Forum - View topicThe Best (and worst) Anime of Spring 2018
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Time Bandit
 Posts: 203 Location: Raleigh |
|
||
|
As far as what I watched this season, it was pretty clear cut for me as to a top three. There were three shows that I literally shook with anticipation to watch as soon as I got home from work.
#1. Megalobox #2. Rokuhōdō Yotsuiro Biyori #3. Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits Worst that I actually was able to finish: Caligula Special shout outs to Golden Kamuy, Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, Fist the of Blue Sky, and Persona 5 for also making my after work hours bearable. |
|||
|
|||
|
mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
|
||
|
Just had an epiphany, this list lacked something. When talking about likes and dislikes of this season's anime, I think the OP and ED themes deserve a list of its own.
Opening: Best: Steins;Gate Zero: Fatima Runner up: Hinamatsuri: Distance Honorific Mention: High School DxD Hero: SWITCH Ending: Best: Last Period: the journey to the end of the despair.: Wiseman no Theme (Wiseman's Theme) Runner up::Steins;Gate Zero LAST GAME Honorific Mention:: Lostorage Conflated WIXOSS: I |
|||
|
|||
|
db999
Posts: 332 |
|
||
|
Here are my ratings for the Spring 2018 anime season
1 My Hero Academia continues to be the best show every season I don’t really need to elaborate that much 2 Megalabox came very close to being number one until episodes 49 and 50 of MHA aired because those are definitely the 2 best episodes of anime I’ve seen this year. 3 Full Metal Panic Invisible Victory Been anticipating this for over a decade and it did not disappoint. It’s lower than Megalobox because of the recap episodes and the climax of the 2nd story arc just didn’t make me feel as sad as it wanted me to be, mostly due to the structure of episodes 7 and 8. Maybe when I binge watch the show later it’ll hit me harder and move up to number 2 4 Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online As someone who does genuinely like SAO I still thought that the spinoff is a lot better because it’s a lot better written. In another season this might have been higher, but this season is just so good it’s down to number 4 5 Boruto This stretch of episodes does a good job of adapting and improving on Boruto Naruto the Movie but I think it’s a bit too slowly paced which knocks it down a bit 6 Food Wars Season 3 2nd Cour This season started off pretty shaky. I don’t read the manga but I was till able to tell that the 1st 3 episodes were clearly rushing through the material in order to reach a certain point in the story, but starting with episode 4 the pacing improved greatly. 7 Legend of the Galactic Heroes I only watched two episodes of this before dropping it mostly because I have trouble watching more than 5 or so shows in a season, excluding the Naruto franchise as I’ve been watching that for over 10 years straight. But I still really liked it. I might finish the show in a slower season or catch up when the next season/movie of the show starts airing. 8 Gundam Build Divers This is the series I saw the most of before dropping after episode 7. It's just a very standard kids show that doesn’t really bring anything to the table other than excellently animated 2d mech battles. This is disappointing as it’s spiritual predecessor Gundam Build Fighters had excellent character writing and a well written and engaging plot. This season just feels like it’s going through the motions but I might continue if I hear that it got better since I dropped the show. 9 Persona 5 I watched the first arc and then dropped it because it didn’t do a good job of being stand alone. I haven’t played the game, and was looking forward to the anime, but it just doesn’t do enough adapting. It was really how they handled the fight scenes that made me stop. It was too distracting to see the All Out Attacks appearing as it did in the games so I dropped it. I’ve ultimately just decided to buy the game instead, so I guess the show did it’s job. |
|||
|
|||
7jaws7
 Posts: 705 Location: New York State |
|
||
|
I only count new shows for these seasonal round-ups, so sequels and remakes are out.
Best: Comic Girls Runner-up: Hinamatsuri Hinamatsuri feels like it could be a classic, but it also felt too much like Maid-Dragon for me at times. Comic Girls hit on all the right fluffy notes, and all the characters were instantly likeable. I don’t laugh much while watching anime, but Kaos and crew gave me some much needed giggles this season. |
|||
|
|||
|
Winger
|
|
||
|
Where are A.I.C.O. Incarnation and Sword Gai on the worst? Those two are terrible shows too.
|
|||
|
Time Bandit
Posts: 203 Location: Raleigh |
|
||
As a fellow fan of OPs and EDs, I agree with this sentiment. And after much deliberation, I have tweaked my answers from previous polls and things, and I have come up with my master list for this season. And since I liked so many, I have a top four of each. As far as OPs go: #1. Fist of the Blue Sky: AK-69 - "Souten no Hati ni" #2. Nil Admirari no Tenbin: Kradness - "Tandeki Miragism" #3. Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits: Nao Toyama - "Tō no Manimani" #4. Butlers x Battlers: OLDCODEX - "Growth Arrow" Favorite EDs: #1. Nil Admirari no Tenbin: Hiro Shimono - "Black Thunder" #2. Devil's Line: Mamoru Miyano - "Sotto Toketeyuku Yō ni" #3. Golden Kamuy: THE SIXTH LIE - "Hibana" #4. Tokyo Ghoul:re : Ziyoou-vachi - "Half" |
|||
|
|||
|
phia_one
Posts: 1661 Location: Pennsylvania |
|
||
|
Best of the Season: Hinamatsuri
It's rare for a comedy to go back and forth between funny, heartwarming, and just damn side so well. Anzu is best girl. Runner up: Rokuhōdō Yotsuiro Biyori I wasn't even planning on watching this at first but I'm glad I did. The comedy was great, I liked the four leads, and it even had likable side characters. Oh, and Junichi Suwabe making cat puns. I don't have a worst, but this is what I dropped: -Tada Never Falls in Love-Dropped around episode 4. Didn't seem like it was going anywhere with the main couple. Looks like I didn't miss out on anything. -Wotakoi-I'm not sure if I'll go back to this or not. Narumi annoyed me. |
|||
|
|||
killjoy_the
 Posts: 2474 |
|
||
|
Best: MHA. I've liked the anime for a long time but felt the first two seasons didn't really manage to be as good - with pacing being the main problem, as it usually is with me and manga adaptations. But this time, MHA managed to have 4 extremely good episodes in 12, and this is counting the dumb recap/filler first episode. Kind of surprised, here.
Runner-Up: Hinamatsuri. I wasn't too much of a fan of its comedy and cast at first, and was more following it for the superb animation. But Anzu just changed the game so much. I'm a crybaby, sure, but goddamn if that girl didn't make me tear up just by existing in the frame. Worst: If we're counting stuff I've dropped, then My Sweet Tyrant and MAGICAL GIRL SITE were both absolutely freaking terrible and I hate that I've wasted more than an hour of my life watching them both. If I'm only counting stuff I'm still following, then The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments is just one disappointment after another - and this is having already read the manga (OST, OP, ED, animation, voice-acting, everything's just... lackluster). Now if I'm counting things I'm still watching and are actually legal to watch, then Persona 5 has been very boring by all accounts - which is very frustrating visually in particular since I know the aesthetics are spectacular in Persona. At least I can still wish I dressed as well as Ryuji. |
|||
|
|||
|
Sven Viking
Posts: 1041 |
|
||
|
If you liked Hinamatsuri, check out the manga also (which is getting a US release). There’s some great material that was skipped, and I personally found it funnier overall.
|
|||
|
|||
zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
|
||
|
Well, I thought I was going to be making a bold choice picking Hina over Megalobox. I guess it's not for nothing Hina has been first in the rankings here. The comedies that balance both humor and heart tend to be my favorites, and this one has consistently excellent animation (particularly character animation, but no slouch in action either) and Kei Oikawa's deft direction on top of that, so it is difficult not to pick it for my top show of the season.
Runner-up: This one is a bit more difficult, but I think I'll go with My Hero Academia, particularly after episode 49, the best individual episode of the season imo and one of the best episodes of at least the last few years, if not longer. I wondered how they could follow that, but episode 50 showed how that's done. If you asked me earlier in the season, I would have picked Steins;Gate 0, but both Hina really grew on me and MHA surpassed itself. I still think Steins;Gate 0 is great, but both have been more consistent visually. Megalobox is definitely great and warrants being considered one of the top shows this season, though it isn't my first choice. Golden Kamuy, Lupin, Food Wars and Wotakoi are all great choices as well. As for shows that were better than I anticipated, Comic Girls is definitely one of the better CGDCT in recent years. While Uma Musume wasn't Kei Oikawa's best work this season, increasingly that was just because Hina was also airing. Last Period really gets gatcha games and those who play them (and has some nice bits of animation), though I don't know that it will appeal to those who don't partake. Kitaro shows that you shouldn't sleep on kid's shows.
I liked the episode too. I thought it was a bold scathing take on the industry (and the show's parent studio), to the point that it's a little surprising they kept their jobs after that. Guess I just like inside-baseball more than the two reviewers who named it the worst, which is perfectly valid, even if I don't agree. Worst: Magical Girl Site I was opposed to this show being covered here, as I could not sic it on the reviewers, but after watching some episodes, I thought it had some real hatewatch potential. Kosame was really promising in this regard spoiler[her magic stick is a box cutter with the power to heal people by cutting herself and having them drink the blood. She remarked that some might be hesitant to use such a stick, but that wasn't a concern for her since she was already cutting herself]. The MC's brother is among my most hated anime characters, and even made spoiler[a murderous idol otaku seem sympathetic, and it wasn't because they thoughtfully explored the mentality of such people, not that anyone who saw the first episode would have thought so.] Though what happened to him in the last episode made me glad that the show wasn't being reviewed. Cutie Honey Universe and Caligula definitely get close by the end, especially Cutie Honey's finale, but both had decent enough episodes, which saves them from that honor. |
|||
|
|||
|
mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
|
||
Never once in my life I have played a game in my smartphone, but the jokes were not only for insiders and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Still not planning to play the advertised game 
|
|||
|
|||
Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2658 |
|
||
|
Welp, I guess there were worse than Darling in the Franxx, but not for me because I didn't watch those other losers. Actually my fave was SAOAGGO (pronounced SAO-a-go-go?) followed by MHA and GeGeGe no Kitaro. That's about all I watched this season. Still not sure if Hinamatsuri is my style of comedy but given the glowing reviews, I might try.
|
|||
|
|||
|
DigitalScratch
|
|
||
|
Best: My Hero Academia. The anime managed to bring some of the best moments in the manga to life, and I can’t wait to see how its second cour goes from here.
Runner ups would be Hinamatsuri and Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast. Both really surprised me and I liked them way more than expected. Everyone told me how hilarious Hina was and I took their opinions lightly until I actually watched it. And it IS hilarious, and surprisingly heartwarming too. I was really tearing up through Anzu’s story and growth. What I was surprised about it was how...Natural the humor was at times? Like I know there’s exaggerated faces and reactions, but the comedy never felt forced and flowed very well. Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast may not have the production values of BNHA and Hina but the reviewing nailed it in why I really am enjoying this anime: Aoi is an amazing female protagonist. She doesn’t take a back seat, it doesn’t feel like the other characters are just holding her hand, and she makes her own decisions. Plus her and the Ogre have very believable chemistry and I’m rooting for them to marry out of love. For anyone who wants a reverse harem-like anime but is sick of the cardboard protagonists, I really do recommend Kakuriyo. I don’t really have a worst honestly. If i didn’t like it I didn’t watch it. Most Disappointing would be Darling in the Franxx for me. I don’t think it’s the worst anime ever written (it’s decent) and I don’t find it offensive/pretentious. But I feel like it had potential only to trip up in its second half because it got too ambitious. A lot of good ideas but not enough time and focus to make it pay off as well as it could’ve. Also, 002 and Hiro are a really boring couple imo. |
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11586 |
|
||
|
Nitpicks first.
 Sam apparently thinks his second runner-up is dull as dishwater and would not recommend it to anyone. Since that seems unlikely, I assume "Runner-Up" should be "Worst."
While you're fixing that (if you do), you might also drop by Sam's Megalobox entry and add another zero, since I don't think they had Digipaint in the 3rd century. I think I'm stuck at a dead-heat tie for best, between Megalobox and Hinamatsuri. They're both so very different in every way, it feels pointless to compare them, as the only common ground they have is being animated. I won't blather about why I love them both, since they've already got plenty of ink from the pros. Runner-up would be Full Metal Panic, which has been extraordinary so far. I have a few quibbles with the story layout, but they're juggling a lot of threads, so that's not unexpected. Second Runner-up for me is Wotakoi. Always made me laugh, always made me eager to watch each week. Worst is probably Magical Girl Ore, which as others have said, looked interesting at the start, rapidly fell into repetition, then recovered a bit at the end, but not nearly enough. Gurazeni would've beaten it handily, but it was sooo focused on money I couldn't even finish it. The lead could barely form a sentence without "money" in it. My honorable mention is a series that seems to have gone almost completely overlooked. Devil's Line got off on the wrong foot with me, and I didn't much like any of the characters at first, but I was hooked around the 4th episode as it built up an intriguing conspiracy, with a dash of amazingly frank romance on the side. Unfortunately, the last half of the last episode tanked, being either an anime-original rush-job or a read-the-manga-we're-done non-ending - and the hell of it is, I can't tell which it was! But they did a good enough job selling the story, that even I, the inveterate manga non-reader, might just go read the manga. |
|||
|
|||
Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
|
||
|
They haven't released the last episode of the season for several shows yet. Isn't it a bit early to determine which was the best?
|
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group