First off, let me start by saying this was one of the most fantastic seasons of anime I’ve witnessed in a long time. From romance, to comedy, to action, to mystery, to whatever godlike genre you’d classify Vinland Saga, this season had a little something for everyone. Sadly there was so much amazing stuff, I even fell behind on greatness like the newest Gundam that’s been drumming up hype. It sucks to be so busy, and chances are you’ll see something on this list that you may have missed. Luckily I don’t think the remaining seasons this year are going to be so jam packed, so maybe we can all find some extra time later this year to revisit greatness that we missed. With all that gushing done, let’s say goodbye to these bangers.
My Home Hero
I had no clue what this was going into it besides the basic premise of a father getting involved with a criminal organization. This turned out to be a cat and mouse style mind game anime and holy shit was it a captivating watch from start to finish. My only complaint with this series was the painfully obvious low budget and bland artstyle. I don’t normally let that stuff distract me from a great narrative, but holy shit some of this stuff looked like a Microsoft Powerpoint slideshow. Alas while the studio animated this using $20 and a bunch of coupons to pay their employees, the core story and characters were amazing. This anime broke some stereotypes of the genre by directly involving the other family members with the MC father’s criminal shenanigans and it paid off in spades. Nobody in this show is stupid, everyone acts in a way that makes sense and keeps the mind games between the two sides fascinating. If you’re an animation connoisseur then don’t bother with this, but for anyone who fancies some good old Death Note style writing, this is a great seasonal anime that wraps up all of the season’s plot points by the end. It does end on a bit of a “please read the manga” cliffhanger, but nothing that ruins the series. You can sort of ignore the cliffhanger entirely and enjoy the series for what this specific arc was about.
Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc
Alright, uh, please don’t decapitate my demon head off for this but… this season had some problems. The animation was clean as always and of course blew most action anime out of the water once again. However, the rest of this season’s elements stumbled. Exhibit A) the demons this season were the weakest yet in terms of personality, combat choreography, and overall impact. The Rank 5 demon was a literal comedy act masquerading as a strong opponent, and the Rank 4 demon was more underdeveloped than some of the damn lower moons were. Rank 4 at least had a cool design, but once he reached his final form, he literally boiled down to one attack: a giant wooden dragon trying to bite Tanjiro and friends. Over, and over, and over again. While the animation during this fight was technically smooth and awesome, the choreography of just fighting giant wooden heads got repetitive for me. Exhibit B) The last episode pulls a horrendous “fake out death” tactic that is so stupid, so painfully anime, that it ruined the pacing of the finale for me and made me feel like this entire arc lacked much impact for every character besides the Mist Hashira. Damn I have some more exhibits stored up but we need to move on. Overall I still enjoyed this season and I’m ready to see where the story goes next, but I do think it was the weakest season of Demon Slayer we’ve gotten so far. Perhaps removing Inosuke from the equation is simply too much of a detriment to the formula.
The Dangers In My Heart
This romantic anime doesn't necessarily do anything wrong. It had okay baseline writing and some super pretty shots. However, it aired alongside Skip and Loafer, which has much superior character writing, and Insomniacs After School, which has better animation and a thicker atmosphere. Essentially this anime is mostly comedy with a teensy tiny bit of character development thrown in so that our shy simp MC becomes 20% less shy and 20% less simp over the course of the season, but that wasn’t enough to really keep my interest. Around episode nine I found myself skipping through episodes so that I could hurry up and watch one of the other aforementioned romance anime. It’s just really nothing special, and I don’t necessarily “buy” the romance here as much as I do for its competitor couples. Diehard fans of romance may stand by this one and that’s fine, but if you haven’t seen either of the other two anime mentioned here I’d recommend you give those priority.
Vinland Saga: Season Two
This was one of the most beautifully crafted arcs in anime history that I’ve ever been fortunate enough to see with my own two eyes. The way everything comes together, every character grows, everyone interacts and learns from each other… my god. It took a lot of setup for a ton of pieces to be put into place, but the final act of this season cascaded those dominoes in a way that’s rarely seen in any piece of media. I have no doubt that this will be going down in the books as a “much watch” anime alongside other big brain powerhouses. We still have more seasons coming down the pipeline so perhaps I should hold my tongue, but they would really have to have some disastrous writing in the works to ruin the greatness that the first two seasons of this saga provided. At this point there’s no excuse not to be watching this.
Hell's Paradise
Holy hell this was… pretty average. Actually by the end of this first season I was so bored with the protagonist I could start thinking about using the term “mid” here. This shounen has about the most generic shounen characters you could possibly run into. Bakugo, Edgelord MC, Cool Sensei, Hot And Sexual Girl, Simp Nerd, everyone is here. While I found the premise of a bunch of people being put on a strange island on a hunt for a mysterious elixir pretty interesting, by the end of it I couldn’t really care less who dies and who lives. If you love shounen you may as well check it out, but to me this lacks a defining atmosphere or characteristic to make it stand proud amongst the competition like Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Definitely won’t be returning for the next season.
Heavenly Delusion
Back on the heaven side of things, this season was a masterpiece. It’s a compelling mystery as you slowly are allowed to see glimpses that connect everyone and everything on our hero's journey across a post-apocalyptic Japan. The animation of each episode is fantastic for a seasonal anime and every time some action fired up, my dick stood up straight. The two main characters have some of the best chemistry of any pair this season and even the side characters are often given proper attention. No spoilers but the episode with the doctor almost had your boy crying over a character who was barely in the series. It’s an emotional journey and thought provoking mystery that I can’t wait to continue with the heavily implied upcoming season. Definitely worth going back for if you missed it.
Dr. Stone: New World
I’ll keep this brief as we’re so deep into this series at this point there’s not much merit in reviewing it, but it’s another fine season of science. We seem to be getting ever closer to uncovering the mystery of the stone petrification and that’s a good thing because while I’m still enjoying the journey, I don’t think the series currently has the same power it did during the previous Stone Wars arc. Still as long as we wrap this up in one more season or two I think they can pace it properly to provide bussin’ scientific education paired with a story captivating enough not to lose attention. If you’ve been sleeping on this but are ready to learn something about science, there’s no better time to start binging it. On the other hand if you were waiting to see if the series ever changes up the formula, it doesn’t. The author has a vibe and we’re sticking to it, which is fine by me assuming a proper ending is on the horizon.
Oshi no Ko
Fuck I loved this season. I’ve been waiting for a long time for an idol anime that actually focused on and presented the realities of the idol system. A few have come along that give me hope, and I’m then left disappointed as the worst thing the girls go through is “not getting to the world stage in one week” or some other horrendously out of touch goal. Oshi no Ko isn’t afraid to get into the sad truths of the entertainment industry whether that be talking about idols, theater, music, streaming, or acting. Each one is plagued with certain betrayal, bias, corruption, and injustice. So far the anime has struck an excellent balance between showing how amazing a career in one of those fields can be, while also pointing out that the downsides can be drastic. It’s the most modern and nuanced take on idol culture I’ve seen from an anime so far, with intriguing characters to boot. Unless you’re one of those people who just hate anything to do with idol stuff, this first season has been an excellent ride that I could recommend to pretty much anyone.
Magical Destroyers
This anime had me in a deathgrip right until the last episode. It was an 11 episode joyride filled with parody and satire of a variety of otaku stereotypes and anime tropes. I fucking loved it, and I found the comedy often put a smile on my face or even evoked a laugh. I believe I got my hopes up too high around episode 9, as I saw other watchers speculating that this was more than a comedy and by the end would evolve into a complete social commentary. Based on the level of writing I had witnessed, I thought that was bullshit. However as we approached the end of the story a few clever twists gave me hope. Then episode 12 blew my dumbass out of the water. It was a rushed, clumsy, and overall lackluster ending to an otherwise super fun journey. What really sucks is they could keep the same basic ending and with a few tweaks, could have had a profound message about revolution and the will to stand up for what you believe in, even if it may result in your end. Unfortunately with the ending in its current state, I left feeling that I watched a last minute “oh and uh that’s all folks” conclusion without much care behind it. Oh well. While the ending keeps this series from being great, I still loved so many moments from the pre-finale episodes that I’m gonna say it remains a good watch and that any parody comedy fans should still give this a try.
Insomniacs After School
This anime was undeniably the prettiest romance anime of the season. While it did also serve up some super cute moments and developed their characters a little, I found the pacing to fall behind towards the end though. Like The Dangers in My Heart, I started losing interest around episode nine as I wasn’t getting very invested in the conflicts that arose. This is a super relaxed watch but I can only take so much relaxing. If this show had developed its characters a bit more like Skip and Loafer with frequent callbacks and constant slow progression I think I would have been more into it. Regardless I still argue it was a well produced production with a romance that many people could enjoy and was far more believable than like 75% of romance anime in the first place. For that I say bravo, but I can only really recommend it to fans of the genre only.
Skip and Loafer
Horimiya wasn’t supposed to come back until next season, but holy shit Christmas came early. This slice of life was able to balance a relaxed artstyle and atmosphere with compelling and relatable problems that got you invested in the cast. I’ve seen multiple reviews of this anime describe the cast as “purely human” and I couldn’t agree more with that assessment. Everyone here feels like a real person that could exist, and thus the subsequent conflicts and trials that arise feel totally natural. There’s no tripping and falling into someone’s boobs to cause a stupid misunderstanding, no baseless assumptions from characters that stir drama for no reason. Just real people with real problems trying to workout who they want to be as they grow into adulthood. THIS is how you write a chill story without boring the audience to sleep. In order to grasp all the foreshadowing and messages, you’ll need to keep your brain constantly scanning the dialogue to grasp what characters are truly feeling. A beautiful season of the genre that any slice of life fan needs to immediately watch and take notes on.
Holy moly. I’ve got to chill with these reviews sometimes, I’m not paid by the hour. There were so many anime to keep track of this season, I hope you made time to give some of them their due viewing diligence. I don’t mind if these upcoming seasons drop off in overall quality, it’s time for a break after all this. What anime did you watch this season? Did I miss any bangers? Did anything disappoint you this go around? Send off the last breezes of spring, start looking for ways to stay cool, and say goodbye to Spring Anime 2023 in the comments below!
