The Subarashii Winter 2024 Anime Season
What's up peeps? This is my third blog post about seasonal animu I've been watching. In case you missed it, I wrote about a revision to my anime rating system along with some additional commentary about the Fall 2023 season.
Anywho, another season started and I've picked up nine anime, dropped one, and am continuing watching two from the Fall season. And just like with the Spring 2023 season, the schedule of the animes I am watching makes it so that every day there is at least one new episode of some anime I am watching.
With these posts I usually start off talking about sequel season anime, but all the anime I am watching this season are first seasons, so I'll just jump in with the mid-season commentary for these in Monday to Sunday broadcast order:
'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess
Oh no! A warrior princess got captured by her enemies, and they employ their top interrogator to extract state secrets! The word "Torture" in the title is in quotes for a reason, because the torture in this anime is absolutely nothing like what you'd imagine when you hear the word. This is actually a totally fun and kind of relaxing anime that you'll love. It's a very bad idea to watch this show if you are hungry or craving something tasty. And the animation is excellent btw.
Villainess Level 99
Ah yes, a good ol' otome villainess isekai anime... except this time the main character is basically kuudere one-punch man. The main character is not the main boss of the fictional game world she was thrown into, but instead she's a 100% completion boss you must beat after beating the "final boss", but no one else knows that yet. And her goal is to navigate everything in such a way that nobody tries defeating her, not that anyone in this world is gamer-brained enough to do what is needed to grind to the (likely?) level cap she has reached.
Um, yeah, it's a pretty fun story so far. However... we're reaching QUALITY levels of animation in certain scenes that kind of subtract from the whole thing. The regular 2D animation parts are what you'd expect from a typical competently-made anime, but the 3DCG parts are awful. Like I'm certain whoever was assigned to do the 3D parts tried their damn best given their time, budget, skill, etc. constraints, but it's just so bad. And you see this 3D crap literally in the opening scene! I guess the good thing is that the 3D stuff isn't really needed often or used for anything that is important (so far at least).
The intro and the outro are total bangers though. Really love those.
Metallic Rouge
An original anime from Studio Bones. I can't really tell you much about it beyond that it's a 90s-vibe sci-fi anime set on a terraformed Mars where the main characters are fighting against some anti-government people. The reason I can't tell you much is because the show just throws you right in to the middle of the story and then slowly unravels what the heck is going on and why. This "show, don't tell" approach is not really for everyone. I'm fine with that, but I do take issue with the pacing and continuity.
Like in one of the episodes there was a sharp cut from one scene with the MC to another without the MC and then another with the MC again where it appears like half a day past, but it took me a moment to absorb that that passage of time actually occurred. These kind of missteps seem to subtract from what is otherwise a well-made show.
The intro and its full song are really nice. The animation is superb, zero complaints there. Wouldn't be a modern "90s sci-fi anime" without that, haha. But I wouldn't really recommend this show unless you are into this kind of genre though. Also it might be better to wait for everything to finish airing and just binge it.
Sokushi Cheat
Step aside people, another trash isekai show coming through. Main character can literally kill anyone and anything just by thinking it, and also knows immediately if you intend to kill him. Seems dumb, but they somehow make it work, with some smarter antagonists actually trying to figure out how to defeat or challenge the MC. And the repeated "you can't kill that" > "yes I can" > [drops dead] dynamic is a little amusing.
Weakest Tamer
Interesting little fantasy anime. The main character is basically an exiled/fugitive little girl who is on a journey to somewhere where she can be safe. She befriends a cute slime who keeps her company and helps her out. Also... the MC is kind of an isekai character? It'll make sense in context if you watch. Most of the show has chill & comfy vibes, but it is punctuated by unexpected scary events, so all the comfiness always has this tense undertone.
The story is cool and all, but the animation is fucking amazing. Not sure why they went so hard here. Both of these can't really be compared directly, but watching Weakest Tamer I feel a similar vibe as Wandering Witch.
Sousou no Frieren
I don't know if you've heard tons of people gush about this show or not, but they're doing it for good reason. The writing is amazing, everything in the story just fits together so well. Like Frieren is an experienced & powerful mage who has lived for a very long time, but she's not undefeatable and has ended up in situations where she could have died. Friren knows her strengths and weaknesses well, but even in situations where she could handle things solo, she chooses to give her younger party members an opportunity to get their own little wins. You can notice stuff like this, and it's really nice.
Right now the show is continuing from the Fall 2023 season and is in the middle of the "first-class mage exam" arc. We learn more about the magic system of this world, and a ton of interesting new characters are introduced. One of these characters is called Denken. It takes a while to show how amazing this guy is, but I think he's like the best side character of the series so far.
In my last blog post I said that I felt Apothecary Diaries was better than Frieren. I'm deeply sorry for saying that, I should have never doubted Frieren. Frieren is my favourite show of this season now.
Apothecary Diaries
The show is great. I love Maomao's adventures & antics. I did say this this anime was my favourite in the last blog post, and it's not that it got worse necessarily, it's just that Frieren has gone from great to greater while Apothecary Diaries has remained steady at its own "great" level.
A Sign of Affection
Far from your average show. It's a shoujo romance series where the lovers are a deaf girl (Yuki) who kind of lives in a small world, and a guy (Itsuomi) who is a globetrotting polyglot who became interested in learning sign language when he met Yuki. And this anime is soo damn cute, it's so sweet, sugar overload, I cannot handle it. Oh yeah, the animation is 5 stars. The way the animators use colour to indicate the mood is so amazing.
People are concerned about how Itsuomi is super touchy/handsy with Yuki, and I kind of agree with that. It's fine in context because Yuki doesn't mind since she's so mad in love and Itsuomi is a total gentleman otherwise, but it does feel odd still. This might be because the writer wanted to show that someone with a not 100% Japanese upbringing might be willing to get physically closer faster like Itsuomi and his many years spent living in the West. But then that feels like kind of an exaggerated stereotype of gaijins. Not a huge deal, but I wanted to mention this since it's popped up in discussions about this anime a few times.
Solo Levelling
This is just a dumb intense action power fantasy show, and that's totally fine. Interestingly the source material is a Korean manhwa. Crazy that it was popular enough that a Japanese studio decided it was worth animating. And the animation is very very good too.
7th Time Loop
Really interesting premise in this show! Main character is a woman, Rishie, who's died 6 times, always around the same time for similar reasons, and always in the same spot 5 years prior. In every loop Rishie learned different skills and met different people, so she has a ton of different skills and knowledge she can use to survive. For this 7th loop she decided to just chill out, but ended up running into the primary reason she died all those times... a handsome prince who always started a war that eventually killed her one way or another. Now Rishie's goal is also to figure out how to survive this loop using all the knowledge she has from her previous "lives".
The battles in this anime are so intense, but they're not fought with weapons, they're fought with words and ideas (and sometimes physical gestures). Like it's kind of mind games and information warfare. Rishie's skills, her knowledge of the future, and the people she's known previously give her an advantage in these battles, but not every timeline plays out the exact same way, and Rishie still has to improvise. The dialogue gets so intense and the drama is next-level. Such a hidden gem of a show.
That's all I have to say about the Winter 2024 anime season for now. Are you watching any of these shows or something else this season? What are your thoughts?