Forum - View topicSpring 2012 Season: Postmortem
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4631 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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Yeah, The Stream has pretty much replaced the purpose of the "in season" section of this thread but I might as well bump this up for the final thoughts. I'm not quite ready to write out a postmortem yet but I figured I'd bump it up as a reminder.
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Unicorn_Blade
 Posts: 1153 Location: UK |
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I only watched two series this season.
Space Brothers was the one I thoroughly enjoyed, and despite pacing problems, I will be sticking to it for the next two seasons for sure. Eureka 7 AO turned out such an incoherent disappointment that I am not sure if I want to carry on with this one. The next few eps'd better be really, and I mean REALLY good. |
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Otishio
Posts: 73 |
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The Spring season was sort of a learning curve for me. It started at a time where I had been just marathoning anime. I was able to get through quite a few series in short time so this lead to me trying as many Spring shows as I thought I could. I ended up starting: Fate/Zero season 2, Kore wa Zombie desu ka, Medaka Box, Mysterious Girlfriend X, Jormungand, Sankarea, Accel World, Kuroko's Basketball, Kids on the Slope, Space Brothers, Zetman, Tsuritama, Haiyore! Nyarko-san, Hyouka, and Upotte!
So, yes. I started quite a bit. I was doing well. After the 2nd week I dropped Upotte, Medaka Box, and Mysterious Girlfriend (I'm sure the romance was good but I just couldn't get past the drool thing.) After week 6, I was up to a steady pace but I was losing interest fast by having so many anime shows to keep up with. I ended up losing just about all of the interest in the shows by week 8 which is sad since they're almost over but I just couldn't help it. After all of that I ended up dropping everything except for Sankarea, Kuroko's Basketball, Hyouka, and Kids on the Slope I loved all of the shows that I kept (And thankfully Kuroko's Basketball is still running *no pun intended* along with Hyouka) I've learned from this and I'm going to start by watching much fewer shows for the Summer season. Last edited by Otishio on Mon Jul 02, 2012 2:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dalvyn
 Posts: 86 |
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I've watched 3 of the shows this season.
Hyouka- I am really enjoying this series. I find the mysteries to be fun, though some of the episodes move a little slowly. Sankarea- I think the protagonist is different enough to be refreshing. I was expecting the show to be a little darker, though it has it's moments I was hoping it would have tried something new, other than just adding zombies to a love triangle. I enjoyed it enough to keep watching though, especially since it ended in a cliff hanger. Fate/Zero- It was a fun series, I enjoyed the stories and characters, though the final fight scenes could have been better. To be honest, I didn't really find the ending that interesting... |
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Petrea Mitchell
Posts: 438 Location: Near Portland, OR |
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I guess Ozma counts as a spring show? The reason it stayed in the back of Leiji Matsumoto's head instead of being made... is apparently it wasn't very good.
OTOH, I enjoyed all the other shows I watched, Space Brothers the most of all. I know it's not the sort of thing everyone is into, but if the premise sounds the least bit interesting to you, then I recommend it in the strongest possible terms. Hunter X Hunter continues to be good fun. I've heard a lot about how the arc it's heading into now is the one that hooked many people, so I'm really looking forward to it. I'm also sticking with Eureka Seven AO, since I'm not feeling hopelessly confused yet. I've had strong suspicions since early on about what the explanation will be and I'd like to find out if I'm right. But there had better BE an explanation. |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules Posts: 4631 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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well, writing this took a while...
My usual rating presentation, an approximate rating from my favorite of the season down to a couple I kind of wish I hadn’t bothered with. Although I did separate out the continuing shows into a second section this time. In short it was a very strong season. I can be stingy with my ratings but this year produced a host of shows I enjoyed. The problem with the season is that I ended up watching so much, I’ve burned myself out a bit and plan to cut down drastically in the summer and maybe catch up on my backlog and enjoy watching shows that don’t have week-long breaks. Excellent Lupin III: A Girl called Fujiko Mine: I have to admit I started to get a little worried in the middle of the show, as I was getting a little tired of the episodic adventures, then they go ahead and finish it off with a very cool final arc that connected parts of the episodic parts, presented an alternately trippy and sinister story of psychological torture, break-downs and even had a psychotic villain that I thought was a well written character (very rare, I may be becoming known on this forum for my extreme dislike of psycho bad guys). And that art, I so love it when expressive art serves a story so well. Kids on the Slope: So nice to see Noitamina hitting on all cylinders again. Quality writing, a story worth telling, characters that feel real and defy current tropes, and a authentic feeling period piece that is very nicely augmented by the jazz music framing device. In order to fit a complete story into 12 episodes (but hey, at least Noitamina didn’t limit to 11) they did have to rush a couple bits, but I found it done well enough that I could easily reason out those motives in between the lines. Mysterious Girlfriend X: I feel a bit sorry for those that couldn’t see past the drool. Unique characters, a sweet coming of age story that takes its time exploring the strange little idiosyncracies of the awkward teen boy and his odd girlfriend with her unexpected abilities and talents. By presenting such a exaggerated couple and their unreal obstacles it seems to nicely represent the awkwardness we all experience in relationships, especially in these teen years. Very Good tsuritama: A group of talented young boys have to bond together, use their unique skills and maybe they can save the world from an alien attack, all the while dealing with their family problems! Sounds so very standard for anime, right? Well, throw in fly fishing, panic attacks, traditional dancing, mind controlling water pistols, much more and expressive art and you have something very unique. If there’s any problem with the approach it might try a little too hard too push the normalcy barrier. Sankarea: It finishes with out a resolution but leaves you wanting more. The lead male is a nice twist on a normally bland lead, the cute girl living in his house trope is cut with a seriously dark twist and the family secrets of both the girl and a the boys apparently zombie related family problems offer a lot of intrigue. The scumbag father is a bit icky to consider and it really doesn’t seem like he gets what he deserves, but one can hope there’s more story to come. Acchi Kocchi: this brand of light-hearted fun comedy seems simple but recent examples of the sort show it can be hard to do. These characters are a fun bunch and have cute little adventures but they don’t fall into the pander trap that so many shows fall into when dealing with cute girls doing cute things. The main pair’s chaste non-romance is sweet and funny, from the first episode it seems they like each other but between her lightly tsundere attitude and his apparently dense understanding of how much she likes him they play off the relations hip well for smiles and laughs. Good Bodacious Space Pirates: There’s some wasted potential in the show, it doesn’t seem to want to commit to being a dramatic action showcase or a cute school based comedy. It is also true that emotions never really go to any extremes. But I like the cute pirate girls and they have succeeded in some fun space action. I’d welcome a return of these characters and am glad to hear of the upcoming movie. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: I liked the comedy, I liked the stylish mood and atmosphere, occasionally the two clashed a bit but there was also at the heart of it a tragic tale of a ghost greatly wronged and the boy who is able to help relieve her of some of the torment she’s been bottling up and denying. It’s an effective story. I do wish they had gone a bit deeper into the “why” of the story- It does a good job of the “how” but I think theres still much more substance to what happened. Some parts, the school festival in particular, felt rushed as well. Medaka Box: This show gave us a slow burn of character and world introduction and partially fools the viewer that its something that it’s not. A wider framework for what’s really going on in this school that apparently has no teachers doesn’t get introduced until the end. I still enjoyerd it becasue I was always getting the sense that there’s some melancholy hidden in Medaka’s cheery perfection. I’m glad that theory was partially rewarded and look forward to the promised continuation. Is This a Zombie? -Of The Dead!: After the first season I said I would have preferred it if they had ignored the dramatic bits more and focused on the comedy more and that I would have probably rated it higher than “good” if they had done that. I got my wish, but it turns out feeling like something’s missing after all. It’s still funny though, some of it outrageously so, so it still deserves a strong if not unqualified recommendation. Natsuiro Kiseki: Cute fun girls doing what they do best, a fine example of this type of show, if not mindblowing. Haiyore! Nyaruko-san: it’s funny, it’s weird, but sometimes this group irritated me. It is a rather quotable show though, the characters interactions and unexpected motives for the "villains'" heinous acts provide some really fun situations and though you’ve quickly gotten used to the fact that these monster attacks are never for the generic “taking over the world” reasons, the punch line for their reasons for their actions still usually surprises you with its absurdity all the way until the final episode- whose "monster" has some of the most hilariously wrong reasoning for his scheme of any antagonist of the series. Decent Jormungand: I haven’t quite finished this show, I have 4-5 episodes still to watch, but I feel this is an appropriate location for it. My pacifist beliefs got in the way of enjoying the show. I can watch shows with violent characters of dubious moral fiber if they can give a good story for whay I should root for the “heroes” over the other side and give me a glimpse into a unique world. This show doesn’t do that so well, it’s a hard sell and I’m a bit surprised I didn’t drop it. I guess I keep hoping for better reasons to care whether they live or die. I feel the way the way they live their lives is tragic, why should I think it tragic if they died? Saki: Achiga-hen episode of side-A The original Saki series is no masterpiece, but it was fun to root for and get to know the series heroes, this side story just doesn’t deliver near the levels of fun and excitement, you barely understand the talents/powers of the main cast and don’t really get the impression that they’re really tremendous players... they do well to present their opponents though, for some reason. So-So Kimi to Boku. 2: This one I really don’t know how I survived until the end of the series. One kid who needed some Ritalin and the others apparently all dosed with prozac. Chizuru was usually plain irritating and theres just so much detached emotions I can take from the rest of them. I think the only way I’d be convinced to watch a third season if it was shown would be if it is announced that Shun will be coming out of the closet. And that’s not homophobic, it’s freaking supportive of a character that seems to have no interest in the least in girls- it is seriously a development I’d support in the show. Not Really Good Recorder and Randsell: Three minutes a pop, when Atushi wasn’t being arrested as a sexual predetor by the worst police department in the least aware neighborhood in the world, it produced some chuckles. But that one joke was more than half of the show and if it took a minute more though- it’d be too much to take. Ozma: I wanted to like it, I wanted to believe in Matsumoto again, and the show did have some neat things going for it and a retro style I dug, but the hope that I’d come to care for the characters more was never really realized and the ending really fell off a cliff of reason and logic and ultimately resolved in a really crappy “message” ending. Ugh. Sengoku Collection: The only show I did drop. IT was the Masamune episode that did me in, if that was an example of the shows “serious” story-telling, it deserves the trash bin. I actually kind of liked the moe girl presentation, and the Michael Moore spoof was weirdly entertaining. But there isn’t a chance I’m watching more of the show. And some quick words about the shows that haven’t finished: Space Brothers: As it is so far this may be another “Excellent” ranked series for the year. Mutta is one of the characters of the year so far. Polar Bear Café wonderfully dry humor, a likable group of café dwellers and associated friends. Cheers for cute animal anime lovers Sket Dance: Still going strong ever since its jump in quality last season. Folktales From Japan: in it’s final estimation I may bump up the rating of this show to “excellent” to make a point. It does what it does very well and through accumulated watching you really start to see how the character of Japan is reflected in its folktales. The vast majority focus not on adventures and figures performing great feats for personal glory, but instead reflect the importance of humility and downfall brought by carelessness and pride. Hyouka: It’s not a bad show. Looks good, has nice characters. Lacks immediacy though, hard to get excited about. I may postpone watching the rest after this next episode, which seems to be ending a “case.” Maybe I’ll enjoy it more marathoned. Hunter x Hunter: ultimately I’ll continue with this becasue its an easy watch and doesn’t require too much dedication to remember precise details of what went on before. If I stopped watching it I doubt I’d ever want to catch up with what promises to be such a long series. Accel World: I like it, but I’m postponing it for now, I think it’ll play better in marathon mode. Kuroko’s Basketball Like HxH it’s an easy watch, and can be fun, but I fear a burn out on its structure. I think I’ll postpone it and watch it in game arcs or something. Eureka Seven AO: Actually I only watched two episodes of this before deciding to wait until its end to watch. |
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