Usually I’m down to hide out in the darkness of winter as long as possible, but this year I’m ready to say goodbye to the cold and heat up in the spring. While I may have been cold this season, these anime certainly didn’t leave me bored. Outside of a few stinkers that hurt my soul, the majority of the entries here turned out to be positive viewing experiences. As always I’ll be ignoring long running series. Let’s put the gloves on and wrap this batch up.
Vinland Saga Season Two
There were many people who were disappointed with the much slower take that this season had to offer and to that I say “up your character literacy abilities my g”. This season is just as well written as the first, but it focuses more on the slow change of Thorfinn from a savage warrior lusting for revenge to, well, an actual human being with a wide range of emotions. Thorfinn’s stunted growth is front and center for the audience and his fellow cast to see during the season as his new friend, Einar, learns that Thorfinn barely knows anything about life apart from the battlefield. Watching him evolve while also experiencing several commentaries on the concept of servitude kept me frothing at the mouth like a berserker viking for more content each week. Bravo to this series, I’m ready to watch this to the end. Highly recommended still, though it’s always dangerous to make a final review before the entire production is finished.
Blue Lock Second Half
The comeback this anime achieved is nothing short of amazing. I was on the fence for the first half of the first part, but during the second portion I was on the edge of my seat every episode. The show found its foothold and was able to balance a darker take on a “team” sport while still developing characters enough for you to want to root for their success. Hell even the main character gets my fist pumping for him to win, and usually in sports anime you couldn’t care less if his or her entire family got slaughtered cause they’re so generic. Season two is already in the works and I couldn’t be happier because while I’ve never watched a real game of soccer in my life, I’m ready to watch my boys go on to win the World Cup baby. If you enjoy sports anime, I highly recommend picking this up as it’s an easy binge watch.
To Your Eternity Season Two
Every time this show enters a new arc, I get scared and begin to lose faith. “Will it finally fall off? There’s no way they can make this prissy prince into a loveable character. There’s no way they can give the main character this many abilities and still cause the enemy to be a threat. There’s no way the writing can stay solid for ANOTHER arc.” Yet every time so far I’ve been proven to be a pitiful non-believer in a masterpiece. Ah, how foolish I am. This season pretty much wrapped up all the plot points we were currently involved with, and thus next season looks to COMPLETELY change up both the atmosphere and plot direction for the anime. And this time dammit, I will not abandon my faith and instead proclaim that it will be another incredible installment. Dare I say, I’m hyped for the next season. My only gripe with this production is that the animation does NOT receive nearly the amount of care and detail it deserves, but I think that’s more of a problem with budget constraints due to a lack of popularity more so than anything else. Maybe this next season can finally serve it the polish that it deserves, but I won’t hold my breath. Instead I’ll merely cross my fingers for more engaging character writing and leave my animation dreams to other studios like MAPPA.
The Fire Hunter
This show contained the most masterful bait and switch I’ve seen in a minute. The opening was one of if not my favorite this season, with a moving song and crispy animation that promised to bring an emotional story to light with an old fashioned artstyle. Instead, this anime desecrated any sort of possible emotion that the original novel may have contained. The show is ridden with poor animation quality, bland characters, and action so bad it makes Dragon Ball lazer beam fights look like choreographed dancing in comparison. Don’t think the basics are good either, even the damn pacing is terrible. Boring moments are stretched out across several minutes while HUGE plot points such as a main character learning the fate of their father are reduced to a couple of sentences. Sometimes you can feel that an anime has failed to adapt the source material, and the usual suspects were here. That feeling of “I think some content was cut” happens at least once per episode when you’re not too busy wondering how low the budget must have been for them to reuse so many shots. How this shit was able to score a season two is beyond me. I ended up unintentionally dropping it on episode six where afterwards I legitimately FORGOT this shit even existed. Three weeks later I remembered I was watching it but by that time I wasn’t about to try to catch up. A true disappointment that wasted my time.
Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill
Okay here me out. In the grand scheme of things, this show is pretty ass. Events that have consequences are almost non-existent to the point where I stopped caring about everything in the show besides the cooking elements. They steal the show here, but unfortunately since the MC is cooking in another world, the recipes aren’t very detailed, used foreign meats and ingredients, and thus are not able to be replicated. I think the anime would have benefited greatly by including real world recipes that the audience could follow along with and refine their cooking skills, similar to how that working out anime a few years ago prompted the viewers to perform real exercises at the end of each episode. Instead of the MC traveling to another world, the ravenous wolf Fenrir could of traveled to OUR world and forced him to cook for him, lest he go on a rampage and destroy shit on Earth. This way the cooking would be grounded in reality yet the MC would still have the same pressure to constantly cook well and try new recipes to keep Fenrir happy. Ultimately since this did none of this, I basically used it to help fight my fake anorexia. I’m trying to bulk up this year and while I’m working out pretty consistently, I find it hard to load up on calories. Watching the alluring animation of the food cooking in this series helped to engage my hunger before dinner and made sure I was in the right mindset to eat a lot. So for that it was pretty great. Otherwise I don’t really recommend this unless you’re prepared for a VERY casual watch.
Nagatoro Season Two
I had planned to skim through this series each week to look for article ideas, but it was so terribly repetitive and boring that I started forgetting to do so around halfway through. God only knows if anything of value ever took place but I wouldn’t bet any money on it. Another classic case of the joke going on for too long without enough mix-ups or character development to keep things fresh.
High Card
During the last three episodes of this anime, I was holding my breath the entire time. Not necessarily because of what was happening on screen, but because it was screaming “season two or bust”. Without a season two this anime would have ended up with a shit rating from me. So many plot points are unresolved as well as a ton of villains yet to be apprehended or even properly introduced. Considering the low popularity of the series I was scared to be hurt again by yet another seasonal anime that doesn’t wrap up every plotline and never sees a second season *cough, Talentless Nana cough*. Instead they announced that season two is in production immediately after the finale and thus I CAN recommend this. This season focused on Chris and Finn, two characters who were thoroughly fleshed out by the end of the installment. While this anime did a bunch of stereotypical bullshit here and there, it also broke some anime stereotypes and surprised me with the depth it went into to build its cast. We still have several members of the main cast who need more screen time (my man Vijay has been cucked) and I assume we’ll see that in season two as we also address the bad guys further. If you like some teamwork-based action with plenty of character-driven moments sprinkled on top, High Card is a fun ride with more on the way.
Tokyo Revengers: Christmas Showdown
Well this was certainly an arc. It sucks to have outside bias affecting your watch, but man, since I know the entire world appears to be disappointed with how the manga ends, it feels like I’m on my toes just looking for signs of the apocalypse every episode. While nothing was really outlandish about this season’s arc, as we set up for the next battle, the author has taken some HUGE liberties with how characters are acting. If we don’t properly address said wild actions I can see exactly how the writing could begin to fall off. This is still in a weird zone of being an interesting watch, but not something I can recommend due to the apparent impending doom. Unless you really want to see some middle school gangs go at it, this may not be worth catching up to anymore.
Buddy Daddies
Ah fuck. This portion of the article may not end well for me. We’re all friends here, right? There’s no need for doxxing, sabotage, or homicide no matter what wild opinion I may state in the following sentences? Great news! Because god dammit, this show is simply a great SPY X FAMILY. It addresses every single issue I had with that anime. There are real moments here. Real character developments. Real comedic gags. Real STAKES and CONSEQUENCES for the fact that the parents are involved in some of the most dangerous occupations known to mankind. At times Buddy Daddies broke my heart, and at other times it warmed it. This was a masterclass of taking the basic ass concept of “family is good” that the Japanese government is loving right now, and turning it into a meaningful piece of media. This show has earned the prestigious “Anime of the Season” award from yours truly (don’t worry that doesn’t count returning shows like Vinland Saga, chill out). It accomplished so much in 12 episodes and wrapped up every plot point. The main cast all grew in their own ways to the point where I sincerely hope there is no second season. The story of the Daughter Daddies has concluded and I’m ready to close the book on their amazing growth and end on a high note. Based on how it finished I think the producers will conclude the same. Absolutely worth going back for if you missed it, and will likely end up in my top 5 anime of the year.
That’s it this time around. Before you know it, spring anime will have started up and a whole new season shall be upon us. In the meantime I hope everyone has some time to catch up to anything they missed this season. What anime did you check out? What was your favorite this season? Did anything disappoint you or waste your time? Take off that winter coat, put on some sunglasses, and say goodbye to winter anime 2023 in the comments below!
P.S. I was debating adding a brief rating system where I simply put (X/5) at the end of each anime’s title in case anyone wanted to get a general impression of my thoughts on the season or part, but without risking any spoilers or adding any bias to their viewing experience. If that seems like a good idea let me know in the comments and I’ll come back to this article and add it in, and do that for subsequent anime review articles like this.
