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vanilla-blessing · 5 years

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Why you should check out summer 2019 anime despite my previous blog post

I was mostly wrong about this season here’s qb’s revised

Hype rankings for Summer 2019

Cop Craft (Funimation)

COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED is the biggest surprise of the season for me. Coming from Millepensee, the studio and director team known for such Art as Teekyuu seasons 4-9 and Berserk 2016, this extremely sincere and wildly stupid Americanized take on anime fantasy adventure colliding with a hard-boiled cop drama is surprisingly highly enjoyable to watch for both intended and unintended reasons.

The intended appeal of COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED hinges on a well-realized mashup of genres from a long running novel series, the buddy-cop teamup of an anime girl with a magical sword and a gruff but kind-hearted cop, and the dramatic thrill of one of the weirder spinoffs of law&order. The show promises an interesting setting where a magical portal ring to the fairy forest where anime-chans are real has naturally slotted into the organized crime of a New Yorkish city, resulting in a fresh take on well-trodden ground, and it actually kind of succeeds at this. In practice, watching loose cannon cops shoot guns at wizards while busting a drug ring who sling fairy dust is maybe the dumbest thing I’ve seen in years, but the story is so overly detailed, thought out, and delivered without an ounce of irony, unlike the recent terrible movie from Netflix that also attempted to do this premise almost word for word, that it wraps around to legitimately compelling. It also helps that this anime adaptation is being scripted by the novel’s author.

The unintended benefit of watching COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED is partly how completely absurd the words they are saying appear in English, producing some of the funniest out of context screenshots imaginable, the animation in execution ratchets between cool, frenetic action that contains distinct shades of a certain tennis club, and the hysterically awful cg that you’ve come to expect and love from the only team capable of producing Berserk 2016. When it’s good, it’s good, and when it’s bad, it’s incredible.

In short, COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED is a two-for-one deal of the best of both bad and good anime. It’s also getting an English dub by Funimation and I can’t even imagine how good literally any line read from that will be.

The Demon Girl Next Door (Hidive, VRV)

Despite my earlier protests, this is actually totally fine, good even. It avoids the fanservice problem I predicted completely and instead sets a relaxed comedic tone that quietly highlights small gags in a way that feels natural, which sounds impossible but they found the only director who could pull it off (Hiroaki Sakurai, known for some quite good comedies like Cromartie High School and Majokko Tsukune-chan). The content is actually pretty funny when delivered in a non-hyperactive way, since a story about a girl who is bullied into making friends after her family circumstances tell her to murderize a magical girl, told naturally, hits that level of low surrealism that works. Her friends also take this in stride, encouraging her to use this as an opportunity to go out more, open up socially, and suffer for their amusement. The magical girl in question, after heroically saving Yuko from being run over by a truck, also encourages her to defeat her and drain all of her blood, because Shadow Mistress Yuko is so much of a non-threat that Momo takes advantage of their impending ultimate confrontation to trick her into being her gym buddy. It takes place in a post-season magical girl anime landscape where the world has already been saved, normal people are used to weird episodic junk, and hitting demon puberty just another thing your friends will tease you over.

It still probably shouldn’t be full episode length, but it actually does something with that length, and is definitely the least painful iteration of this kind of slower, long-form comedy that you don’t usually see in anime because it’s usually a terrible idea. Predicting this would end up like other entries in the incredibly cursed magical girl parody genre was a safe bet, but this anime is the rare exception and it’s actually worth checking out.

Given (Crunchyroll, VRV) is on the noitamina block and it’s about boys in a rock band who might become more than friends. You’ve probably tuned out at this point and you’d be right because you know exactly the tone and style of this from that description but it’s executed well and written well and directed okay, so if you’d like this sort of thing try it out. There’s an interesting range of ages (the band has members in high school, college, and graduate school), a fun sense of humor, and the music is a standout in a season that has Carole and Tuesday in it, so that’s something.

I forgot to mention Fruits Basket (Crunchyroll, VRV, Funimation) in my last post because i didn’t know it was continuing. It’s hitting its “stride” in being massively depressing so check that out still. It’s tragic and great.

Granbelm (Crunchyroll, VRV) is a magical girl show I watched on a whim and turns out it’s actually a magical mecha battle royale. The color scheme is overly bright and the mechs look squashed, but it has girls snarling and yelling their heads off summoning beam swords so it’s different from what I expected. It’s got a G-Gundam energy with the multiregional cast and how the mecha fights are playing out, so if you’re fans of that, and magical girl, this is both at once. The second episode introduced a unique motivation for the main character, that piloting the mech helped her get over crushing nihilism, and I want to see where that goes, if at all. Combining the sometimes bleak and fun-sucking writing of overly dark and philosophical magical girl with what I can only describe as Domon Kasshu energy is a choice and I would like to see where Granbelm is going with that.

Misc variable hype list

O Maidens in Your Savage Season (Hidive)

This looks gorgeous and it may be the most Mari Okada thing ever written, move over Dragon Pilot, but the manga has some uncomfortable elements that would translate poorly to anime, in terms of keeping me watching it.

Crunchyroll actually did pick up Symphogear AXZ and XV, against my pessimistic attitude.

Ensemble Stars (Funimation) is okay.

Fire Force’s animation is fire af but the girl who lives in her own hellish fanservice series is about to be introduced and this part of the series is kind of slow so it would take a lot of effort to elevate the material until it gets to the “good stuff”. David production seems willing to give it their best shot though, so we’ll see.

Vinland Saga started slow, quiet, chronological and ultimately strong, but it took multiple episodes to get there, which is why they aired 3 episodes in the first week. I think I still prefer the high octane opening chapter of the manga, but they’ll get there soon enough so it’ll be a non-issue in a few months anyway. I recommended this before and I still do. WIT studio is clearly playing for the longer game, setting themes that encompass the whole series first rather than the fleeting themes of watch the bad ass viking slice the mans, but it is currently missing the energy people associated with that opening volume or two. It will probably pay off though.

#COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED #sentai subs are a gift from heaven #this hand of mine burns with an unfulfilled and nihilistic attitude #bus p*rn

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