Spring 2022 was always, theoretically, the season where it was supposed to all start coming together. Winter had some good series but if 2022 was going to wind up bucking what’s been a generally downward trend for quality in anime, spring was when it had to start happening. There are some big names on the schedule and on the staff lists this season, and as always spring is a season that carries a lot of weight.

This season started slowly in every sense. Oddly enough nearly everything out of my third expectations tier (and that’s as low as I go in previews) premiered before anything from the top two. Knowing that is well and good but one does tend to worry anyway when things don’t look too impressive. Fortunately once we got off the on-ramp and onto the highway the outlook improved considerably. The big guns have mostly delivered the goods so far, and they have some unexpected company from the infantry ranks.

The strength of this season so far, undoubtedly, is in where the series are concentrated.  Much of this check-in falls in the “Outstanding” and “Very Good” categories, while in a normal season (at least in recent years) “Worthwhile” and “Still Watching” would tend to be the biggest groups (as a result of this the bubble is as small as I can remember, only two series).  Five shows (and it could easily have been six) in “Outstanding” is a rarity in this day and age – if they hold up (at least two and probably three are two-cour) it will have been quite a good season indeed.

Even so, most of the really big names haven’t arrived yet. Some we know will premiere this year (like Made in Abyss 2 and Golden Kamuy 4), while others still keep us waiting. If we get one or two AotY candidates out of spring, I think 2022 still has a chance to be a pretty decent year. Will we? That, of course, is impossible to say at this early stage.

Onward, then, to Spring 2022:

The Elite

None

 

Outstanding

Dance Dance Danseur
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: A
Comments: Dance Dance Danseur is certainly not the show I would have pegged as my #1 at check-in time.  Especially given that the heavy hitters of spring have all more or less met expectations.  But this is the series that’s been most revelatory and intense.  The direction and animation (crucial with a dance series) have been stellar.  DDD has approached the story of a 14 year-old boy trying to balance social pressures with his love of ballet with subtlety, intelligence, and nuance.  It’ll still be an upset if it winds up being spring’s best series (especially at 11 episodes) but it leads the pack at the first check-point.

Kotarou wa Hitorigurashi
Episodes Watched: 9
Grade: A-
Comments: I debated whether to include it here, just as I did with the season preview post.  But since it’s in the latter and I haven’t finished it, it only makes sense to include it.  I’m frankly amazed that Kotarou wa Hitorigurashi manages to be the series it is, telling the story it does, without lapsing into melodrama or becoming saccharine.  But somehow miraculously it does, and it’s been one of the best series of the season and another in a pretty solid run of shows for Netflix lately.  It may go to dramatic extremes to illustrate a point sometimes, but I look at this is a sort of dark fantasy more than a gritty reality story – a chronicle of all the ways kids are poorly treated by modern Japanese society.

Spy X Family
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: A-
Comments: To be honest I think some of the adulation for Spy x Family is a little over the top, but I don’t know what more anyone could expect from its adaptation.  It looks great, the cast fits, and it captures the manic screwball comedy vibe of the source material perfectly.  I don’t personally find this series to be anything deep or profound, or even particularly brilliant  – it’s just a relatively simple but clever premise executed with great style and wit.  In baseball prospect terms we’d say SxF has a “high floor” – maybe it won’t be a Hall-of-Famer, but it’s pretty much a lock to be really good.

Kingdom Season 4
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: A-
Comments: Normal service has certainly been restored with Kingdom Season 4, returning after one of the shortest breaks in the adaptation’s history.  The quality of the writing is nothing if not consistent, and so is the animation at this point.  We seem to be getting a thematic shift this season to a greater focus on political intrigue and lesser on military conquest.  And that means different characters are likely to feature, the ones more connected to that side of the story.  It’s all good as far as I’m concerned – Kingdom is one of the top old reliables in anime at this point and I’m heartily glad to have it around.

Ao Ashi
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: A-
Comments: With Production I.G. at the helm of one of the most respected sports manga around, there was never really much question that Ao Ashi was going to be really good.  The only shadow hanging over it is length – theoretically it could be a single cour, which would be pretty disastrous (though I’d bet on two – and early returns on the manga sales boost are positive).  If “sports anime for people who hate sports” is now a genre (and it is), Ao Ashi is definitely sports anime for people who love them.  Especially soccer, of course.  It’s a traditional sports series with a cocky young protagonist and some will bash it for that, but for those of us who love that sort of thing this is manna from Heaven.

 

Very Good

Summertime Render
Episodes Watched: 2
Grade: B+
Comments: This series and the one below it are right on the edge between categories, honestly.  But at only two episodes in I’d put Summertime Render just a hair below the first five shows, with the caveat that it won’t surprise me if it passes at least one of them by season’s end.  This looks like a really solid supernatural thriller, and it has the season’s best director (though I’d listen to arguments for Furuhashi) working on it.  Watanabe Ayumu will get the max out of Tanaka Yasunori’s manga, you can bank on that, and he’ll manage the pacing (always crucial with a mystery) precisely.  I’m very excited to see what Watanabe can do with 25 episodes here.

Aharen-san wa Hakarenai
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: B+
Comments: My sleeper pick for the season going in, Aharen-san wa Hakarenai joins Dance Dance Danseur as the two biggest overperformers of the season.  It’s certainly my favorite of the season’s pod of romcoms – the two leads are adorably weird dorks, the comedy is clicking on almost every level, and the supporting cast seems to have a lot of potential.  With so many mediocre examples of the “giant robot show with the girl as the giant robot” out there lately, it’s great to see a really good one.  And it succeeds largely because it makes the male lead just as distinctive as the girl rather than a bland self-insert character.

Tiger& Bunny 2
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B
Comments: “Continuity” is the buzzword with Tiger & Bunny 2.  It’s very much in the vein of the first season, which by and large is a good thing.  I’m not sure it has any urgent reason to exist apart from as a sequel to an extremely successful series (albeit almost a decade late), but it doesn’t really need one.  It’s still fun, Kotetsu and Barnaby still have great bromantic chemistry, and it strikes a good balance between comedy and drama.  While it’s easy to see that it was an influence on Horikoshi Kouhei and Boku no Hero Academia, I actually think the non-Horikoshi spin-off Vigilante is closer to T&B thematically and stylistically.

 

Worthwhile

Thermae Romae Novae 
Episodes Watched: 8
Grade: B
Comments: Another Netflix offering (those may be an endangered species if rumors are true, sadly).  This take on Yamazaki Mari’s Taishou-winning manga is considerably more straight-laced and faithful than the ultra-low budget short of several years ago, which seems to have soured some Western viewers on it.  I quite like it, though – Bizet’s “Toreador” as an OP is a winning start, and the “Onsen Journey” omakes with Yamazaki-sensei are an interesting addition.  I’m on onsen otaku I admit, but I enjoy getting a much more detailed version of events this time around, and TsudaKen is quite funny as Lucius.

Paripi Koumei 
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: B-
Comments: While the most notable thing about Ya Boy Kongming may be its OP (the best of the season), the actual show ain’t bad either.  The plot is pretty standard and the music doesn’t do that much for me, but there’s a cheeky energy to it that I find appealing.  It’s also nice to see P.A. Works doing something so unmistakably different that’s basically working. Plus, Koumei and I have the same taste in dive bars.

 

Still Watching

Kawaii Dake ja Nai Shikimori-San 
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: C+
Comments: While I don’t find the series itself all that interesting, I’m having a lot of fun analyzing Shikimori-san.   I don’t know that anything meta is really going on here – whether the series is trying to be a gender-flipped shoujo romance or BL series, or subvert the modern “Girl as the Giant Robot” genre. But that’s how it plays to me.  More likely though. it’s just a fluffy romcom which pushes some big commercial buttons, and that’s fine too.  It’s pleasant, the characters are nice, and it doesn’t do anything to make the world a darker place.

Love All Play 
Episodes Watched: 4
Grade: C+
Comments: Mostly when I think about Love All Play it’s that it’s not as good as Ryman’s Club, and how all this badminton has me jonesing for the inevitable Blue Box anime.  But it’s really not bad at all – just completely and totally generic.  It’s as vanilla as a modern original sports anime could be – the expected cast, the expected buttons pushed, the expected plot.  But as an execution of that generic template it’s perfectly fine, with pretty good visuals.

Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato de
Episodes Watched: 2
Grade: C+
Comments: I’ve only caught a couple eps of Love After World Domination but it’s a breezy, modestly amusing satirical romcom with an unpretentious quality to it.  Eminently forgettable but to be applauded for not taking itself seriously in a good way.

Deaimon
Episodes Watched: 3
Grade: C
Comments: I really wanted to like Deaimon, which is not just a Kyoto series but one set a short walk from my neighborhood.  But it’s sappier than Quebec in maple season and the writing is pretty broad, to say the least.  I’m not always that bothered when shows don’t cut it for me but this one has been a disappointment.

Dropped:

Tomodachi Game, Kakkou no Iinazuke, Birdie Wing, Gunjou no Fanfare, Kunoichi Tsubake no Muni no Uchi

 

Here, then, is this season’s blogging prospectus:

Monday:
Definitely Blogging: None
Probably Blogging: Baraou no Souretsu

Tuesday:
Definitely Blogging: None

Wednesday:
Definitely Blogging: None

Thursday:
Definitely Blogging: None

Friday:
Definitely Blogging: Summertime Render
Probably Blogging: Paripi Koumei

Saturday:
Definitely Blogging: Dance Dance Danseur, Ao Ashi, Aharen-San wa Hakarenai

Sunday:
Definitely Blogging: Kingdom 4, Spy x Family
On the Bubble: Kawaii Dake ja Nai Shikimori-San

Blogging Irregularly (Netflix): Kotarou wa Hitorigurashi, Tiger & Bunny 2

Manga: Otoyomegatari, Hunter X Hunter (hiatus)

Watching For Now: Digimon Ghost Game, Thermae Romae Novae, Love All Play, Deaimon, Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato de

 

One more thing before I wrap.  I know times are tough right now but if you’re inclined to consider helping out, please visit one of the links in the sidebar (and you can now buy me a coffee – or sign on as a monthly subscriber – through Ko-Fi).  Things have gotten more expensive, even in Japan, and the need to keep LiA financially viable is more urgent than ever before.  Patreon patrons, Paypal subscribers or one-time contributors  – you all have my everlasting gratitude.

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