Fall 2015 Anime Season: First Impressions

First impressions: Fall 2015

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The new anime season has quickly started and there are a ton of shows to talk about. What’s interesting about this show is that a lot of the shows are connected to other series or franchises in some way or another. They are either straight up sequels, or connected to an older show and expanding on them. It’s interesting, and it makes the new shows all the more obvious. Let’s not waste any more time. These are my first impressions of the fall 2015 anime season. 

A pray for this season. Lets hope it's good.

Young Black Jack- Black Jack is a classic manga and anime franchise originally made by the god of the genre Osuma Tezuka. It is about a licensesless doctor who takes on dangerous and sometimes illegal cases for large amounts of profit. He usually ends up doing a complicated and insane surgery with his godly skills, and heals more than just the sickness in his patient, sometimes helping there spirit and person if he can. The character is iconic, with his scared and partially sewed on face. This series explores where he comes from. Before he was a doctor without a licenses, when he was just a student. The show starts off with him taking on his first actual surgery, reattaching a boys arm and leg after a train accident. We get to see both the godly side of the character and the more human side of him. We see him sew together nerve endings and blood vessels with ease, but we also get to see him shake after doing his first surgery. It makes for an interesting dynamic. The character from what I understand is always cool and collected. He never shows weakness in times of adversary. He once bought a hospital so he could use their equipment to do a surgery despite his lack of licenses. That’s just cool. But now we get to see him become that character. Yes a part of it is already with him, but he is still growing into the role the audience knows him from. A very small thing I like is that during the end credits we see characters from the original Black Jack manga and how they are being taken and updated for the modern anime. It’s interesting to see how much character designs have changed over the decades since Osuma Tezuka first made these characters. I’m really interested in this show. I like Black Jack as a character and it’s interesting to see his origin. I know I am going to keep up with this show.

Heavy Object- War has changed. Instead of using lots of weapons to fight mankind as invented the Heavy Object, a huge ball covered in guns with complicated technology that hypothetically can exist. These weapons are so massive and so powerful that the only thing that can really defeat it is another Heavy Object. Wars are now skirmishes between these large weapons, usually with few to no casualties. We follow a few soldiers who live in this world with a lack of need for soldiers. One of them, a researcher who studies Heavy Objects, interacts heavily with the young female pilot of their large ball weapon. And this show is boring as hell. The first episode was half exposition, half unfunny comedy either about being cold, being forced to do boring labor, or the pilots breasts. It was just not interesting. Even the opening bit, which showed the first Heavy Object fighting planes and ships and getting nuked and being fine, was boring as hell. I would have wanted to watch anything else. They even tried to have a cliffhanger ending where we see our characters losing a large battle, and I didn’t care a bit. This is a really boring show with nothing really going for it for me. War never really changes anyway. Consider this show dropped.

I wonder if they will show him meeting his partner?

Kindaichi Returns Season Season 2- The second season of the return of the show that looks like a Detective Conan show. To be fair it’s more of the same from the first season. All the same problems but also all the same intriguing plots. The first mystery of the show has Kindaichi’s mortal enemy trapping him in a web of lies and making everyone believe Kindaichi is a murderer. It’s kind of an interesting premise, but the main character and the lame humor is still a problem for this series. If you liked the first season it’s more of the same. I’m probably going to keep up with it, regardless of quality. Though if it gets too boring I will drop it, even I have my limits.

Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen- A young man awakes in a snowy forest. He has no memories of his former life, or of the world he finds himself in. He is saved by a young woman with cat ears, which is apparently normal in this world. She gives him a name and appoints herself his guardian of sorts. The guy is physically weak but very intelligent, coming up with solutions of problems and fixing broken things. Together they travel and work together in this strange world of giant monsters and magic, a world of small villages and powerful fighters. So far the show is very easy going. While it has had some action, the story is much more relaxed with exploring the world and our main characters. So far I like it, but there is something worrying me about the show. It’s actually part of a much larger franchise that I know nothing about. There’s something about a guy in a very iconic mask and presumably magic and stuff, but that’s all I know. I’m afraid that this show is going to turn out to be heavily based in this franchise and that a new watcher like me is going to get lost in references to things that are going to go straight over my head. I’m really hoping they don’t go down that route and I’m able to watch the show without much research into anime that are over a decade old by now. I really like this show. The characters are fun and the world is both old and interesting. For all I know this might be a complete reboot of the franchise, and if that’s the case I think I’ll be ok with it. While I’m weary, I’m excited for this show.

She looks a bit scary in this shot. The cat girl will eat you.

Haikyuu!! Second Season- I am so happy that we finally have the second season of this show. For those who didn’t watch the first, this is a volleyball anime. It is about a shorty who was inspired as a kid by another short volleyball player who could jump high. Our main character then uses his jump skills to become a spiker for a high school that used to be great, when it had the player who inspired our hero. He and the team are trying to make their team great again, going up against the strongest teams in their area. It is a great little show, one that I consider the top tier of what sports anime can be. Our second season starts with the main team getting ready for the spring tournament and a training camp with other teams. It starts with one of the coolest scenes from the manga. The scenario is our main character and his rival/friend/lover accidently meeting up with the best player in their area. He’s so good that he plays for the national team along with his high school team. He looks down on our main characters, both literally and figuratively. And then a stray ball bounces out and the tall guy jumps to get it, and in a split second our main character runs up, jumps higher than the guy, and catches the ball, declaring he will defeat this team. It is an amazing scene in both the anime and the manga and it is an amazing way to start off the new season. I have read the manga for this show, and am up to date on it, so I know what’s going to happen, and I am so excited to see it all animated. This is one of the best sports anime of all time, and the matches that are coming up is going to be awesome. I’m definitely going to keep up with this show.

Comet Lucifer- Have you ever seen Eureka Seven? It’s an older mecha anime about a regular kid who gets caught up in a larger world of robots and women and has to at some point fight the government for freedom with a ragtag group of people. This is show is kind of Eureka Seven. It’s about a boy who collects rare and strange stones and gems while riding around one his hover scooter. He finds a cool red gem and, through a series of events involving his friends, ends up in a cave with his female friend. They get trapped together for a short time, until the government busts along looking for something powerful and ancient. When they knock down a stalactite the main characters gem stone reacts with the new exposed rock and a random young girl appears along with a large robot that is trying to protect her. He must now discover the secret of this strange girl and robot, protect them from the government and their mechas, and probably save the world. This is an incredibly by the books anime. The reason it reminds me so much of Eureka Seven is that they are basically the same show, just a different paint of coat. Eureka Seven was a very generic mecha anime in that it’s a teenager who gets a giant robot and ends up saving the world or whatever with a girl by his side. It’s going to be the same show, the only difference is that instead of sky surfing it’s going to be rocks. This show is almost painfully generic, and I don’t think I am going to keep up with it. There are better mecha anime out there.

Most tense scene in any anime.

Gundam: Tekketsu no Orphans- Speaking of better mecha anime, there is a new Gundam series. On Mars the Martian colonists want independence, and one of the biggest speakers of this is a young woman from the aristocracy. She plans to go to Earth to speak about this, and has hired a private army/transportation company to act as her guards to earth. This company is made up of mostly child soldiers who are modified at a young age to use mecha. The b-team of this company are our main characters, mostly young people who know that they will be used as cannon fodder unless they do something. And on the base they live on is the Barbados Gundam, which looks awesome. The show is coming at us with a lot of different angles. We have the main company split into two factions, the child soldiers and the older ones who only care about self-preservation, the Martian liberation story which is about poverty disparage especially in the young people on Mars, a classist story about the poor interacting with the rich, and of course the core of the story involving child soldiers. Someone pointed out to me that Gundam has always been about child soldiers in one way or another, the first shows protagonist being the archetypal kid who falls into a giant robot and saves the world. But this show is tackling the issue head on. We are seeing how being a poor child on the streets are forced into these situations where they are willing to sell their lives away. How it breaks them down and transforms them from kids into killing machines. This is really evident in our main character, who is almost completely a solider for his friend, and how much his friend hate using our main character, but is forced to because of the situation they are in.  As I’ve probably mentioned before as much as I respect the Gundam franchise it is something I am not hugely knowledgeable on, so I am going into this series a bit blind. But so far I am liking what I am seeing and I am planning on keeping up with this series. 

Onsen Yousei Hakone-chan- A micro series about onsen culture in japan. A young guy whose family owns an onsen accidently summons the god of open air baths. Because this god has been asleep for so long, instead of being an adult beauty it’s a little girl. And that point I stopped caring about this show. I was really hoping for a show like Thermae Romae, a show about a roman bath maker who accidently travels to modern day japan and learns and copies the bath practices of the Japanese. It was a show that looked into Japanese bath culture and it was really interesting. I wanted something like that, where we would learn about onsens and stuff about them. It would be interesting and fun. Instead we got loli-bating. I am not into a show about loli fan service right now. I am not watching this show, and I do not recommend it to anyone else. 

The mecha looks insanely awesome.

Komari-san wa Kotowarenai- Another micro series, this time about a girl who cannot refuse any request. She is seen as dependable and kind and everyone can’t help but ask her for help. Because of this she has gained super strength. It’s a simple gag series and I mostly like it. It’s simple and silly and I like it. I disagree with the design of the main character, but that’s mostly because her large bust will lead to a lower brand of humor, but that is also the type of humor that gag anime do. Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good with dumb gag series like this. It’s a little show that I look forward to wasting a couple minutes a day with. 

Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou- This show takes place in a world were Japanese heroes of every type exist. Magical girls, tokusatsu heroes, giant robots, aliens, and so much more all exist. While there people fight to protect the planet, it is up to a secret governmental task force to protect those heroes from harm. We follow that task force as they deal with different heroes and villains. But that’s not the whole story. The show takes place in two places in time, 5 years or so apart. We see how our main characters become friends and colleagues, and how after 5 years our main character is now a villain and being pursued by the other characters. I believe that the show will be about connecting those two plots while also showing them going on at the same time, seeing the consequences of the actions of the past and how they affect the characters 5 years later. I am very interesting in this show. It looks like a really cool action show with a deeper story that will unveil as the show is going on. A big plus to the show is its color scheme. It looks amazing. It has a very pop art feel to it, being bright and colorful. I like it. And what I like more is that the shots of the future we see isn’t has bright and colorful. It’s dark and grey. It’s a simple way of contacting the darkness of the future and how the brightness has been lost. It’s something I enjoy and look forward to seeing actually happen in the show. I have high hopes for this show. It might just be because I am a fan of tokusatsu and heroes and stuff like that, but sometimes that is enough. I look forward to keeping up with this revolutio. 

Look at these conflicting levels of art detail. I love this show.

One Punch Man- I love this manga. It is silly and action packed and the art is amazing. The characters are hilarious and the artist has this ability to draw panels and make it look like panoramic motion, gifs online being everywhere of people putting the individual pages together into something that looks like it should be out of an anime. And finally it is getting an adaptation. The show is about Saitama, a hero for hobby in a world of monsters and demons and heroes. He’s bald, kind of lazy, and one of the strongest beings on the planet. The problem is that he is so powerful he finishes all his fights in one punch. He’s become too strong, and finds no joy or happiness in defeating the monsters that plague this world. He seeks the strongest monsters to fight, and finds that he defeats them in one punch. It is a comedy, but this underlying feeling of malaise at ones purpose in life being made boring and terrible is really interesting. Sometimes that happens, you find no challenge in your life and you just become lazy and sad. People need challenges. Watching Saitama be depressed over this really hits home sometimes. But it is the wacky fun that I really like. My favorite panel in the entire series so far is one were we see Saitama and his friends walk into a room filled with the strongest heroes in Japan. They are all detailed and look like cool characters, each in their own right. And then we see Saitama, who looks like was drawn in one line and whose hands are literal balls. It’s amazing, and indicative of the style and story of their series. I love this show, and I know the anime is going to be a fun ride. 

High School Star Musical- This is the gayest anime I have ever seen and I love it. The show is about an entertainment training high school, or in other words, and idol high school. We follow a new student who was inspired by the dancing and singing of a person he randomly saw and on a whim enters the school. The main thing about the school is that they have an intense training program that you have to audition for. If you make the audition you join an idol team, and if you do exceptionally well your chosen to be one of the five teams mentored by a member of the student council. Our main character is chosen along with four other people, each who actually failed their interview process. They are mentored by the same person who inspired the main character, though he doesn’t know that yet. So it is five handsome guys, each being a different archetype of boys love character, all dancing and singing and acting, along with a sempai character. There are a million different ships for this show. It is a shipping festival. There are also musical numbers randomly placed throughout the show, making it a really fun music based anime. I am going to enjoy this show. It is going to be silly and gay and fantastic. Also I totally ship the main character and his roommate, they are adorable.

My new workout regimen. Though I don't want to lose my hair.

JK Meshi- Another micro series. This time it is about three friends hanging out and studying for tests. They have some banter until they decide to have a snack, and make a simple dish that anyone in japan could easily make, usually with some instructions on how to make it. It is an incredibly simple show. That simplicity is reflected in the shows animation, which doesn’t look that great to be honest. But I kind of find it endearing. It’s a really small, simple show which has some cool, though I believe common, recipe ideas. It’s not great, but it’s kind of fun. I’ll be keeping up with this little show.

Osomatsu-san- This has to be one of the strangest shows this season. It is a pseudo sequel to the black and white, super old anime, Osomatsu-kun, an ancient gag anime about identical sextuplets, the ‘oldest’ and by default leader of them being Osomatsu himself, and the troubles they get into. Now we are going to watch those sextuplets as adults, awash in the world and looking for something to do. I should say right now no matter what you should watch the first episode. I have never seen so many references to other anime done in such a short period of time. It was like Osomatsu-san was trying to catch up to the modern world of anime in one go, and it was kind of awesome to watch. But it’s not really indicative of the show as a whole. It is very much more of a simple gag anime, mixing classic gags with modern day humor and stuff like that. Personally I like Japanese gag anime like this, and so far the show has been pretty fun. Each brother has an individual character while also being one cohesive unit. The side characters also seem to be funny, though a bit simple but that makes sense, they were created in a day and age where characters like these were just being made, they were fully original and fresh because nothing else like it existed. It is actually very interested to watch. I like this show. It’s kind of strange and the art style is a mix of the original style they show in the first episode and a very modern style that I like. I hope it doesn’t get boring, but I think it will be a funny show. I plan on keeping up with it.

This is actually Osomatsu-san, and not High School Star Musical.

YuruYuri San Hai!- The third season of the show about moe lesbians. I don’t know what I still watch this show but I am going to watch it. Well I know why I watch it, I like moe girls, I like cute comedy slice of life shows, and because I am trash. If you don’t know this series is about 4 friends who hang out after school at the tea ceremony club only because that club has its own building and no one uses it. They make jokes, 90% of the cast are lesbians, and it’s cute and sometimes really funny and sometimes quite messed up comedy. I am going to watch this show regardless of what it provides.  I can’t help it. I like terrible anime sometimes.

Fushigi no Somera-chan- Our last micro series, and I don’t really know what it’s about. I think it is something like magic girls, or a magical girl and her sister, and they’re parents are dead so they have no money and are trying their best to make ends meet. It is a very strange gag anime and I might end up dropping it. It isn’t hitting me in a way that I find enjoyable. I just sort of watch it because it’s new this season. I don’t know, if the show makes an identity for itself in the next few weeks I believe I will keep up with it, but for now it’s up in the air.

Planned means Keikaku

Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru- A high school boy is friends with a strange woman with an obsession about bones. She rebuilds animal bone and is an expert on bones. Together they get wrapped up in murder mysteries, the girl using her expertise in bones to figure out the story behind the murder. While the show is about the murder mystery of the week, it is much more about the relationship between the woman the young man. It is kind of an odd relationship. It’s not a romantic relationship as of yet, that might change as the show continues and I think the two characters would make a good couple but I don’t think they are in a relationship as of yet. They are instead much more like master and apprentice. She is unintentionally teaching him to think beyond his world and look at life from the angle of the bones and the story they tell. He acts as an assistant of sorts. I hate to make the comparison but it reminds me of the relationship between the Doctor and a good companion from Doctor Who. Not romantic, but also not bad. More like she is the brain and he is the heart, as it were. It’s just different seeing that sort of relationship, especially with the woman being the brain and man being the heart. I actually really like this show, it has some decent humor and the stories are interesting so far. It is a good show and I plan on keeping up with it.

Garo: Guren no Tsuki- The newest Garo anime. This time taking place in medieval Japan, we follow three people. The first is our main character, a female Makai Priest who seems to play outside the rules of the larger behind the scenes organization. She is very anarchy pro and I like her because of that. She uses her sexuality and her skills as a musician and magician to get what she wants, trying her best to fight against the established order and go about things her way. The next character is our titular Garo, wearing the living Mado ring Zaruba. But what makes him strange is that he apparently can’t summon the armor himself. It is sealed, indicated by Zaruba being stone, and can only be unsealed by our main hereon. So this Garo is completely dependent on her. The idea of a damaged Garo is reminiscent of the third season, where the armor had lost its golden shine and the season was about the armor regaining its shine. Of course this is completely different, but I assume that by the end of the season he will be able to use the armor freely. The third character is a person who looks like a kid but events I the second episode imply he is much older. He is actually the way people find out who is a horror or not. In the live actions series it is always a lighter, and if you reflect the flame up to a person eyes, if they are possessed the eyes show that somehow. This time it’s the kid looking guy running iron bars on the ground to make sparks, and when the sparks reflect on the persons eyes they show them to be possessed. It’s an interested way of doing it, but they are almost relegating an entire character to a thing a gadget does. I hope he gets some more characterization as the show goes on. So far there are no ongoing story except for a villain being teased right at the beginning. He seems to be a fallen Knight or Priest again, but I am not sure yet. As an addition to the Garo franchise so far I am liking it. The setting is really fun and interesting and new for the series, and I like the world so far. My only worry is that the show feels very anime like, if that makes sense. The characters are acting like characters in an anime. In the last season they felt more human, or in the very least more like a tokusatsu character. It might just be the series adapting to its new format better, but it feels odd. I don’t hate it, it just makes me wary for now. But I’m going to keep up with this show regardless.

The main character and their human sidekick.

Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka??- The second season of the moe girls’ slice of life anime about girls working in cafes and rabbits are involved. Doesn’t anime sound like a bunch of random words chosen out of a hat sometimes? I watched the first season of this show and enjoyed it, it’s simple but cute and fun. The second season so far seems like just more of the same, five moe girls spending time together, making jokes about rabbits and cafes. I can’t really say much about this show because of how simple it is. Oh, and the spirit of the one girls grandfather is trapped in her fluffy rabbit, but that is really just a simple gag that really doesn’t amount to anything. I plan on keeping up with show regardless.

Brave Beats- With the end of Tribe Cool Crew there was a severe lacking of dancing anime in the world. And then the next week Brave Beats started up. Brave Beats is a dancing anime that follows a robot from another world who enters our world. He challenged the King of Dance, the highest authority in his world, to a dance off, but the king through him into our world to learn the true meaning of dance. I assume that this will have something to do with the spirit of dance, and not just knowing the moves because when he enters our world he loses a bunch of stones that gave him all his moves. He must now find these stones, but in order to do this he needs the help of a human, our other main character, a kid who isn’t really passionate about anything and doesn’t particularly like dance. Together, the two combine into one older dancer who can fight for justice or at least dance for justice. I can’t help but compare this show to Tribe Cool Crew. Tribe Cool Crew was a show about dancing, while Brave Beats is much more of a super hero show that happens to use dancing as its form of fighting. There was something nice about Tribe Cool Crew, it wasn’t about conflict but about dancing as a whole. It was cheesy but it was a good thing that made the show interesting and gave weight to the characters. I just don’t get any of that from Brave Beats. It feels light and silly and all of that is fine. It’s a different show and I shouldn’t really hold it against it, but I can’t help it. It might be that I just mid Tribe Cool Crew and I am judging this show unfairly. It’s a fine show, and I plan on keeping up with it. I just hope it can find the heart that its dancing predecessor found.

Such a manly rabbit.

And those are my first impressions of the 2015 fall anime season. There are some cool stuff this yeah, a lot of sequels and the original stuff looks interesting. Remember to watch the first episode of Osomatsu-san and definitely watch One Punch Man. So until next time, keep on watching. 

The holy volleyball monk blesses you.