Winter 2021 anime

Looks like one of those sports dramas where the emphasis is on the drama rather than the sports

Attack on Titan The Final Season

So many questions here. Why is titled "The Final Season" when the manga is ongoing? Why is it airing a month ahead of everything else? Why is the staff and studio new?

...We do have an answer for that last one, since the production committee addressed it. When the letter is despinned, it boils down to the production being rushed and having to make do whoever was crazy enough to work on an anime of this scale on a short timetable

Back Arrow

Comes to us from the director of Code Geass and the writer of Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill. What we've seen of it so far leans towards the former, being a bright, colourful genre mish-mash, but the more shounen tendencies of the latter are apparent with the mecha being conviction-powered

Bottom Tier Character Tomozaki

So this is definitely within general LN genre of highschool romance/dramas, where there's a gimmick, and as much focus on the main character's development as anything. What stood out to me here was that it—how to put this—it doesn't feel like it's trying to mimic Monogatari. There's no girl with long hair and a sharp tongue, and the dialogue isn't especially trying to be clever

Cells at Work!!

So the film earlier this year is actually the first few episodes of this TV anime. I think

Cells at Work! CODE BLACK

It's the above series, but dark and edgier. Also the female lead has large breasts, an open shirt, and no bra

Dr. Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist

I haven't been able to track down the actual source material, but from some of it's promotional material, this sounds wacky and kinda gross. The diseases are things like crying mayonnaise or growing chikuwa from the penis

The manga only has three published volumes, so this is probably half-length

EX-ARM

There's a lot I could say about the source material, how it fits in the genre, it's approach to women... but it doesn't really matter since none of it is "you should watch the anime despite it looking like an upscaled PS1 game"

Gekidol

This seems to be primarily an anime project, so it's probably got more going on than just idol stuff. Presumably relating to it being post-apocalyptic

Heaven's Design Team

Edutainment about animals' physiology framed as a Work Com. I found the manga mildly amusing but fairly repetitive, and have some difficulty seeing it work as a full-length series

The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter

From what I've read of it, it's basically your standard isekai except A) not an isekai and B) designed so that the MC can solve most of his problems by making out with his girlfriend. And, yeah, he has a girlfriend. Doesn't mean there's no harem

Horimiya

A sweet, domestic romance. It's pretty good, and I'm saying that as someone who doesn't really like the genre. I hear it starts to fall apart later on, but I don't think the anime will get that far

This runs in a shounen magazine, just in case you needed evidence that manga demographics don't really mean anything

Hortensia Saga

Pretty generic fantasy, though more in the traditional warring knights style than the overpowered adventurers we've been seeing lately. Based on a mobage, so I'd expect way too many named characters

I-CHU

Pretty boys singing and dancing. Ultimately comes from the same company as A3

Idoly Pride

Pretty girls singing and dancing. Seems like it's intended to be a drama

Kaifuku Jutsushi no Yarinaoshi

So one of the first things that happens is the main character raping a women before erasing her mind and rebulding her as basically a sex slave. ...That's in the novel and manga, at least. There may have to be significant changes for this to be airable on TV

Kemono Jihen

Urban fantasy. What I read of it was on the slower-paced, more character-focused side of things

Mushoku Tensei

The original isekai, from which all others ultimately derive. It'll seem pretty familiar if you've seen a lot of isekai before^note Though most of the more popular anime examples have been fairly original, so this might not be an issue if that's your point of reference, but it does have some unique characteristics of it's own. Like character development, actual themes, and incest

Personally, I found it pretty boring, though. And having character development means that the protagonist starts out as a real shithead, which puts a lot of people off

Also what we've seen of the animation is amazing, holy shit

Otherside Picnic

ANN seems intent on describing this as sci-fi yuri, which... isn't exactly wrong, but is definitely misleading. It's horror, and includes women in love with other women. Specifically, it's what I'd call 'anomaly horror', for lack of a more accepted term. Deeply strange things are going on, not easily attributable to any being or belief system. Think SCP Foundation or Roadside Picnic

I really like this one, but I can't say how much of that is down to it playing to my specific tastes

Project Scard: Praeter no Kizu

So, this seems to be GoHands trying to recreate the success of K, but with the complication that the people working on it have much more to do with Handshakers. And Handshakers was, you know, awful

The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon's Judgement

Has the same staff as the last anime. You know, the bad one that everyone hates

SK8 the Infinity

So we have the director of Banana Fish and Free (the first two season) and the writer of Code Geass, Kabaneri, and a bunch of other stuff. So, the impression I get is that this particular writer tends to turn out crazy sci-fi nonsense unless the director keeps a strong hand on him, and I have no idea whether to expect that here. Worth keeping an eye on, though

Skate-Leading Stars

Uh, so the PVs make it look like a fairly standard sports story, but the character designs and most of the other promotional material lean much more towards "we have pretty boys, please love them". In any case, the staff is pretty underwhelming. I'd maintain cautious pessimism here

Show By Rock!! Stars!!

The cast of the original and the cast of Mashumairesh. Be interesting to see how that works out, since from what I've seen the fandoms for those two are a lot more separate than you might think

Soukou Musume Senki

Underwhelming PV, fairly nothing premise, does have the writer of Sengoku Basara, though, so there is some hope

So I'm a Spider, So What?

Despite some surface-level similarities, this is very different from the slime isekai. What we have here is basically a cross between a traditional isekai, with it's game systems and rapid power growth, and a shounen fighting manga, where the main character is constantly getting in fights against superior opponents. ...It's my favourite for both genres? The fights are very inventive, and have real strategic depth. Kumo has a fun personality, too (which is good, since it's basically a one-spider show)

I do wish the anime had gone with the manga designs, though. Human eyes don't look right on a spider

Suppose a Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town

Not isekai, has no game elements, the title is just a metaphor. ...The source material is okay? Worth a look if you want a comedy, but I wouldn't expect it to be any kind of a big deal

WAVE!!

Decompiled movie trilogy, so it might have some wonky editing/pacing if this wasn't intended. That aside, the staff is solid and the animation looks good, so this should likely be on the higher end of pretty boy sports series

Wixoss Diva(A)Live

So, definitely still about a card game. Has idols and other forms of music girls. More than likely a continuity reboot. Between the title not quite including the word 'alive' and maintaining the previous series' colour palette for the RL sequences, I think it's still a death game

Wonder Egg Priority

So the big thing here is that the writer is an apparently popular j-drama writer, and hasn't written for anime before. I'd expect some kind of supernatural twist that'd be hard to do well in live-action (particularly with the weird name and caginess about the plot)