Winter 2015 Anime Season: First Impressions

Winter 2015 Anime Season: First Impressions

For a better view of a season chart, click here.

The winter season has begun and there is a slew of new anime have appeared. It seems a lot of anime this season are actually sequels to past ones, and it is nice to see a lot of those familiar faces. Let’s not waste any time, and get right to it. These are my first impressions of the 2015 winter anime season. 

Yuri Yuma Arashi- This show is about lesbians and bears. Let me explain, a meteor strikes the earth, and somehow it caused all the bears to become sentient and want to eat humans really badly. This caused a great war or something, and humans eventually erected a great wall to keep all bears out. Our show starts when two bears, magically disguised as girls somehow, enter human civilization with the intent to eat people. The other half of the show is about lesbians. These two girls are in love with each other, and I think people don’t like it, because it looks like they are bullied for it but that might have been the bears who are want to eat those girls. Also the bears are lesbians too. And once one of the girlfriends goes missing, presumably eaten by a bear, everything goes crazy, the remaining girlfriend enters a strange courtroom of the bears run by three male bears, and she loses I think and has a random chest flower erotically licked by the two lesbian bears. This show is nuts. Visually it is beautiful, with lots of contrasting and bright colors, strange angles. But the feel of the show reminds me of Sasami-san@Ganbaranai which was interesting to look at but after a while just got boring with its insanity. And I fear that will happen to this show too. This show isn’t bad, but I feel it is a visual spectacle over anything with substance. It will depend on the next couple of episodes whether or not I keep up with this show. But it does look like a crazy little show. 

Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei Bu Love!- In a regular high school, there is a lazy club with no purpose with a mysterious name plank on it. The four students in this club and a fifth guy that works at the local public bath house are hounded by a pink wombat, and are forced to become the defenders of the earth and the warriors of love. They fight against an evil organization, also a school club, which is headed by a cute green hedgehog. They seek to destroy or conquer the world. This is the magical boy anime I’ve always wanted. Well that’s not true, but it is a magical boy anime, and that is something I’ve always wanted. This show is very similar to Daily Lives of Highschool Boys, in that it is both satirizing and reveling in the genre that it is, slice of life moe anime in the case of Daily Lives and magical girls in the case of this show. The show isn’t a mean parody though, it isn’t just rubbing it in people’s faces how strange and nonsensical magical girl’s anime are. It respects the genre while also satirizing it. The show looks incredible, the animation is fun and bouncy and really bright, all fitting in with the genre. The characters are the only really rough part. As of the first episode they all have some basic personality quirks, but nothing deeper. While I hope the show remains heavily a comedy, I wouldn’t mind the show reaching in and pulling to the light some of the darker aspects of magical girls. I would love an episode just about Madoka Magica, like the whole series summed up in 23 minutes, it would be great. Or an episode highlighting unnecessary fan service in the genre, by having the guys be the unnecessary fan service. I am really digging this show, it is fun and looks like to be a real winner. 

Military- A micro series about a guy who has to be protected by moe blob lolis who use military equipment. This show is not going to be good. It flashed some fan service of girls who look like they are way too young and the protag is at least a foot taller than them. The only good thing about the show is its backstory. The reason the guy needs to be protected is that his father is a mercenary in some foreign war. It turns out that his father is a regular Japanese business man out on some foreign job, when there is a mix up in the paper work. He ends up having to work with the military as a merc, and does a really good job of it. So good that now the bad guys are trying to hurt his family. That is an anime I want to watch. A meek mild mannered business man forced to go to some foreign nation by his boss who he hates. Because of a mix up he has to enter the army, and accidently he is amazing at war. So much so that he single handedly saves the day or something big. I would love to watch this show. Too bad we have a micro series with loli moe blobs. 

Our hero! And villains. And oddly colored animals.

Ansatsu Kyoushitsu- Assassination Class room is about a nearly all powerful being that one day destroys most of the moon. He promises to destroy earth in one years’ time. Why one year? Because he wants to play a little game with the earth, and just destroying the planet would be boring. He wants to teach a class. As in, he wants to be a teacher, and have a positive effect on the lives of his students. The students, meanwhile, are promised that if they kill this being that will destroy the earth, they will get a shit ton of money. So the story is a mix of slice of life teacher and student interactions and near psychotic kids trying to kill a tentacle monster with special guns and knives. The design of the teacher is great, it is both very simplistic and cartoony, and really takes most of the menace out of a creature who is able to wreck the moon. He is a big smiley face sticker on top of a bunch of tentacles, it looks like something out of an American cartoon. And the whole demeanor of the teacher is great too. He is almost of the stereotypical tough but kind teacher in Japanese fiction. He is the type to smack you for being an idiot, but never give up on you and help you every step of the way. He is the type that even the hardest of punks cry over when the graduate, and the teacher is crying just as hard as them. He is the best kind of teacher. The students seem diverse, they are the lowest of the low in a high end prep school, and everyone has given up on them. They are the stereotypical trouble maker class. Outside of the teacher being a tentacle monster who can go Mach 20, this is a very by the books teacher and student relationship anime. So far I have high hopes for this show, I’ve heard good things about the manga and I hope those good things will translate to the screen. 

Kuroko no Basuke Season 3- The third and I believe final season of this long basketball anime is finally upon us. I know the manga ended a short while ago, and when I heard that I started looking for the next season of this show to come out, and here we are. I am actually excited for this season, I want to complete this story. I want to see Kuroko beat his former team mates, I want to see Kise kick ass too. I want to see the play style of the evil dude who never loses. While Kuroko no Basuke is always a good show to make fun of, it is still a fun little basketball anime that I still like to watch. But let’s hope this is the end of this series. I don’t want it to overstay its welcome too long. 

The Rolling Girls- In the future, some stuff happened and society collapsed. Young people rebuilt society in the forms of like-minded individuals, I think, and now fight for territory. But instead of having all out wars, they have proxy battles with each side having one person fight. These individuals can be kind of rented out for the different tribes of people, working for an agency. I have to admit, there wasn’t a lot of story in the first episode. They didn’t really explain much, preferring to show awesome fights over telling us what apocalypse happened. But it kind of works here. The show is really style over substance, with alsmot every important character having some stylistic flair about them. The one girl fights with a giant safety pin. The other has a Kamen rider style scarf and fights in a tokusatsu/Super Sentai style suit. There is even a dude who wears a crocodile mask, like a horse mask, though it is facing the wrong direction. Visually this show is very interesting. There is a lot going on and it is really fun to watch. The problem is that I have no clue what is going on in this show. I know as time goes by it will open up more and things will get less confusing, but as of right now, I can only tell you this show is bright, crazy, and a real fun time. I really hope it holds up as the series continues. 

The class picture is hard to take when your teacher goes mach 20 all the time.

Durarara!!X2- Durarara first came out five years ago, during the halcyon days of 2010. It was a fun show about the lives of a collection of strange and cool people who all were involved with a large scale gang war between a normal gang, an internet gang formed at first to do good things but then people started using the name of the gang to do vile things, and sword zombies. The leaders of these groups turned out to be all friends who had no clue about their friend’s involvements. Alongside that is an asshole information broker, a headless horsewoman on a black motorcycle, a dude with serious rage problems, and a black Russian who sold Russian sushi. When it first came out, it was a sort of pseudo spiritual sequel to another anime by the name of Baccano, which is one of my favorite shows. There was even a Baccano cameo in DRRR, two of the characters from the former showing up for a bit and even having a line in the later. When the show came out I enjoyed it, but never really expected a second season. Well, I did at first, but I expected that second season to come out maybe in the same year, maybe a year later. But not five. I stopped thinking this show will ever get a second season to be honest. But here it is, and time has made its mark on the show. It takes place about 6 months after the events of the first season, where during those six months nothing much of note has happened except life going on. The first episode is structured like the show as a whole, where the events are told non-linearly, kind of. It starts with one event, but then goes back to explain that event from a bunch of angles, some not even pertaining to the first event until the last second or two. DRRR has always been told like that, with events seemingly coming and going and only later there importance becoming relevant, another reason it was a spiritual sequel to Baccano as that show did the same thing, though even more so.

 I did like how the episode ended with a similar iconic scene from the first season’s first episode, of the main character watching Celty, the headless rider, blast by on the street being chased, though the show pointing that out was unnecessary. The first episode here does set up a lot of what I assume will be important to the show. There is a gruesome murderer who wears monster masks called the Hollywood murderer. As an aside, the people who name this guy that in the first season would go around reading popular light novels, actually naming ones that exist in the real world. They do the same here but all the ones they name are trash. Like Sword Art Online and that terrible little sister one. In the past 6 months/5 years, there tastes have gone to shit. Another plot point brought up is the famous younger brother of Shizou, a guy with massive rage problems and super human strength, was a focus in this episode. I believe this will mean he will be important to the episodes to come, and he looks like a very chill and cool character. Also possibly a sociopath, it depends on where the show takes him. I really liked the first season of DRRR and I hope that the second season is able to be at least as good as the first, if not more so. This show has a lot of potential, let’s hope that modernity doesn’t screw it up. 

Kamisama Hajimemashita season 2- Another sequel to an anime that I have seen before. This time it is the sequel to the supernatural shoujo Kamisama Kiss, or Kamisama Hajimemashita. The show is about a girl who is abandoned by her dead beat father, but saved by a guy who turns out to be a god of a local shrine. He turns her into the god, without asking her mind you, and runs away himself. She must learn to be a god while dealing with her growing feelings of love for her fox familiar who is sworn to serve her. She also has a bit of a male harem growing of other gods, magical beings, familiars, and other people. This show is still a very stereotypical shoujo anime, with all the misunderstanding plots and long looks and no one actually talking to each other. The first season was serviceable at best but now I am not sure if I even want to continue watching. I will give it a few episodes, but I’m not really feeling the problematic aspects of the shoujo genre right now. 

Kantai Collection –Kan Colle- Speaking of shows that I would usually like but am not just feeling right now, Kantai Collection! Kantai Collection is about a marine war between a nebulous purple and black blob and moe girls who takes the name of battleships and fight with giant cannons and stuff. They surf on the water and have crazy shields and some of the ships shoot out little planes via bows and arrows. On the surface this is a really fun concept. Yes, it is the moe girls as X thing, but I can usually dig that. And the battles aren’t bad, they have some high energy and I like how the girls are wearing their guns on their legs and arms. But the main part of the show is that it follows the super stereotypical group of girls who are all nice to each other. The main girl is clumsy and new and wants sempai to notice her, but she isn’t compelling to watch. None of the main girls in the first episode are compelling to watch. This series is based off of a Japanese mobile game where you buy and fight with moe girls who are famous Japanese ships, so the show should in some way try to make me want and play that game. But it just doesn’t work for me. This show could be so much better, or at least so much more fun, but it isn’t. Maybe I’ll pick it up after the season finishes if I hear good things, but as of right now, I am dropping it. 

I will always love how simple this image is. Best website design ever.

Koufuku Graffiti- A young girls lives alone and cooks for herself. While she knows the recipes by heart, the food is just not tasting as good as it used to. That is until her cousin comes over to visit, now living at her home over the weekend, and she rediscovers the thing that made her cooking taste so good in the first place, cooking for others. This is a moe girls acting nice to each other show with food as its overarching theme, and as I mentioned before I like that type of show sometimes. And this show really hits that sweet spot for me. I like good food porn, which the show definitely has when it shows off the detailed images of its meals, and the characters of the show are really likable. I like the idea that the character will go out and meet new people and even make friends with her food. This show isn’t particularly deep, but it is harmless and I like it. 

Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Season 2- Jojo comes back, with this season finishing up part three with the Egypt arc. I’ve always felt the latter half of part three was the stronger half. The battles become more interesting, the villains become really fun, and Dio is in it. Iggy is also a great addition. He is an asshole of a dog, and that makes him so much more of a lovable character. But the highlight of the arc is going to be the final battle with Dio. This fight is iconic, with some of the best scenes in the series. I honestly can’t wait. It is going to be a wild ride from here on out. 

Death Parade- In a strange bar at the bottom of an elevator, two people enter to play a game. The winner of the game lives, while the loser dies. Over the course of the game the inner workings and darkness of the players are revealed. And then the boot drops, both players realize that they have been dead the whole time, and instead of playing for survival they are playing for their souls, either to be damned or to be saved. This is a very dark but very fun show. It is the type of show where the main character is not really important, being more of the glue of the show, like Mushishi. People come into the bar of the afterlife, play a game of life or death, and their inner darkness comes out. It looks like it will be a weekly characters study. Or at least I think that is going to happen. The opening theme paints a different picture. The opening is diametrically opposed to the show in theme. It is super happy and cool and kind of funky, but more importantly shows a bunch of other characters who look like they work at the bar but don’t show up in the first episode. Maybe the bartender will change with every episode, which could be fun. I really like this show, it seems dark and mysterious but really fun, over all. 

Excuse me, I'm just going to cry over this picture for an hour or so.

And those are the shows whose first episodes I saw. There are some really great shows this season, and that’s not even counting sequels to show I already like. Between magical boys to kick ass girls, this seems like a really great season. So until next time, keep on watching. 

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