Summer 2024 Mid-Season Check In

Welcome all, to a mid-season check in post! I’m stuck in the middle of a writeup on My Hero Academia that’s taking longer than I thought, so I figured why not talk about how this season is going and what, if anything, interests me. Make sure to let me know how you’re enjoying it in the comments down below! Always a chance I missed something after all. Also these are in no particular order, so don’t read into that, I just added them as I thought of them.

Isekai Shikkaku

First is my surprise favorite of the season, Isekai Shikkaku. To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to stick with this. The first episode was a pleasant surprise, but I didn’t think it would be able to keep it up for the entire season. Yet here we are, seven episodes in, and I’m still enjoying it just as much as I did the pilot. Something about Hiroshi Kamiya’s deadpan performance as Osamu Dazai, the way he simultaneously enables and dampens all of the usual Isekai bullshit, really appeals to me. His power is still situational OP bullshit that does whatever the plot demands, and they still always win, but he also never involves himself in a conflict until the very end to clean it all up. Instead he walks around making morbid quips and trying to kill himself, all the while those around him expect Dazai to be the standard Isekai protagonist man-child.  It’s… I wouldn’t exactly call it novel, because Isekai Shikkaku still follows a lot of the standard Isekai tropes, but it’s definitely more entertaining than 90% of Isekai and there’s a degree of heart to it I don’t get from most. Something about a suicidal Osamu Dazai giving life lessons and wisdom to people that he himself will never take to heart works for me.

MONOGATARI Series: OFF & MONSTER Season

Next is the new season of Monogatari, AKA Off & Monster. Monogatari can be very hit or miss for me, largely dependent on which character the arc is about as each character tends to get a certain kind of story. So when I saw that Nadeko was the heroine for the first arc, I wasn’t very enthused. After all, her best arc isn’t even focused on her (Hitagi End) and her first arc is about her getting DPed by a snake in a shrine parking lot while wearing a one-piece swimsuit. Not the best introduction if you ask me. And yet… this first arc was great. Watching Nadeko confront all of her past actions/attitudes, directly grappling with and growing from them rather than running away, was really compelling. It also helps that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to enjoy Studio Shaft’s almost schizophrenic editing more and more. There’s so much meaning packed into every shot/scene, it’s not a show you can just ignore or put on in the background, it demands your full attention if you want to get everything out of it. As such, Monogatari: Off & Monster has been a surprising and pleasant time for me this season.

Bye Bye, Earth

I’m really not sure how I feel about Bye Bye, Earth. All about growing swords, music, animal people, identity, religion, there’s so much packed into this show. Yet despite that, I have absolutely no idea what it’s trying to say. Bye Bye, Earth makes just enough sense that I know it’s trying to communicate with me. I’m certain there’s a purpose behind the setting, the narrative, the characters, all of it is to purposeful to just be random bullshit thrown together. But I also can’t figure out what it’s going for, so I’m stuck in a limbo where I’m interested, where I want to see what it does and where it goes, yet have no idea where it will end. So yeah, Bye Bye, Earth is interesting and unique, and I won’t know if it’s any good, if it comes together, until the end.

The Elusive Samurai

Elusive Samurai is another weird one. Filled with some of the best animation of the season, seriously look at how ridiculous this is, yet also containing many off-putting and concerning scenes/characters, I’m finding it hard to really buy into the series. Like… Do we really need a bunch of inappropriate jokes aimed at a young child, even for comedy? And when does the retainer gathering end and the “retaking the country” bit begin? When Elusive Samurai actually gets moving, when our leads are fighting back against the villains, it’s pretty compelling. Tokiyuki’s fight in episode 2 against Muneshige was fantastic, not just in animation but the narrative surrounding it as well. But Elusive Samurai hasn’t managed to get anywhere near that height since, even with an absolutely bonkers production backing it up. Hopefully the series figures itself out, because right now I’m getting dangerously close to just looking up all of the great scenes on Sakugabooru or YouTube and skipping the bad jokes and meandering narrative.

SHOSHIMIN: How to Become Ordinary

I’ve been told that Shoshimin is just a budget Hyouka, which really tells me that I need to go back and actually watch Hyouka if it’s just this but better. Getting serious, I’m not entirely sure why I like Shoshimin, just that I do. The dynamic between Kobato and Osanai is just really compelling to me. I love their banter, how soft spoken they are and the timbre of their voices. Some of the mysteries/extended scenes are petty or dull, I’ll admit. Watching them spend 20 minutes figuring out how to make hot chocolate with only a single spoon is tedious in the extreme, easily one of the worst episodes of the show. At the same time though, when it works, it works. The whole thing with the driving school, the cakes, Osanai getting one step away from going full yandere, those are engaging! Hopefully the second half of the season will be more of that, more of Kobato and her interacting, and less of the pointless petty stuff.

I Parry Everything

Look I won’t lie, this is regular OP MC fantasy bullshit. The lead is “weak” in that he can’t use any complex skills in this MMO-like fantasy world, but that just means he has to practice the basic skills and take them to their utmost limit if he wants to be strong. And that’s exactly what he does, becoming able to parry literal dragons, and cast basic heals or physical enhancements to the point where he becomes a veritable god. What makes it work though is that the MC is actually a pretty decent guy. His power doesn’t go to his head, hell he doesn’t even recognize himself as strong, instead seeing the dragons and giants he defeats as “Frogs” and “Goblins” that even the most low-ranked adventurer is expected to be able to beat. It’s actually rather endearing how respectful and polite he is of those around him, never seeming above anyone or anything, never seeking fame. I Parry Everything isn’t particularly special, the production is average and the story is rather standard. But it’s not up its own ass about itself and the MC has an actual personality, making it a solid popcorn watch for me this season.

My Hero Academia Season 7

Obviously I’m watching the newest season of My Hero Academia, how could I not? Hell I think some of my weekly writeup posts from before my retirement still had episodes of it, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. MHA continues to chug along just fine. I’m not particularly enthused by it, the story gets rather messy if you ask me and the production flits between average and pretty good. I wouldn’t say we’ve seen anything mind-blowing from it yet, though a few scenes do try their best like Dabi, Bakugo and Cathleen. It’s just an overall decent production for a long running Shounen. It definitely doesn’t have anything on One Piece’s recent arcs, that’s for sure. Anyways, I’m mostly watching MHA as part of my research for the “History of My Hero Academia” post I’m working on at the moment, it’s helpful to see some of these scenes again, voice acted this time for that added emotion, plus stuff like Dabi and Todoroki or Bakugou and Shigaraki do still hold up pretty well.

Tower of God Season 2

Finally we come to Tower of God Season 2. This is… This is just bad, in almost every way. I pity actual Tower of God fans, because thing even managed to ruin what should have been the hypest moment of the entire adaptation. That “fight” between Viole and Mazino was just… It’s difficult to call it a fight at all. And the rest of the season, such as the exam, the various character introductions, isn’t much better. Personally I’ve always felt like the time skip was the start of Tower of God’s decline, that it lost sight of itself as it rushed to turn Bam into an OP MC who could fight the strongest characters in the series despite not even being a Ranker himself. That by dropping most of the cast we came to love in the first part for a bunch of new ones, only to reintroduce the old cast one by one as it realized we didn’t care about the new ones, it ruined my investment. Well this season is only worsening my opinion of it. Without SIU’s passionate, if rough, art, the only thing left Tower of God to fall back on is its mediocre narrative. And let me tell you, that’s not working.