Winter 2016 Anime Season First Impressions
The Winter 2016 anime season has begun, and below are some quick impressions of some of the first new titles. Admittedly, these impressions are based on exactly one whole episode each, so the nature of the show may change completely. But more often than not, an anime show wants to set its feel, tone and theme right out of the gate, so we’ll see how accurate my descriptions are in a few months.
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Active Raid
This is mostly an action sci-fi with armored powersuit-wearing cops in a future Tokyo. The animation and suit designs recall Tiger and Bunny, which isn’t a bad thing. Best thing so far: despite the marketing about the police unit subject of the show being troublemakers, the first episode shows they really know what they are doing. Competent troublemakers in an anime? Shocking. (Crunchyroll)
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Erased
This might be the toughest one to get a handle on, because — SPOILER — the adult main character Satoru, a pretty interesting monotonic struggling manga artist with a time travel skill, ends the episode going waaaay back to when he was a middle schooler to solve a mystery that he has mostly forgotten about. So the things I like about the show (Satoru’s kinda depressed characterization, his enigmatic high schooler coworker Katagiri, his seemingly ageless mom) may not be there in episode 2. (Crunchyroll)
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Please Tell Me! Galko Chan
I wasn’t going to watch any short-form animes, and a Galko-chan episode is only 7-plus minutes long. But it is really funny, and captures something that is still all too rare in Western entertainment — females talking about very personal things with humor, as they do in real life, but only guys have done in movies or TV until just a few years ago. And I made it through this whole mini-review without once mentioning Galko-chan’s huge boobs — dammit! (Crunchyroll)
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Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation
Kudos to Sega for coming up with a pretty interesting way to make an anime around its popular MMORPG. Basically it is a sci-fi academy anime in which characters have some as yet unknown important reason for playing PSO2. So far it mixes well time in game with time out of game. And watch it for the Sega easter eggs (from something as obvious as the academy being named “Seiga” to, well, don’t blink when they show the school’s outdoor pool in the center of the campus for a neat half-second treat). (Crunchyroll)
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BBK/BRNK
The acronym above is for “Bubuki/Buranki” and are the names for parts of giant mechs in the show, and the mechs themselves, respectively. The anime is made by studio Sanzigen, known for CGI and animes like Black Rock Shooter and Arpeggio of Blue Steel. The character designs are even more stylish than Arpeggio, recalling Dramatical Murder at times. But, the world concept of a future after these giant Buranki have affected the Earth is fascinating, and the lead teen boy, Azuma, has a serious chip on his shoulder. If the silly character designs don’t become silly writing, this could be one of my favorites. (Crunchyroll)
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Nurse Witch Komugi R
This is supposed to be a parody of the typical magical girl anime, but unlike Is This a Zombie?, it is tough to tell where the line between simply excessively ridiculous magical girl elements end and actual parody begins. Some things are clear, like when middle schooler and new magical girl Komugi makes fun of the stupid names for things she has or skills she can use. But even then some just seem like extreme versions of things that would be normal in any similar anime. Probably too subtle for me. (Crunchyroll)
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Norn9
A mysterious beautiful girl gets whisked away from her beautiful post-technical land by even more beautiful young men to the beautiful bubble-like giant ship in the sky. The ship is filled with a beautiful landscape and buildings straight out of French wine and chateau country, and the girl meets the other beautiful young men and women who reveal that they all have powers like she does — and nothing much else happens. Did I mention it is beautiful? (Hulu)
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Luck & Logic
This fits into the typical “fighting pairs” trope of animes, like Freezing or Absolute Duo, with a twist — a human always pairs (forms a Covenant with a, wait for it, Covenanter) with someone from an “otherworld” where that world’s Logic is different and may allow for things like magic powers. If the show explores the actual Logic of some of these otherworlds it might be worth sticking with, but the washed-out palette with hyper-saturated colors used after the “Logicalists” pair and transform is tough to watch, particularly in fast action. Being based on a trading card game, I have little hope. (Hulu)
