Weiss & Ramblings

I have to say, Spring 2017 was quite an enjoyable ride. Maybe I'm just getting better at identifying shows that suck before they run, or I'm just becoming more accepting of trash. Like most things, it's probably "a little of column A, a little of column B", but unfortunately I'm not here to start a discussion about changing tastes; I'm here to spew my opinions about Chinese cartoons, so let's jump right in. A few shows from this season went two-cour, so as per usual I'm going to omit them from reviews. If I had to drop any opinion about them though, I'd definitely say that Boku no Hero Academia S2 and Re:Creators are definitely worth checking out. --- Zouroku's special form of old man "justice" is always a riot.

As this season comes to a close I find myself looking forward to a yet to the upcoming spring season rather than reveling in this year's "hot and cold" winter season. Overall, shows this season were either pretty damn good or total trash, with only a few "meh"s to speak of. Thankfully, great shows and terrible shows are pretty easy to write about, so strap on in as I run down everything I watched this season, good and bad. I'd say again that I'll try to keep it brief, but we all know that's a bold-faced lie. Insert "rate-within-genre" blurb here, etc... etc... Shows that hold-over into spring will not be rated ( Little Witch Academia ). --- This kind of fight animation from the first episode is the best the show ever looked.

Well, the fall season has finally come to a close. Since I did a "first impressions" post this time around and started watching 18 shows this season, I'm going to keep this one a little more brief than my previous "Season in Review" posts, although that likely isn't going to happen. For the most part, everything played out as expected with only a few surprises and let-downs. Again, i rate everything in-genre, so if something seems a little higher or lower than you'd think, remember that I'm rating against a show's contemporaries and not cross-genre. I'd rant again about the worthlessness of cross-genre ranking but I've done it to death. Anyway, I'm only going to score out stuff that finished this season, so stuff that continued into winter like March Comes In Like a Lion  and Trickster  won't be included. Let's get right into it. ---

We're about 3 or 4 weeks into the fall season, and as per the usual for the industry, the showing is far stronger overall than what we had in the summer. While we don't have an overblown blockbuster in a true sense like spring and summer's Re:Zero, there is definitely a higher general quality in what's airing. That's not to say anything this season is particularly amazing (yet), but there's a notable absence of true dumpster fire series like last season's Taboo Tattoo or Orange. Like the sensible, employed man I am, I made the executive decision to pick up EIGHTEEN series this season. However, my mistake is your gain; I'll give a short synopsis of what I've seen, and whether you should watch it, try it, or just flat out drop it/never start it. Let's get started, shall we? ---

Before I get into the thick of it, I'd like to take a moment to quickly touch on two things: I rate for purposes of recommendation to others, within a show's genre. Like any piece of art, anime is subjective and I don't see any way of attaching a qualitative rating to a subjective medium unless I can categorize a show and compare it to its contemporaries. I try as best I can to keep my personal enjoyment and biases out of my scores, but that's likely impossible. This is why my personal favorites and my top scorers don't always perfectly match up; I try to keep numbers as objective as possible. I'm 'No Drop'. That means I never drop something that I start watching, no matter how bad it gets. This is good for you, because it means you don't have to watch garbage because I'll do it for you. I just hate leaving things unfinished, even if they aren't really worth finishing. Honestly, I just love complaining so much that I turned to terrible a...

For anyone who isn't already aware, I do a lot of streaming for my local Super Smash Brothers Melee community, or rather, I used to. Ever since my senior year workload increased, it's been one thing after another: graduating, looking for a job, getting adjusted to a new job, whatever. It's been hard for me to justify continuing to stream and push footage out at the rate that I used to back when I was in college not too long ago. In general, appreciation for the stream (especially at the weekly) was waning dramatically with our weekly series becoming incredibly stale and losing PR player attendance. In addition to all that, s treaming is a hell of a hassle, requiring me to be the first one in and the last one out from events, cutting drastically into my time to actually enjoy the game, and forcing me to carry around a large amount of equipment that takes an incredible amount of time to set up and tear down.  "Oh, he'll stream his home commute but not fucking Mo...

Let's open this discussion with an example we're all familiar with. Imagine your professor just assigned the class a critical essay on this week's lecture topics. Like all essay assignments you've ever received in your life, this one has a page limit, let's say, 4 pages. Can't be more, can't be less. As you sit down the night before it's due to finally complete (or start) the assignment, you're likely to face one of two problems: 1. You are struggling to meet the 4 page limit that was set for you, experiencing a lack of material to complete the essay or have simply answered the prompt in a concise manner. 2. You are struggling to trim down your essay to fit into the 4 page limit, left feeling like you could not adequately prove your point within the limit or that there is just too much material to be fit within such a small space. Neither situation feels great for you: you either feel frustrated that you just can't seem to fill up those 4 p...