Hello again, folks! Lolinia here with another monthly post about anime. This past month of episodes has been a roll of goodness and some disappointments. You’ll notice that some of the characters from last month’s Featured Image didn’t make a return. *cough* In November, however, I had been watching a few dubs via the FUNimation PS3 app. There will be some comments on new series, as well! So here we go~
First up is Sound! Euphonium Season 2. This show has been a whirlwind of emotions. Immediately after the last post, episode 5 premiered via Crunchyroll and blew my mind utterly away. A near seven-minute display of nothing but music and various shots of varying intensities. Since then, each episode has kept up emotional intensity, though the focus has moved away from their playing to more on the students’ lives. Euphonium is still my top pick for this season. I really want this series to end with the force of great typhoon.
Second would be Shuumatsu no Izetta / Izetta the Last Witch on the list. Starting out fierce with the strength of a raging fire, Izetta has unfortunately started to disappoint me. I have hope, but at the moment, nine episodes in feels like a rushed mess. It’s a shame that I feel like this with this show as it really started out well enough (though the first episode had a lot of material in it). What I have been enjoying though is the FUNimation dub of the series. With what episodes are out, I’ve found myself enjoying the dub version a tad bit more than the version available via Crunchyroll. I just hope this anime doesn’t crash and burn at the end.
The next series would be Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku / Magical Girl Raising Project. That Madoka feeling I had never went away. However, I should make mention that this is no Madoka clone. The story is gritty and dark and the animation fits it well. The storytelling is engaging and leaves me wanting to know more the next episode. Some things are still not really explained (like, who the fudge decides to call themselves Swim Swim, anyway? Can’t you pick a better name?), but for the most part, I enjoy the series. I haven’t looked into if it’s getting a dub, but I plan to look very soon. I would definitely watch this series in English. Depending on how the story goes, this show is a very good contender against Euphonium for my attention.
Then there’s shows like Flip Flappers. I feel that this show is a marathon series now. Going weekly felt like a bit of a drag and before this post was written and posted, I was two weeks behind on the series. I may end up dropping the series til it’s finished and just rewatch the entire series afterwards.
The same thing goes for Bloodivores, except that I’ve already dropped it. Will watch it again after it ends and see if it holds my interest.
Sadly, the same ALSO goes for Natsume Yujin-cho Season 5. While I do love the series, with its quirky and charming cast of characters, I marathoned the first four seasons… in a row. For me, it’s a series that I’ll watch all the episodes at a time and don’t want to wait. Shortly after last month’s post, I dropped the series to continue watching it later.
And also Poco’s Udon World. Again, really good series, but I can’t see myself wanting to watch weekly. Dropped it around the same time as Natsume. Dear Poco will have to wait til I want to visit Tawara Udon again.
And then…. Sousei no Onmyouji… I think I’mma just go to the manga. Dropped harder than the balls of Morgan Freeman’s voice.
With that said, shows that I dropped won’t be showing up in next month’s post UNLESS I somehow decide to pick them up weekly again. While I do plan on watching all of shows I’ve mentioned completely, some series are not weekly series for me. If the shows were truly horrible, I’d have mentioned them in the first post that I picked them up and then dropped them. However, there is good news. I picked up a couple of other series in the past month.
One of them would be Dragon Ball Super. As we mentioned earlier this season, DBS started showing on Crunchyroll with the Trunks arc in full and premiering 10 of the previous episodes every week ’til they caught up. They caught up this past weekend and boy was it a ride getting there. While there’s hardly any filler, the storytelling a bit more “Tell, not Show” than I would like. However, the series is extremely good and I don’t see myself dropping it.
Another title that I picked up is Gi(a)rlish Number. I love shows that show a bit of the industries involved in animation and gaming, such as New Game, SHIROBAKO, and Bakuman. So a show about voice actors seemed like a really good pick up. However, I’m teetering on dropping it completely. It feels rushed and I find myself not finding any redeeming qualities about Chitose at all. It would be a shame to just drop it after watching so much already, but I almost can’t stand watching Chitose not have any character growth whatsoever.
The season started off so strong, but ended up being a bit lackluster to me. There could be a lot of reasons for this, one of which could be the fact that I was also doing the scheduling and some PR work for The 12 Days of Indie, which incidentally begins at Midnight EST on December 1st! Only a few hours away! I’ve been using anime to keep me calm throughout the entire process as a stress reliever, so some series may have worked better than others. All together, this season has been pretty good. If you have any anime suggestions (other than Keijo), leave them in the comments below! And about Keijo, I already have plans on watching it only after it’s all finished. Thanks for reading!
