Short comments on episodes of spring 2017 anime

>Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e

I am disapointed in this, and in Maybe. I might read the manga when I am done just to give it another chance. I don't understand, Tasogare otome was almost a masterpiece for me. Their two new manga are a lot worse. Tale of the wedding rings is, as far as I know when I dropped it, just another harem. This is very contrived, and, most importantly, lacks a lot of what would make for a good female revenge story.

>Simoun

I like it, it does a lot of things right. Sadly, I also feel like it's empty, or shallow. There is really one layer to it and only one. It's not about not fucking with old gods technology, it does explore a lot of its themes, the enemies are just enemies (except for a guy at the start).
The fact that a lot of male characters sound female is quite weird, I don't know if I like it or not. I am giving a big plus to the clothes, especially the main cast, and the aesthetics in general.

>Moyashimon s1 and 2

Since this season lacks interesting anime, I've been watching a lot of backlogged stuff. Among this there is Moyashimon.

Oh boy. S1 is fine, even fun sometimes, though I am not a huge fan of the genre, some of the characters are annoying, but again, that's on me.
S2 is awful. The character this time are so stupid it angers me. You go to France to rescue your friend, and you spend your money and days drinking and eating fancy food? uh? The fact that the guy has a superpower was annoying in s1 as well but here it's even more frustrating. It basically serves no purpose except for make special. Special without having earned it and special without having to pay for it. I already moaned about this in a isekai post for last season. A lot of things in this anime are so over the top. I don't know if japanese college is like this, I don't care. Auctions for pictures of girls? some crazy masked people? what the hell.
I would have liked it a lot more if it was just a somewhat grounded story about a group of students working on yeast.

>Xenoglossia

Amazingly fun. There are some bad things about it, like an overuse of the betrayal twist, or a ending that is too good and nice. Overall though, it's worth watchin and paying attention at.

There are 3 things it does very well. Through the anime there is a distorted sexuality, from the robot lovers to the father kissing. It's not judgmental, it's not remarked, it's just laid there. When Haruka shows her swimsuit to the robot, your mental castle of morals crumbles. It's so simple, so genuine, like something a normal girl in love would do.
The violence is also used in a smart way. There isn't much of it, but when it happens, especially the first time, it leaves you feeling bad.
The betrayals, while overused, are logical and not asspulled just for the sake of shocking. Especially the first one with Makoto, its built like a tragic movie.

These three elements create a dark, almost urban, anime. Dark and claustrophobic, even. A good anime is raised by another level through it's depth, with the meaning of what we see on the first level is not everything. Xenoglossia is also a love triangle between Haruka and Chi-chan. It's not the most interesting tale ever, but it adds enough spice and complexitiy to do its job.

>Aikatsu stars

It's not bad. It is aware that it is a sequel in a beloved franchise and it tries to do its best to be something else. The most evident example of this is how they replaced the axe with a chainsaw in episode 37.

In general the first season is not bad, like I said before. The main problem is that it is watery, it flows well and it is easy to watch but it's also very easy to forget. There are some nice interations, like betweeh Mahiru and her sister, I thought it was relatable, likeable, and universal in a way. Plus the view of make up as a sort of armour/power up is probably one of the most interesting view on the female world, it has a lot more depth than people think it does. There are some things that made me shake my head, like how Rola is shat on consistently, or how they sent Koharu away. The best thing in the season for me was Lily, but I have a thing for her archetype. Plus this view of books as positive escapism is something I agree with.

The second season is more polarizing. It tries to say something about individualism, goals, etc, but I think it fails. A lot of characters disappear in favour of a main trio and Elsa. This is good, because Rola can shine and have something positive in her life. It is bad, because Elza basically is two characters, the Elza we are told about and the Elza we are shown.

>Violet Evergarden Gaiden: Eien to Jidou Shuki Ningyou

The movie is more VEG, and it shares the same good things and bad things.
Visually, it's beautiful. Both the "mere" technical aspects of drawing and animtaions, well done. It's not Hyouka, but I admit I am a fanboy. The use of the visual aspects to drive the story was a bit scholastic, for example in the use of framing to show Isabella as trapped, but it became scholastic because it works. Or in how Isabella sleeps with the peluche, it's connection with Taylor.

The biggest negative part was everything after the dance. If it ended there, it would have been a flawed but good episode. Instead it became a slog, and the payoff wasn't even that good considerd how Isabella, who we spent the first part of the movie with, is locked away in a palace with no explanation and no bright light at the end of the tunnel, beside her sister's letters.

There are some small issues here and there, like around minute 8 the books scene which I thought was unintetionally funny, how there is no reason for Violet's hands to be that ugly and mechanical, some jarring "breaks" like at minute 21, and a couple more. I would have condensed or even removed the part where Isabella finds out that Violet is an orphan.

>Ogkatsu

I finished the 4 seasons of Aikatsu. The best one was the first, but everything is worth watching. The downpoints were the fourth season, mostly because I really liked the new idols, and 2wingS/WM in the second season.

>Grimm Douwa: Kin no Tori

The story was so-so, but visually it was amazing. The witch reminded me of Yzma from Emperor's new groove.

>Love Live Aqours movie

The movie was kinda rushed because of too many plot points, and it didn't have that big of an impact. But it had one of the best italian I can think of.

>Ginga e kickoff

Ah ah fuck me what a shit show.
The show went on a downhill when it switched to 8-a-side. I can't believe that irrelevant side characters were better than the two blonde boy, but he was so boring and so silly. The last episode was pure Japanese masturbation. The ending "slideshow" was also awfully unsatisfying.

>Shamanic Princess and Magic users club

The two ova series are linked by a short ova, which I watched this morning and already forgot about.
Shamani Princess was ok, though the last two episodes, which are the first two chronologically, should have been the first two full stop. They are the best ones and they are the most interesting, the first four being boring and confusing. Though, it was a pleasure to watch. For example here in the last episode, it looks like a painting, it's beautiful.

Magic users club was more consistent, but also a lot less interesting. I am not sure if I were supposed to agree with the guys about the aliens being a threat, but ok. The best thing, and quite frankly a very good thing, was this fanservice part. It was so "fresh" and genuine, pure in a way. Miles ahead of most modern fanservice, sometimes it feels even gross.

>Goemon Ishikawa's Spray of Blood

The violence was too much, and frankly the story was a bit meh, carried only by the violence. Though it looked good.

>Bungaku shoujo

The OVAs were very good, the movie I am not so sure. I still liked it, but it had some issues, like the book-eating monster actually not needing to be a book-eating monster, some questions that are not answered, how easy Miu was forgiven, how Nanase was useless.

Though this line was nice, with the implication that men are easily manipulated.

>Bungaku shoujo

>Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower

Bloody hell this was bad. It's ok to have a structureless movie, even just as fanservice, but at least make the fights good.

Or here, it would have been very cinematic to have us see the door being completely closed.

>Full moon wo sagashite 24

It got better, it's very very good now. It's still firmly in the "mahou shoujo without monsters" genre, the kind where you just see a young girl dealing with magic, but there is also something else. The idol element is genuinely important here, and you can feel the hate. What is missing is making me like the antagonist girl, Madoka.

This is nothing special, but I liked how they made the background irrelevant like that, with a sfumato that reminds me of shoujo manga panel backgrounds.

>Batman Ninja

My biggest issue is that I wish there was only the joker as villain, and he actually believed he was a feudal lord. The bat clan was incredibly stupid as well. The characters looked good "on paper", but animated they were awful. Maybe if it had only Joker, I don't know.

>Full moon wo sagashite

It's weird, I can't say it's good because I've too many complains about it, but I am liking it. The OP/EDE songs are very good, the temporary ed for the first 6 or so episodes was amazing as well. I perfectly understand that this is aimed at little girls, but I feel like she's too scared for how much the anime focus on WHY she's so scared.
Another issue, for example in episode 10 right now, is that the MC is thrown in a world she doesn't know and no one explains shit to her, acting as if she should know everything. And then the veteran attacks for no reason. I hate when character A gets angry, character B tries to explain, and A says they are not allowed to talk back.

>Precure All Stars Movies

Ok, finished All stars DX. The design of the monsters was great, and hearing the old OPs for max heart and futari wa was very emotional.
Seeing the transformations all together made me realise some things I didn't pick up before, namely that the rose & swords theme from gogo made me think of rose of versailles, which connected with the idea of a fighting girl and a more useless, to brutally simplify, guy. Another one was how the OG's light power felt less interesting than SS's gold/silver and earth/wind/moon concepts. Though this would have been better if Egret and Windy were a bit more different.
My only issue is that the Fresh girls looked a bit ugly sometimes, but I guess that's Fresh.

I then watched all the rest of the movies, and now it's over.

I liked every movie. I liked Cure Echo. I think it was awesome seeing the cures back again, hear their songs. The first 3 movies were probably my favourites, because every cure talked, and it felt more like a proper crossover where everyone shines, as tiem went on they became more focused on the latest teams. Understandable of course, and inevitable, but still.
There were some top moments for me, for example this sorta meta scene with Cure Echo and March doing a GoB style attack which I always love. Also, I realized we had a proto Harry.

One think I like, I don't know if it's just head-canon, but I like the idea that the first 3 groups, FW-SS-Yes!, are some sort of old guard with big guns massively better than the rest.

>Yes gogo

With this I am done with precure seasons. What to say about this. Compared to the first season it feels very different, it dropped a lot of what Yes! unique, or better different, and it worked more as a standard precure season, but then I'd have to see it in the prospective of this being among the first precure season. I read that Fresh is the first modern precure, and while this might be true, gogo already had all the elements. The more traditional shoujoish elements disappeared, the romance is a lot less prevalent.
I think this anime suffers from dropping a lot of characters from the first season, I liked the old ones more than Syrup and Flora. All in all, a good average precure season.

>Kirakira precure the movie

What a movie. It was very fun, with some cheeky visuals like this.

I think the most interesting part of the movie was the animals. They finally used the theme that went underused through the tv anime, and they used it in a fun way. I think the meaning of the lobster and panda flew over my head, but still, it was fun seeing the girls act like their new animals. I also liked the wings, it fit well with the animal theme, especially because all the five animals had troubles with moving. Lastly, another interesting point was what Jean-pierre said when talking about the competition, he was completely right.

>No Game No Life:Zero

I can't say this was a bad movie, but I didn't like it. I have three fundamental issues with it. The first one is Shuvi. I expected her to be a sex robot for some pervert, or in any case the sexual elements to be important. Instead they were just an excuse for fanservice and for comedy elements. I also strongly disliked how the MC talks about humans can do everything, but kill, to survive, and this presented as good. I would have prefered if the show, like a good revenge movie, endede up with him being empty or mentally fucked up. He did get physically injured, but that was closer to the lamb getting the sins of the world. Lastly, I disliked the anthropocentrism of the movie.

>Yes Pretty cure 5

It was a good season, I'd say. Strong points were, for me, the friendship between Komachi and Karen, a real friendship. It felt like Saint Just and Kaoru from Oniisama e..., and Anya/Minami from more modern times. Bunbee was another good character. I didn't like Rin, and Urara was a bit pointless. Milk was terrible, Coco ok, and Natsu was too much a 00s character for my modern taste.
The villains were too ignored, especially Desperaia, who had a good concept but was not explored well enough because each girl had to get her own episode. Which is ok in itself, but the masks and dark cures themes deserved more time. Maybe if they had split this in two seasons, Corporation in one, Masks&Mirrors in the other.
The journalist was annoying as well, now that I think about it, but then she was also annoying dropped like she didn't exist in the end.

Still, complessively for me it's a solid midtable precure season.

>Yes Pretty cure 5

Using the girls to change the point of view is the opposite of tricking the viewers to make them believe it wasn't a single take. I really liked it.

>Cutey Honey

This was surprisingly worse than I expected. Episode 13-15 were good, but the rest was very forgettable, and the anime didn't end. Good sides were the op, one of if not the best I've heard, and how catchy the trasformation sequences are.

>Haikara-san ga Tooru

The ending was basically the whole anime in a nut shell. It's not bad, and there are some good ideas, but it lacks impact.
Sowe find Shinobu and all is good, but we don't know how he gets his memory back and we don't give a shit about the russian girl. I saw some manga spoilers and there things were developed better, at least on paper.
Even him simply coming back didn't have the impact it should have had considering we spent one third of the anime with the mc thinking he was dead. It tried so much, sometimes too much (did we need to find out that his family was actually poor?), other times it threw everything away with the mc's actions not having consequences but then we have this long planning with the military man trying to fuck over Shinobu because of the mc.

Over all, I did like it, I just wish it was more impactful.

>Haikara-san ga Tooru 39

The bandit leader who is actually a good guy here was ok, but it felt a bit rushed. This, together with how absurd the drama sometimes feels, like when we find out that Shinobu's family is actually poor, and the comedy, make the anime witouth impact. Another issue is how she couldn't study because she had to work for her family, but this was negated thanks to her luck. Annoying, watching someone getting breaks only through a natural 20 is not fun. I might have liked it more if there was any weight to impact, but it was like the author simply had to close some plot points asap.

On the other hand, there are neat ideas, like the feMC thinking about suicide and the narrator telling us the anime was over, until she is saved. Her work as journalist is interesting, having a guy who hate women as her boss brought back some of the topics we had at the start. Also, it meant that her idea of becoming the perfect woman and annihilating her desire of female freedom was thrown away with a good motivation.
I might sound like I hate it, but I swear, I like this. I just wish it was better.

>Haikara-san ga Tooru 27-29

Shinobu was sent to Siberia, to be the leader of a group of criminals and bad soldiers. He gains their respect by protecting them from punishment. The whole thing reminded me a lot of when Oscar became Commander of the French Guards. Oscar's manga came first, and I'd bet Haikara's author took some inspiration from it, but the story is different enough to not be a carbon copy. Oscar's might be superior, it was better developed and the fact that Alain fell in love with Oscar's made it more interesting.

>Haikara-san ga Tooru 1-6

It's crazy seeing all the high and lows this anime has. You go from visually interesting images like a heart made of flowers, frames that look like a picture story

or this

The negative side is that you have silly frames like this one that remove you from the story

The comedy is the same: you go from scenes that made me laugh, like when we find out that the blonde guy is a complete idiot as well, to something that feel annoying and stupid, made worse by the fact that the feMC never seems to be punished for her actions.
The characters are somewhat interesting. The mc is clearly a bit stupid, and her desire of freedom for women is selfish, as we can see because she still thinks that males should be how they should be, and only women have the right to be different. Ranmaru, he childhood friend, is feminine ever for 70s shoujo standards and might be a good candiate for the first "draw a girl, call it a boy". My favourite character so far is the thug that became her servant, his loyalty is genuine and I like it no matter how much the anime tells me to laught at it and him.

>Aoi Hana

I liked how it presented the love between two girls as normal, and some scenes like this one. First they introduce the lily, then the hands of the two girls look like flowers, and then the plate and wooden chopsticks.

Now we start with the negatives. The first 9 episodes were terribly hollow, with situations like the siscon brother never elaborated on. The families suffered the most from this, every familiar interaction should have more weight thant what it had. Episode 10 was a very good ending, with Sugimoto being left alone in the dark cave and Fumi walking out recalling the meaning of the cave as rebirth. Episode 11 finally brought some impact, with situations like Sugimoto leaving recalling when she left Fujigaya because she loved the teacher and making us suspect she might have loved Fumi. The problem is that it ends in a big nothing, it could have better if the op was different and didn't make me expect to see a real pair ending. Another thing that bothered me, but was kinda minor, was how it was spelled out who the Master of the Library is, completely unnecesary.

>Pretty Cure splash star

Probably my favouirite precure season. It didn't start well, it looked like a bad copy of Futari Wa, but from episode 14 with the introduction of dorodoron it became amazing for me. The fights, the serious topic with the more comedic approach to tone it down. The "family situation" concerning Kaoru and Michiru gave the anime a weight that I didn't see (or don't remember, to be fair) in most other precure seasons. Akudaikan, beside looking like a curtain behind which Goh-chan was hidden, was the description of a father who wants his daughters to inherit the family shop or, in any case, do what he wants and not what they want. The last 3 villains (Dorodoron, Ms. Shitataare, and Kintolesky) represent 3 extremized human types in a way that was missing in Precure before this.

>Pretty Cure splash star 43 and 44

I liked the use of lines in episode 43, showing the school's curved and diagonal lines and the the straight lines behind Michiru and Kaoru. You can already see the light coming from the right side, it will later explode and show Mai/Saki completely bright despite having the light behind them. The same imagery is even stronger in episode 44 with the cages.

>Pretty Cure spalsh star 24

I am loving Spalsh Star since episode 14 or so.

For example in episode 24 I liked the use of the water droplet from the faucet to not show Mai crying. I also liked how after the heavy Kaoru/Michiru episodes we had some silly enemies, even Goh-chan was made much more silly.

>Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart 2: Yukizora no Tomodachi

I noticed some nice frames inside the frame in the movie, either to show how trapped characters were trapped

or to focus our attention on them.

>Ibara no Ou

I downloaded this by chance and I was really surprised. It was not perfect, far from it, but it felt like I was watching a "real" movie and simply a long tv anime. The sleeping beauty theme was a bit silly, but it did work in their world. The plot is a bit confusing but not too much. The movie looks real cheap though, sometimes it looks really bad. Another issue is that it doesn't look claustrophobic enough. All of this doesn't matter, I had fun watching it.

>Hanasuka Iroha

One of the few times where I want to rewatch something and properly study it. There were some small things that I didn't like, for example how her father was never mentioned (I think) or a couple of where I didn't like the "listen to the authority" message, but all things considered a very good anime. I don't have much to say about its ideas, its a solid title in that category of Japanese anarcho-primitivism and all the things that come with it. Maybe the value of family wasn't really explored, I am not sure why.