Spring 2016 Anime Season First Impressions (Part 1)

Welcome to the first installment of 'Anime Season First Impressions,' where I, Braden Turk, go over some selected anime from the currently-airing season to talk about. For this first time (it might change later) I wrote these opinions up with having seen 2 episodes of each show. I hope you like it!

Enjoy!

Kumamiko: Girl Meets Bear

Starting off, let’s take a look at “Kumamiko: Girl Meets Bear,” an anime that follows a country-raised shrine-caring girl who will do anything to go to school in the city, much to the behest of the being she gives care to: a talking bear.

I enjoyed these first two episodes! Though it may seem a bit odd at first, the relationship between Machi and the bear (named Natsu) seems to have a lot of comedic (and even potentially touching) drive going for it; it’s more of a daughter-father relationship than anything, and it could lead the way to a good, defined relationship at the end.

However, that’s all of the good things I’m really getting from these first two episodes: while they aren’t bad, they’re just… average. In fact, both of them are pretty similar to one another. To show some examples, here’s the frame of the two episodes: Machi says ‘I want to go to the city,’ Natsu rebuts with ‘Here’s another test for you,’ Machi gets ready, the plan goes wrong, hijinks ensue, and the episode ends on a sweet note. That’s it.

Overall, “Kumamiko” shows that it could improve over time, but I’m just worried that “over time” will take a bit too long.

6/10- Shows promise, but I might be wrong; one to indirectly keep an eye on this season.

Bungo Stray Dogs

The newest detective/supernatural/comedy assembling, “Bungo Stray Dogs,” follows a group of superpowered ‘humans’ (if you can call them that) that carry out tasks and follow mysteries too tough for the normal government to handle, most notably among them our main character, Atsushi, an orphaned boy who has the unwilling ability to turn into a tiger.

At least, that’s what I had thought while watching the first episode.

When I had gone into episode two, I thought I was going to get the same thing I got prior; needless to say, I was generally surprised: I think this has a lot of potential. And not just “Kumamiko” potential, no, this looks like it could do a lot. Of course, BONES (the animation studio behind this work) has already given us great production value already, but it looks like the manga-adapted story could go in places where I’m not expecting it to.

Sure, it may be a bit of a wildcard, but I think this is one of the shows that most people should be trying out this season.

8/10- A slightly okay first episode is followed by a great one, making this one of the unexpected few shows to really look out for.

Anne-Happy

“Anne-Happy,” otherwise translated as “Unhappy Go Lucky!” is a new comedy/slice-of-life, and, yes, (collective groans from audience) high-school anime brought to us by studio Silver Link. Although, there’s a specific reason I chose this slice-of-life anime over the countless others I could have chosen: there’s a gimmick.

The gimmick goes as such: in this school, classes 1-3 and 4-6 respectively follow either academics or sports. However, after the 6 other prestigious groups, there still remains one more class: the class of 1-7, whose only purpose is to make the students happy. But why, you say? Well, it’s because each and every one of the students in class 1-7 are unfortunate; whether it’s by being extremely frail, (most strangely) falling in love with a ‘construction apology sign’ mascot, or just having general bad luck, these students have it the worst.

They really do have it the worst, and that’s what makes “Anne-Happy” a bit different from the other anime of its ilk; this show milks the gimmick for all it’s worth. Of course, the fact that the gimmick is a consistently funny one helps that case, but it really does get its right amount of jokes from the premise alone. Even for two twenty-minute episodes, the anime still finds a way to get some good gags from the device, which I hope lasts long enough.

7/10- It relies on a single maneuver, yes, but when all is said and done, “Anne-Happy” has (and will continue to have) a lot of comedic tricks up its sleeve.

Space Patrol Luluco

“Space Patrol Luluco” is an absolutely chaotic short studio Trigger anime series (each episode lasts 7 minutes in length) that takes place in a city in Japan where humans and aliens live in conceived peace. Naturally, this peace wouldn’t be possible without the help of some police entity, and that entity just happened to recruit a middle-school girl (Luluco) who used to pride herself on a leading 'a super normal life;’ that is, until she comes into contact with another, more mysterious transfer student under the name ‘Alpha Omega Nova,’ of which will lead to a change in her fate.

Wow. For such a short series, it requires a lot of information to be said, which didn’t seem like the case when I first laid my eyes upon it: that first episode was very, very chaotic (dare I say crazy), as per usual of Trigger’s fast-paced western-inspired style.

Now, don’t let that deceive you: it isn’t so hyper that you can’t tell what’s going on, but, rather, it lends a hand to the show’s curveball comedic timing (of which is also Trigger’s other specialty).

There’s really not much else to say, yet it seems like I could write an essay on this one. One more possible thing I could say is that the company seems as in on the joke as much as we are, since apparently the ‘second season’ of “Space Patrol Luluco” started before the fourth episode even hit (the company is notable for its horrendous drops of quality in its fourth episodes).

7.5/10- Both one of the most easily recommendable and most chaotic to watch anime of this season, “Space Patrol Luluco” is a ride that won’t seem to stop, both for the creator and viewer.