Okay, so Hunter X Hunter is hereby dropped. I just have no clue what to replace it with. After watching both Nazo na Kanojo and Jormungand’s first episodes, I think I’m either going to blog Jormungand, or go with a Kaleidoscope. I’m leaving that for next week to decide.
The thing is: we really have a special season this time. It really needs to be successful, because it has the potential to raise the bar on anime. Last Summer I also was very enthusiastic about how good it was, but this time it’s different: there are so many series this season that put in a lot of effort to stand out in their own ways. There are no immediate instant classics, but there are so many series that have the potential to become so. This will very likely become the best season of the entire year in terms of overall quality.
My thing with Jormungand is that it does not belong among those series, yet it has the potential to stand out. It’s not the only series this season that has this. Really, I had a ton of difficulties picking between this series and Nazo na Kanojo X. Seriously, the runners-up this season also really have some potential to stand out, and that’s something I haven’t seen in a while. A quick overview of them and why I didn’t decide to weekly blog them:
– Nazo na Kanojo has a great female lead and excellent characterization when it gets down to business. It however has only 13 episodes and I’m not sure whether it’ll be enough to talk about weekly.
– Natsuiro Kiseki is very creative, and again deserves a lot of points with the interplay between its cast. It is also very bold in spending so much time on small things. It however, is too angsty at times.
– Polar Bear Cafe is wonderfully creative and delightful Iyashi-Kei. It’s also so boring.
– Same for Kimi to Boku: I’m only starting to like this show more and more and the characterization only gets better, yet the annoying parts are also still there.
– AKB048 just puzzles me with its bizarrely creative premise.
– And then there is the wildcard of Medaka Box, which is very overblown moe, but I can see it break the boundaries of genres like what everyone says about it… if it ever gets to that point and the director doesn’t ruin it.
– Not to mention that Legend of Korra which promises an interesting look at modern day heroes.
And then there are the series that don’t stand out, but are just very good entertainment:
– Kuroko no Basuke knows how to be fun. But yeah: it’s both too shounen and a shounen jump series.
– Saint Seiya has Yoshihiko Umakoshi‘s animation, but unfortunately it doesn’t really add much to what we’ve already seen from him in Casshern Sins and Heartcatch Precure.
Now that I’m typing this up, I see a lot of potential for a good Kaleidoscope here. The past summer season had me saying that it could become an incredibly good series. In the end it didn’t turn out as good as I expected due to a number of bad and incomplete endings. This season has that much less: only Zetman is an obvious culprit here, and even that show is actually trying to make up for it, rather than ignore it.
Anyway, Jormungand. I actually chose this show because it was out of the ones mentioned above, the show I wasn’t going to blog, yet have the most to say about. Again, this can really grow to stand out: the manga is also fully finished and there will be 26 episodes, not to mentioned that the semi-episodic nature will makes sure for a ton of variety. This can really work, and yet I am missing something from this series. Something that doesn’t place it among the top of this season. I’ll try to explain what that is.
Because really: I am a big fan of war dramas. Anime in the past have done some really great things with it. And that’s a thing: this series does feel a bit derivative. I’ve seen a lot of people compare it to Black Lagoon, but that’s also probably because the OPs sound similar (and indeed: the OP does in no way match the classic OP that Black Lagoon had), but I think that the problem is more with the way it ends up setting itself apart because of this: its humor and entertainment value.
This series indeed is very slick, fun and fast-paced. This episode also threw in a lot of character development for the side characters, which also is a good sign. What I do feel however, is that it has its tongue a bit too far up its own cheek, and overplays the comedy a bit too much for a war drama: it always needs to have a joke ready, or it always needs to have a character looking cheeky. Despite the solid production values overall, this is something that it fails to recognize. It makes this series very one-sided. Especially Coco is guilty of this. Think a bit about the most memorable characters out there who use comedy: they use it with a natural charm: they don’t try to be funny, but this comes naturally to them. Jormungand seems to go for this effect, but ti tries to force this too much by trying to give the characters too much natural charm, making them forced. This is something that this series is going to really have to take care of.
Rating: *+ (Great)