Spring 2015 Anime Midseason Overview

Mid-season of the anime season of Spring 2015 is upon us, so time to round up how I feel about the shows I’m current on, or decided to put on hold. A round-up telling you what I think is worthy of your time, or not, and where it’s at. This season I decided to pick up less shows than usual, and hold off what I expected will be “averagish”, so let’s see how it panned out.

Tiers are in-order of enjoyment/evaluation. Within each tier the order is alphabetical. Also, each show will get a couple of words about how the past week’s episode had been, because I’d rather jot these down.

Great:

OreGairu Season 2 (SNAFU Too!):

If you keep at things for long enough, things will boil over and drama will ensue. The light atmospheric comedy of the first season is rarely seen, and instead Hikigaya Hachiman is brought to task over the way he “solves” things. It’s as if the finale to the Cultural Festival arc was stretched into an entire season. Yes, Hachiman is still allowed to perform his “cool martyr” act, and people who really want to can still believe it’s everyone around him who sucks, but the show, and Hachiman know it’s he who suffers. A very sharp take on human interaction and loneliness. If you liked the first season for “cool Hachiman” and the more standard RomCom antics, you might be disappointed, but otherwise? Pretty great.

Winter 2015 Anime Overview – Week 13 – Final Week! (Anime Power Ranking)

The new show is about to start later today, so this will be the last opportunity to look at the episodes we received this past week, the final offerings of the Winter 2015 anime season. The episode write-ups linked usually have an overview of the season in its entirety as well, so take a look!

The shows covered will be Assassination Classroom (Ansatsu Kyoushitsu), Death Parade, Durarara!!x2, Junketsu no Maria (Maria the Virgin Witch), Log Horizon S2, Parasyte: the Maxim (Kiseiju), and Shirobako.

1) Death Parade episode 12:

Episode 11, with its skating sequence alongside Chiyuki’s memory montage was truly special, perhaps the best episode of the season for me. While this episode did not top it, it stood just as tall, which is already an achievement.

Winter 2015 Anime Overview – Weeks 11-12 (Anime Power Ranking)

The penultimate episodes are upon us, so just before shows finally give us their final episodes, let’s see what we’ve got on our hands. Spoiiler – because I’ve dropped most of the shows I didn’t care for, anything ranged from “average” to “absolutely sublime”, the past two weeks, and especially the last, had been extraordinarily strong. A great finish to a good season. Now just to hope the finales all deliver as well.

The shows covered will be Assassination Classroom (Ansatsu Kyoushitsu), Death Parade, Durarara!!x2, Junketsu no Maria (Maria the Virgin Witch), Log Horizon S2, Parasyte: the Maxim (Kiseiju), and Shirobako.

1) Death Parade episodes 10-11:

The last two episodes have been magical. I think they truly worked great as “two episodes”, and were best to talk of them in said manner. Death Parade isn’t always consistent in its pace, but rather than call it “uneven”, it often feels, and certainly did this time around as if it’s a conscious decision, just as one could read an anthology of short stories that don’t all follow the same tone. So it was here, and these two slower episodes felt more thoughtful, more deliberate, and infinitely more intimate.