Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of The Anime Pulse! With the Winter anime season coming to an end, it’s time to take a look at some of the shows I’m going to be watching in the upcoming Spring anime season!
But first, I would like to say that I am not alone on this column! Joining me and making her Outerhaven debut is my new partner in crime when it comes to reviewing anime, Alea Kilday! Alea will be assisting me each season in reviewing shows which means there will be even more anime content on the site and perhaps a few joint reviews as well! I can’t watch and/or like everything so having a second person is going to help with that tremendously.
Also, to answer the question of “where was the Winter 2017 Anime column?”, I can simply say there wasn’t one. For the first time since becoming an anime fan, there was not one single show that caught my interest. I do want to say that it doesn’t mean that the shows in the season were bad, but they just didn’t have a premise behind them that caught my eye. The Spring season; however… oh boy.
Before I take the stage and give you guys the rundown of the shows I will be watching, I’m going to kick it over to Alea (i.e copy and paste her E-Mail hue hue!) and let her tell you which shows she will be watching come Spring.
ALEA’S PICKS
Renai Boukun (Love Tyrant, The very lovely tyrant of love)
I’m a sucker for a romantic comedy and the synopsis for Renai Boukun has me interested to say the least. In a twist similar to Death Note, an angel named Guri must create couples to fulfill her job as cupid by writing names in her Kiss Note. The catch is, if the person whose name is written does not kiss someone, they die. This happens to Aino Seiji, just an average high school student and is convinced to kiss his crush who happens to be the popular girl at school. It turns out that his crush, Hiyama Akane, already has strong feelings for Seiji which seem comparable to Yuno Gasai from Future Diary. In all, i think it will be hilarious and hope I am not disappointed.
Sakurada Reset
This story is about a town named Sakurada where its citizens have supernatural powers. To bring order and monitor the citizens of Sakurada exists a group known as Kanrikyoku. The Kanrikyoku delegate missions to a group of high school students at Ashiharabashi High School who are in a school club, the name is roughly translated to “Service Club”. The members have powers such as Reset, where the user can reset the world 3 days and another has the power to remember the past, even a past that has been reset.
Sakurada Reset has a mystery tag on it which perks my interest to show it will not be an ordinary slice of life anine. There is an underlying tragic story that I cannot wait to dive into and see how these characters change the world.
JOSH’S PICKS
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Yes, I am a Naruto fan. While shows like Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats were my true first experiences in anime, Naruto became my true gateway into the anime world. It’s when I realized that anime wasn’t a Saturday morning cartoon and was a living, breathing entity. My friend Mike got me into anime through Naruto and I stuck with it throughout the good and the bad. While Boruto looks to be an original story (since the manga is simply re-telling the movie at this point, thus making the movie the ONLY source material), I’m still willing to give it a shot. However, I can still hear the haters out there complaining that Studio Pierrot is now making an entire Naruto series that’s nothing but filler!
Clockwork Planet
The synopsis REALLY grabbed my attention on this one. A black box suddenly crashes into a house of a high school dropout. Inside is a female automaton and it sparks an endless cycle of failure and success. The world that does change and the mankind that does not change.
This really sounds like a deep philosophical anime just from the description. Since I am the kind of person that doesn’t really read source material as I am an anime first, manga second kind of guy, I didn’t really know if this series had a good following, but with an intriguing synopsis and some positive feedback so far, I decided to check this show out for myself
Eromanga-sensei
Yes… I know what kind of anime this is going to be. Lots of loli moe fanservice hooha and whatnot. Sometimes you need to have a really dumb show to distract you from the other stuff you’re watching. A show where you just put your brain aside, sit back and watch. This is going to be one of those shows. I can already foresee the massive pile of anime tropes that this show is going bury itself in and while I usually condemn this stuff, it just looks dumb enough for me to watch.
In fact… without even watching it, I can probably give you a review of the show right now.
Masamune Izumi is a light novel author in high school. His sister, Sagiri, is a shut-in that forces her brother to bring her meals, thus ripping off a plot point of Welcome to the NHK…. Except with 100% less emotional impact. However, Masamune is a pervert and loves to draw erotic pictures. In his efforts to get her to leave her room, typical and embarrassing sexual situations occur because the two have an incestual interest in each other! But wait! Here comes the third wheel in the form of another girl who becomes Sagiri’s rival! Set to a random electronic opening theme song with either a choice of violins or trumpets backing the droll and uninteresting main melody and most likely sung by the main cast’s voice actors in a futile effort to become the next LiSA / Girls Dead Monster, this shows offers up a mediocre comedy experience at best that can be experienced in just about every other random romcom show each and every season!
2 / 5 Stars!
There… that wasn’t hard! I think I just saved myself a review come June!
Fukumenkei Noise
This looks to be the romantic drama of the season or at least a romantic slice-of-life story. I actually love stories like this and since it involves music, I’m even more interested. Nino has to say farewell to two of her childhood friends, one of which was her love interest, the other is a boy who composes music. Nino makes a promise to continue singing until they find her voice again. Time passes and the three of them are now in high school.
In fact, the premise of this show is so interesting to me that I requested the first volume of the manga from VIZ Media to review. For the first time ever, I will be reading the manga alongside the anime! That may not seem like a big deal to a lot of you, but trust me, that is a rarity from me!
Re:Creators
I was on the fence about this show because it seemed really interesting, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to be interesting enough. Humans have created many stories. Joy, sadness, anger, deep emotion. Stories that shake our emotions and fascinate us. However, these are only the thoughts of bystanders, but what if the characters in the story have “intentions”? To them, are we god-like existences for bringing their story into the world?
So it sounds like those who create stories change the world around them, but what happens when multiple creators change the world? It’s almost akin to playing God. The premise sounds really interesting, but it’s the key visual that’s throwing me off. It looks very shounen-esque and that’s where I feel like the show is going to be cheapened. It has the description of a seinen fantasy drama, but the appeal of a shounen battle series. I’ll give it a shot. Worst thing that could happen is I drop the show, right?
Renai Boukun
As Alea alluded to earlier, this is basically a twisted Death Note meets Mirai Nikki. I think she summed it up pretty well so I won’t go into my reason. Needless to say, this looks like it’s going to be a sleeper comedy hit!
Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Flat
This is the second season of How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend. I loved the first season (a review of which can be found here, by the way) so it’s only natural that I’m going to watch the second season!
Shingeki no Kyojin 2
And we saved the best for last (TRIGGER WARNING! INCOMING “ATTACK ON TITAN IS OVERRATED HOW DARE YOU CALL IT THE BEST” HATE MAILS AND COMMENTS) mainly because it was also last alphabetically.
Yep… we are getting the second season to Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan series. I, personally, don’t care if you hated it. I loved it and I am psyched for the second season… especially since this series turned me into a manga reader and I want to see the material animated… especially with the beautiful art that Wit is known for. If you don’t like it… don’t watch it and feel free to skip my review come September/October.
With that being said, those are our picks for the Spring anime season. What are yours? Did we miss some shows that you are amped up for? Let us know what you want to watch in the comments section below or fire of an email to joshpiedra@theouterhaven.net and/or aleakilday@theouterhaven.net
If you’re into the social media thing, you can follow me @TheAnimePulse on Twitter.
Until next time,
Ja ne!
