#mkanime

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken Streaming on Crunchyroll.

AHA! Just when you thought I was going to hate on EVERYTHING this season - this show comes along and says “Hello! Look at me! I’m good and have a solid first episode!! Watch me!!”

MC wants to create anime. More importantly, she wants to turn the amazing city she lives in into the setting for an anime. Her friend doesn’t really get it, but when the two meet another artist (the child of two famous actors who want her to follow the same career) MC’s friend sees the chance to ‘make a lot of money’ (or maybe actually sees her friend found someone with a similar mindset) and perhaps they will make an anime together.

Eizouken is sorta already the darling of the season I feel (at least, it’s the only show I’m really seeing other people talk about on twitter lol) but with good reason. It’s energetic, creative, fun. It’s got great designs and great voice acting. It’s got buttloads of imagination and yet very realistic characters. If you’re an artist who has even for a second thought about creating your own thing, go watch this show RIGHT NOW. I PROMISE you will relate to one of these two girls in some way.

Eizouken needs to go teach certain other shows this season how to actually write a first episode. This introduced the setting and characters and premise, had a cool attention grabbing scene after it made you care, and even if the title still means nothing and where the plot is going isn’t 100% set in stone (just a general idea), it’s not in a frustrating headscratching ‘what the heck did I just watch’ sort of way.

You know what you watched. You watched a whole lot of creativity smash you in the face on screen.

Studio Trigger: Kill la Kill, Kiznaiver, Little Witch Academia, Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade, Little Witch Acadamia TV, Ninjya Slayer, Inferno Cop, Space Patrol Luluco, When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace.

Out of those, ONE is an adaptation. Everything else is an original production. That doesn’t happen often in anime. That hasn’t been an easy thing to do in anime for a long while now. The fact that Studio Trigger makes its name almost entirely on original productions is very noteworthy.

There’s not much money in pursuing original titles. You don’t get sponsors easily for one thing. It’s a risk because you are producing something that doesn’t have an existing fanbase waiting to buy every keychain and beach towel that comes out. Heck, they had to crowdsource the second Little Witch Academia movie because they couldn’t get the sponsors to produce it! Without support from fans in funding LWA:TEP, I bet there wouldn’t even be a LWA TV series ‘saving anime’ right now.

You know what saves anime? M O N E Y

A cold, hard truth. Don’t think that studios like Trigger are invincible. I don’t think anyone thought Manglobe (Samurai Champloo, Samurai Flamenco, Michiko&Hatchin, Ganster. among many others) was going to file for bankruptcy in 2015 until it happened. Anime studios come and go all the time, they are also quite often forced to evolve and change their output to meet demands.

If you want to see Trigger output more original shows like LWA, then you HAVE to show them that! Japanese companies HATE piracy of their shows. (and rightfully so!) I’ve seen English licencors get badmouthed for taking down fansubs/illegal streams, but more often than not they’ve been told to by the Japanese company, sometimes at threat of loosing the license.

Anime is more accessible than ever right now, and that puts shows like LWA that get picked up by a broadcaster that doesn’t air the show 2 hours after Japan at a greater risk than most for piracy. I understand, it’s hard to wait, especially when spoilers float around the internet faster than you can blacklist it. But PLEASE, if you love a show, promise me you’ll support it!

I can’t stop anyone from watching fansubs, and I know that, but watch the official stream when it comes out! Buy the DVDs/Blurays! Go on a site like AmiAmi and buy some merch. PLEASE show the creators that you love this show! Don’t just fund the illegal fansub streaming site’s ad pockets.

Seton Academy: Join the Pack! Streaming on Crunchyroll.

Where the last show had a character that got me throw start to end, this show had a character that pressed the eject button on my seat and left me on the side of the road after only 10 minutes, ears bleeding. Soul broken.

MC attends a school of animal people (Or, well, all the GIRLS are animal people, all the boys are just animals standing on two legs in uniforms. Something I saw the show immediately taking heat for on twitter.) He is human and boy does he hate animals. Which begs the question of - why is he here? He’s not the only human, so why did he attend a school for animals?????? He knew he’d be miserable? Anyway, he gives this wolf chick some of his lunch and she has decided he will join her pack yadda yadda she snarls and hisses and yells a lot and that’s all I know because I grabbed the remote and said “No more.” and turned it off.

That’s that.

The Promised Neverland Streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and HIDIVE.

Here we go. Another season of anime. I’m starting on one that I was looking forward to quite a bit, having heard nothing but good things about the manga it’s adapting. Does it live up to that hype in this first episode?

Yes. Yes it does.

The Promised Neverland is, so far, about a bunch of kids who live at an orphanage. They live a pretty simple life, most of what we see them doing is playing tag in these huge fields. There’s also some academic tests they do, so there’s clearly an education system here too under the education of “Mom.” But nothing ever seems right. There’s something very off about the whole setup.

That’s what this first episode does best: suspense. Between the imagery of bars and the children’s own discussions of the outside world, you’re always left with the impression that something is about to go horribly wrong, but you’re not really given any details to know how or why. Once we do get to the meat of what’s going horribly wrong, the scene is wonderfully played out and shows the story is capable of still being suspenseful even when its cards are on the table.

Even as things can be a bit predictable (like it’s easy to guess what’s in the back of that wagon the second you see the wagon on screen), the show handles the characters, their expressions, and the camera in wonderful ways to make it engrossing all the same.

I think I made a mistake starting with something this strong right off the bat, but I’m really looking forward to where this story goes!

Kaguya-Sama: Love is War Streaming on Crunchyroll.

Female Lead and Male Lead are both members of the student council at a prestigious school. She’s super rich and well trained; he’s a commoner super genius with top grades. Together they battle against one another in the war of love! They both want a confession, but neither wants to be the first one to give it.

I was a bit worried when this show opened up with an explanation of love as a power-struggle where someone always comes out on top while using visuals of a woman using a guy only for his money, but once that was out of the way, I found myself unexpectedly charmed. These are just two prideful morons too afraid to admit their own feelings for each other. Instead, they play mind games and tricks to try to set up situations that will force the other to confess to them.

Basically, they are both morons. Throw in the secretary as an unexpected integer in their calculating schemes, and you’ve got some great chemistry. Sometimes they both come off pretty shallow, but when you remind yourself they’re just a couple of morons with crushes they are too stuck up to act on, it’s fine. I don’t know if this dynamic can work for an entire season, and romantic comedies don’t tend to hold my attention - but I’m curious to give it a go.

Ah, I forgot to mention the directing in this show is great. I wasn’t expecting so many visually interesting scenes from such a premise. That alone could give it reason to hook me longer than I expect.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime Streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lead male is a pretty down on his life guy without much going on for him. But that’s okay, the title implies it all - he’s just going to die soon anyway and then be reincarnated as a slime. I guess that’s a pretty fresh twist on the “die in the real world get reincarnated in the fantasy world” subset of the Isekai genre.

This was a pretty solid first episode. It’s funny, the character expressions even on a slime are fantastic, the reincarnation/ability system looks very slick - but then that OP plays as the ED and I lost interest immediately. I can’t even put into words why the OP was such an instant downer for me - which is why I’m willing to give the show a second chance. Though, no matter what it becomes from here out, this first episode is certainly worth checking out.

Run with the Wind Streaming on Crunchyroll.

Male 1 is running away with some bread he just stole, when Male 2 chases after him and asks him if he likes to run. A strange thing to get in this moment, considering he’s running out of necessity and not for fun, but Male 2 is in desperate need of one more member for his apartment complex. An apartment complex that doubles as the Track and Field Club, he so cheerfully announces to a room of unsuspecting boys who thought this was cheap, easy rent.

It’s not surprising that the character designer also worked on Haikyuu and Welcome to the Ballroom, but that means it’s a very cute cast of boys. That’s not everything this first episode has going for it (though it’s a huge draw for me. The glasses boy is top tier.), it sets the stage for an emotionally grounded sports story with a wide range of characters. And it looks beautiful doing it, something that comes as no surprise from Production I.G.

It’s just a feel good premiere, and although there’s little to talk about at this point considering the first episode was mainly introductions, it still manages to set the mood and set the bar pretty high for itself.

If you like Haikyuu or the 1st/2nd season of Free, this is something you should check out.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie Streaming on subbed on Crunchyroll and dubbed on Funimation.

Lead female has just either quit or been fired from her job and is now ready to become an elite NEET. With her first day of freedom, she logs onto a new MMO, creating her ‘hot male character’ to begin a new life. After much failure, she meets a cute bubbly priest, and time passes they become closer, Lead female becomes more obsessed with the game, they get a guild etc etc -

I’m not sure when the show will hold up on the promise of its title - RECOVERY - but episode one seemed bent on introducing us to her growing addiction and the other characters. Even the subtitle of the show in the OP was “Recommendation of the Wonderful Virtual Life.” I’m not sure if this is a trick and the title will change later if the focus does, or if this is just a strange localization choice for the title. (The source material doesn’t seem to have any indication of the ‘recovery’ version of the title.)

Anyway, despite groaning at the name of this, this was actually a really cute first episode. Also a little troubling haha It’s always nice to be dealing with an adult cast in an anime - Lead female is 30 - especially adult characters who are failing at life. My only wish is that this doesn’t glorify her life choices and that the friends she’s made online pull through to help her out. (the preview had them discussing that she’s a NEET so maybe... maybe)

All in all, watching episode one is worth it to see two characters have a nicely introduced online friendship (romance????) with cute character designs and some funny animations reflecting the game world at times.

Rating: Unexpected fun!