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The Best (and Worst) Anime of Fall 2018


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Joshua Zarate



Joined: 12 Jan 2017
Posts: 2061
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 5:26 am Reply with quote
My list:

1st. Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

2nd. Golden Kamuy (I’m honestly a little surprised and saddened to not even see a mention of this show anywhere in this article. It’s been a wild ride to say the least.)

Honorable Mentions:

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Zombie Land Saga, Bloom Into You

Last. I’ve lucked out this season and not watched anything that I would put in this category.

Overall, a pretty solid season and besides the shows that already have some in the works, I hope that these series can get more anime sometime in the future.
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MF65



Joined: 14 Dec 2017
Posts: 90
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 7:13 am Reply with quote
Best: Run With the Wind. What can I say? I'm usually a sucker for sports anime, and this one just really caught my heart and run away with it Laughing I feel like it's one of those anime that does everything right, from the characters, to the setting, to the pacing and with an excellent soundtrack to boot. Easily on my top 5 favourites of the year.

Runner up: Zombieland Saga/Golden Kamuy I can't really decide between these two. I don't like idol anime so, zombies or not, I was planning to stay far away from Zombieland Saga. Then the reviews started coming in and my curiosity won out. I'm very glad I did check this one. It's very endearing while somehow managing to be hilarious too. It even made me shed a couple of tears. I still roll my eyes at the musical numbers, but nothing surprised me as much this year as Zombieland Saga did.
As for Golden Kamuy... I don't think there's anything like it around. Season 2 upped not only the visuals, but also the sheer insanity of the story. Asirpa-san is still the best girl of the year and I might have to start reading the manga, since I can't wait to see where the story goes.

Worst: Tokyo Ghoul:re season 2. I don't have much more to add to what's been said already. I actually dropped this after the second episode because, even having read the manga, nothing made sense anymore. I'm just sad that such a great manga (... for the most part) had such a terrible adaptation. Here's to hoping that it gets the brotherhood treatment by a more competent studio sometime in the future.

[Edit]: snark removed. Don't make personal comments about reviewers or other posters here. Errnundra.
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alconnow





PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 7:29 am Reply with quote
MF65 wrote:

As for Golden Kamuy... I don't think there's anything like it around. Season 2 upped not only the visuals, but also the sheer insanity of the story. Asirpa-san is still the best girl of the year and I might have to start reading the manga, since I can't wait to see where the story goes.


If you want to read the manga, I would suggest starting from the very beginning. Unfortunately, the anime skipped a lot of chapters.
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Jonny Mendes



Joined: 17 Oct 2014
Posts: 997
Location: Europe
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 7:34 am Reply with quote
Fall 2018 Anime Awards

Best:Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume o Minai

Runner-up:Sword Art Online: Alicization

Dropped:Goblin Slayer

Honorabe Mention: Kishuku Gakkou no Juliet
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Stretch2424



Joined: 14 Mar 2008
Posts: 166
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 8:22 am Reply with quote
The shows I watched to completion this season were, in rough order of favorite to least favorite:

1.Goblin Slayer --something about this tale of an odd adventurer and the team that forms around him just grabbed ahold of my attention and wouldn't let go.
2.Space Battleship Tiramisu Zwei --the second season of a parody of mecha anime which is on a completely different and higher level than most anime comedy.
3.Zombieland Saga --There's nothing like a completely bizarre and impossible premise to make a show fun and original.
4.That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime --sort of like Overlord except that the protagonist is trying to do good in a fantasy world. It has a way of staying fresh.
5.Sword Art Online Alicization --This show is halfway complete but I'm still wondering exactly where it is going.
6.Anima Yell! --a silly but fun show about 5 girls trying to form a credible cheer leading squad.
7.Akanesasu Shoujo --5 girls have discovered a passageway to alternate realities. It wasn't as 'deep' as I had initially expected but was enjoyable nevertheless.
8.Gurazeni S2 --Though it wasn't brilliant, I felt it would be a shame to pass up a show with the original premise that this one had.
9.Himote House --5 girls living together--and each is a psychic. Bizarre humor--which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't—ensues.
10.Otona no Bouguya-san --a weird short about a guy who sells kinky armor for adventurers.
11.Ulysses--Jeanne d' Arc to Renkin no Kishi –While it seemed to start off well by the end I had little idea what was going on anymore.

(Notice how many shows involved '5 girls'?)
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SailorTralfamadore



Joined: 25 Feb 2014
Posts: 499
Location: Keep Austin Weeb
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 2:56 pm Reply with quote
Even if a character isn't actually trans, but is actually a crossdressing cis person, you guys do get that making a big joke out of how appalled and shocked everyone is over that "reveal" and making it clear that you're supposed to agree with them is still transphobic?

It's a crappy attitude that results in prejudice toward actual trans people, often one that gets them hurt IRL, so it still counts as "transphobia" even if the target isn't trans.

That's a little like saying that it's "not homophobic" to call a straight person anti-gay slurs, or "not racist" if the person you're making fun of for being dark-skinned is actually of European descent. It's about the attitude behind the joke itself, more so than the person's identity. Obviously it's worse if the person is actually from that group, but bigoted attitudes are still bigoted attitudes.

Just clearing that up, since it seemed based on a few posts that people were confused on that point. Now if you want to disagree that you were supposed to agree with the characters and laugh at that reveal yourself, go ahead, make that case, but "it's a male character crossdressing" doesn't actually change anything about the tone of the joke.
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Yttrbio



Joined: 09 Jun 2011
Posts: 3652
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 3:22 pm Reply with quote
What exactly was the joke? I don't remember anyone being appalled, and I don't remember anyone but Kirill being surprised. The only joke I understood was that Kirill is so dense that he was surprised by what was not particularly surprising (along the lines of him keeping Yuri's "secret"). The "reveal" was even more irrelevant and non-sequitur than most of the stuff in the show, which loved telling jokes like that.
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 4:43 pm Reply with quote
Yttrbio wrote:
What exactly was the joke? I don't remember anyone being appalled, and I don't remember anyone but Kirill being surprised.


Yeah, this and Deana not wanting to tell Derick in order to mess with him is all the jokes i remember. I honestly didn't notice any "ha ha, this is weird, let's all laugh about the guy who pretends to be a woman!"...and what about Max' backstory where she unconditionally supported her best friend, was that transphobic as well?
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4888
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 5:29 pm Reply with quote
Theron on Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight wrote:
late in the game Ulysses develops a truly bizarre plot twist, and I don't mean that in a good sense.


I'm guessing you mean the part spoiler[with gods and spaceships]. Yeah, that was weird. It also had fairly awful animation (wtf is this). And there were a lot of odd slow out of place zooms. Ulysses would have easily been the worst anime I watched all-year if not for My Sister, My Writer.
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#HayamiLover



Joined: 22 Jul 2018
Posts: 796
Location: Eastern Europe
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 7:08 pm Reply with quote
Rose Bridges, I hardly know you, but thank you so much for your feedback! This is one of the best posts about yuri and teenage romantic drama in general, that I've read lately. Also, thank you for motivating me to take a look at My Love Story and finally complite Bloom into you!
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VerQuality



Joined: 01 Oct 2016
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:07 pm Reply with quote
I'm so glad Rose Bridges mentioned Michiru Oshima's OST for Bloom Into You, it was terrific and absolutely elevated the already stellar material.

As far as favourites go, it's really hard to narrow it down; there were a lot of great series this season. Thunderbolt Fantasy was its usual, brilliant self; Bloom Into You was a terrific yuri series (although the OP still kind of freaks me out, with the weird dolls and dead-looking flowers); Vanguard had a fun run; and yugioh Vrains finally revealed it had a plot. But my vote for top series has to be Gridman. It really feels like this is what Trigger promised from when it started up as a studio, but has never quite managed due to a constant fall-off in the later half of its (full-length) series. It's a series not only filled for passion for a variety of nerdy pursuits, but also a powerful and affecting emotional core. (I also watched Index, and especially having read the novels beforehand, it was disappointing and horribly rushed - it had some nice background art, though).
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 9:55 am Reply with quote
I find it surprising that none of the reviewers even mentioned Golden Kamuy. While it lagged a bit in the middle episodes, the dramatic last third certainly made up for any earlier lapses.

And kudos to Rebecca for naming Kitarou her top pick. While no episode this fall rose to the heights of episode 20 about Japan's whitewashing of its role in WWII, the Backbeard arc gave us an appealing new character in Agnes, a dark look at ethnocentrism, and an American imperialist as the main villain. I hope they blow through the announced fifty episodes and keep on going for years to come. I'll be watching.

Two voice-acting performances stood out for me. One is the voicing of Nanashi, the spectral villain in Kitarou, by veteran Banjo Ginga. As someone commented on another forum, it must have been quite the scene when he performed this role in the studio. The other memorable performance came from Aoi Yuuki, the voice of the demonic sword Seven Blasphemous Deaths in Thunderbolt Fantasy. She totally captured the seductive power of the sword in a nuanced voicing.
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idioteva



Joined: 04 Apr 2011
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 10:45 am Reply with quote
Dekaichi was horrible. For 15 odd years I've watched every bl and yaoi series or I've and this is the first I have ever dropped.
There were no redeeming factors to the show. It wasn't even so bad it was good, it was just plain bad.
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gridsleep





PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 8:26 pm Reply with quote
Thunderbolts Are Go! F.A.B.

Sorry. I've been watching marionette shows since the 1960s, particularly Gerry Anderson's. This is not a new genre.
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Lactobacillus yogurti



Joined: 17 Aug 2011
Posts: 845
Location: Latin America
PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:40 am Reply with quote
Japan has had a long history of puppet/marionette shows. They were fairly popular in Latin America in the 80s/90s.
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