~SPOILER FREE~ FINAL THOUGHTS: SPRING 2026
We’ve got yet another season of anime to talk about! I fell a bit behind this time (I feel like that’s been a trend lately), partly because I’ve been busy, but mostly because I wasn’t in the mood for anime at the start of the season. I didn’t start watching stuff until 6-weeks in, so I had a lot of catching up to do. I had fun with a lot of it though, so… yeah, it was a good season. Much better than the last one; 2026 is on the up!
Shows watched:
- Awajima Hyakkei – 9/10 – OP, ED & Anime of the Season
“It’s gentle, yet slightly cold; melancholic, as nostalgia tends to be.” - Hidarikiki no Eren – 6/10
“Conversations feel very chuuni.” - Himekishi wa Barbaroi no Yome – Dropped
“I struggle to think of things to say about it.” - Isekai Nonbiri Nouka 2 – 7/10
“A fun place to spend time in.” - Koori no Jouheki – 7/10
“It fluctuates between sufficient and mindless.” - Meitantei Precure! – Still Airing
“Too focused on Luluka.” - Tongari Boushi no Atelier – Dropped
“Clumsy and logically broken.” - Tsue to Tsurugi no Wistoria 2 – Dropped
“Show it to an 11-year-old; they might have a good time.”
Awajima Hyakkei
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 9/10
This was my most anticipated anime of 2026 because… there’s so much here for me to like. Let’s go down the list, shall we?
To start, the source material was created by the author of Hourou Musuko, which was my 13th favorite anime of the previous decade.
It’s also structured in a way similar to Akebi-chan, one of my favorites of this decade. As you may be able to tell from this show’s title, Awajima Hyakkei takes a Fugaku Hyakkei approach to storytelling. Like going through a photobook, we’re treated to a series of short, nostalgic stories about the different people who’ve been affected by the all-girls school for actors—Awajima. It’s not only about the kids who study there, but also the families, friends and fans of Awajima talent. As tales of different generations of students are told, names and events overlap, history is woven, and the natural connections of human society begin to form. There are also some Aoi Hana links to tie this story into an even wider setting.
A lot of the team behind this production comes from Yamada-kun Lv999 (which was itself an extension of Chihayafuru), and the director also worked on Nana, Chobits, Galaxy Angel, and Cardcaptor Sakura. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about how much I like Asaka Morio before.
The OP, the song of which begins playing during each episode’s cold open, before leading into the actual full OP, is sung by the F/GO lady herself—Hana Hope, and while poppy, it has a very downbeat rock aesthetic, which suits Hana Hope’s voice well.
The ED is sung by Nakashima Mika, aka, Nana. You know the one: Glamorous Sky, Kiss of Death, apparently she’s doing the ED for the next Mushoku Tensei series? Crazy time for Nakashima fans.
On music, the song Caro Mio Ben is used to introduce the first episode. I used that very same song to introduce the first segment of my Ave Mujica analysis.
And one final bonus point: there are a bunch of cool girls in this show. I mean, it’s a story set in an all-girls school, so there have to be princes for the ladies to swoon over.
So yeah, plenty to look forward to, but for all the references I’ve made, the strongest link has to be… the first anime I ever watched. I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this info on this blog—maybe I’ve mentioned it in passing—but my very first anime was Tanoshii Moomin Ikka back in the ’90s. Based on the Moominland Midwinter stories, episodes 22 and 23 focused on a winter where the main character woke up mid-hibernation and was left to face the cold (almost) alone. A new game actually came out based on those stories earlier this year; it must be a popular set of stories!
Anyway, the way that the emptiness and quiet are depicted in these episodes really stood out to me. None of the cartoons I watched on TV or on tape were like it. It was that curiosity towards a cartoon so uniquely told that led me to anime, a medium that prides silence as an equal to sound. A medium where pillow shots and limited animation were points of pride.
Awajima Hyakkei is one of the best modern examples of that, I think. A lot of the time, music isn’t the focus, and when it is, it evokes Moomin‘s chillingly beautiful The Lady of the Cold theme. A lot of the time, there’s no motion in the frames, but when there is, it’s wonderfully elegant. It’s gentle, yet slightly cold; melancholic, as nostalgia tends to be. That’s what anime is, to me, like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, or Kino no Tabi, or Kaiba, or for a modern example, Gimai Seikatsu. I just want something thoughtful.
Like this! I never would’ve thought to use a wooden floor or a mattress to represent chains!
To me, the strength of an anime adaptation partially depends on whether it can capture that unique nuance. Even in action-packed stories, and even in shows I don’t like, I often get to enjoy those moments. Pluto, Mizu Zokusei no Mahoutsukai, and so on… I need to stop making comparisons, but this is a genre-spanning trait of anime. In slice of life, in action, in stories for older men and in stories for young girls, it’s usually there. If some newcomer to anime tries to explain why their shounen manga adaptation is different to all the others, they’ll surely point to one of the rare moments in which the creators allowed silence to speak. “Look, it’s a mature story.”
Maybe that’s why I so often dislike the products of animation-focused studios like Kyoani and the mindless manga adaptations that tell tales bound by panels. That’s not what anime is. Awajima Hyakkei (a manga adaptation itself) is the ideal they should be aiming for. I wouldn’t want everything to always be like this, but man, give your stories time to breathe.
Now, where the show is at its strongest narratively is in grounding Awajima as a real place. It weaves the connections of time beautifully. As the story progresses, it becomes natural to compare the generations. Where one girl once failed to apologise to another, a pair rediscover their friendship after a nasty falling out. A year of cold, cool senpai may consequently raise a year of warm, dorky senpai. A mistake from three generations ago will result in an unrelated child one day becoming famous. None of this is emphasised, but it’s there, as it is in life.
But where the show is at its weakest is in the individuals. It does an incredible job at presenting time on a macro level, but the details and intricacies of everyday living get entirely lost. I couldn’t tell you what the girls at Awajima study, or how long a school day is, or how the school is laid out. How long is someone a kouhai before becoming a senpai? I have but a vague idea of what each character does in life, and it can be hard to care about any of them in particular. It’s the type of anime that lacks a main cast but has a giant secondary cast. There are a few characters I grew attached to. If I had to name any characters as the main focus, it’d be them: Katsurako Ibuki, Okabe Emi, and Takehara Kinue. That’s all, though. I imagine that a lot of people will struggle to grow attached to a story that so quickly moves on from its characters.
I’m not one of those people. While I do believe the lack of time allotted to individual characters is a flaw, I do believe that the show’s better aspects outweigh that single issue. I’ve gone over a few strengths, and that alone has already eaten up a lot of this post, but I love so many small things about it. The stunning amount of beautiful visual metaphors, the many handsome voices, the brutally simple line of dialogue that often punctuates a poetic arc, the character design style that looks as beautiful as it does in my memory of 2011’s Hourou Musuko, and crucially, the way that all of the stories come together to tell a single message. Even if you do struggle to grow attached to the individual stories, I believe that, in the end, that single message will resonate with you.
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Hidarikiki no Eren
Episodes Watched: 13/13
Rating: 6/10
A teenager with a love of art, aware of his lack of talent, is determined to become a designer. He doesn’t plan on becoming anything special; he just wants a cushy job.
However, an encounter with a prodigy in the field of art leads to a brief rivalry that stokes his ambition. Bettered by his highschool days, he enters the world of marketing.
This is a hard one to truly give a synopsis for. It is about the art world and about advertising agencies, but it’s written and portrayed as more of a Yakuza flick. In anime terms, it’s like a limp Zankyou no Terror combined with a worse White Album 2. It’s not as well directed, not as well written, and furthermore, the structure of this story is super messy.
Episodes jump back and forth between time periods. We begin in 2010, hop back to the ’90s, then haphazardly move through the ’00s. Because of the frequent rewinding, there’s no acceleration of stakes or progression of a thesis, and while the pieces do come together to tell a story, it’s not one I’d call interesting.
I don’t know if this is the case, but I (as usual) get the sense that this is an adaptational issue. At the very least, I can’t imagine the source material was this rushed and still managed to get an adaptation.
What it all revolves around is a guy named Kouichi, who’s kinda the protagonist. It’s an ensemble cast, but he’s the most prominent. He’s a bit of a limp individual who, despite having big dreams and enough determination to put up with hellish scenarios, isn’t proactive enough to get things done alone. So, led around by one manipulator or another, he coasts his way through life, losing more opportunities and making more mistakes as the years pass.
Comparatively, the titular character Eren is exceptionally talented but lacks drive and determination. So while Kouichi admires all of the talented people around him, she admires him. That’s the core theme, and as such, the cast members are often lacking in something. They have something that they’re good at, but they’re incomplete, forever stuck trying to find that which completes them, like an artist trying to pinpoint why their drawings feel unfinished.
If you’ve seen Byousoku 5 Centimeter, this show has a similar worldview to that, but it’s a bit more comprehensive and spends more time developing the cast. Wrapped up in this drama are three ideas: the progression of technology, the vast increase in skilled workers, and the collapsing economy. Yup, it’s a lost generation story, and many of the cast members are fueled by ambitions from an age now gone. It’s the drama of these kids’ many interactions throughout the years, and their long struggle to find themselves, that drives the plot forward. Well, whenever it’s moving forward…
That being said, it’s far more juvenile than the Shinkai film of a similar structure. It’s full of shounen manga tropes. Characters will give grand, arrogant speeches in settings where doing that would get them in hot water, but rule of cool ensures they never get in trouble for it. Villains make a show of their ugliness, talent is presented like a powerscale argument, skill is shown via intense expressions and performative flourishes, and conversations feel very chuuni. At one point, a woman tells her driver to “drive faster than the sky turns blue”, and that’s meant to be taken seriously as a quiet, heartfelt expression. It’s cheesy.
The OP begins with a really quick shot of someone eating udon, and I think that’s a good representation of the show: a bowl of noodles, all tangled up, none leading anywhere. It does have a strong identity, (which is part of why I think a lot of the issues with this show are adaptational), and I think if you like these sorts of messy, ensemble cast dramas, you should give this one a shot. Just don’t expect anything serious; it’s all about hype and aura.
I do think there’s potential here, and if you’re the right person, that potential may hit, and this story could be something very special to you. In my eyes, however, the concept does most of the carrying. Maybe that concept is best suited to another medium.
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Himekishi wa Barbaroi no Yome
Episodes Watched: 7/12
A lady knight is raised in an oppressive state ruled by rich, greedy traditionalists. Her duty as a noble outweighs all else, and yet she swings her sword. Why? Because the commoners are starving on the streets, and claiming new land will bring the kingdom more food.
But in one pivotal battle, she’s beaten in a duel by a barbarian commander and taken as prisoner. She braces herself for the worst, but instead, she receives a marriage proposal. As it so happens, the monstrous barbarians she grew up being told horror stories about are actually pretty reasonable. So reasonable that she, in fact, begins to doubt everything she knows.
It has a lot of fanservice, but the artstyle’s ugly, so the author’s intent clashes with the decisions of the anime production team. Similarly, there’s a lot of action, but the art style doesn’t lend itself well to smooth animation, giving us choppy, disjointed fight scenes that rarely make sense.
What isn’t disjointed is the main theme of the story. One country views “use” as a synonym of “exploit”, while another is more respectful to the world and its people. Greed harms the planet, makes life worse for the average person, and provides fuel for future generations to power their resentment with. Generosity heals the planet, fosters an equal society, and empowers future generations. It’s basic, but the magical analogy they use for real-world issues is handled well enough, I’d say.
Most of the show is basic, actually. It’s very… unremarkable, so much so that I struggle to think of things to say about it. It’s a light fantasy story, so if you’re in the mood for some simple, non-isekai fantasy, this works. It doesn’t impress, but it functions, and that might be good enough.
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Isekai Nonbiri Nouka 2 – Covered Previously
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 7/10
It’s been a while, but I settled right back into it. When I started episode 1, I was hit by worry; would the author be able to handle such a large-scale cast? But very quickly, it becomes clear that the one-off interactions between random villagers is the biggest strength of the story. In between the bigger story moments, these incidental scenes detail things such as… an energetic puppy trying to please a slow-paced tree stump, or a couple centaurs competing over delivery speed records. It makes the village a fun place to spend time in.
But I do recall the last season settling into a groove, and this continues that. It’s mostly episodic, with some carry-through characters and comedic bits, and it manages to remain interesting while still being light enough to not take seriously. It’s very relaxing, it’s pretty funny, and all of this combines to make the type of story that could easily last forever. If this aired for the next 20 years, I’d probably continue to watch it as go-to mealtime media. It’s a very comfortable watch. The last show I watched that really scratched this kind of itch was… Urusei Yatsura, the original run.
It’s not laugh-out-loud funny very often, (turns out, I said this about the first season too!) but the comedy is charming. Lots of the jokes stuck with me—the horse rivalry, the charades sequence, Hiraku’s “dancing”, everything the Nyunyu Daphne do, and so many more. They’re fun sequences.
This is a product of confidence, I’d say. You can tell that the team understood what made the original series work, and they’ve gone all out in focusing on that. Nothing illustrates this better than the final episode, which is crafted as build-up to a reference. The shot I used in my write-up of season one—of Hiraku looking over his villagers as they celebrate—was the highlight moment of that entire twelve-episode run, to me. The final episode of this season not only brings back the setting of that key moment, but it also references it directly in two moments, the second of which is the final frame of the whole thing.
Yet even those moments aren’t amazing. It has to be said, the heights of Nonbiri Nouka are low, but even so, the lows are high. The main character is a generic nice guy who never offers anything at all for you to get attached to. He’s a total nothing of a character, but sometimes, he says something funny.
The world is vast and full of crazy species, wild history, and grand plans, but you’ll only see a shallow rendition of the world before it’s turned into a punchline.
These, in a way, are bad things. They don’t ruin the show, and in some ways, they improve the show! But would it hurt to have something more genuine to latch onto? I don’t think so. The best comedy shows know when to drop the laughter and give you a moment of humans being human, and this run of episodes doesn’t really have that.
So this isn’t one of the best comedy shows, but ultimately, it’s a slow life show. It’s comfort material, and while its ever-consistent tone might feel a bit too samey and vanilla in a seasonal watchalong, as something you can put into your rotation of anime and reliably fall back on whenever you want something lighthearted, funny, and comfy, I think this is near perfect.
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Koori no Jouheki
Episodes Watched: 14/14
Rating: 7/10
Higawa Koyuki suffered a lot from bullying, and now that she’s in highschool, she’s a verified loner. She has one friend—a girl named Miki—but she keeps her distance from the rest of the world.
Due to a series of events, she becomes friends with one of Miki’s friends, and upon entering the small social circle, Koyuki catches the attention of a habitual introvert-fixer. Now she’s stuck between the happiness of having a friend group and the stress of being stalked, confusing a coming-of-age story.
As I’m sure everybody can tell, this story was originally created by the author of Seihantai na Kimi to Boku. That was a story with some pretty stellar character writing, where the writing of the teenage characters navigating social pressures was very appealing.
This is a story that focuses on that, almost entirely. There’s far less comedy, and what comedy exists is typically an awkward aside to escape a high-pressure scenario. It’s not feel-good.
This is a story that’s never going to be recommendable to a general audience. It’s a drama show with a depressed protagonist, and one of the main characters is an unwitting creep who, in an attempt to make Koyuki less pitiable, makes all the wrong decisions.
Other characters try to restrain his worst habits, but he’s always eager to force his way into the group. To him, being told “no” is a temporary thing. That kind of personality will undoubtedly scare some audiences away. But there are enough gaps in his self-awareness to create potential for improvement, and the question of whether that potential will be realised or not is one of the main attractions. He’s a bit Kanae-like, though, so a lot of women will probably love him.
I think the one adaptational flourish that’s worth highlighting is the ending song. The introductory melody of it is used as a build towards the end of each episode, however, there’s also an instrumental version of it that plays every now and then, and both versions are very effective at creating tension in different ways.
Other than that, it’s a very plain adaptation. It relies entirely on the charm of the original work, which is kinda fine, because the original work clearly has a lot of charm. But… there’s not much strength to it as an anime. It looks and feels like a manga, and sometimes it literally is one. It fluctuates between sufficient and mindless.
There’s a bit of missed potential, I feel. There’s one moment in episode 10 where the mangaka’s iconic chibi designs are brought to life with some really solid animation, and seeing that, I was struck by the reality that all of the previous chibi segments were really, really plain and minimal on motion. They were the panels from the manga, not scenes from an anime. Still funny, but again, it’s riding on the charm of the source without adding anything. Well… the protagonist’s voice actor sometimes has fun delivery.
And though the core of the product is good, and the lack of adaptational flourish means no risky moves are made to ruin the source material, it does have some unique weaknesses. For one, it’s a bit rushed. For another, it’s incomplete, but they did push for 14 episodes to fit in as much as they could, and a second season is on the way.
Those problems aside, I had a good time with it. The author is good at writing social dynamics, and the structure of the story is a well-worn formula that I tend to like. I struggle to think of good things to say about it because of how unremarkable it is, but I’d watch another 14 episodes of it… probably.
Also, pointless observation that most people won’t relate to: seven minutes into episode 10, the song in the background is so incredibly close to one of the slot machine songs in FiveM. I was singing Bikkuri Donki the whole time.
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Meitantei Precure! – Covered Previously
Episodes Watched: 20
Here’s a second helping of Precure. I figure I’ll write this one follow-up before leaving the series to wrap up for a final review.
In this second set of episodes, we get some reappearances of random characters from the first set of episodes, and seeing them reintroduced so casually after… almost 12 episodes of them being absent, it got my thinking. Kids are want to repeat things over and over. I remember being like that, and my sister was that way too. So even though these characters have only briefly appeared one time a few months ago, a lot of the target audience have probably spent more time with them than that. Rewatching the episodes over and over, imagining scenarios in their head, and obsessing over merchandise that’s slightly out of reach. The world of the show will be a lot more familiar to them than it is in an ordinary viewing. To me, the story ends when one episode does, and resumes the next week; to a kid, the story never ends.
Now that I’ve had time to settle into it, I think the soundtrack is underwhelming. It’s fine; it’s not annoying or anything, and the songs sound okay, but a lot of it is just there. A really good place to point at is the transformation sequences, as I think those are telling of a show’s identity. In Meitantei, the music is very… filmic, I wanna say. They’re compositionally good, with lots of quick, brief movements sequencing into one another to tell the character’s story, but it makes for forgettable accompaniment in the end. I don’t have a problem with that—that’s all music really has to be to succeed in its role—but compared to some of the other Precure! series, the music here is certainly weaker. I think the use of vocal hooks to accentuate points of the transformation sequence is a really good technique, so I wish they’d have used it here.
While we’re talking about the sound, though, I didn’t get to mention it last time, but Mikuru’s voice is so interesting to me. Sometimes she sounds more mature, sometimes she sounds cuter, and it varies at random. It doesn’t feel inconsistent, per se, but I sometimes catch myself thinking about the voice actor’s delivery. Also, I could swear that her transformation speech is a different take from one episode to the next, but maybe I’m just going crazy.
Oh, and on voice actors… Takayama Minami shows up! I was so excited when she appeared in the episode preview; I rarely get to hear her in anime. I stopped watching Conan a long time ago, but that’s pretty much the only show she still voices in.
I will say, I do think this chunk of episodes was too focused on Luluka. Everything else falls to the wayside, all the other villains take a backseat, and almost every episode has a Luluka B-plot. I was interested in the character initially, but now I find myself having far more fun with episodes like the Conan collab and the train one with Goemon. Who knows which direction they’ll focus their time on in future? I’ll probably stick with it until the end, so I look forward to getting my answer.
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Tongari Boushi no Atelier
Episodes Watched: 6/13
Since a childhood encounter with a magician, Coco has been in love with magic. Sadly, the wand and book she bought that day haven’t resulted in anything. Plus, even if she did learn magic, she can’t ditch her lonely mother to pursue education, so the status quo is all she’ll ever have.
Then, one day, a handsome mage guy conveniently shows up and Coco peeks in on his spellcasting, learning the secret to magic in the process. Then she casts a spell that conveniently kills her mother. Now, Coco has no familial responsibility and all the connections required to become the mage she always dreamed of! So begins her life as one of the several cute girls apprenticing under Mister Magic.
It’s an odd story. It begins with an analogy about birth-set destiny; were astronauts and idols born to work that job, or did they choose them? Why our protagonist—a village girl in a medieval setting—knows about astronauts and idols, I don’t know. It’s a clumsy analogy made worse by the fact that one wasn’t needed; Coco works in the family business, but her dream is to be a magician.
It’s very cheesy. It does that manga adaptation thing where a character pauses in a dynamic pose while saying a one-liner. In happy moments, various hues will dance over the image. Characters can be described as “the grumpy girl” and “the happy girl”. Episodes will have their designated sad time, but then one character will tell another to cheer up because… I dunno, magic is good or something, and the sad time will end.
There are some decent visuals, such as a shot in which a character makes a choice between a dark alleyway and a light one, but they’re few and far between. And as explained earlier, the metaphorical language is clumsy and logically broken. To give a second example of that… In one episode, as Coco flies through the sky, she thinks back to her childhood. She looks down on a round bit of geometry from high up above and, with a match cut, it becomes the image of her old home; it’s fine as an abstract concept, but when you begin to question how Coco knows what her house looks like from a bird’s eye view, it starts to fall apart.
Breaks in logic don’t just get in the way of the author’s attempts at poetry; it also gets in the way of the themes and morals of episodes. One is built around a hostile dragon that gets hurt, inspiring empathy in our lead heroine. As she’s been taught, good magic exists to bring happiness to the world, and everything else is forbidden, so Coco hatches a plan that allows them to help this dragon. They bring happiness to the dragon, celebrate for a bit, and then a couple minutes later, it’s being knocked unconscious by flames powerful enough to break through its natural resistance to fire. We get a cartoony drawing of it twitching after being knocked out, and that’s that plotline wrapped up!
In an early episode, a character comments that doing one of the tests at this time of year is incredibly dangerous and he wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. Then Coco clowns around for a bit and passes the test without any help or training. There’s little sense of danger about it, from her (and therefore our) perspective, and when she’s done, there’s no debriefing to put her achievement into context, no conversation about what happened. Instead, it’s handwaved away as unimportant, and the story goes on.
But the big complaint I have is in how it handles its main narrative. Throughout the show, a mystery is seeded involving the person who gave Coco such a dangerous book of magic. This is done by having a character vaguely hint to their plans at the end of an episode, as the sort of cliffhanger you know won’t be followed up on for a while. It’s done by having a character name-drop something important—something that means nothing to us, but that comes with a musical sting. Foreshadowing is as subtle as having a character pull a twisted expression while the camera zooms in on them.
It’s very generic, plus, it doesn’t succeed in nailing the core formula, so I think there are plenty of alternatives I’d rather watch. This isn’t a genre I’m desperate enough to watch bad entries in, but if you are, it might be an okay time.
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Tsue to Tsurugi no Wistoria 2 – Covered Previously
Episodes Watched: 5/12
Hey, it’s this again. Exposition is as clumsy as ever. One character will explain something to another, even though it’s common knowledge to them both. A villain will deliver exposition to an audience of none, solely to allow the viewer to follow what’s going on.
There’s a sequence where a group of characters scattered around a city cheer Will on, yet most of them are in completely different places from one another, far enough away that they can’t see or hear Will, and with most of them having no knowledge that Will’s even fighting something, but… we need the characters to cheer for our protagonist, so here they are!
It has the same powerscale update as in the previous set of episodes: we’re introduced to a set of characters, each represented by a different colour, and each with a different quirk. They’re the most powerful in their setting, but oh no, there are even more powerful forces in the world beyond!
That’s a description of season 1, but it applies here perfectly.
The formula is the exact same, as well. Will gets beaten down, we get a boohoo sob moment, and then he wells up with determination and becomes OP with a sudden, unearned upgrade. Repeat that once per episode and you’ve got a full story!
The setting still has a lot of logical failings, of course, but there are new ones on top of the established problems. In episode 2, for example, we get the end-of-year celebration, in which the world’s citizens gather together to witness the tower’s mages restore the seal. Now, if the mages fail to restore the seal, it’ll be a complete disaster, so gathering everyone together seems like an easy way to get them killed. Furthermore, it’s hard to keep track of potential saboteurs in such large crowds.
To make it even worse, all of the world’s mages are expected to point their wands up at the sky as part of the ceremony, so it’d be very easy to blend in as a bad actor and cast off some foul magic that ruins everything.
Fight scenes are now deep into Dragon Ball territory, with a dash of Fate. It’s pure nonsense. It reminds me a bit of Naruto. Everyone even runs like Naruto characters!
I always thought the peak of Naruto was the early tournament arc, and here, I’m getting the same feeling; the school setting where inexperienced fighters are limited in power and reliant on tricks and planning is far more interesting than the mindless laser fights of later episodes. We’re beyond the good bit.
Also like Dragon Ball, the recaps and repeated scenes are offensively common. It makes sense in the first episode, because we need to remind the audience of what happened in the previous season, but it never lets up. Flashbacks are incredibly common (acting as a form of padding), and episodes often open with a repeat of a scene from the prior episode. Episode four, no exaggeration, begins by replaying the final two minutes of episode three without any modifications. They then have the audacity to give the episode a double-length credits sequence, making for a whole seven minutes of unarguable filler.
But for all the flaws it shares with last season, it has one strength in common: they do some visually interesting things once in a blue moon. A collage of frames featuring separate characters reacting will be broken as one character exclaims, pushing the rest of the characters off the screen with his shout.
Instead of seeing a character head-on, we’ll see through his eyes, getting a shot of the world he sees. Yet in the shot, a pair of glasses will reflect his face, showing us his expression.
I don’t think either of these examples look good, but… they’re interesting!
Sadly, it doesn’t have the animation quality of its predecessor, and that was really what kept the show afloat during its original run for many people. Given the declining quality of this adaptation of an already low-brow product, I can’t imagine many people enjoying this outside of a very specific age range. Show it to an 11-year-old; they might have a good time, but in ten years, they’ll look back on it and say that it “aged poorly”, somehow unaware that non-corporeal things don’t age. That’s the kind of mind you need to have.
Also, bit of a spoiler section here. I find it so weird that Will’s big power-up and reunite scene—built up to from the start of the first season and brought to our screens with a hype vocal track accompanying it—takes place during the fourth episode in a battle against a generic monster with no personality, no voice, no motivations, and no goals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the protagonist’s major power boost occur against a non-named, non-unique character before, at least, not in a shounen manga adaptation.
Anyway, if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from this set of episodes, it’s that you shouldn’t give up, even when the world is against you; you might secretly be a super duper special hero, so just wait for the plot to give you your powers and everything will be fine.
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