This is going to be quite a lengthy post since I am trying to sum up seven anime series and one movie. Anyway, for the autumn season of 2020, I followed these anime series:
Fly Me to the Moon (トニカクカワイイ Tonikaku Kawaii)
Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina (魔女の旅々 Majo no Tabitabi)
The Day I Became a God (神様になった日 Kami-sama ni Natta Hi)
Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World (キミと僕の最後の戦場、あるいは世界が始まる聖戦 Kimi to Boku no Saigo no Senjō, Aruiwa Sekai ga Hajimaru Seisen)
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear (くまクマ熊ベアー)
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle (魔王城でおやすみ Maōjō de Oyasumi)
Adachi and Shimamura (安達としまむら)
On top of this, I also caught Violet Evergarden the Movie (劇場版 ヴァイオレット・エヴァーガーデン). (Okay, this premiered in September, so it should be a summer anime... but I watched it so many times in autumn that it feels like an autumn anime too. And it looks like it will continue to air in cinemas next year, so maybe it can count as winter 2021 anime?) I also caught Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train (劇場版「鬼滅の刃」 無限列車編).
First, for Violet Evergarden the Movie, my review is here and other related posts (many of them...) can be found here.
The Demon Slayer movie is a hit in Japan, with box office earnings reaching 32.4 billion yen as of this past weekend, toppling the previous top earning movie, Spirited Away. Given that Spirited Away took 253 days to cross the 30 billion yen mark, Demon Slayer achieving that same feat in 59 days was... truly amazing. I did enjoy watching it in the theatre, and seeing the fight scenes on the big screen is truly amazing. There are also touching parts of the story, seeing Rengoku go all out to protect other people, and how Tanjiro steeled his heart to escape the dream trap. Yet somehow, it did not draw me back to watch it again. Not like Violet Evergarden the Movie which I have watched 10 times so far. I guess it is also why I haven't written a post on this movie even after watching it.
Okay, now that I am done with the movies, time to move to the anime series.
My favourite for the season is Tonikaku Kawaii. It is simply heartwarming and fun, giving me that warm and fuzzy feeling. I really hope they come up with the next season for this, since this season only covered the very first part of the manga series. It ended with a summer festival episode which I don't think was in the original manga. There was also a recap episode (Ep 12.5) but personally, I would have hoped they used that 13th episode to cover more of the original story. I have already written about this series in a separate post so I shall not touch more on it here.
Next must be Wandering Witch. Elaina's story is a good mix of serious themes and light-hearted fun. I really like the opening song, which makes me want to go on a trip. There is a bit of soft yuri element to the story too, but this is a series about witches, so I guess there is an abundance of female characters. The staff tried to add an element of world building by coming up with their own alphabet script, but it is nothing like Violet Evergarden. I mean, it was quite obvious that the text in the anime were in English, just that the alphabet is written in a different way. I hope they make future seasons of this since the original story has quite a lot of material left that was not covered in this season.
Adachi and Shimamura is another soft yuri series. A slice of life story about two high school girls and their blossoming friendship that all started because they were both skipping classes and ended up in the same place. The story is still on-going so I hope they make a future season for this too. It is nice to see how the characters deal with the everyday "struggles" of being high school girls. Nothing epic. But it is the everyday that endears these characters to me.
On a similar note is Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear. Usually, the overpowered protagonist in another world is a male character, but this time, we have a teenage girl as the overpowered protagonist. Just that she gets her powers from wearing a cute bear costume. And uses her powers to satisfy her craving for good food, but ends up helping people with their problems.
Sleepy Princess is yet one more light-hearted fun series. This little girl, a princess, was kidnapped by demons and imprisoned in their castle, but a princess leading a spoilt life couldn't sleep because her bed was not soft enough, the pillow not soft enough, and the bed sheets were too rough. So she went around the castle searching for materials to make her own bed, and in the process, ended up terrorising the demons and monsters around her. In a way, she is the true demon of the castle. But she is a cute demon, and we can all forgive a cute princess girl for all the naughty things she did, right? 😅
Oh, by the way, I actually didn't set out to follow Sleepy Princess at first. It just so happened to air after Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, and I just went with the flow and watched it. But the gap moe struck a note and I continued to follow the series for the entire season.
At the start of the season, I followed Our Last Crusade because it seemed interesting. In the end, I must say that the story is... so so. This is probably because this season covered only enough material (the original is a light novel) to form the setting for a future story. Now that I understand the setting, I hope they continue to adapt the rest of the story into anime so that I can find out what actually happens to the two protagonists, who are on opposing sides of a war but both wanting to end the war.
Finally, we come to The Day I Became a God. Given that this is a series written by Maeda Jun, who wrote Clannad and Angel Beats (among others), I had expected it to be more touching. In the end, I think it fell short. Way short. Like, horribly short. Like Episode 5, which is... well, somewhat touching. But it pales in comparison to Violet Evergarden's Episode 10. I think Maeda wanted to create a bubbly Hina so that he could set a contrast with Episodes 11 and 12, using Hina's sorry state to shock viewers, and making viewers cry when they see Yota struggling to bring back Hina in these two final episodes. I know I was supposed to cry when watching Episodes 11 and 12. But it just didn't work its "magic".
Anyway, this series wasn't very well received in Japan by fans, and it seemed Maeda received a lot of harsh criticism. So much so, it seemed he deleted his Twitter account, and wasn't even there for the end-of-production celebration. The show's radio program, hosted by the voice actors for Yota and Hina, even mentioned something about "we lost contact with Maeda-san". I really hope he hasn't disappeared, because it would then be another case of Internet bullying. But still, for this series, I think the story didn't build up enough of a bond between Hina and Yota for me to want to empathise with them.
For the upcoming winter 2021 season, I actually have 12 series that I want to watch. This is going to be tough on my sleep... 😅
(All pictures taken from the respective Wikipedia pages of each series.)
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