Spring 2014 has behaved pretty predictably thus far, and that’s mostly a good thing.

After the disappointment that was Winter 2014, anime really needed a good season both artistically and commercially.  And while it will obviously be a while before we know how it fared on the latter score, this certainly looks like a sizeable step-up in terms of raw quality.  Indeed, the only real consolation about Winter is that the landslide top-seller was one of the best shows for a change – Hoozuki no Reitetsu, the only series to break into 5-figure sales (none of the others came even close in the worst anime sales season in the Blu-ray era).

In reading back through the last few of these check-in posts, it’s inescapable that our perceptions one-third of the way through a season can look very different from those at the end (Fall 2013 is an especially good example of a season where a bunch of shows tailed off later in their runs).  And given that Spring is generally the busiest season of the year, some of the improvement in the amount of watchable series is a matter of simple arithmetic – this is certainly no landmark season like Spring 2012.  But on the whole it does look pretty good, and most of the series that were expected to deliver on the quality front are doing just that.

Without a question, the best show airing is one that long predates this season – Hunter X Hunter.  Equally without question, the most significant attribute of the current anime schedule for me is that it’s the best time for sports anime in all the time I’ve been an anime fan.  We have five different superb sports series, all covering different sports (two are racket sports of a sort, true) in quite distinct styles.  Two of those are carryovers as well – Yowapeda (which has one more confirmed cour but will likely get another season) and Diamond no Ace (which has two more and likely won’t).  But all three new sports shows I’m following have delivered the goods – two I very much expected to and one which has been a very pleasant surprise.  Heck, even sumo series Matsutarou has gotten a lot better after a really rough start.

Apart from that, we have a fairly representative and varied calendar.  No one genre is dominating, and we have the usual cluster of mediocre LN adaptations that leave me wondering why they were so hyped.  The positive spin is that it’s hard to find a major genre or demographic that’s really being shut out – we even have a medieval shoujo fantasy (talk about as rare as the Dodo) and a very good one at that.

On, then, to Spring 2014:

The Elite

Mushishi Zoku Shou
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: A+
Comments: It would be hard to imagine another series returning after a long absence with this degree of continuity.  Everything from the visuals to the writing to Nakano Yuuto’s voice is the same – it’s as if we stepped into a time machine and emerged in 2005. Mushishi is one of the great wonders in anime, a perfect adaptation of a great manga and a completely immersive experience.  What a joy to have it back.  There seems no reason to think we won’t look back on these split-cours as every bit the equal of the 2005 classic.

Ping Pong
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: A
Comments: So far, Ping Pong is looking like it has a chance to be my favorite Yuasa Masaaki show yet.  It’s ugly in the way his series usually are, but Yuasa’s style suits the manga material perfectly, and he finds a sort of Wabi-sabi beauty in showing the imperfections of his characters.  There’s obviously great depth in Matsumoto Taiyou’s story, and I see echoes of Searching for Bobby Fischer in the musing on the nature of ruthless drive and ambition in youth sports.  This could be the anti-sports anime sports anime of recent years.

Outstanding

Baby Steps
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: A-
Comments: In terms of content, I rank Baby Steps with any series airing this season.  It’s following the course of the manga and so far capturing the essence of why it’s one of the best sports manga ever, and Ei-chan one of sports manga’s best main characters.  It’s not a show pony like Haikyuu, more of a draft horse – but that’s not the reason I’m inching it down a notch.  Simply put, the production values aren’t especially good – they’re tolerable, but not what a series this brilliant deserves.  I can live with that – though I wish I didn’t have to – as long as Baby Steps continues to be this faithful to the letter and spirit of the manga.

Isshuukan Friends
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: A-
Comments: This series is what it is, an unapologetically sentimental and warm story that avoids becoming cloying in part by not shying away from the dark side of the emotional spectrum.  I like the judicious use of silence here, and the no-frills nature of the narrative structure.  This show is a textbook example of a series a studio seems born to adapt, and Brains Base was every bit the perfect fit for Isshuukan Friends they looked to be on paper.  Simple, as restrained stylistically as it open emotionally (by necessity), this is one of the best shows of the year so far.

Very Good

Haikyuu!!
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B+
Comments: No doubt about it, Haikyuu is a winner – a surefire commercial smash that’s awfully hard to resist.  Beautifully directed and featuring fantastic production values from Production I.G., Haikyuu looks on-pace to be the best sports anime from WSJ in many, many years.  So far the success comes more from a likeable directness than any great subtlety or invention, but there’s nothing wrong with that.  With an immensely sympathetic main character and superb sports sequences, this series is a feast of simple pleasures that never fails to satisfy.

Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B+
Comments: Like Isshuukan Friends, Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii is a classic “horses for courses” success story.  This kind of fantasy setting is a perfect fit for Pierrot, and any shoujo fantasy is a rare sight on an anime schedule these days.  There are some issues here – the pacing has been rushed at times – but the core relationship at the heart of the series is one of the most interesting and engaging I’ve seen in anime for some time.  If you use the basic theory from Ueshiba Riichi (Nazo no Kanojo X) that any romance-themed shounen is like a mecha series where the girl is the giant robot, that makes Livi the mecha in Soredemo Sekai – and that added contrast with most current anime makes this show all the more interesting.

Captain Earth
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B
Comments: BONES being BONES, no doubt about it.  This show seems to be for them what Valvrave was for Sunrise – a pastiche of all their various mecha themes under one roof – except it’s playing it straighter than Valvrave did.  The show I’m most vibing on here is Eureka Seven (the original, not Astral Ocean), and the last ep was full of the seemingly nonsensical linguistic ventures and seemingly endless plot twists with no ready explanations.  I enjoy Captain Earth – it looks fantastic, it makes me laugh, and the characters are more than interesting enough to hold their own.  How much sense will we be able to make out of it in the end?  That’s very much an open question with BONES, so the key is really just to enjoy the ride.

Gokukoku no Brynhildr
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B
Comments: This is the sort of series I could see contributing memes – “It’s just a cold”, “Oppai fee”…  Gokukoku bo Brynhildr manages to balance its dark subject matter with absurdist dialogue and a very jocular tone with great success.  It’s silly, it’s full of asspulls, but I find it extremely entertaining.  Good, trashy anime is nothing to be sneezed at and Gokukoku is delivering it – the key, as usual, being that it doesn’t take itself too seriously.  This is a classic example of a series that was high on my expectations list being quite different from my preconceptions, but still thoroughly enjoyable. The instrumental OP is one of the season’s best.

Worthwhile

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B-
Comments: Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou has been squarely on the fence all season, but after the fourth episode – flawed as it was – I’m leaning towards blogging it.  There are the obvious charms here, most notably the truly gorgeous visuals, a combination of great art and clever direction.  I also get the nugget of something interesting in the character-driven plot, but it’s struggling to find its footing amongst the cliches and indecisiveness about whether the show wants to be a screwball comedy or a sensitive drama.  If it follows what I see as its most interesting course – studying the nature of introversion and how it relates to happiness – it could surprise in a good way.  If it leans mostly on heaping abuse on a doormat male lead, it’ll end up as one more anime roadkill that’s quickly forgotten.

Kanojo ga Flag o Oraretara
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B-
Comments: Here’s another one that’s in a bit of an identity crisis, not dissimilar to that of Kawaisou.  This series has a strange dichotomy of an almost somber canon plot and extremely zany comedy, though in this instance – unlike Kawaisou – it executes the comedy very well.  Under Watanabe Ayumu Gawoware is generally very funny, with excellent comic timing, and the willingness to be pretty ruthless is sending up LN tropes is very appealing.  Ultimately I think the series will stand or fall in how it’s able to put its various pieces together into a coherent whole, but at the very least I think it’s always going to be good for some consistent laughs.

Still Watching

Hitsugi no Chaika
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: C+
Comments: There are definitely things I like about Hitsugi no Chaika.  It has an interesting old-school fantasy premise and for a LN adaptation, it’s amazingly straightforward and lacking in pretense and ponderous and unnecessary exposition.  I even like the cast for the most part, especially a main character who’s an adult ex-soldier and very competent.  It just hasn’t entertained me as much as I want it to.  The whole is less than the sum of the parts, for now at least, though it would be fair to say I still have a reasonable amount of hope that can turn around.


Fairy Tail 2014
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: C+
Comments: Not much need be said here, really.  It’s Fairy Tail – you pretty much know what you’re going to get here, and if that’s your thing you’re in good hands.  So far I don’t find the season-opening arc to be one of the series’ best, but the character interaction has always been the main draw here anyway.


Sidonia no Kishi
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: C+
Comments: Here’s another one I really wish I liked more than I do.  There’s all the trappings of a classic, old-school hard sci-fi story here.  But somehow it’s not quite working for me, and it’s a matter of more than just the 100% CGI look (though that is grisly at times).  I find the character interaction very wooden and artificial, and God help us when Sidonia tries to be funny.  In a sense this is reminding me of Shingeki no Kyoujin (which some had suggested it might) in that the overall premise seems better than the execution, but AoT is much better at laughing at itself, and there’s reason to even start to compare the two shows visually.  I’m watching, but I’m still far from hooked.

Abarenbou Rikishii!! Matsutarou
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: C+
Comments: I very nearly dropped this after the premiere, which didn’t work for me on any level.  But the series has made a nice comeback, and while the lead is still singularly unlikeable it’s interesting seeing how that plays out.  He’s rude, insensitive, violent, doesn’t give a whit for social status or politeness – and while in the West that would brand you a ruffian, in Japan it effectively makes you a revolutionary.  This is fascinating as a look at a country that even today has elements the West would view as old-fashioned, looking back at its own past of a half-Century ago, and at a sub-culture (sumo) that was viewed as old-fashioned and traditionalist even then.

Majin Bone
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: C+
Comments: Speaking of old-fashioned, Maijin Bone plays like it came out of a wormhole from 1982 (and this week it added a character who looks as if he was kidnapped from Rose of Versailles).  There’s certainly nothing revelatory here, but I quite like this series – it’s fun, and Kenn is really spot-on (again) as a classic shounen lead.  I also love the delightfully unhinged ED.  In look, animation and style, this is about as old-school as anime gets.

Dropped:

M3, Kindaichi Shounen no Jikembo, Selector Infectes WIXOSS, Fuuun Ishin Dai Shogun, Mekaku City Actors, Ryuugajou Nanana, Escha & Logy no Atelier, Soul Eater Not!, Mahouka Koukou no Rettosei, Black Bullet, No Game No Life, Kenzen Robo Daimidaler

We still have a few true bubble series for at least another episode.  All of the carry-overs are rock-solid – there will be no drops from that group.    Here’s my take on the schedule as of right now:

Monday:
Definitely Blogging: Yowamushi Pedal, Tonari ni Seki-kun
Probably Blogging: Kanojo ga Flag o Oraretara

Tuesday:
Definitely Blogging: Hunter X Hunter 2011

Wednesday:
On the Bubble: Hitsugi no Chaika

Thursday:
Definitely Blogging: Ping Pong
Probably Blogging: Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou
On the Respirator: Sidonia no Kishi

Friday:
Definitely Blogging: Mushishi Zoku Shou

Saturday:
Definitely Blogging: Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii, Captain Earth

Sunday:
Definitely Blogging: Diamond no Ace, Haikyuu!!, Baby Steps, Isshuukan Friends, Gokukoku no Brynhildr, Game of Thrones

Manga: Otoyomegatari, Mix, Chihayafuru

Watching For Now: Fairy Tail 2014, Maijin Bone, JoJo Stardust Crusaders, Abarenbou Rekishi!! Matsutarou

On the Fence: Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to