With the end of the Spring 2014 Season over and this thread now up, I thought it would be proper to write an extremely long and overdrawn post about what I watched this season in list format to draw as much ire as possible. The season was better than I was expecting (which I say after pretty much every season) as I once again managed to stumble upon quite a few decent shows I had little or no intention of watching before the season started.
#1 Ping Pong The Animation
Hey, here's a show people said would be really good and likely AOTS and they were actually right. This was the show I looked forward to the most every week.
Despite the odd style and budget/time issues, this show still had more than enough to put it over others this season. This a show where I found the symbolism and imagery were actually pretty nice, as opposed to the usual blatancy found in most anime. It's also nice to see a show just end, without a season 2 tease or cliffhanger.
The characters are all interesting (even Smile, who I thought and many thought was the weakest character, I ended up liking more and more) and you can empathize with even the "villains". Wenge goes through an arc in such a short time on screen and yet he's still such a great character. A character with no name that I just call "traveling guy" has way less screentime, and yet still gets a full arc and he was pretty great. Kazama changes a lot in the last two episodes, and I was not expecting that at all, or at least not in the way it was done. PECO IS THE GODDAMN HERO.
Overall, without reading the original source material, I think Yuasa and the odd animation style they chose fit this very well and combined with it being a show about Ping Pong which many people would scoff at, I really enjoyed it despite that. Great OST as well.
Easily AOTS.
#2 Hunter X Hunter 2011
Considering this arc is ending conveniently at the end of the season along with everything else, I'll rank it despite it not being over or at a halfway point or anything. I'm just going to reiterate what's been said and what I've said about the Chimaera Ants Arc again - it has pacing issues, and that's a bigger or smaller problem depending on who you ask. However, it has the highest high points in the entire series as a payoff. Yorknew may be a more complete and tighter package, but events in this arc are great, as are the characters (the villain is probably the best character in the whole series.) I was really interested to see how they would adapt a whole bunch of parts of this arc, and they did it all very well. Hats off to you Madhouse, that 131 episode wait was worth it.
AND THAT OST IS SICK AS HELL, they play the same two songs nearly every episode and it never gets old.
#3 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders
No, the Ripple is not coming back stop asking
Despite not being absolutely crazy about Part 3, it's still entertaining as hell and continuing Davis Production's excellent adaptation of the JoJo manga, despite crudish censoring and silly Crunchyroll name changing. But Walk Like an Egyptian is the ED and that's awesome.
Little to say about this because I'm a giant JoJo fan, I was going to like this anyway. I also read it already and watched the OVA and I personally think Part 3 gets way better in the second half, or at least after the first quarter. I will give them credit for making fights I wasn't very hyped to see very fun to watch (Ebony Devil in particular.)
But they changed Hol Horse's voice actor from All Star Battle and that's shit.
#4 No Game No Life
Probably the show I want a S2 for the most, this show is just super entertaining. Usually I don't like overpowered unbeatable MC's, but I'll let it slide for this show because it's so stupid and not meant to be taken seriously at all, and I actually like Sora and Shiro's dynamic a lot. The referential humor was pretty well done and placed I found, and wasn't the only kind of jokes. Plus it had JoJo and Phoenix Wright references so I can't hate it. The games are all entertaining as hell, and despite the fact the MC pair cannot lose because they are so good at NEET things, it still manages to put on quite a show. Although I was kind of getting tired of the super calculated bullshit plans for everything by the end of it.
This was by far the lewdest thing I watched this season, and that kind of stuff doesn't bother me but if you don't want to see an episode where all the characters are naked for like half of it or "beautiful things" I don't judge
And Jibril is the best girl. And Steph is a Steph.
#5 Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou
I'm really a sucker for this sort of thing (I am allowed), but it really helps when the show is actually good. Even though the main relationship moves at a snail's pace (it ends with them exchanging cell phone numbers I mean come on) I still thought it was a nice watch mainly because it was adorable. The show is more of a comedy then a romance anyway. I liked how it mainly stayed away from the school setting, and had quite a few adult characters. However those adult side characters really make this show and without them it'd actually be pretty boring. Mayumi, Sayaka and Shiro are hilarious and make all the interactions great. Also moe KanaHana gives it some points too.
#6 Hitsugi no Chaika
I would write this part in Chaikaspeak but I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I did.
This show is a great boon upon the world for giving us hilarious screencaps. I expect many Shocking Truths in our future.
Despite being very by the books and average fantasy, it doesn't really do anything worth hating or loving, and that's good. It didn't dissuade me from wanting to watch the second season. Apparently it's also very similar to an older, better show called Princess Tutu or something I dunno. The main cast is more likeable then I was lead to believe, especially after they add a viscous Dragoon loli. And despite Akari's gimmick being making vaguely incestuous deadpan jokes, I find her great.
About halfway through it turns into Choose your Chaika and the only real choice so far is Red, let's be real here
#7 Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei
Honestly this show isn't too bad (besides the times when it is like that dumbass stuff with the kendo girl and the current arc is pretty boring) and that's probably because I was expecting it to be really, really bad. This is another show I can say has too many characters and I forgot everyone's name but I don't think it's as bad as NaNaNa. The magic system is interesting and I wish they would expand on it more, but then there wouldn't be time to MARVEL AT HOW GLORIOUS ONII-SAMA IS. DO YOU SEE ONII-SAMA? THE MAN WHO INVENTED FLYING MAGIC IN HIS SPARE TIME? THE MAN WHO IS SO GOOD AT EVERYTHING THAT HE BROKE THE TESTING FOR THE SCHOOL? A MAN SO FLIPPANT AND SUAVE, HE WOULD STAND OUTSIDE OF A BUS WHEN IT IS HOT OUT? WHENEVER ONII-SAMA'S NOT ON SCREEN, ALL THE OTHER CHARACTERS SHOULD BE ASKING "WHERE'S ONII-SAMA?"
ONII-SAMA IS THE GREATEST CHARACTER OF OUR GENERATION GODDAMMIT
#8. Captain Earth
It's really hard to say anything about this show when nothing ever happens. I honestly just watch it to see what predicaments Team Rocket and Our Heroes will end up in and how dumb it will be in vague hopes something interesting will occur besides magic yuri awakening kisses, or marvel at how much overblown sci-fi lingo will be thrown in this week. The main characters are really awful at tracking down probable bad guys, despite them all having different colored abnormal hair. You think after a while they would get instantly suspicious of anyone with green or red hair but no, they never do. Don't these guys watch the episode previews?
But it looks pretty, has a decently good OST, a badass launch sequence and Hana who is actually really boring and kind of annoying but I'm a sucker for brown girls. And I swore I'd stick with this to no one for no reason, no matter how shitty it got, so now I'm stuck watching it because I'll be damned if I lie to myself
#9 Mekaku City Actors
I'll be honest, this show is 2Shaft4Me. I can handle Shaft, but not this much Shaft. I also had little to no idea what was going on for most of the show (especially the ending), so that didn't really help. I don't have a lot to say about this show, because I don't feel strongly either way about it. I didn't really like any of the characters, but none of them were bad. The songs were alright, but I'm not really into that kind of music. I just never really dropped it because I wanted to see if it had something to say, and it did get better in the later episodes but not enough to sway my opinion into the positive.
Good OP and ED though.
#10 Nanana's Buried Treasure
This was dropped but I just couldn't leave it well enough alone and came back to it. It wasn't worth it. I got played like a goddamn fiddle. I started watching this show for the redhead girl who shows up an amazing 10 minutes the entire series- 8 of them being in the first episode- so then I started watching it for the black hair girl who also never shows up, so I just settled for Tensai like everyone else.
I wish this show was just a wacky treasure hunting show and didn't have all these organizations and so many characters. It would've been better that way. It probably also has one of the lamest, most generic villains in recent memory who's name I can't remember but he was wearing a trenchcoat . But it does have its moments, as few and far between as they are.
FURTHERMORE, this show makes me mad by proxy by continually showing Nanananananana playing Phantasy Star Online 2 all the goddamn time fuck you Sega
#11 M3: Sono Kuroko Hagane
Now, I like mecha series. But there's a lot of bad mecha series. And this is one of them. It's such a drab, dreary and dull show that looks like it came out of a different decade, and not in a good way. It's also worse than Nobunaga the Fool (which was basically a soap opera with mechs thrown in as an afterthought to make someone like me vaguely interested, but I don't know what I expected from Kawamori), so congratulations on doing that one.
So our main cast of no one interesting has to pilot these robots to fight the generic shadow enemy in the Zone and the shadows are actually humans gasp and then the biggest edgemaster of all time comes in and starts licking people and I dropped it because I have standards
Absolute WORST Show I watched this Season?
FUUUN ISHIN DAI SHOGUN
I'm fairly certain absolutely no one in here was watching this (and neither was I, I dropped it after the first episode) except Midonin. I hesitate to call this a show because it consists entirely of stills moving slightly. This show is like, Musashi Gundoh tier at times. The only draw is the boobies but you can watch SOMETHING GOOD AND WHOLESOME like Blade & Soul or Daimidaler for that and spare your eyes from this.
Best show I DID NOT watch this Season?
MUSHISHI S2
I would've watched this but I was too lazy to watch the first season. That's it. It's about ghosts, right?
Although I feel like I secretly missed something by not watching WIXOSS. But I'm not sure what.