What I ended up watching this season.
Ongoing
Re:Zero is gradually becoming better, though it has already started on a high note. Mild harem notions aside, it's one of the few successful attempts to deconstruct the premise of an everyday person ending up in a fantasy-themed world. And it doesn't pull its punches when showing the less desirable traits of the protagonist! Not on NGE's level of psyche exploration, of course, but good enough to be believable.
Mob Psycho 100. Clever and insightful satire from ONE, as expected, and
amazing animation from Studio Bones, even better than expected! Well done all around.
Amaama to Inazuma / Sweetness & Lightning. It's much like Usagi Drop, except with blood-related father and daughter, and focused on... making food. Likable characters and their very natural interaction makes it one of the better SoL shows I've seen recently.
91 Days. A gritty Prohibition-era mafia drama from the studio that made Baccano and Durarara. Seems well-written and not at all insulting to the intelligence. I expect a nice plot twist coming up soon, so if any of you is going to watch this, better start now lest you get spoiled.
Shokugeki no Souma S2. It's exact same as S1, except with no characterization and more monster-of-the-week approach. If you like your cooking showdowns, you're going to have a blast, but if you're looking for more substance and less shounen porn, you probably won't find that here. I wouldn't bother, had I not liked the previous season.
Orange. Very slow and girly. I'm not sure if I like it, but there's nothing really bad about it except the glacial pace.
Onara Gorou. A brilliant short-form series straight from the bowels of Takashi Taniguchi, the man behind such acclaimed masterpieces as
Mr Ando of the Woods,
Salaryman Man, and, of course,
Mukidashi no Mitsuko.
Bananya. Another short-form about a cat that lives in a banana peel, and his friends, who are also cats living inside banana peels. It's exactly what you'd expect from a description like that.
Berserk. A very,
very poorly made adaptation of a best-selling manga that pales in comparison even to
one made 19 years ago. I'm not even sure how you can fail so badly. But since it's the only adaptation of my favorite manga, I still have to witness it destroyed by the incompetent hands of whoever comprises the production committee. There's no excuse that Mob Psycho 100, a manga that barely anyone outside Japan knows, receives incredibly well-done animation by one of the premier studios, yet a worldwide phenomenon Berserk only gets low-budget 3D with unremarkable music, laughable sound effects, and... censored nipples (yes, in an R-rated series where 90% of the cast eventually gets tortured and/or brutally killed).
Older stuff
Monogatari series. I've watched all of it up to and including Kizumonogatari movie 1. Loved it! Great humor, very confident sense of style to the point where it becomes the substance, infinitely lovable and well-written characters, entertaining dialogue, extreme fanservice executed in such a deliberate and confident way that you can only applaud and say, "fucking this, THIS is how you do it". Kizu is more subdued in the latter regard, clearly more suited for cinematic experience. Can't wait for the other two parts and the final TV season.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni / When the Seagulls Cry. I'm about halfway through, and I still don't get what some people like about this show. In some rare moments it appears like an intelligent mystery series, but it takes only a few minutes to wash that impression away with how annoying and unnatural everyone and everything is.
