the patriarchy. But since New Girl has had absolutely no training, the three of them nearly die and have to rescued by the male team, making their uphill battle for respect in the workplace even more difficult.
I wanted to like this show. It's got a crazy unique premise that I've never seen anywhere before and I was behind its noble goal of making a statement on gender equality in the workplace. But when the characters act like complete idiots all across the board, I cannot get invested in their struggle. Even the big bad sexist guys are stupid. Instead of saying "What do you expect when you drag a complete rookie into the field with no training?" like a sane person would, they all act like the reason the girls needed rescuing is because "Girls aren't cut out for this line of work?" Like, seriously? Try to have some nuance in your storytelling! None of the characters are likable, not even the ones I'm supposed to be rooting for. Cute character designs can only get you so far in getting me to like your show, and the girls here aren't even that cute if you ask me. And it's not like the animation or soundtrack is worth a damn either. Needless to say, I'm not coming back to this show next week.
Radiant
(Studio Lerche, Directed by Seiji Kishi, Based on a French manga)
Is it weird that shounen adventure stories seem to be a rarity nowadays? Naruto ended last year, Fairy Tail is wrapping up this year, Pokemon has moved into the slice of life genre, and while Boruto and Black Clover have debuted since then, it still feels like One Piece is the only relevant show in the genre sometimes. So, naturally, I was excited to see Radiant promise to breathe fresh life into the genre. Sadly, it did not keep its promise.
In episode 1, a bunch of monster called Nemesis fell from the sky and infected a bunch of people, giving the survivors magic powers and killing everyone else. Seth is an apprentice hunter who wants to hunt Nemesis so that normal people won't discriminate against him and his mentor anymore. While his mentor is away on a mission, a Nemesis egg falls from the sky and lands in the village square. Seth fights the newly hatched monster, but gets his ass kicked because he is a dumbass, before a new group of sorcerers arrive on the scene to save the day.
Shounen adventure stories like this are my favorite kind of anime and have been since I was a kid. But this pilot episode was so boring that I actually fell asleep while watching it and had to rewind to see what I missed. Radiant is a Frankenstein's monster of other, better shounen shows. Seth looks like a recolored Natsu Dragneel, and the first half of the episode where he runs through a fantasy village causing mischief before a mentor figure forces him to clean a wall while she lectures him is literally the exact same way Naruto's pilot started. Also like Naruto, Seth wants to become a super badass and earn the respect of the normal village people who ostracize him, which is almost word for word Naruto's motivation in his own series. And Seth's personality of being a bombastic wannabe super wizard reminds me of the little bit of Asta from Black Clover that I checked out, only somehow more annoying. The cringe-worthy attempts at humor feel like they came out of the bad fanfic of a One Piece fan who doesn't quite understand how Oda's sense of humor works. The Nemesis themselves, at least, don't look they came from any popular shounen anime. No, they were just stolen from the pile of rejected creature designs for Studio Ghibli films instead. I know that shows like this always start out really slow and get better with time, so I hope that those who are on board with Radiant get a great show that they love. But I'm not interested in seeing where this snooze-fest will go from here.
Zombie Land Saga
(Studio Mappa, Directed by Munehisa Sakai, Anime Original)
A monster anime in October? What a novel concept. In episode 1, Sakura Minamoto is a high school student whose name is way too similar to Sakura Kinomoto of Cardcaptor fame. She leaves for school with a heart full of dreams and gets immediately run over by a random truck. She then wakes up ten years later as a zombie in a strange cabin with six other zombie girls and a bad case of amnesia. A very flamboyant man arrives and announces his plans to whip the zombie girls into shape and form an idol group that will somehow save the Saga Prefecture from some unspecified threat. When he books them a gig at a metal concert with no actual training, the girls surprise everyone, including themselves, by putting on a show stopping metal number despite never actually singing or playing instruments during the show.
This was a riot from start to finish. When the episode started with a high school girl getting ready for school while narrating about her dreams, I was groaning and rolling my eyes. Seeing her immediately get thrown in the air by a truck, falling in slow motion with inappropriate metal playing in the background, was so abrupt and hilarious that I was instantly on board with whatever the show threw at me for the rest of the episode. And the manager guy is a goddamn treat, and he has the potential to be a fountain of memes. My only real complaint with this episode is that the girls don't do anything during the concert besides scream and head bang. I would have loved to hear Sakura ad-lib some metal lyrics, but I expect to get really good songs in later episodes.
Jingai-san no Yome
(Studio Saetta, Directed by Hisayoshi Hirasawa, Based on a 4-Koma manga)
Ready for the shortest episode summary ever? In episode 1, Tomari Hinowa is an ordinary high school student. He gets called to the principal's office, where he is told he is going to marry a mysterious creature named Kanenogi. Then the episode ends.
I don't want to be too hard on this show, since this is Studio Saetta's first ever project. But even for a short form anime, 3 minutes is just not enough time for an episode, especially when half the run time is used for a mediocre opening theme. And it's not like short form anime can't be done well. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K tells multi episode story arcs in five minute shorts, which is what I expect to be the goal of Jingai-san, but each short still tells a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end that still ties into the larger story being told, all while being packed to the gills with jokes. Even Space Battleship Tiramisu, which is more sketch comedy than an actual story, still has stuff happen in it. Much like Tachibanakan Triangle, which aired last spring, the short run time is not being used effectively and it feels more like a bad teaser for the show instead of an actual episode. I feel like the studio should have either gotten rid of the opening or just added a few more minutes to the runtime to be closer to Saiki K's five minutes or Tiramisu's seven minutes. I'm going to stick with this a little longer, since it is only three minutes and I want to support a new studio, but if it doesn't pick up soon I will be dropping it.
Hinomaru Sumo
(Studio Gonzo, Directed by Kounosuke Uda, Based on a manga)
Now, we're really getting into the good stuff. These last three shows I'm gonna be talking about are the ones I was most excited to watch. In episode 1 of Hinomaru Sumo, Hinomaru Ushio is an aspiring sumo wrestler who hopes to attend a high school with an elite sumo club. But he has two problems: first, he's a bit undersized for a sport with no weight classes. And more immediately, he got lost and ends up heading to a completely different school whose sumo club is just one guy who got pushed out of his dojo by a bunch of bullies and is left to practice alone outside. After bonding with the lone sumo wrestler, named Shinya Ozeki, Hinomaru challenges the leader of the bullies to a duel, wins the dojo back, and decides to apply to this school and form a new sumo club with Ozeki, better than ever.
This was exactly the pilot I hoped it would be. Hinomaru is a very strong protagonist. His confident demeanor crossed with his nice guy persona reminds me of Soma from Food Wars, and if you've ever seen Food Wars, you know that that is a good thing. Ozeki makes a good sidekick, but I hope that he grows a spine soon. And the final sequence of Hinomaru enduring 15 minutes of pummeling without getting knocked backward and then knocking the bully on his ass with one hit is admittedly a bit cliche, but I was so hyped that I cannot even bring myself to care.
Goblin Slayer
(Studio White Fox, Directed by Takaharu Ozaki, Based on a Light Novel)
Before I get into the summary, I just want to point out that none of the characters in this episode have been named. So I'm just using their job titles as their names.
So, in episode 1, Priestess is a rookie adventurer that is recruited by a party of rookie adventurers, consisting of Swordsman, Monk Girl, and Witch, on a mission to hunt goblins. But their overconfidence and under-preparedness leaves the adventurers vulnerable to an ambush, leaving Swordsman and Witch dead and Monk Girl being raped right in front of Priestess. But then, Goblin Slayer arrives on the scene, working together with Princess to slaughter every single goblin in the cavern, including children, using an array of traps and mind games to render the goblins' numerical advantage worthless. Monk Girl retires from adventuring and goes to the temple for therapy, and Priestess decides to join Goblin Slayer on his adventures.
I came into Goblin Slayer expecting dark fantasy, and hoo boy, did I get some dark fantasy. I imagine the rape scene will be a point of contention, but it's worth noting that this rape scene isn't nearly as horrifically offensive as similar scenes in something like Sword Art Online. The important distinction is the way the scene is presented. Asuna being molested by the villain in Sword Art Online is tonally incongruous with the rest of the series, and the way the camera focuses on her body throughout shows that the scene is meant to be titillating to the audience, and if you ask me, sexual abuse should never be celebrated or fetishized. Goblin Slayer has a bleak tone throughout, and there is never a single closeup on Monk Girl's breasts or buttocks. Instead, we focus on the horrified faces of both her and Priestess, and it really nails it home that these people have no hope and the goblins are not to be underestimated. That being said, I still think that having the rape scene in the first episode is a bit much. I might not have minded, but this is not a good way to sell your anime to a new audience. But when the rest of the episode was so good, I can't bring myself to be anything but positive about this series.
SSSS.Gridman
(Studio Trigger, Directed by Akira Amemiya, Based on a Live-Action TV series)
In episode 1, Yuta has amnesia, and that sucks. Even worse, he starts hearing a voice calling himself Gridman and sees him as a masked figure in a computer screen. But since nobody else can see Gridman, Yuta is worried that he's hallucinating. That is, until a kaiju that looks like Gamera with a dragon face and neck starts rampaging through the city. Yuta is dragged through a computer screen and is forcibly merged with Gridman, and the two of them grow to giant size and defeat the monster with the help of his classmates Rikka and Shou. The next day, the trio are surprised to see that their school, which had seemingly burned down during the kaiju's rampage, is completely undamaged.
SSSS.Gridman is the first anime I can remember watching that is based on a live-action television series. In this case, the inspiration comes from Gridman the Hyper Agent, a 1993 tokusatsu series that was localized in the States as the Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. While anime Gridman doesn't have the same plot as live action Gridman, the monster of the week format is thematically similar, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that this is a sequel to the original series. Unfortunately, while the kaiju battle at the end was incredibly fun, the first half of the episode focusing on Yuta going to school is very slow-paced and has a lot of issues. A lot of frames of animation, music, and sound effects in this first half seem to be flat out missing, and I'm worried that this is a troubled production that will have more and more problems along the way. But even with these production issues, Studio Trigger has such a fun and unique voice in all of their shows that I'm still having a good time and am ready for more.
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