Winter 2019 anime

Boogiepop: I think this is the best thing I'm following. Well-animated, good character writing, interesting ideas. It's also dark, kind of pretentious, and not entirely coherent, but those things don't especially bother me

Egao no Daika: Decent? Poor character animation, but good design work and the mechs look fine when they show up. Writing's been okay if somewhat directionless, though it looks like we're moving into an over-arching plot now

Asuka: Ehhhhhhhh. The manga's fun, if trashy, but the anime's not doing a great job. Poor animation and it copies the manga even when it doesn't translate well to screen

Endro: Moderately above-average CGDCT. No major weaknesses, but no striking strengths

Star Twinkle Precure: Good aesthetics... and that's it. Don't think I'm bothering with episode 4

Manaria Friends: Actually quite good! Looks pretty, the leads have definite chemistry, plenty of variety

Dororo: It's well made in that the animation is great and it's fairly well directed, but it has a major problem in that a lot of the individual episodes just don't have very interesting plots

Kemono Friends: Not quite as interesting as the first season, but still enjoyable (and it looks better). Has some interesting mysteries and has managed to find it's own voice despite bringing back a lot of old characters, including the first season's protagonist

My contenders for AOTS so far are Wataten and Endro~!. Wataten combines tooth-rotting cuteness with being genuinely funny, and I'm sad that people were turned off by its Audience-Alienating Premise. A lot of the comedy is at the expense of Miyako and how she's a socially inept loser with no friends, but it never feels too mean-spirited and it's nice how her little sister adores her despite her being such a nervous wreck. It also has the best ending of the season by far.

Endro has some surprisingly smart writing for being a silly parody of JRPGs and actually seems to have a plot. The characters, while all pretty neatly fitting into genre conventions, have some great dialogue and personality, especially Mei and her Cartado obsession. The only thing that hold it back for me a bit is that a couple of the episodes have had noticeable art problems, most notably Episode 4. Also the princess responding to the whole "but we're both girls" argument with "I'll just change the laws, I'm the princess" instantly won it even more points.

Shield Hero has been surprisingly engaging, and I've enjoyed these couple of episodes of basically him, Raphtalia and that goofy bird putting on their best Spice and Wolf impression. I have a feeling its gonna be less enjoyable once the actual plot begins to kick in again, though.

Manaria Friends is fifteen minutes a week of a cute princess and a cute dragon girl princess being incredibly hot and bothered for each other and it's goddamn perfect. God bless Cygames.

Other stuff is pretty cool too, but I don't think i can say anything more about Dororo or Kaguya that hasn't already been said. "Party is over" is my new favorite thing to spam on imageboards.

Edited by Uninstall on Feb 23rd 2019 at 4:34:00 AM

I really need to watch Endro when I'm not busy grinding all my games. Eesh.

There's a lot of yuri in that list.

Naaaaaahh, I'm sure you're just seeing things.

Should also mention that Spec-Ops Asuka is some nice turn-your-brain-off fun; not too many magical girl series have a military theme. Kurumi's naked lust for Asuka makes for some funny moments. It's definitely not a pretty show though.

Kaguya-sama put out yet another hilarious top tier episode, i can see why manga readers hyped it up so much

Mob and Kaguya-sama are pretty much competing for the top spot in r/anime's weekly karma rankings

What's that show about?

Probably.

So it seems like Radiant is getting a season 2. I… did not expect that, honestly. Hopefully that next season will be less of a mess − i.e. just stick to the goddamn source material. Especially since it's gonna adapt an arc I absolutely love.

Two students in love with each other who have battles of wits to make the other confess first (amongst other shenanigans). Imagine if Death Note was a romcom, and you get Kaguya-sama, more or less.

Edited by Lyendith on Feb 23rd 2019 at 1:37:55 PM

Hold up there, Death Note wasn't a rom-com?

……

I was about to say "no", but you've instilled doubt in my mind…

forgot to mention that it has the best ED of the season

Wow that is smooth AF.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 23rd 2019 at 5:11:02 AM

It was a one time ED, but the regular ED is also pretty good.

Every episode has been great so far, but this was the first since the episode with the French students to make me laugh out loud.

The opening is pretty baller as well.

Edited by Druplesnubb on Feb 24th 2019 at 12:12:56 PM

The Kakeguruixx opening is probably my favourite out of the few new series I'm watching.

But gambling does not work that way.

Where's Kaiji when you need him?

Well, I gave Endro a shot, and... it's really dull somehow. Maybe I just wasn't going into it with the right mindset, but it lost me a third of the way into the first episode.

I liked a few episodes, but I am now two episodes behind, which probably means I am dropping it.

Grimms Notes is still pretty intriguing for me esp. on Episode 7

Edited by ElfenLiedFan90 on Feb 24th 2019 at 8:21:56 PM

Mao is the best part of Endro, because she's a budget Satania. and a budget Satania is better than no Satania

She's not really that.

Kotobuki episode 7:

Wow, we actually get a potential overarching plot this time around.

Didn't see that coming.

It's already has a plot the moment that Ancap politician rants about her rival trying to make one true government. It's just that our protagonists don't really care about those things until it suddenly gets really personal for them and their livelihood.

So...two overarching plots then?

Basically, the magic man is attempting to monopolize everything in that world. Planes, government flight licences, airfield, oil - anything essential in the world ruled by air power. While it's already hinted in Ep 1 that the pirates suddenly got stronger, it is until in Ep 2 that they outright say it that someone is funding these 'pirates'. Ep 2's pirates are riding planes too expensive for their standard and got some military training, Ep 4's has the small airfield got shot up without being raided and the pirate mutineers are talking that they're attempting to steal the rare plane to their real boss, Ep 5's pirates suddenly attacks when a debate regarding pirate pardon is on air to show that this war hero saves the day and these pirates are real dangerous, Ep 6 has someone pressing the only remaining guy that made these planes in the first place to make more planes but failed because he fled.

Basically, the mutineers are working for someone to steal strong planes so they can reverse engineer it because the one who can make them from scratch didn't want to, give the mass-produced planes to their own guys who disguise themselves as pirates, plant a sense of terror against pirates on the masses, make them dependent on the guy who has the reputation, skills, and weapons to fight these pirates, and eliminate any competitions to make them even more dependent. It's basically the Rockefeller's Standard Oil scheme, but with more dogfights.