#umaruchanr

This year was a good year for anime. I liked a lot of shows this year and I thought I would write up another one of these! Again, they're in no order really!

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Dragon Maid

Dragon Maid as a series has definite problems. There's some kind of gross fan service and some really unhealthy feeling fetish stuff, especially from what I've heard and seen from manga snippets. However, despite all that, Kyoani was able to polish this show up into a nice little story about a dragon and her love for the woman who saved her life..and drank with her a lot out in the boonies one night. It's a really nice story though of a lonely person slowly getting a new lease on life with new friends who happen to be dragons. There's lots of good little character moments and it's nice that all of the characters grow as time go on really, even when one just plays MMOs all day and writes curse doujinshi. Also I can't listen to the opening theme without getting butterflies in my stomach from cute lovey doveyness.

Girls' Last Tour Girls' Last Tour takes place in the shell of a world that is on its last legs. There are crumbling buildings, technology long since in use and even the occasional grave site. Really, the world itself is kind of bleak, but the story of Chito and Yuuri is not an overtly sad one. It's the story of how as long as you have each other, you've got all you need in life. Seriously though, there are some good heart warming moments in here. The girl's have weirdly cute wide Hidamari Sketch style heads against the bleak background but it works really well. It has some really nice music too:  the rain drops song in patricular is super duper chill and is just a joy to listen to.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie It's nice to see an anime about people my age, that might be why this one interested me at first. On top of that though, it's a show where one can find a lot of familiar stories, especially if you've touched an MMO at any point in time. First and foremost though, Recovery of an MMO Junkie is a story about relationships though and how helpful they can be. These don't pertain to just romantic ones of course. Friends are super helpful when you're having a bad time, and as the show goes on, you can see just how much the friends Moriko is making along the way mean to her. It's a cute little story with some very cute moments and character designs. Morimori-chan is one of my favorite characters this year and I support her in every way. Sakurai is also a very good boy of course.

Love Live Sunshine Season 2 Last year I had season 1 on my list and the trend continued this year. The girls in Aqours just seem so much more realistic in their struggles than Muse ever did in the original show. They don't always get what they want; life does not just throw out miracles like Chika wants it to. But they don't let it stop them, and the girls keep going because, to quote the opening "we got dream." Seriously though, I am consistently pleased with this show and it helps that my favorite girl got her own episode early on. Also the studio has FINALLY figured out how to make the CGI look good compared to the previous series' attempts. Good music, good girls, good show. It still has 2 more eps but I'm confident with placing it here in my shows of the year of note.

Little Witch Academia Little Witch Academia has been bouncing around through various OVAs for the past couple years, so it was nice to finally get to see this show...be an actual show. It has a few ups and downs, which mainly are wishing a few characters got more screen time, and one specifically LESS screen time, but it's a very nice show. It's got a fun doofy protagonist who is doing her best even though she is terrible at magic. It has a haughty rival, even though only Akko sees her as on the same level, a cute nerd pal who reads anime Twilight and a mushroom obsessed creepo who got vored by a slime monster. I really do not know what else you need me to say. It's by Trigger so it's beautiful to watch? It has a Moomin reference? You can see the dumb guy from Pawn Stars but anime? It's a really good show. Real good.

Restaurant to Another World This show is a guilty pleasure honestly. It's fun to see the weird fantasy creatures ordering, mostly Japanese, cuisine in an interplanetary restaurant, yes. The main draw though is seeing the wonderfully animated and drawn food though. Every week watching this just made me hungry and it was hard not to drool a lot of the time. The characters are all really fun, even if they're essentially all interspersed between episodes. Almost all of them get their own little spotlight episodes in conjunction with their favorite particular dish. Most of all, I'll never forget Restaurant to Another World for giving me so many furry vore retweets from a random image I got from an episode. It's a fun show you can watch in the background and just admire the tastiness. Just, you know, maybe eat dinner first.

Interviews with Monster Girls Interviews with Monster Girls is not Monster Musume, that's the thing I can stress the most about this. It's about a world where there are just...monster girls! Join our way-too-into-them sensei as he...tries to honestly just learn about the differences between the folklore surrounding various monsters and how it ties into how they actually live in society. Also root on for a succubus as she tries to just let her mature woman side fly. It's very rough being a succubus in a super packed society did you know? Seriously though, it's a nice little show that oddly has more continuity than you'd think since it's not just an episodic 4koma style show. It's also got a dumb vampire with a shirt that has a cape design on the back, it's great.

Kira Kira Precure a la Mode This was the first Precure I've watched as it was on-going so it's been a fun ride. It has a bunch of magical girls who are also animals but ALSO are desserts. It also has some of most fun looking CGI I've seen in anime before, but that seems to be what Precures are good at so it's not that surprising for series veteran watchers I'm sure. Either way, it's a good story about friends and fairies and sweets. It's made me want to bake dumb anime cookies for an upcoming con and fill them with kira*kiraru. It has a really fun ending theme too...well both of them really. I'll look forward to see what the Precures are up to next in the coming series, but I'll never forget these girls.

Umaruchan R I liked the original Umaru season well enough, but the second season has really been going all in on the fun. On top of that, a lot of the characters have gotten more screen time and more character development even. We learn more about Sylphin, Kirie and Ebina, and  Umaru and Taihei's sibling relationship is shown to be a lot nicer too. It's not like before where she was always just a terrible brat trash girl, now she's just that SOME of the time. You can tell they really love each other though, and not in a gross way that other anime like to do with siblings. Also it's shown just how being friends has helped the other girls, and even Umaru herself really. It's a good show and I'm glad that it managed to get better on its second at bat.

Big Gold Star Show

Kemono Friends Kemono Friends is...well It's not really a good show. It has a hilariously low budget and even worse CGI. It's a lot like a picture drawn by your 5 year old where it's not fine tuned yet but it makes you feel kind of good anyway. It has some really cute character designs of this bunch of doofy animals that are just living their lives. Whether it's going to battle every day against their long time rival, wandering ruins looking for coins or just singing to their hearts content, there is something about the Friends that just makes you root for them. It's not a show you need to watch, but you might just like it if you do. Sugoooooi~

Old Anime of the Year

These are shows that I watched that didn't necessarily come out this year but that's when I watched them. It's pretty simple!

Osomatsu-san Sheeeh! I watched this one on the recommendation of a buddy. A remake of a series from the 1960's about sextuplet brothers modernized into terrible dirtbag NEETs. This show is full of weird, often gross, things, but there's something about its manic humor that just speaks to me. The brothers are terrible terrible terrrrrible boys but you can find good points about them too. I've been watching season 2 as well this season so this will probably carry over into next year as an old anime of the year. Sooo...let's just say Osomatsu-san is an Old Anime of the Year 2016-2018. Ok? Cool!

Yuri on Ice I had this on last year's list of shows to look into and I'm very glad I continued it. It tells a really good story about gaining confidence and learning to feel good about yourself. Yuuri's journey along the way is wonderful. Because of that, this is another series I'm looking forward to the second season of to see where it goes. My only complaint was that it was a little repetitive but that's probably how sports anime go huh? I liked watching the routines and listening to the songs. It also has a great cast of side characters like Chris with the great butt, the weird vampire guy and Phichit, your best friend. There's also J.J. who is full of himself, sure, but there's just something fun about him still. Here's to more ice boys!

Konosuba Konosuba is a series full of lovable dummies. Like...execeptionally dumb. Like..super..SUPER dumb. But that's really what's so fun about them. I had some Ah! My Goddess vibes with the series' set up except Aqua is a much much much more flawed goddess than Belldandy ever was. Seriously though, this series takes the isekai/reborn in another world from our world genre and takes it in a direction that's actually fun instead of retreading the same old stories. It's got explosion mages, it's got really awkward paladins and it has a very put on dullahan who just wants to have his evil schemes go the way he planned. I need to watch season 2 still, and if it's more of the same, I'm in for sure.

Heart Catch Precure This show was actually my first Precure several years ago, but my buddy and I didn't finish it before. Since we had been watching the new show, we decided to double up and watch both of them at the same time. Heart Catch is honestly a delight and has some of the things I like most in a magical girl show. It has fun heroes, it has really doofy villains and it has a whole lot of heart. It's episodic sure, but it has a really great art style that just makes it even more endearing to me. Also, episodic magical girls with dumb monsters is why I loved the original Sailor Moon anime. I also enjoy that the Precures just punch and dropkick things as their first course of action. You just can't step to a magical girl that's gonna just pop you in the jaw.

Ugh show?

Gabriel Drop Out I don't know whether to call this show an UGH show or just an ultimately lame one. I know it definitely is a 1 or 1.5 character show though. The best character is sweet dumb demon Satania who the show seems completely content to just dump on whenever it has the chance. I do not appreciate that anime. I don't at all. Please do not bully this sweet evil girl because she does not deserve it. This show was not as heinous as last year's Kuma Miko, but one of the characters is for sure a bad bad ugh one.

Anime to Check Out

I have a few shows I've had on my list to look at, mostly on my Crunchy Roll queue that I haven't gotten on due to a crazy good Fall season/laziness. Here they are!

Alice to Zoroku I watched the first episode of this back in the summer and I didn't take the time to finish it up. I plan to fix that in the coming year since I like the premise and I really liked the old man especially. I look forward to learning more about them in the future!

The Ancient Magus' Bride This one I've mostly seen interesting looking pics of so I'm curious. I like cool skeleton wizard looking things and anime. This seems reasonable enough to me.