Sweet Dreams

Long time, no see! I'll hopefully get around to posting a new Merchandise Round-Up soon -- I've got some really cool stuff to show off! -- but for now, let's talk about the winter anime season. At the moment, I'm just going to focus on the shows I watched on Crunchyroll. I've just started a two week free trial at Funimation so I can marathon through the four shows that really interested me this season (Sk8 the Infinity, Skate-Leading Stars, Horimiya, and 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team), which means I haven't really watched enough to form an opinion on them yet. I'll probably edit this post later with my thoughts when I finish.

Sk8 the Infinity: This is what I meant about making a sport exciting when talking about the surfing anime below. I don't care about skateboarding at all, but, dang, those races were thrilling and cool! Also loved the friendship between Reki and Langa, but ADAM is a world-class creep. Best show of the season by far.

Skate-Leading Stars: Y'all already know how much I love figure skating, so, to be honest, this show wasn't a hard sell for me. *laughs* I did have to turn off my brain a little bit to watch it, though, because the jumps were just so ridiculous. Apparently everybody can do quads in this world, even a guy who quit the sport as a novice in singles and decided to come back years later to compete as part of a skate-leading team. He even tried a quint at one point and landed a quad axel/quad toe loop/quad loop, which is just...impossible. Buuuut, even though I was annoyed that the teams wore the same costumes for both their short and free programs and wished they had showed more of the programs, what skating they did show was well animated, and I just really enjoyed it. No, not as good as Yuri!!! on Ice, but still a fun watch.

Heaven's Design Team - This was probably my favorite of the season -- fun and educational! After almost every episode, I ended up hitting Wikipedia to learn more about the animals featured. I wish they had decided they were going to use the localized English names from the manga for the characters from the start instead of suddenly switching three episodes in when I was just getting used to the Japanese names, but that's my only real complaint.

Horimiya - The first half of this series was fantastic! But starting around the halfway mark, when the titular couple started dating, it seemed to lose its way a little. Apparently a lot was cut from the manga in order to make the whole series fit into a single season, and it showed. I still really enjoyed it for the most part, but Hori became kinda unlikeable with her unreasonable possessiveness and her pushing an obviously uncomfortable Miyamura to beabusive to her in public as part of her masochistic kink
I really think the show would have worked better with another season and more chances to show the good side of their relationship, along with exploring some of the side characters more. (I especially liked the love triangle between Yuki, Tooru, and Sakura.)

Tropical-Rouge! Precure - I don't think I've ever seen such a HYPER magical girl lead. Manatsu can be a bit much to take in at times, but it's fun and colorful, and Laura the mermaid is kind of a wicked delight. It's only been a few episodes so far since it started mid-season, but I'm enjoying it!

2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team - This show really wasn't what I was expecting, which seems strange to say when it's clear from the title that it's a volleyball anime. I just wasn't expecting it to focus so much on volleyball? Especially based on the first couple of episodes. I thought it would focus more on Hajima working to become a better person and team player when his bullying of one of his old teammate resulted in said teammate trying to commit suicide (not a spoiler, BTW), which he does, somewhat, but... It's hard to explain. It doesn't help matters that it turns out thesuicide attempt was actually faked, seemingly absolving Hajima of most of his guilt.Anyway, it was a good series, but I couldn't help feeling that it didn't know what it wanted to be, if that makes sense?

Quintessential Quintuplets - I really enjoyed the first season, so I was looking forward to watching this continuation. Unfortunately, the pacing just felt...off almost all season, and the girls (especially looking at you, Ichika) backstabbing each other to try to win Futaro's heart was disappointing when they mostly avoided that in the first season. There were still some good parts, but, eh, I was left underwhelmed.

WAVE - Let's go surfing!! - Though I tend to enjoy sports anime, even for sports I don't particularly care for, this show really did nothing to make surfing seem exciting. Don't get me wrong; it's not terrible. It's a nice enough show, and I give it props for genuinely surprising me bykilling off one of the main characters early in the series in a surfing accident, but we didn't even find out for certainhe was deaduntil the second-to-last episode. There was really no reason to make it a mystery for the audience, many of whom were hopinghe was alive after allaccording to the comments at Crunchyroll. EDIT: Wait! I wrote this review before actually watching the final episode, and it turns outhe actually is alive? Or maybe he was supposed to be a spirit or a ghost?I don't know! They never really explained why he decided to go surfing during a storm either, when he knew how dangerous it could be. Now I'm really curious and want a second season! Or at least to see the movie this series was apparently based on.

Bungo Stray Dogs Wan! - A series of amusing shorts based on Bungo Stray Dogs, it was good, but mostly forgettable aside from the episode that turned most of the cast into pre-schoolers with Dazai as their teacher. Hilarious!

The spring season is looking to be REALLY good, with lots of sequels to series I already enjoy. Of course I'm going to continue with Tropical-Rouge! Precure, as well as the new seasons of Fruits Basket, Zombie Land Saga, My Hero Academia, and Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun. That doesn't leave much room for new shows, but Those Snow White Notes, The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent, Bakuten!!, and Farewell, My Dear Cramer have all caught my eye. Guess I'll just have to see which ones land on Crunchyroll to help me decide!