Welcome to the Anime round-up articles, where we’ll be looking at the opening episodes for many of the new series airing this Summer season.
RWBY: Ice Queendom
Studio: Shaft
Genre: Actio, Fantasy
Streaming: Crunchyroll
The first episode of this new RWBY series is mostly just introducing all our four main girls, in some ways reminiscent of their initial character introduction videos. Shaft have pulled out all the stops for the animation as it looks gorgeous and the characters and world fits well into the anime style. Crunchyroll released the first three episode of this series together and given how the first episode feels very much like a prologue, this makes sense. So far it isn’t really bringing anything new to the franchise but one to keep an eye on for sure, regardless if you’re a fan of the original RWBY series or not. The action sequences are absolutely stunning and there’s just enough fleshing out of some of the main cast to make them three dimensional (Yang and Blake suffer somewhat in this regard but hopefully time will be spent on them in the future).
My rating: 8/10
Yurei Deco
Studio: Science Saru
Genre: Sci-Fi, Mystery
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Definitely one of the more colourful animes airing this season, Yurei Deco (or ‘You Deco’) is a treat for the eyes, with the stunning world design and kooky cast of characters. In a world where “love” is considered currency and technology rules everyone’s lives we follow a girl called Berry who meets a mysterious person called Hack who introduces her to a world outside of the digitally controlled society she lives in. The first episode is full of action and whilst there is a lot which doesn’t make sense as of yet, it’s definitely off to a really interesting start, as well as some interesting commentary on how social media and technology controls our everyday lives. It’s a little bit Black Mirror at times, albeit in a more colourful package and given this is an anime original, I’m really intrigued as to how far they’ll push the darker aspects.
My rating: 7/10
The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting
Studio: feel., Gaina
Genre: Slice of Life
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Kirishima is the right hand man of the Sakuragi yakuza family – he gets everything done no matter how brutal. So how is he going to handle his latest mission: looking after the young daughter of his boss? One of the more wholesome entries of the season, The Yakuza’s guide to babysitting had a great first episode featuring an colourful cast of characters but the real strength here is the growing connection between Kirishima and the young girl he’s tasked to look after. The antithesis between the two makes Kirishima have to act out of his normal comfort zone as he tries to relate to her and make her feel better and he ends up being more suited to the role then one might expect. The first episode had a fairly simple storyline but had me smiling all the way through so if you want a cute cosy watch, this is the one for you this season!
My rating: 7/10
Fate/Grand Carnival
Studio: Lerche
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy
Streaming: Crunchyroll
I’ll start with a disclaimer – this is not a series for people new to the Fate franchise. A successor to the 2011 short series, Carnival Phantasm, this series generally consists of comedy skits between all the different characters in the TYPE MOON series. In particular, this series features many of the cast from the mobile game, Fate/Grand Order so would unfortunately make little sense to anyone unfamiliar with the source material. I’m actually a big fan of the series however (and an avid player of the mobile game) so I was pretty excited to see this was coming out. The first episode for this series was absolutely hilarious, featuring a host of Olympic games the servants compete in to prove themselves worthy enough to survive the budget cuts of Chaldea. It had me smiling and laughing all the way through and the animation itself looks pretty good too for a parody series.
It’s a little hard to give it a rating due to the knowledge of the mobile game needed however so I’ll settle for doing two separate ones:
My rating for the fans: 9/10
My rating for newcomers: 6/10
