I normally try and keep the top 5 posts pretty upbeat, but I can’t deny I’m a little disappointed with the last season of anime. No, it isn’t a sign that modern anime are dreadful or that seasonal watching is the problem. It is just that there were a lot of anime that just didn’t live up to their potential or deliver. As the season comes to an end, I’m reflecting on reasons why I was so disappointed this season.
Whether you liked the season or not, I’d love to know your thoughts on the anime from Spring 2018 so be sure to leave me a comment below.
Please note, there will be spoilers below.
Number 5: Sequels and Spin-offs That Just Didn’t Land
Whether it was the debacle that was the continuation of Tokyo Ghoul (reverting to the story in the manga without providing explanation for anime viewers) or the disappointment of SAO Alternative: GGO where viewers were asked to watch a pink bunny girl play a game without much in the way of stakes and were expected to care, the Spring 2018 season has definitely had its share of mis-fires with sequels and spin-offs. Even if we look at the ending of Cardcaptors, most people are expressing a general sense that it just didn’t manage to live up to its predecessors and My Hero Academia took a fair while to get going (though fortunately it has now gotten going and it has certainly stepped up).
Number 4: Scattered Viewership
Normally with seasonal viewing there’s the couple of shows that everyone is watching. Spring 2018 hasn’t had one of those unifying shows that has ignited the entire community. Instead we have small groups of people proclaiming a love for Megalo Box while older mecha fans have been rejoicing over the return of Full Metal Panic, some people praising SAO Alternative: GGO for not being SAO and a few who have gone for one romance or another. But there’s been no single show that has gotten everyone really excited. With so many big titles out that would seem really odd and yet nothing has really captured the masses this season.
Number 3: Controversy and Fan Idiocy
While I like to avoid the fandoms are toxic debates, some of the stories going around this season really do emphasise that sometimes people just go too far. Death threats to writers and voice actors just should not be a thing. I know I don’t want someone coming into my workplace and threatening my life just because they disagree with how I go about doing my job, or spamming my email or twitter feed for the same. And then of course we have the issue of post plagiarism sweeping the blogosphere with quite a number of bloggers impacted. The last few months have not been great for community spirit and like it or not, it does impact on the enjoyment of the medium when the community is very much focused on some of these more negative aspects.
Number 2: Recaps, Fillers and Gaps
How many shows this season have done recap episodes or fillers? And how many have skipped airing one week or another due to some event of the like? It has made following shows more challenging than normal as episodes are delayed or skip a week, or worse they put out a recap episode four episodes in as if the entire community suffers from short term memory loss. While I get production delays happen and that sometimes schedules do go awry with broadcasting, the Spring 2018 season feels like it has just been one interruption to the schedule after another making it even harder to get into some of the shows on offer.
Number 1: Broken Narratives
Whether it is Record of Grancrest War, Darling in the Franxx, or even the abomination that is Devils’ Line, there are so many anime this season that just make no sense in terms of how they have structured and delivered their story. Maybe they are trying to avoid the label of generic but we’ve got time skips, random characters dropping in and out, reveals that make no sense, themes that get built up and then abandoned, and all and all its just a mess. This hardly makes for a satisfying viewing experience. There’s a reason narrative structure is almost identical in every culture, and that’s because people figured out a long time ago how to deliver a story in a way that made it interesting. A lot of these shows need to go back to basics and just figure out what they wanted to be because honestly Spring 2018 has definitely been a bit of a miss in terms of delivering anything resembling a compelling story line.
So those are my reasons for feeling a bit disappointed. I’d love to know if you were disappointed with the season and why, or whether you ended up loving the season and why. Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Also you can vote for your favourite and least favourite anime of the season below.
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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Well…even though I hated my blogging hiatus, I am pretty shocked at everything I read here just now. Especially the plagiarism issue, that just crazy. I have started watching Gun Gale Online and Darling in the Franxx but then the stuff with my dad happened and I kind of dropped it. I do plan on picking it up again soon because quite honestly I did like both shows. I do have to say looking over the animes from this season I did not really have series that appealed to me a lot. Hopefully with the new season on the horizon, things will become more interesting.
Ps…I had a very annoying fly bug so I missed out on quite a few posts. Sorry about that. I am feeling better now, so unless something crazy happens, I hope to finally be back in full swing again the upcoming weekend.
Oh and just before I forget: great post! 😀
I hope you are feeling better. Being sick really sucks. I’m also really looking forward to the new season as the end of the spring season has been quite flat with very little really making me excited (other than a few rewatches of old shows).
I am feeling better thanks for asking. It really did suck though. Especially since I just announced my return and was really looking forward to spending time again on WordPress. I felt more lousy about that at times than the flu itself. But am back now, and in the upcoming weekend I definitely will spending a lot of time on blogging again.
I am looking forward to it myself too. Both for the shows itself (no idea yet what I am going to watch, except of course for Attack on Titan which is a no brainer), but also exchanging thoughts on the series again 😀
I must admit, I haven’t even really looked at the new season, except what other people have posted that they will be watching. I think that once I start the season I’ll just try everything and then decide.
Some of these anime I felt like my brain was leaking out of my ear… (I’m looking at you Devil’s Line) But there were a few that really just perked me up when their release day came out and Love is hard for and Otakue I would sit and wait for my Amazon to update lol. It was just so enjoyable it gave me a fog about the whole spring season.
Its great that you found a show you really liked this season. I will admit, since midway through the Spring Season I’ve been super hyped before every My Hero Academia episode and my relaxation for the season has come from Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori. That one was just a complete chill out to watch.
Fortunately I went with only Persona 5 and Steins;Gate 0 this season and I can’t say that I am disappointed at them… But, to be honest I just don’t go to new series expecting much!
Nevertheless, I have to say that the amount of fanservice put into Steins;Gate 0 disappointed me a bit and I don’t think it is as good as the first show… Nevertheless, there is still time for it to rendeem itself since it will still have one more season airing
I have to admit, Steins;Gate 0 didn’t really disappoint because I went in expecting not to like it given it was an alternate time line. It just felt like an unnecessary addition. Mostly I’ve found it okay to watch with a few really solid moments, but I still don’t think anything has happened in 0 that was absolutely necessary to make a series about. It still feels like just an excuse to drag out the characters again. Maybe the second half will prove me wrong and something amazing will happen.
Yeah, I think the same as you, but if it goes as the first show, everything will happen and be explained in the second half 🙂 I hope it’s like this because I need explanations to a LOT of things!
The difference being I really enjoyed the first half of the original because the characters were really dynamic and the dialogue just really moved. While the story didn’t get going until later, it didn’t really matter. Here, while there have been some touching moments and one or two really nostalgic moments, the majority of the time hasn’t been all that entertaining while we’ve been waiting for the show to find its feet.
Yeah, completely agree with you! I think what changes from one to another is that in the first time they had a lot of characters to grow and show to the audience… While here you only have Maho and they are not really doing a great job with it…
It isn’t awful either and I know Irina has really connected with Maho. I will admit, the most recent episode has done wonders for my curiosity at least even as I wonder if they are maybe biting off more than they can chew.
Yeah I think you are right. To be honest I didn’t like that much the last episode. I don’t really know are they going to explain how did Kagari teached Rintaro the music, when Mayuri only knew the music from him… Which brings to a paradox…
They definitely create a paradox. The only question is whether they have already figured a way out or whether we’re just going to be stuck with an unsolvable loop.
Unfortunately I think it’s the last one…. They just wanted to add a cute moment and forgot about the loop
I agree, I found that a lot less people were talking this season and I also agree that there was no clear favourite show
The conversations definitely became a little less lively as this season continued on. Mostly because saying the same thing over and over about a show isn’t really stimulating for a conversation and most of the shows were either fairly consistently average or the problems were ongoing problems with the series.
Should one show have to capture the masses every season? Certainly, it happens a lot but even without that happening, it’s not the be all and end all for the anime-loving community – it just means there’s greater variety of shows and opinions out there. (I thought Boku no Hero Academia had that role this season, but maybe I’m just blind because I wasn’t following Megalobox, Steins;Gate 0, Tokyo Ghoul:re or a lot of the other big talk-generators this season.)
I still have a bunch of shows I want to get back to (more so than usual), so I think this season’s still pretty stellar. Almost all of my spring shows were comedic to some degree though and I know comedy isn’t your forte (especially Rokuhoudou’s and Happy Kiss’s), so that’s probably why we differ in opinions.
I hadn’t heard of the plagiarism until now though…can someone fill me in on that?
A few bloggers, some in OWLS and some others have noticed their content appearing pretty much copy and pasted on other sites. It kind of soured things for them when the content they create is being taken and not acknowledged (understandably really). There’s been a few posts that I’ve come across on people’s blogs asking for this practice to stop and a number of other discussions happening about the situation. It really doesn’t make any sense to steal someone’s content when most people will happily consent to you linking to it or reblogging it if you really want to share it. The only other reason would be you couldn’t be bothered creating your own content, in which case, don’t run a blog.
I don’t necessarily believe one show has to capture the masses, but there’s usually that show everyone is talking about. This season I haven’t really seen that. Franxx gets talked about a lot, but not always in an enthused and positive way and other shows have all captured segments of an audience but the wider community is a bit scattered. And while that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything good to watch or that the season has failed, in terms of the community it has made the conversations this season a little less enthused in general.
My favorite shows this season (Hinamatsuri and Wotakoi) also had these problems. Hinamatsuri I know cut a few chapters, and had a problem of every character looking very same-y in face structure, moreso than the manga even.
Wotakoi, in typical A-1 fashion, got the shaft in some episodes, with obvious budget cuts and sloppy animation.
Both shows got carried HARD by the voice acting and writing.
Hinamatsuri I’ll hopefully watch soon but Wotakoi is one I don’t have access to so I’m a little disappointed that I won’t get to see it. It’s been polling reasonably well in my best of the season.
I actually preferred GGO to some of Sword Art. I thought it was cute and the female characters were actually good characters in my opinion. I’m actually excited to see how it ends.
Some viewers really did like GGO. It didn’t do anything for me and it didn’t feel at all like it needed to be related to SAO, but I get that the type of story it presented would appeal to some viewers. Glad you enjoyed it this season.
Yeah it probably won’t be for everyone and even enjoying it I don’t think it was groundbreaking.
I totally agree with all of these. While I’ll never hate a season of anime, as I consider myself lucky to have so many titles available to me in the first place, there were too many dropped balls this season for me to count. SAO: GGO was somewhat boring, FranXX was a different show each week . . . ugh, at least we had the great continuation to Steins;Gate that I’ve been anticipating (and enjoying), as well as some MHA to catch up on!
Yes, I certainly don’t want to complain when anime is so accessible. However, this is probably the weakest season I’ve reviewed in the 9 seasons of anime I’ve covered on the blog. There was still some fun to be had, but I’m glad these shows are wrapping up and we’re about to move on.