Another season has come upon us, another 3 months has passed us by and a new age of anime
lies before us.
Which sounds rather dramatic for something so usual and common.
Yes a new season of anime is airing and with it new entries into the lexicon of anime culture.
New potential leaders of our fandom!
Shows that we might be talking about for years to come!
Or you know, maybe just the next few weeks.
“Oh hey get excited about this show you’re not
going to care about 4 months from now”.
It makes you wonder why we bother sometimes doesn’t it?
Well the reason why we bother is very simple.
For every season that airs, there is the chance however small that there is a series within
it that will be THAT show.
A show that sticks with you, a show that reminds you why you watched anime to begin with, a
show you can point to instantly when you have a friend that askes the inevitable question
“So uh...Anything good this season?”
So today!
I have scowered through the information we have before us on the upcoming Summer 2017
season, and bring you 5 shows.
One of which, if we are very lucky will perhaps be for you THAT show.
I can hope anyways.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and others I would like to present my Top 5 Most Anticipated Anime
of Summer 2017.
Let’s Jam.
So how are our prospects?
Well I’m never one to judge an entire season so early in it’s life cycle, though coming
off last season with the double Saturday hitter of MHA, and Titan, along with several other
noteworthy shows airing during the week, the summer season has a lot to live up to.
I’m going to start off with a personal pick, one that I doubt many people will agree with
but hey this is my list.
NEW GAME!!!
The first season of new game aired last year and it was a wonderfully wholesome comedy
slice of live that gave a, quite exaggerated, view into video game development.
It was not a series that I would have ever pointed to as one to be taken seriously as
far as its depiction of the job or what those people do for a living but the setting was
intriguing regardless.
It ended up being one of the few anime from it’s season that I followed each week until
completion and I’m very excited to see another season come from it.
We live in an era that sequels to things that don’t have massive mainstream success either
never are seen again or get far more adaptations then necessary.
Hopefully I don’t end up getting too much of a good thing here and start to hate the
series by the end.
*sigh* Next up, an interesting entry.
Fate/Apocrypha.
The fate franchise and I have had an interesting history together.
First with me proclaiming that the 2006 adaptation of Fate / Stay night was my favourite anime
of all time, an opinion I have long since changed, and now Fate as a series has more
entries and spinoffs across multiple mediums then I can possibly keep track of.
Even if tried apparently the few that we DO get in the west have localization problems
up the wazoo.
Totally talking about Fate/Grand Order right now
I’m also even in the process of doing up a video on a newcomer’s guide to the fate franchise
#PleaseLookForwardTooIt But here we have Fate/Apocrypha, an adaptation
to a light novel that really has nothing to do chronologically with any anime adaptation
of Fate that we’ve seen before.
The setting is an alternate reality where some shinigans happened in the backstory and
now everything is different.
A crapton of events from the main fate franchise never occurred.
So we get a bunch of new characters, new servants, and a whole new battle to hopefully watch
and enjoy.
Personally it’s on the list for two reasons, one its Fate, and while I completely realise
it has a convoluted continuity and I am sorely lacking in knowledge of it.
The chance to dive back into the Fate with something un-related to the original Fate
/ Stay Night is a thing I’ve been pinning for a while now.
I’m also interested in what A-1 Pictures ends up doing now that they’ve been handed
this series.
It’ll inevitably be compared to the ufotable adaptations especially with Heavens’ Feel
coming up, so to see what they can pull under such pressures might be interesting.
Or it’ll just be a wet hot mess and I won’t watch beyond the first few episodes.
We’ll have to see.
Centaur No Nayami Here’s a series I’ve been looking forward
to for a while.
Earlier this year we bore witness to a similar show by the name of Interviews with Monster
Girls.
It was a short 12 episode comedy with demi girls on parade that attempted to showcase
how these quote unquote “monster girls” actually survived everyday life.
And while I did enjoy the series and thought it was lovely, I also thought that it never
went far enough.
I’m not looking for Monster Musume or Monster Girl Quest levels of monster girls but when
you have a story about Monster girls it would really help your case if the majority of them
didn’t look like looked like they could just pass themselves off as normal people.
Hell they were all normal looking if you only counted from the neck down.
So now this season brings us Centaur no Nayami, which looks to be solving that problem quite
quickly.
The promotional videos show several different species of Monster girl and the general feeling
that these PV’s give off is a light hearted one.
Not one heavily steeped in comedy either.
Comedy is fine of course but I’m hoping for something a bit more wholesome if we can
get it.
and hopefully this series will provide.
Princess Principal I fully expect many people to write this series
off as the promotional material looks like it’s going to be some wired action hybrid
with girls in semi-maid outfits.
They are not actually maid outfits, they are school uniforms, though I doubt that helps
matters much.
It’s a story set in 19th century London, and the brief synopsis talks about spies and
disguises and intrigue.
The feeling I’m getting is quite similar to some anime from the early 2000’s, specifically
the series Noir.
Not surprising since the director of Princess Principal Masaki Tachibana directed an episode
of Noir and did some storyboards as well.
So the similarity stands.
On top of all of that the PV teases us with this interesting take on Jazz music from the
lovely Yuki Kajiura.
I’m not sure I’m necessarily sold on her composition used here, as the mix between
Jazz and the traditional vocals she has in her works sounded a bit odd.
But the last time Kajiura was attached to a series starring a group of young girls we
got Madoka.
And while I am not expecting that kind of a heal turn in the plot I’m hopeful for
something at least intriguing.
Last out of the 5 I wanted to look at is a series called “The Reflection”, I’ll
give you one guess to figure out what made me look into it.
Obviously it’s Stan Lee.
No, though that is an interesting facet of the project.
Here’s what we know about it.
It’s a super hero series that has Stan Lee’s fingerprints on it, it’s being directed
by Hiroshi Nagahama who previously directed the entirety of Mushishi, and!
It’s going to be going head to head with My Hero Academia by airing on a Saturday,
They are either really confident or really stupid.
Nagahama’s direction though is what makes me feel like this series has a chance.
Anime adaptations of actual Marvel works have never been that noteworthy in the past, but
an original IP with a good team behind it has a chance of being something great.
As long as it’s better than the very barebones synopsis we currently have then I’ll be
happy.
Just having it being “Well we have a perfectly normal world and then suddenly SUPER POWERS!”
has been done to death and it’ll take something special to separate it from other shows that
are similar.
So that’s my current 5, beyond these there are several shows that I might check out but
haven’t seen anything as of yet to make me excited.
A diving series that may or may not be better than Free, a series to show that even competitive
quizzes can be exciting, and another series about a normal guy being sucked into a fantasy world.
This time with a working smartphone!
I’d like to be optimistic about these but it’s very hard at this juncture.
We’ll see what changes in the next couple of weeks.
So that’s it from me!
A special thank you to all my patrons who make these videos possible including Viktor Ekmark, Joshua Garcia,
Hedrel Leon, Bing Theo, Calhoonboy, and Siri Yamako who are especially awesome.
And until next time, ladies, gentlemen, and others: Stay Frosty!