Man oh man the heat is finally dying out around here. And with changing temperatures comes a changing lineup of anime that are currently airing. I won’t pull any punches, there were multiple anime that let me down this time around. As always I don’t have time to review every single one so feel free to leave your own thoughts below. Additionally, I didn’t cover anime that have been out for a while like My Hero Academia as everyone already knows where they stand on it for the most part. Without further introduction, let’s jump into this.

Tokyo Revengers Season 1 Part Two

God damn this show continues to raise the bar. Sure the protagonist is a little bitch boy who often explains the most basic components of the plot over and over to the audience. Sure some of the shit is the most unrealistic situations, like a kid surviving being hit with a metal pipe in the head several times. However, if you can look past the flaws of the protagonist and spoonfeeding of certain information to the viewer, this is absolutely the most raw hype anime of this season. Gang wars, gang rivalries, gang money, gang bitches, and gang banging baybee. Or at least most of those. This anime knows how to keep you on your toes, constantly trying to anticipate how a certain conflict will turn out. What members will be harmed? Who will survive? How will the MC’s actions in the past shape the future this time? The suspense and characters of the show make it stand out and I’m already lubing my mental dick up for a continuation down the line. The series ended on a horrible cliffhanger and I need answers dammit. If it doesn’t receive a season 2, I’ll have to change my view on this anime because the ending would simply ruin everything. However, I have high hopes for more anime content adapting this series.

Vanitas no Carte

Well, in the end this show ended up a bit below my expectations set by the initial episode. We have tropes on top of tropes presented in this one, such as the classic “girl pretends to like guy and spends time with him but ends up LIKING the guy for real? Oh my!”. Ultimately I don’t think it was a bad watch but it has a bunch of yaoi bait so if that’s not your thing I’d steer clear. Again I want to stress that if you love vampires/hot boys and want to go back and see this since it did get announced for a season 2 already, it’s not at all garbage. It’s merely a standard anime in terms of character quality and plot progression. And there are plenty of standard anime that I’ve enjoyed already. I’ll skim through season 2 just to see what happens, but I’ve pretty much gotten the gist of it and won’t be watching this seriously anymore.

Uramichi Oniisan

Oh god why. Why did they fuck this up so hard? I feel extra disappointed in this anime because the premise was grounds for an amazing series. I mean, a gymnast struggling with what to do with his life turning to acting in a children’s TV show? That’s some unique shit. But what was more interesting is that everyone in the TV show seemed to have a childish problem. One got violent and attacked his former boss, one has a shitty boyfriend but won’t leave him, one struggles to ever get serious and stop making jokes. All of these character flaws could be seen as childish or at least teenager-esque. Therefore I thought this would be a meaningful comedy about these adults learning how to deal with their own problems through helping the children resolve theirs. But no. Instead every character flaw is merely played to death over and over again over the course of 12 episodes. Nobody grows. Nobody learns. And let me tell you, after a while the jokes got predictable and stopped landing for me. With Kobayashi in this season as a far superior comedy, I honestly have no reason to tell anyone to watch this. Man, it could've been something.

The Detective is Already Dead

I have to be honest, I was already dead by episode four or five of this anime. In a tragic turn of events, the author decided it would be very epic to kill off a major character very early on. To make matters worse, they were the most interesting person in the anime so I was already off to a rough start in the beginning. Another big issue was that it was a detective show… with supernatural elements. That can make for a very bad combination as viewers will naturally try to follow along and solve the mysteries that the main detectives are facing. That is very hard to do when suddenly an event is explained by “oh this was possible because the suspect was a werewolf”. Huh? Bitch I didn’t know we had those in this universe. I know the exact moment I dropped out was when we had mechs, a secret base, werewolves, and supernatural powers in the same episode. At that point I simply gave up because the “light novel” atmosphere grew too thick for my taste. No idea how it turned out but I can’t really recommend this as I have no idea who the target audience was intended to be.

Kobayashi Dragon Maid Season 2

Okay I probably already spoiled it earlier but damn this is a banger. The animation is probably the best for a comedy I’ve ever seen in my life. The characters are all dumb and lovable in their own way, while still being deep enough to leave room for occasional down to earth and sentimental moments. Kinda like exactly what Uramichi Oniisan should have done… I’ll admit that it didn’t have me bursting out loud with laughter every episode, but other aspects of the anime are so good that it doesn’t need to rely on being the funniest anime ever created. If you haven’t picked this up yet I’d thoroughly recommend it if you enjoy relaxing watches.

Shiori Suna no Aquatope

Oh brother. Another anime that started decent but descended into the deep dark pits of nothingness. This is about two girls trying to keep an aquarium open, with one girl giving up her dream of becoming an idol. I thought that was pretty interesting, but they found a way to make it the most painstakingly slow and boring process known to mankind. I shit you not, the moment I dropped this was when I looked down at the episode timer and realized the past ten minutes of my life were spent watching two anime girls try to decide what ice cream they should sell. And spoilers they end up not selling ice cream. Holy moly I couldn’t take it anymore dude. The pacing killed this anime for me and nothing could revive it after that. If you don’t mind slow and I mean a turtle crossing the road type of slow, then by all means give it a try. Maybe the ending has a huge payoff. All I know is I wasn’t investing the time to find out.

To Your Eternity Season 1 Part Two

This time it was neck and neck between Tokyo Revengers and this one for my most anticipated episode each week. Eternity combines worldbuilding with a cool cast of characters that are deep and exposed to death constantly, forcing the MC to repeatedly evaluate his life and direction as an immortal. It’s definitely the better written anime of the two and has more thought provoking content, albeit Tokyo can be a bit more suspenseful. This latter half introduced us to a bunch of new characters while adding on new information to old faces too and continuing to develop them. I will finally say that a few things happened, especially regarding the main villain, that at last made this feel like a more typical “anime” instead of an art piece. Yet that shouldn’t deter you at all from picking this up because there is plenty still for your brain to pick over. And if your brain gets tired of analyzing the characters and world, your heart can step in and be torn to pieces instead. Truly an anime with a little something for everyone.

Sonny Boy

Full disclosure, I am only about halfway done with this anime as I’m watching it with fellow blogger Kinky and we both have busy schedules these days. In my impressions article I noted that it would likely either be trash or godlike considering that anime with this sort of abstract feel typically end up as one or the other. In this rare case I think Sonny Boy falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Some episodes have been quite interesting and in my opinion when the gang of students is tackling a specific problem and trying to utilize a specific solution, that’s when the show is at its best. Typically the solution bestows some sort of interesting moral or knowledge onto the students and viewers that’s interesting to ponder. Unfortunately, this show also loves to kill continuity into the ground and skip around. There’s been several episodes so far where Kinky and I thought we had skipped ahead or something and were on the wrong one, but no this show merely enjoys fucking with you like that. This makes some things overly complicated to digest in a show that’s already pretty taxing on the audience’s attention. The characters are alright, though some are so “abstracty-anime-like” that it’s hard to connect with them. At the end of the day this easily claims the title for the most unique anime of the season. If you want a mental workout I would recommend it so far, but be warned that it’s certainly lacking in some departments. And holy moly  if the last half of episodes don’t make sense of the plot, this could become a massive waste of time overall. Watch at your own risk.

By the time I finished dropping the series that lost my interest, I barely had anything to watch this season and truly felt the impact of the summer drought. They say you learn what you really value when you get busy and there’s definitely some truth to that. In younger days I might have let a few of these slide by, but alas that time is long past. I’m looking forward to several new shows coming this fall season though. Surely it can’t be as empty as this season...right? What anime did you watch this time around? Did I miss one of your favorites? Do you have a different opinion? Say goodbye to summer anime 2021 in the comments below!