Favorites of the Spring 2018 Season So Far

Another half-an-anime-season goes by and surprisingly, I’ve been keeping up with 3x the amount of shows that I watched last season! …I have to get SOME credit for that, I believe coming from a person who only watched like four shows in the Winter season.

But in seriousness, I’m loving the Spring season so far and while I never really wrote down my first impressions for all of these shows in a proper post format, I think the initial reactions I tweeted on Twitter were sufficient…

Today like the last mid-season post I did, I’ll be talking about my favorite things about this Spring season so far, with the addition of a fun choice or two that I made up on the spot.

Let’s begin!

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Favorite Show(s)

It’s gonna have to be a split choice here since I simply can’t have only one favorite show this season…

I don’t usually watch sports anime but if what I’m seeing with Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is how sports anime usually are then damn, I must be missing out! I’ll be honest and say I hesitated a little with this particular show. I mean how can you not, at first glance it’s a show about horse girls racing who happen to also be idols… and I’m here (as a fan of idols) asking what’s the point of incorporating the idol element in this story. Well… I guess that’s a pretty easy question to answer: because idols are money makers.

But once I watched the first two episodes of this show, I was genuinely enjoying it. As I said, sports anime is not my cup of tea but once I got to experience the intriguing intensity of these races, this show got me on the edge of my seat so often, seeing if Spe-chan or any of the other racers of Spica will win their races or not. But not only is the “sports” aspect of this show good, the various characters are enjoyable, it’s visually appealing and overall, it’s a show that doesn’t disappoint.

Lupin III: Part V on the other hand, ooooh, so good. I would say that I’m still a newbie in the Lupin franchise, the first Lupin-related thing I’ve seen was the Miyazaki created film, The Castle of Cagliostro (which you can read my review on it on #moe404) and since then, I’ve loved the series and wanted watch the older installments, from the ones from the 1970s-80s to the more modern series released in 2015. While I’m not caught up with this particular series given that it’s the fifth part, I’m still really enjoying it!

In this installment, Lupin and the gang go over to Paris, France where their thievery plans are interrupted by a group of black market/deep web sellers with their goal being to finally kill Lupin once and for all. While escaping is usually a piece of cake for Lupin and the gang, they find that modern technology and social media make it significantly harder for them to get out of the line of sight. In my opinion, I think you pretty much just need to know the characters, the overall premise and reoccurring gags the series shows to understand and enjoy what’s going on (because that’s what I’m going off of). If you like the genres of action, adventure, mystery and comedy, this would be a great show to check out if you haven’t.

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Unpopular Choice/Dark Horse

…”dark horse” is pushing it a little, but I really do enjoy this show while I don’t see many people talking about it a lot around the community.

Hisone to Masotan is a show made by studio BONES, and is about rookie cadet Amakasu Hisone who discovers a live dragon while wandering around the Gifu base of the Air Self-Defense Force and it chooses Hisone to become its pilot. Because of this, Hisone is then quickly sucked into the “OTF” program and finds a way to be successful in her new job, given that she is clumsy as hell.

There are a lot of things that I enjoy about this show. The entertaining characters such as Hisone herself and her relationship with “rival” Kaizaki Nao, the concept alone of dragons turning into fighter jets sounds interesting, the art style is very unique and something I’ve never really seen before in anime and it’s pretty much a fun show to watch. And now that I look at it, the seiyuu cast is pretty stacked with voices like Kuno Misaki (Momo from 3-gatsu no Lion) and Kurosawa Tomoyo (Kumiko from Sound! Euphonium).

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Favorite Opening

I was going to put Ooishi Masayoshi’s “Otomodachi Film” from Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai here buuuuut, this opening is just super catchy, it’s hard to compete.

Like many others, I am enjoying A-1’s Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii for both the chillax romance between both duos of Hirotaka/Narumi and Koyanagi/Kabakura, and of course the entertaining comedy that consists of otaku or nerdy topics a lot of us has experienced such as cosplaying or collecting figurines. But one of my other favorite things about this show is, the opening! I have never heard of the band Sumika before (mainly because this is the only anime opening they’ve done) but the lead vocalist’s nice voice and the fun tone of the song just makes it hard for me to skip it.

Plus, you just can’t skip this cute part in the opening visuals:

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Favorite Ending

I’m actually not paying much attention to the endings this season. I’m even having a hard time remembering any of the endings for any of the shows I’m watching right now… well, except for one.

I think this is the only memorable one for me because, well, it’s a French song. Apparently this is a song from a pretty well-known artist over there in France, and you know, it’s fairly catchy. It’s not one of my favorite endings of recent anime seasons but you can appreciate the unique song selection BONES had for this show. You don’t see many foreign songs in anime.

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Favorite Character

To be very honest with you, the only parts of Hinamatsuri that I’m enjoying now are the ones with Anzu in them. At first, I thought Anzu would just be the annoying rival of Hina who would never back down in a fight but when the transition of her becoming homeless and being a part of a unique family of homeless men and learning many useful things from them, we got an actual, intriguing story developing Anzu as a character and showing off her new lifestyle. And just seeing the most recent episode that almost made me emotional, it’s safe to say that I’d rather watch a show based around Anzu and her life rather than Hina and Nitta.

Hitomi is another good choice, a middle school student who is a bartender by night. Very odd but funny.

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Favorite Hairstyle

gooooooooood… Kaos has been a fun character to watch in Comic Girls but a significant feature of hers and other than noticing her funny reaction faces throughout the show, her hairstyle keeps changing. My favorite variation is definitely the twin buns. It look good on her.

Also, uhhhhhh who wouldn’t want to be scolded by a beautiful teacher, i’m with her on this one

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Favorite Seiyuu Performance

Gonna have to give this one to the main cast of Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai.

Doga Kobo managed to get a stacked seiyuu cast for their new original anime, that was one of the first things I noticed about it. Let me just list them and what each of them have been in:

• Nakamura Yuuichi (Tada Mitsuyoshi) – Okazaki Tomoya from Clannad
• Iwami Manaka (Teresa Wagner) – Hoshinomori Chiaki from Gamers! [aka best girl over Tendou]
• Ishigami Shizuka (Hasegawa Hinako/HINA) – Ikuno from Darling in the FranXX
• Shimoji Shino (Alexandra Magritte) – Oozora Akari from Aikatsu!; Miyamae Tooru from Seiren [aka not best girl from that show, I’d pick Nanasaki over everyone else]
• Miyano Mamoru (Ijuuin Kaoru) – Okabe Rintarou/Hououin Kyouma from the Steins;Gate series, Matsuoka Rin from Free!
• Minase Inori (Tada Yui) – Rem from Re:Zero, Chito from Girls Last Tour
• Shimono Hiro (Yamashita Kentarou) – Katsuragi Keima from TWGOK, Connie Springer from Attack on Titan
• Umehara Yuuichirou (Sugimoto Hajime) – Goro from Darling in the FranXX, Kamitani Hayato from Gakuen Babysitters

As you can see, this cast is just golden. And while I can definitely hear some of the seiyuu’s past roles/voices in their respective characters, I think they all do a good job depicting this group of characters pretty well. I mean Miyano sounds like a happier Okarin!

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Favorite Visuals

I think I’ll have to give this one to Uma Musume: Pretty Derby. The animation in the races is smooth and amazing to look at and the art in general is pretty damn clean. For a show that shows a lot of movement, fast movement that is, they did a great job. But keep in mind that this is coming from a person who doesn’t watch sports anime. 🙂

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I think that’s all I want to talk about today. I didn’t put in any “least favorites” in this list this time around because there’s surprisingly not a lot that I don’t like this season, other than the shows that I dropped after one or two episodes, so yeah!

I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the rest of this season, as I think I’m watching a good selections of shows right now. Also, I’d love to hear your favorite things in these categories, feel free to leave them in the comments 🙂

Thanks for reading!! 😀

-al