Final Impressions of the Spring 2014 Anime Season, Part 4 of 4

If you’ve been keeping track of where the already covered anime series have placed then you’ve noticed that none of the top anime series have been covered. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Now, if you’ve realized that this season’s last place anime hasn’t been covered as well then you deserve a gold star and feel free to head down to the nearest office supply store and buy one, just one. So, here’s the best and worst of the Spring 2014 anime season.

Shingu Begins

After collecting dust for almost year, my long simmering desire to watch this science fiction series finally converted itself to actually watching Shingu. I’m only a little ways into the series. So it’s a little early to start recommending Shingu to people looking for smart science fiction anime; but, Shingu is definitely trending in that direction right now.

Normally, I would be writing up my conclusions 8 days after starting to watch an older anime series because, normally, I would marathon it in a couple of days. (For example, I had Ghost Hound completely watched within 48 hours of starting the first episode.) In light of my current experiment of watching Space Battleship Yamato 2199 at one episode a week – to mimic the TV broadcast that no one is subbing – I decided to severely limit the number of episodes I would watch of Shingu in a day. I want to see if the generated anticipation increases my enjoyment of Shingu, like I think it should.

Thus, while this isn’t a review of Shingu, there have been several items I’ve already observed that I wanted to write about.

Spring 2013 Mid-Season Anime Report – Part 2: #16 to #9, The Middle Eight

Like a middle child of a family having to work at being noticed between the siblings on either end of the spectrum, this post covers those anime series that have a tendency to get loss in the shuffle caused by the hubbub of the top and bottom anime series. The true strength of an anime season can often be found by examining this middle crowd. A weak season might have no solid hits coming from this middle; whereas, a strong season might have several series that would be top series in another season.

How strong is this season? Read on and find out.

Spring 2013 Anime First Impressions – Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S, Red Data Girl, Shingeki no Kyojin, and Valvrave the Liberator – Cherry Picking

Looking at the 9 new spring series I have watched and still haven’t written a first impressions post for yet, I notice two distinct camps. The first are series that don’t evoke much of a response, either positively or negatively, and include three of the series I’ve dropped. If I can muster the energy I’ll write that first impressions post next. The second group of series are ones that I’ve liked but have needed some reassurance from the anime that it won’t go south later on. It’s this group of series that I’m going to pull from the pile of new series and write about here.