It’s that time of the season again everyone. Fall anime have just about wrapped up completely, with the exception of some late starters that didn’t abide by the typical schedule. Still I’d be hard pressed to find a perfect time where all anime lined up to completion entirely so that means it’s time to throw another log on the fire, bundle down, and say goodbye. On the bright side there are definitely some entries here that I’m ecstatic they will no longer be haunting me once a week for twenty minutes. Oh, and I should probably start saying that I keep this as spoiler free as possible. Okay, let’s get into it.
Demon Slayer: Red Light District Arc
Normally I don’t review ongoing series that span several seasons, so this is more of an announcement that the Demon Slayer anime has moved past the movie and has begun onto the new arc for about the past three weeks. If you’ve been waiting for the movie stuff to pass on so that you can hop back in for the new content, this is your warning that it’s out and it’s time to catch up to it. I won’t speak much to the quality of this season as it’s not even halfway through at the time of writing so, moving on…
Komi Can't Communicate
I’m still a few episodes behind on this one, but I think I have the gist enough. This is a cute little comedy following around Komi who struggles with her communication disorder. Despite this, she wants to overcome it by making 100 friends with the help of our other main character, Tadano. Don’t get too excited, this show is 90% comedy with 10% serious growth, this ain’t no Horimiya. I’m almost to the end and don’t remember Komi growing much at all, except for a few scenes here and there that lasted a couple of minutes. If you’re ready to keep your brain on cruise and marvel at the amazing animation and cute hijinks then I do think you’ll enjoy this one. I also need to give a special shoutout as this anime did a goddamn service for the lewd community. Lewd Komi art was all over Twitter each week and the side characters got their fair share of dirty images too. Personally I need more yuri doujins of the characters in this series and then I’ll be a happy man, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the impact this one had on the lewd community overall. Very nice.
Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu Part 2
The word that immediately comes to mind when I think of this series is “mature”. Not mature in a way of bloody or violent or “adult”. Mature in a sense of extremely character focused scenes, mature in how the characters bond with each other and subsequently argue with each other, mature in that the hardest hitting moments of the anime aren’t a huge burst of action or a surprising revelation about a mystery, but rather when characters learn something about themselves and thus grow in that process. Outside of Blue Period, this was definitely my favorite watch each week (which isn’t fair to Blue because this is Part 2 of Mushoku). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, give this show a chance unless you simply hate isekai at this point. The action is rare but beautiful. It’s slow but properly allows for setup. Sure it’ll have a moment every now and then where the MC does some dumb pervy bullshit, but it’s never enough to ruin the entire journey for me or even close to that. Absolutely recommended.
takt op.Destiny
This show could of been so fucking good. It had fantastic animation thanks to the collaboration between Madhouse and Mappa, synchronized action that matched the soundtrack, and even some loveable characters like Lenny. However, god damn the writers dropped the ball in multiple areas. For one, the group dynamic of the scatter-brained but down to earth older sister, the emotionally traumatized middle child, and the oblivious but cute little sister gave the series an awesome start. The problem is this dynamic wasn’t utilized very much. It stayed the same for the vast majority of the series, only flourishing at the last few episodes where the writers say “LOOK! LOOK THE CHARACTERS HAVE DEVELOPED! DID YOU NOTICE??? DID YOU NOTICE THEY ARE ACTING DIFFERENTLY THAN BEFORE???”. But the true atrocity of this anime was easily the villains. Nothing more than your classic “I’ll save the world…by KILLING EVERYONE HAHAHAH”. They tried to make the ultimate big bad a bit more compelling, but after the main character destroyed his philosophy in like two sentences at the end, it really solidified how pathetic the big bad’s plan was to begin with. If you’re like me and love action this might not be so bad, but be warned that this series is basically Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song - The Poorly Written Version. Oh, I almost forgot, be prepared to be told “MUSIC IS GREAT” 50 times over too. Not that I disagree but damn it’s repetitive.
Platinum End
It is fucking astounding for me to try and process that the Death Note creator had anything to do with this project at all. It’s a mind games based anime where new rules are constantly added to the mind games at any point, making the audience feel retarded for even bothering to spend time trying to learn the rules and predict what may happen in the anime. On top of new rules making the mind games boring, the characters themselves are mostly cardboard cutouts with the exception of one side character who is a father trying to take care of his family before he dies of sickness (god bless him, someone in this damn show to root for). Outside of him I wouldn’t mind if the entire cast got sucked into a black hole, never to be seen again. If I watch season 2 of this it will be merely to see how it ends and skim through the rest. Not recommended.
Blue Period
Disregarding the anime that have been here a minute like Mushoku Tensei, this was absolutely the anime of the season out of the ones I watched. It has characters that are developed and human as hell, trying to become full fledged artists and be accepted into top art-related universities. It’s a recipe for potential disaster, but Blue Period does such an excellent job of portraying these people having real, everyday emotions that it works beautifully. Even if you’ve never done art, if you’ve ever attempted ANYTHING creatively you’re likely to find yourself relating to a character in Blue Period who's struggling. Mix all these elements in with the fact that the series feels so different, you’re not sure when the main character is going to succeed and when he’s going to fail, and boom you’ve got top anime material. My highest recommendation on this list in regards to anime that only aired this season. Please may the powers that be grant this a second season, even though it did end on a decent stopping point. I need more.
BONUS: Higurashi
This has been done for a while but I started reviewing it so I may as well finish it. I watched all of the new Higurashi, it was shit. I’ll give them credit for trying to teach a lesson at the end, but the road to get there was so incredibly fucking messy that I could never tell anyone to watch this and stomach the long, long, journey to reach the finale. If this was cleaned up a bit and trimmed down a lot, this whole saga could have been a refreshing take on Higurashi, however in its current state it’s not horrifying, it’s not engaging, and it’s not recommended.
Alright that covers my watchlist for this season. As always I don’t have time to hit up everything so I’ll be looking over the comments to see what you guys watched and what sort of impressions those anime left behind. The craziest thing is it’s already about time for the winter anime to start coming out so I need to switch gears and move on fast. What anime did you check out this season? Which did you enjoy, and which did you drop? Say goodbye to fall anime 2021 in the comments below!
