I'm considering getting back into anime next season · 6:40am March 13th
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Lazarus - A doctor develops a drug to cure everything, but once everyone takes it, he then announces it will kill them all in a few years. Agents from around the world work on a cure.
Witch Watch - A young witch chooses her childhood friend instead of an animal familiar.
Kowloon Generic Romance - A mystery set in a future where the Kowloon Walled City wasn't demolished. Good manga.
Your Forma - A cop and her android sidekick solve crimes by diving into people's memories
Gorilla no Kami kara Kago sareta Reijou wa Ouritsu Kishidan de Kawaigarareru - A timid noble girl receives the blessing of strength from the gorilla god.
Ninja to Koroshiya no Futarigurashi - A ninja running away from home meets an assassin and both of them realize they have complimentary skills. Some bloodshed, but generally upbeat comedy. Kind of peripherally yuri. Good manga.
Kakushite! Makina-san!! - The old "popular girl moves in with introvert boy" plot except she's actually a sexbot.
Apocalypse Hotel - After humanity is all dead, service androids are still running a hotel.
Virgin Punk - A movie about a female bounty hunter.
From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!
still truckin
And now down into the manga.
List organized in rough order of my most to least favorite.
Below are those manga that I recommend.
A High School Girl Who Has Become a Boy
And hooks up with a female friend.
I initially thought it was a doujin of Zenbu Kimi No Sei, but it turned out to be a sidestory by the same author. Short chapters and not much yet.
Kyatapi Land
"An office comedy with no straight man." That's about right.
Feels like Pop Team Epic random comedy but workplace. I kind of like it more than PTE.
Below are those manga that I conditionally recommend.
I Wanted a Friend, So I Revived a Demon!
A rookie exorcist wants friends, so she unseals a demon and turns him into a girl. The two of them deal with it while hiding the secret from classmates at exorcist school.
A decent screwball comedy. Ecchi.
After School, We Wander in Space
A school rocketry club goes viral because one of the girls is cute. This complicates her getting with her crush.
Could be a decent romance, but not many chapters yet.
Clinged like Goldfish Droppings
A newlywed couple swaps bodies. They theorize that they could swap back by having sex. Unfortunately, they're Japanese.
No idea what the title has to do with anything. Generally a slice of life comedy. Short chapters. Lots of nudity, but little to no actual sex.
Magical Girl's Defeat Trial
A lawyer represents magical girls in the court of law.
I guess points for being unique, though courtroom drama has never been my jam. Ecchi - for example, the first case is about tentacle rape.
Vampire-san Wants Her (Man's) Blood Taken
Vampire childhood friend romcom, practically a minor genre by now.
Boy, they sure couldn't wait to introduce a triangle halfway into the first chapter. Not much skin, but still ecchi.
My Childhood Friend Goes Meow From Under My Skirt
Two estranged friends are reunited when one gets a cat curse. They decide to make out about it.
A little more physical than romantic, and even then, mostly about the floof.
Raising an Eggplant Girl Using Online Polls
Title is plot summary.
Short chapters. I'm a little concerned about some of the choices, but it's still early.
Below are those manga that I do not recommend.
Nothing that bad this time.
Dunno why there were so many gender bender manga this month.
Haven’t looked to next season much yet, but definitely looking forward to Lazarus. It might be due later in the year, but as popular as Nichijou was, there’s another similar one by the same author coming up.
Apocalypse Hotel sounds like a similar idea to Planetarian, though that one only had a single android left who was thrilled to have a human customer after so long.
If you’re looking to catch up any, I can’t say anything from this season was that impressive. There were several I did like a lot, but also where I don’t think they’d have great appeal outside fans of their core genre. Zenshu is a different take on isekai. Honey Lemon Soda is a good high school romance where the guy uses a tough love approach to get the girl to be self-sufficient. Sakamoto Days is fine, though it feels like a less funny Way of the Househusband. Medalist is a nice enough story and has great production values. Orb: On the Movements of the Earth is interesting, but has the hurdle of most of its protagonists being unlikable. Blue Box has been one of the better high school love triangle shows I’ve seen, but in the end, it’s still a standard collection of tropes. My Happy Marriage continues to show good character growth. Apothecary Diaries has virtually no action but is still a good mystery show and one of my favorites from the last couple years.
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Just realized the second season of Bye Bye, Earth is also coming.
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Oh, hadn't seen that announced. Maybe they'll say what's actually happening. At least for that one it was clear there was more to come (of course that doesn't always mean they actually make more), but there have been a number of other series recently that announced additional seasons after they'd already come to a satisfactory conclusion (notwithstanding that the manga probably didn't stop there), like Aharen is Indecipherable, Skip and Loafer, and Bocchi the Rock. Also looking forward to whenever Dorohedoro is continuing.
Alright, looking over MAL's list of spring shows.
Fire Force. At long last, S3 is here!
Lazarus. No-brainer to give this a try.
Vigilante. Side series to MHA. Maybe. I still haven't seen the most recent season of the main series.
Aharen is Indecipherable S2. Never expected there'd be more to the story, but it was a very cute romcom.
Go! Go! Loser Ranger! S2. I'm getting a little disillusioned with how often anime has to go over the top and make it an overblown conflict rather than let it speak for itself, and the conspiracy here goes very high.
Huh, Black Butler is still going? I never started it, but at some point, I probably will.
Hm, Witch Watch sounds alright, though it's just another "end up living with your crush" plot, and the manga rates as barely average. It's a maybe.
Sword of the Demon Hunter. A guy assigned to guard a shrine maiden encounters a demon who speaks of future events, and the guardian pursues him across time. Manga rates well, but I typically don't like historical stuff that much. Maybe.
Kowloon Generic Romance. I'd seen a columnist also strongly recommended this once before, so it's a yes.
Shoushimin S2. Oh wow, I didn't expect this to be out already. I really liked S1.
Agreed that Your Forma sounds really interesting, plus hey, for once it's the android sidekick who's male instead of the other way around. That's a yes.
Summer Pockets. Sounds like it'll turn into a harem thing, but as yet, it's not even tagged as a romance, so maybe it'll turn out to be a good character piece. No source material to gauge how good it's likely to be. Guy goes to a rural island to dispose of his grandmother's estate and meets four oddball girls with varying circumstances. I'll call it a yes.
Kakushite is a tough call. No source material to gauge quality. I'll probably wait on this and see how much you like it.
Once Upon a Witch's Death. Fledgling mage with a powerful mentor finds out she has a year to live but can undo the curse by collecting tears of joy. Sounds like it'll be an anthology series, something like Wandering Witch or Kino's Journey. No source material. I'll take a gamble on it.
Bye, Bye Earth S2. Hope there will be a cohesive plot, but the production values alone make it worth watching.
Anne Shirley. Remake of Anne of Green Gables which is based on (or a direct adaptation of?) the famous novel of the same name. The original series was considered a classic, and... maybe I should watch that instead? Hm, might add both of them.
Kanpekisugite Kawaige ga Nai to Konyaku Haki sareta Seijo wa Ringoku ni Urareru. Maybe on this one. The manga rates as fairly good. Lady who's a powerful saint gets a big head about it, so her fiance calls off the engagement and sells her to a neighboring kingdom in need of a saint, so it's time to re-evaluate her life.
Zatsu Tabi: That's Journey. Girl with little success as a mangaka goes on a journey to gain some life experience and ends up doing a comic about her learning things the hard way. No source material. I'll take a flyer on it, since travel shows tend to interest me.
Rock is a Lady's Modesty. Another girl band show, this one about a pair who do it in secret because their elite school would look down on it. Another genre I've had good luck with, so why not.
The Dinner Table Detective. Rookie detective who's also a wealthy heir teams up with her wise-ass butler and a more experienced detective in a similar situation. No source material. Leaning toward yes—I've seen several similar shows in recent years, and though none have been disappointing, none have been especially good either.
The gorilla one sounds kind of interesting, but the description of it is terribly written. Honestly, it sounds a lot like Encanto.
Apocalypse Hotel looks promising.
Ninja to Koroshiya no Futarigurashi also looks promising.
Miru: Paths to My Future. In the far future, a robot is created to go back through history and help people overcome their problems. No source material. Maybe, it's an interesting idea.
Hibi wa Sugiredo Meshi Umashi. Seemingly just a slice of life about 5 girls who meet in their first year of college and have a common love for food. I've had some good luck with food-centric slice of life shows. No source material.
Virgin Punk has very little info about it, but two points in its favor, both because it's a movie: 1) it's a pretty minimal time investment and 2) it'll probably be a year before it shows up on the usual anime sites, so I don't have to worry about it yet anyway.
Princess Principal: Crown Handler movie 4. It's an odd situation where the original series didn't conclude and they said they'd wrap it up with a series of movies, one every couple months. But it's taken them far longer than that, and there's been a gap of years since the third movie, plus there was a gap of years before the previous one. The original won lots of awards, though I never hear anyone mention it.
(To clarify, some of those "no source material" ones do have source material, but no rating is given for them on MAL even though some have been around for a while. Makes me wonder if they don't rate things that have no completed volumes, even though they do rate shows with no complete seasons.)
That's 9 definite yeses among new starts, which is back up around average after a winter where I only had 4. I probably won't bother with many of the maybes then.
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I feel like I've read the manga for Zatsu Tabi: That's Journey, but can't seem to find evidence of it. I recall that not much happened. Or maybe I'm thinking of a similar one.
I did read Ballpark de Tsukamaete!, about a guy who gets to know the beer girl at the baseball stadium. If it had been a romance, that might have been one thing, but it was mostly just a slice of life.
There's also Haite Kudasai Takamine-san, a show about a girl who can turn back time by stripping off underwear, and the boy who finds out and she blackmails to carry extras for her so she can do it multiple times per day. Astonished it got an anime. Ecchi aside, I didn't like the characters when I read the manga.
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I did just see the descriptions of those. The stripping girl one seemed like it'd lack substance. The baseball one I considered adding just because baseball, but the manga doesn't rate very well.