The summer season was, in all fairness, a very bad luck season for me. Some great shows came out, but it was my own poor judgement that got the better of me, and so I was left despairing a lot of the time. I had to stop Hi-Score Girl straight away due to it going to Netflix (it will arrive sometime in December), I dropped Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight after only a couple of episodes as I was getting very frustrated with its mixture of yuri, idol show, theater fight club, and Ikuhara-level surrealism, and Hanebado! left me annoyed and a little angry at how all of the characters were being portrayed, from the boring secondary characters right up to the main protagonist herself.
I therefore have already decided that my picks for the Fall 2018 season will be infinitely better, without a doubt.
Bloom Into You
Begins: Friday. October. 05
(Available on HIDIVE)
This is the long-awaited adaptation of the very popular yuri manga; we’ve had Citrus, Sakura Trick and all sorts of others (all of which of named after flowers or fruit), and so it’s now the turn for this.
Yuu has always loved shoujo manga. But as she starts high school, she finds herself at odds. Even though she’s been longing for the day she receives a love confession ever since she was young, when a junior high school boy does it, she feels nothing. Stuck with no club to join, she is convinced to join the student council, where she meets the beautiful yet equally aloof second-year Nanami, who appears to be in the same dilemma herself when she turns down a suitor.
I have read the first volume of the manga of this, and actually really enjoyed it for its simplicity. I’m pleased to see that the animation studio are deciding to stick to the same art style. I’m also looking forward to how they are going to tackle the third character in Bloom Into You, Nanami’s best friend Sayaka, who is also on the student council. We’ll see though, as this could be a hot mess.
Release the Spyce
Begins: Saturday. October. 06
(available on HIDIVE)
Another sort-of yuri show, although unlike Bloom Into You, it isn’t integral to the story.
Momo is a high-school girl who likes to keep to herself, but unbeknownst to everyone else, she is in fact a trainee agent for Tsukikage, a private intelligence company. With everyone else in her unit also leading double lives as high-schoolers, they all try to keep the peace in the city they live in while at the same time, tackling all the problems that every high-schooler has.
The character design for this was by Namori, the creator of Yuru Yuri, a slice-of-life show that I really loved for its ability to poke fun at itself and the slice-of-life genre. Not totally sure how or if Release the Spyce will do the same thing, as I don’t know that much else about this, other than high-school spies who may or may not have crushes on each other.
So, two yuri shows for this season: one that’s yuribait high-school melodrama, and the other yuribait spy action. Both of these shows have in fact been a long time coming, and so a lot of people are, I imagine, looking forward to both of them, and are hoping that neither of them suck. In the meantime, I will eventually get the opportunity to watch Hi-Score Girl, although as it is a Netflix show, you can catch my review of that on my other blog (Japan Curiosity) when the show drops in December.
But both of these picks (Bloom Into You and Release the Spyce) were something a little…standard for me, so let’s go for something different, and hope I don’t do a repeat of last season:
SSSS.Gridman
Begins: Saturday. October. 06
(available on Crunchyroll)
This is going to be my first venture into the Gridman franchise, just as Gatchaman Crowds was my first venture into that franchise. Gatchaman Crowds has since become one of my all-time favorite shows, as I loved how it chose to focus on how anyone could be a hero, as well as sticking to the rather standard superhero storyline where people are ‘chosen’ (like Hajime Ichinose). Very curious to see how Trigger are going to put their spin on this long-standing mecha franchise, especially with a bizarre-sounding title such as this. I have discovered, though, that what we’ll see here will be unrelated to what happens in past shows.
The show begins with Yuta, who wakes up with amnesia and the ability to see things that others cannot. As he looks at his friend Rikka’s computer, he sees the image of a Gridman who tells him to ‘remember his calling’. Then when a large monster arrives in the city, Yuta begins to understand the meaning of this message…as the computer pulls him into the screen and transforms him into the giant hero Gridman.
This could be another 2-cour show, meaning it could stretch into the winter season; it appears to be the kind of show that would do something like that, but this show is something that I am picking out of curiosity. I know curiosity can kill the cat, and curiosity ended up biting me on the backside when I thought a surreal musical show about a theater fight club would entertain me. I chose more carefully this season, and went for some genres that I knew I would enjoy, plus I’m always eager to see what Trigger has to offer, even if it turns out to be something like Darling in the Franxx.
This was meant to be the oddball pick of the season for me, however note that the theory I have of finding an ‘oddball’ show to enjoy each season doesn’t always go to plan.
I chose to watch Serial Experiments Lain in the summer season, to celebrate its 20th anniversary. It also ended up being the first time I watched the show in full. Now my brother-in-law gets his multi-region player back, I can watch something that’s on Crunchyroll…and you guys picked a good one. A really good one.
The Tatami Galaxy
(Available on Crunchyroll & home video)
Our protagonist, who remains unnamed in this show, is a third-year college student in Kyoto who wanted that rose-colored campus life he dreamed of when he graduated from high school, and this show looks at what he sees as his ‘wasted time’ at the circles he joins at college. The girl who is often the center of his affections is freshman student Akashi, who is extremely rational and sometimes cold, but befriends our protagonist very quickly. Every now and then he comes across all sorts of other characters, including fortune tellers and matchmaking deities. Will he end up leaving college and going into the sunset with Akashi, or will it be Ozu, the unpleasant guy who seems to hang around with him all the time, who takes her hand?
I don’t actually know that much else about this show, but this has been on my ‘plan to watch’ list for years now, and like a lot of the shows on that list, I seldom ever get the time to actually get around to watch it.
So, what do you think of my choices? Will we see a repeat of the summer season? Should I have gone for the big franchises (Sword Art Online, Index, Fairy Tail, Tokyo Ghoul) instead? Feel free to air your opinions and hit that like button below…