Forum - View topicThe Best and Worst Anime of Summer 2016
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thekingsdinner
 Posts: 1096 Location: Geertruidenberg, Netherlands |
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Not going into full detail here, but for me it was pretty much:
Best: Sweetness & Lightning. Runner-up(s): Mob Psycho 100 & Fate/kaleid liner Prisma 3rei!!. Worst: Berserk & Battery. Battery bored me to death and Berserk... well you probably know the gist by now. Overall I thought this season was a little weak. Mob's animation was incredible and Sweetness & Lightning was a real treat to watch every week, but I really don't have much to say about anything else I watched (which were 15 or more shows I think) and I dropped 5 of them which is a record for me. |
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DeTroyes
 Posts: 521 |
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Best: Alderamin on the Sky
Love the characters, the world building, and the story. Really hope this gets a second season, and a longer one at that. Runner-up: Orange I'm seeing a lot of hate on this show, but I enjoyed it for many of the reasons some people hated it. Its slow pace and examinations of love, friendship, regret, and even problematic subjects like suicide made it a stand out for me. If you liked Anohana, this series is very much in that vein. Honorable Mention: New Game Cute and amusing. Clearly not a memorable entry in the "Workplace Comedy" genre, but enjoyable. Would also like to see another season of this. Worst: Taboo Tattoo Ugh. Gave up after a couple of episodes. Sadly, haven't gotten around to Mob Psycho 100, Re:Zero, or 91 Days yet. Probably will soon. Last edited by DeTroyes on Wed Sep 28, 2016 4:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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Best of the season: Macross Delta. I was uneasy about Delta, since I couldn't stand the latter half of Frontier. And while it had some pacing stumbles and some underwritten moments, on the whole it was a return to what I enjoy most from the franchise. I loved the cast, really dug the music, and the finale was probably my favorite episode of anime I've seen since the finale to Aquarion EVOL. It's in a deathly close race with 7 as my favorite Macross, and I'm hoping to have the money soon enough to start importing it.
Runner-up: Orange. The production issues are what they are, but I was stunned by how the series approached and captured the emotional fragility of Kakeru's character. This season (and year) hasn't had much in the way of colossal standout shows, but there have been a lot of flawed works that I thought still had a unique, singular strength. And for my money Orange had the strongest with its characters and emotional sincerity. I'm both nervous and excited for the sequel movie. Worse: Tales of Zestiria. I mostly gave this one a shot because the production was good and I'd heard from friends that it had an endearing cast. But this cour felt like one long, stagnant prologue that droned on past the breaking point. That 2 episode were spent on (apparently) a completely unconnected story for a totally different game just kinda put the nail in its coffin. I know video game adaptations are basically expensive commercials for the games but you can at least try to pretend you care about your show's story. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I loved re:Zero, but I'll just call it "Spring anime so I can give some love to...
Favorite 2016 Summer Anime: Momokuri, it's fluff, but it's fun in that weird "Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun" way. Obviously it has a different setup, but its all about a relationship between the two leads and all the weird cast of characters that orbit them. I LOVE the friendship between Yuki & Norika and the way Norika always reacts to and advises on Yuki's antics. Runner up: Re:LIFE, I actually got sold this by an ad on YouTube. The concept isn't all that unique, (adult man is given chance to relive high school) but some of the twists make it really interesting (opportunity is part of a "hikikomori-solution", his BODY is technically still adult body but LOOKS like teen, the MC actually has forgotten a lot of high school "knowledge" because he never uses it). I really hope this gets continued because the final episode, while not shocking, opens up an entirely new interesting path to explore Worst: Orange, I'm somewhat of the impression that people will love or hate this, which is to say you'll either REALLY empathize with Kakeru (or maybe Naho) or you won't, and if you don't you're likely to be irritated by them. Even ignoring my MASSIVE hang-ups with the story, the production itself is terrible. If you LOVE the manga this is based on, you may be able to look past the flaws because of love for the source, but otherwise, the middle is "First season of Sailor Moon Crystal" level bad for shoddy animation. Last edited by HeeroTX on Wed Sep 28, 2016 4:45 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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Best One Cour Alderamin on the Sky
Best Continued series Re:Zero Honorable MentionsPrisma Illya 3Rei Personal DissapoinmentMacross Delta I was entertained, but the animation was questionableBerserk (2016) I tapped immediately after episode 2Hybrid x Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia There are some other shows I found entertaining, and shows I probably missed, but for a Summer run it was decent enough to keep me from being bored, in the end not all works can be equally engaging. |
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AholePony
 Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
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I couldn't tell if Theron watched beyond the first episode but I wanted to mention that Hitori no shita the Outcast got a bit better as it went on. I agree it had a horrible first few episodes and didn't make much sense but it ended considerably better than it started and I was able to complete it unlike Taboo Tattoo which I dropped at episode 6 I think.
It still wasn't that great but I feel bad that Theron crapped on it when it managed to kinda/sorta develop an actual plot against all early impressions. It wins my Little Engine That... Tried? award. To go against the grain I'll say Amanchu was best of the season for me. Beautiful to look at and cute character progression. As for worst that I completed. I have to say Battery. Shows with hateful main characters never seem like a good idea. Takumi wasn't some anti-hero like Lelouch or anything. He was just a broken middle schooler with a seriously deranged personality. Plus that show was way too heavy handed with the pairings. None of them seemed natural or even mutual which created all this melodrama that bored me to death. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 2112 |
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Favorite: Diamond Is Unbreakable: The fourth part of this series is incredibly well written with so many twist that there was one episode where Josuke searched for "twist" and instead found there was nothing wrong in the restaurant.
Runner ups: 91 Days: The plot might be too simple (Revenge!) but there are episodes where some actions surprised me. D.Gray-man Hallow: The pacing and the animation had issues like 91 Days, but I still enjoyed it. The twist behind Alma's identity was tragic but at the same time touching due to Kanda's surprising character development. Allen's situation was really bad but he himself found he made chaos and wanted to solve them. Worst would be Berserk: I don't care about its animation or pacing but the story was so edgy (the religious guys are crazy!) that even Takahiro from Akame ga Kill would say: "Dude, you are too serious!. There was one episode I liked where Guts is told he should give up on revenge but it didn't look like the MC accepted it. Lastly, I liked Re:Zero but not my own type of anime. |
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SnowyLightning44
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Best of the Season - ReLife
I decided to just watch this one weekly instead of binge watching the whole thing and found it very enjoyable, the soundtrack was nice and as well as being very believable plot wise the cast of the show really sealed the deal with the drama not coming out as unnatural but being positively comedic at times as well Runner-Up - Sweetness & Lightning Maintained a high standard for me the whole way through, I especially like the way Tsumugi is treated as a character, having a greater variety of emotions then your typical child character and acting like an actual child would in certain situations with seemingly random outbursts and her hyperactive behaviour Worst of the Season - Rewrite I haven't actually played the original visual novel but for me the characters themselves were all quite dull and personally I found plot a bit hard to follow the with some events happening so suddenly and an insufficient amount of explanation for me to make sense of it Runner-Up - Battery It may have not have helped that I came into this looking for baseball but even as a the drama I think it was trying to be it just felt plain bad, the story was extremely boring and Takumi's character just too annoying and bland for me |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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Of what I watched:
Best: Mob Psycho 100. MP100 had a tepid beginning and a lull or two I didn't really appreciate - and I thought the finale was good but incomplete - but it did manage to gradually sell me on its characters and their relationships with one another. By the end of the series I actually appreciated each character as a person and valued their experience emotionally; couple that with MP100's stunning fight-scene artwork and animation and you've got the season's best, IMO. Runner-up: Re;Zero. R;Z's early arc impressed me as it began to flirt with defying genre tropes; its middle arc absolutely blew me away with the dramatic deep dive it took into its characters' personal suffering and the seriousness with which it meditated on and showed its characters variously falling prey to and/or flailing half-successfully against their flaws; but then its final arc largely lost my interest when it fell into deeply and predictably well-defined genre schtick anyway, even embracing some of the genre's least interesting and most irritating win-the-day, get-the-girl tropes by show's end. R;Z was well-animated and competent throughout its run, and a tremendous stand-out at its height, but its denouement was just too damned trite and failing in self-reflection to keep my attention or its once-unquestioned spot as my # 1 for this season. Worst: Taboo Tattoo. At its beginning it had glimmers of an unremarkable, poorly written action show with fight scenes and choreography so downright explosive that you actually thought you could forget its stilted dialogue and lack of coherent plot; unfortunately, as if to correct the mistake it had made in giving you hope, it then jarringly launched into some of the worst comedy even anime's ever seen, and I say that in full awareness of the very high standard most anime sets for awful, unfunny 'jokes.' It then enjoyed all too brief moments of subtle, self-mocking meta-humor in its latter half, but ultimately failed to maintain that style of funny as well, and concluded with fight scenes whose quality suggested TT's once-decent animators had all been summarily executed and its writers had transitioned into mainlining truly hard drugs while penning their now incoherent babble of a 'story.' Most pleasant surprise: Berserk. I'm among the chorus of voices that hates where the story's taken Casca (I think she could be a much more effective character without portraying her response to great trauma by her becoming a babbling loon), and I was actively pessimistic about the production team's ability to pull off anything even watchable after the poor modeling/poor rigging/poor interleaving/poor framing catastrophe that was the first episode, but Berserk 2016 completely defied my expectations by gradually improving throughout its run. Somewhere around the middle of the season I found myself 'at the edge of my seat' mid-episode and eagerly looking forward to the next episode mid-week. Most disappointing: Jojo. Still vaguely watchable, but I'm not sure I'm sticking around for another arc after this one. With Part 3 Jojo jumped onto the thoroughly lazy 'monster-of-the-week' train, and with this most recent arc not only are we still on the ol' MOTW train, Jojo seems to have also replaced all its dramatic tension and compelling villainy with goofy janken-playing bad guys and psychedelic color palettes. Call me when it develops a villain and a plot, I guess; Jojo doesn't do silly well enough to keep my attention, I have no appetite for structurally meaningless, episodic monster-of-the-week nonsense, and Jojo's characters have always been pretty shallow idealizations of real people. Without the over-the-top 'dark epic' quality of the first two parts Jojo's lost the only parts of its identity that were worthwhile in the first place, in my opinion. Last edited by NeverConvex on Wed Sep 28, 2016 6:58 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 529 |
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My favorites were Thunderbolt Fantasy and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, for pretty much the same reasons that everybody else has said. They're great shows and would stand out in any season.
I don't really want to call anything the worst, because I'll drop a show after the first episode if I'm not enjoying it, and I don't want to pass judgment on something I didn't actually watch... but Berserk was the most disappointing. It could've been so good, but it's got a boat anchor holding it down. On the other hand, I liked Re:Zero but honestly don't understand the huge amount of love it gets. It has a lot of fun moment-to-moment scenes and clever twists, and the art direction is great, but the overall structure of the narrative is a total mess. The author clearly wants Subaru and Emilia to be the OTP but Emilia gets practically zero development or screentime and has nothing going for her other than "token magical half-elf." Side characters are introduced, made to seem important, and then dropped, and entire plot threads are started and then forgotten. It was a fun ride, but if a third season happens someday, I don't know that I'll have enough interest left to watch it. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11584 |
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It was? In the anime? When did that happen? I guess it went completely over my head. 
I think I have to give the top spot to Re:Zero, but only by a nose over Mob Psycho 100 (it did get a head start after all, so MP100 catching it in one season is pretty damn good). Both series kept me guessing and thinking throughout the season, and that's all I ask. Animation, music, etc. are all gravy for me, but they were mostly pretty tasty gravy for both series, with MP100 often soaring to Toutsuki Academy levels of savory originality and excellence. I was delighted to see The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. get some recognition, as it was definitely the best comedy of the season, in a close race with Handa-kun. Handa-kun only lost due to carrying the extra weight of the sadistic and despicable "best friend" Kawafuji. Didn't like him in Barakamon and loathed him in Handa-kun. Thunderbolt Fantasy wins in the Best Puppet Show category. Great fun to watch every week! Worst was probably Hatsukoi Monster, which I stuck with to see if I could figure out how the stellar voice cast got roped into it. I couldn't. The only part I really enjoyed was the last episode, where Kaho was channeling most of the audience, and the parody elements in the first half were on point. DAYS and Cheer Boys are probably the runner-up worst of what I watched. DAYS apparently isn't over yet (why not??), but both of these series were little more than slide shows, which is death for sports anime. I thought Cheer Boys was saving budget for the finale, but even that was rife with stills and flashbacks to avoid showing the performance. Honestly, if you don't have the money or staff to animate a sports series, don't produce a sports series. DAYS' plot made little sense, and the games even less so, and CB's drama seemed to mostly make mountains out of molehills. So even that didn't make up for the lack of animation. They were equally frustrating to watch. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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I was wondering this as well - not sure what Rebecca was remembering when she takled about this or the mystery of the witch being resolved in any meaningful way by the anime. |
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MikeNeko San
Posts: 51 |
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Favorite: Thunderbolt Fantasty. There was an unexpected tragedy in my family, and pretty puppets hacking each other to pieces proved to be a good distraction.
Surprise favorite: Re:LIFE. I didn't warm up to the first episode, but I got so hooked so quickly. This is a series that benefitted from bingeing for me. Worst: Thanks to the preview guide, I missed the worst of the worst. My greatest disappointment was Days. |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2474 |
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My first pick was Mob Psycho 100. If I averaged up all its episodic scores (which is how I've been rating series for a while now) with no correction, it wouldn't be #1 of the season, but an actually thematically good ending (an unexpected one, at that) and one phenomenal episode in the middle made me give it a bit of an edge. What I liked the most about the show was really Ritsu's relationship with Mob being explored so well, as well as Reigen just owning the show at the later stages. What I liked the least was actually all of the shounen stuff at the later half - which was mostly OPM levels of 'pretty but boring' to me.
Runner-up would have to be Sweetness and Lightning. In average score it'd actually be higher up than Mob, but I gave it a bit of a lowing because the repetitiveness of it all and the pointlessness of the cooking bits to me just got annoying by the later half. Tsumugi and Kohei are the show at its best and the way it subtly explores their feelings about the Inuzuka Mom being gone was great. Pretty much all the cooking bits were just filler to me. While writing this I realized that my worst of the season (for things I actually finished watching) would have to be Re: Zero. The show was going great for the beginning of its second half, and while I agree with Rebecca that episode 18 was the best episode it had overall, after that it just went completely downhill. Episode 24 was one of the worst episodes I watched all year. I had hoped that the show wouldn't go the direction Jacob predicted in his "Subaru Natsuki: The Best and Worst Thing About Re:Zero" piece, but it didn't just go there, it built a little house and started graffiti'ing the walls. If I were to count stuff I didn't finish (because it was that bad) though, then it'd be Rewrite. It was just kind of terrible all throughout. Not even the interesting kind of terrible, just generically terrible. I can at least say Tales of Zestiria the X felt like a boring, lifeless extended commercial, or that Handa-kun was entirely disappointing as a spin-off to something great, but Rewrite had absolutely nothing. Last edited by killjoy_the on Wed Sep 28, 2016 8:52 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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FloozyGod
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wth i can't understand some of these staff. You thought Fudanshi and Bananya were bad?!! why are you picking on the little guy, sweet jesus! THose shorts were great!
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