It occurs to me that I never really revised my 3 episode rule article at the end of 2019’s summer season. I kind of just forgot to follow up on those shows and how things ended up panning out with them. I had always intended to make up for that with this post, talking about the shows I ended up watching in the following season, but then the end of year happened and I had to write a bunch of top ten stuff.
Y’know what though, I wouldn’t even say this is too late, I’m still weeks away from writing Winter 3 episode rule posts, that means there’s no better time to throw some opinions out there on the internet. I mean, that’s literally what the damned thing seems to be for anyway. So here are my summarised thoughts on the shows I watched from the 2019 Fall/Autumn anime season:
New Series:
Ahiru No Sora
This thing is going to be running for 50 episodes?! Holy crap.
As I mentioned in the 3 Episode Rule post for this, I don’t normally gravitate towards sports anime. But something about this one has grabbed me, and it’s about basketball of all things; a sport I also couldn’t give two ducks about.
But hey, the endearing cast and slow build from a rag tag bunch of delinquents and misfits into what will inevitably be a united team to be feared is the exact kind of underdog story I can get behind. Each of the characters seems to have their personal reasons for their admiration of the sport, and they’re all as relatable as hell.
I’m really enjoying it. It remains to be seen whether it’s long run will be to its benefit or its detriment, but all I know is that every time an episode ends, I’m bummed out. I am really invested in seeing where this one ends up, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it for an update next season.
Days of Urashimasakatasen
The one really didn’t do anything for me, and I dropped it like a bad habit as soon as I possibly could. It seemed like a nothing show. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up up again after my rant at the beginning of the season.
Ascendance of a Bookworm
Isekai is another genre I generally don’t go for. Power fantasy is something I like in video games, and not television. But not every Isekai is a power fantasy, and while Main certainly has advantages that come from her being isekai’d into an isekai, the downsides almost overlap them.
Thus, I ended up enjoying this show a lot more than I’d have expected to. I actually have a lot more to say about thus one, and have a post in the works talking about it in a lot more detail, so look forward to that one. In short though, I enjoyed this show’s message; How Main’s singular obsession that drives her through the first half of the series ends up taking a back seat to the family and friends she discovered along the way.
It’s a touching story about second changes that kind of pulls the rug from under you in the final episodes, but I’ll talk about that more in the future.
Null & Peta
I went to binge through the whole thing at the end of the season and only really made it to episode six. While it’s very cute and very sweet in the message it’s putting forward; about being comfortable in your own skin and the sisterly love between two girls. The short format continues to not really work for me. You can’t really do anything but have a nice little message and then run away before you’re into the next episode.
As nice as it is to get through the show super quick, i’d have really gotten more out of it if I didn’t have to watch all those credits every four minutes.
Continuing series:
Fire Force
I enjoyed Fire Force, but it ended up feeling like a show whose style ended up coming at the detriment of some of its substance. The show is packed with great action set pieces and a ton of amazing visual moments, but the characters feel like of shallow, especially Shinra, whose single-mindedness only really gets expanded upon in the final few episodes of the season, which ends up being kind of too late.
I wrote a bit more about it in my anime of the year list, which is mostly go into thanks to it’s action and visual flare. Pun intended.
Dr. Stone
Nobody called me out on saying Dr. Stone was an Isekai, so I guess I’ll keep calling it as such. Dr. Stone was great. Again, this is another show that has made it onto my top ten anime of 2019, and it deserves the spot there. A combination of sheer goofiness and the cast’s slow acquisition of technologies made this one really intriguing. Once it got into its flow and we really got to see what the show was about, after that nuisance of a villain was swept into the background, Senku and his band of descendants/subjects were a delight to watch.
Senku himself was a great protagonist too, being smart and feeling smart without it being too forced. He’s a nice guy, but has no qualms about manipulating people to get the result he wants. I mean that’s just science at the end of the day.
My Hero Academia (Season 4)
It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve actually spoken about this season of My Hero, despite it being like 11 episodes in at the time of me writing this. And this season continues to do what the series does very well, high drama, high stakes action that makes you love every character as they get into very cool and interestingly choreographed battles that always seem to have super hype payoffs.
This series in particular seemed to take a while to get going, at least in terms of its action. But as I’m writing this, the series is as hype and dramatic as it has ever been. The one thing that kind of irks me about My Hero is that now, in it’s fourth season, it doesn’t seem to have the impact on me that the events of the first two seasons did.
Don’t get me wrong, I love this show still, and I can’t actually put my finger on an exact thing that is making it seem weaker than the previous series in any regard. It’s just that I’m struggling to find the highs of the earlier seasons in the events of these later seasons compared to the first few where every little thing felt like a do or die situation. Maybe I’ve just build up a tolerance to what the show’s doing at this point.
My Hero is still great though and I feel like I could probably carve out some time to write more about it before this season is done.
Overall, I guess this season was fine, a solid 7/10. Most of my favourite shows were ones that were continuing from previous seasons. Although both Ahiru No Sora and Ascendance of a Bookworm ended up coming out of nowhere and grabbing my interest. I’m already watching the new shows for this winter season and a couple have already really intrigued me. But I guess that’s part and parcel of the anime experience. It just never ends.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 