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This was a really good season for anime. I watched 7 new series, and liked them all. As usual, this is technically in order of preference, but the top four all tangled in a roughly co-equal ball.:

My Hero Academia — It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since the first series came out. I wasn’t too happy with the very beginning of the first series, and a giant tournament didn’t seem that appealing this time. But it actually worked out well, showcasing some real character development, and laying the groundwork for the next round of storylines.

Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor — You know, if the girl’s school uniforms weren’t woven of fanservice, this might have been my favorite series of the season. That’s really the only thing holding this down. The characters all have troubles, but they round out the characters instead of being excuses for overblown emo-drama, and the writing is really smart. If you missed this (and especially if you missed this because it looked like fanservice all the way down), check this one out.

The Eccentric Family 2 — I was a bit worried that this would suffer from sequelitis as a new story after the first series, but it turned out to be very strong. While it does introduce new characters at the beginning, threads from the first story continue here, and I’d recommend watching the first series before picking this up.

WorldEnd — I’m not even going to bother with the full overblown subtitle (yeah, the one that takes up an entire screen). Bring kleenex. Another really well-done world that’s looking at a slow-grind apocalypse, focused on a love story (admittedly, while we see a decent number of those in anime, there’s only been one other I’ve been aware of recently).

Alice & Zoroku — I somewhat randomly spotted this this and said ‘let’s try it!’. I… should do that more often, it turned out to be very good. The ending wasn’t really final, but it’s quite satisfactory, and anything more would probably be an anticlimax.

Natsume’s Book of Friends 6 — I was a lot happier with the latest season of Nastume than the previous one, as it spent a lot more time on character development. Not a lot happened in the various continuing threads, but those never proceed very fast, and they were present this time.

Granblue Fantasy — At almost any other time, this would have been a pretty strong series, but this season was so good it’s the bottom of the pack. Another videogame adaptation, its weakened a bit by a rapidly growing cast, and an over reliance on a few tropes (go to place, have trouble, defeat boss monster), but the art is good, and it doesn’t feel like it’s taking itself too seriously like Zestiria did. I have a feeling we won’t see any more of this, but I’d like to be proven wrong.

I also watched a few things from the previous season or two:

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju — One of the nice things about anime is the occasional series that exists to show off a love for a particular subject, in this case rakugo, a traditional type of comedy native to Japan. The full series covers a period from the early ’30s to ~2016, focused on the impact of a couple of performers, and is an excellent trip.

ACCA-13: Territory Inspection Department — Supposedly this was a seinen series, but by look and feel it is oh so shojo. In either case, it’s very smartly done and stylish throughout and a great political drama (not quite in thriller territory).

The Saga of Tanya the Evil — So… ‘god’ decides to shock a bastard out of a heartless, materialist, viewpoint by getting him reborn in an alternate timeline that’s going through something of a mix of WWI and WWII in the ’20s. Smudge wasn’t sure I’d like this with good reason, as I generally don’t go for anti-hero stories, but this was very well done. Tanya is horrible, and what she’s fighting against isn’t any better. Even with ‘divine’ intervention, I’m not buying a lot of the technology seen in the later parts of the series, as its springing up with no antecedents or problems, and that really drags down the later parts for me, but ignoring that part, this was a really strong story.

Voltron: Legendary Defender — Finally caught to the second season of this. It continues to be very good, and got a lot more climatic than I was willing to give it credit for going in. Now I’m anxiously awaiting season three. I have to wonder what this series’ version of Prince Lotor will be like….

Akiba’s Trip — Um, yeah. If you’ve heard anything about the pervy/parody game, this is about what it says on the tin. But, it’s really an Excel Saga-style parody series, tackling a different fan subject each episode. The quality of the humor went slowly downhill over the series, but at least the overall story stayed to help make up for it. Someone was really getting something off his chest for episode 2. If you’ve looked at this and thought ‘could be good, could be awful’, its on the ‘good’ side.

And between other things, I’ve gotten around to re-watching Mushishi and Girls und Panzer; I consider both of them in the top five of the last several years (or longer), and I really need to see them more often, I’d certainly forgotten too much of Mushishi.

And finally, some more Pokemon:

Sun and Moon — This has finally started updating on the Pokemon Channel, so I’ve only seen a few episodes. But, the new style has been good, and the larger constant cast will give it a nice dynamic if they start leveraging it more. (I really liked the middle part of X and Y where all the secondary characters were there most of the time.)

Master Quest — After a long delay getting the set from Amazon, we’re about a third of the way through the last section of second generation. It’s the usual mix, with some really clunky episodes, but we still giggle over “Pudgy Pidgey Island”.