Winter Anime Season 2020 – Review

This season didn’t have much in terms of super interesting animes, hence why I took my time getting though them, sometimes taking a week off watching before playing catch up. Doesn’t help that global current events had even delayed a few episodes. If you want to see a full list of what animes I’ve watched, you can always check out My Anime List. Here is a list of animes that I watched from this season:

Azur Lane

Heya Camp△

Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu.

Kyokou Suiri

Murenase! Seton Gakuen

Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita.

Somali to Mori no Kamisama

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T

Remember, these reviews assume that you have watched the series, which means SPOILERS will be few but imminent. You have been warned.

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Azur Lane

I recently finished watching Azur Lane The Animation after its hiatus. Even though the story and animation were subpar at best, I still liked it for the characters and action scenes. I have a bias towards this series because I’ve been playing the mobile game since its release in the US. I did wish that some improvement would have happened during the hiatus, but it looks as if they did their best just to make sure it didn’t fall anymore. I guess most of the effort went into putting in as many of the characters as possible from the game into this animated version. I recognized pretty much everyone who showed up in some form, and in most of those appearances they were spot on. I doubt Azur Lane will continue in the anime scene, as I feel their popularity has peaked, but only time will tell.

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Heya Camp△

Room Camp is a mini series of Yuru Camp, where Nadeshiko and the Outdoor Activities Club goes on travels around the Yamanashi prefecture to collect stamps and explore what the region has to offer! Despite it’s name there isn’t much camping in a room, or camping at all (so I don’t know why it’s named this). However we get more comfy adventures with the characters of the series, advertising real places within the region. I bet this is what the creators were going for, make more people visit Yamanashi for tourism….. I’m interested. Time to put it on the list! Looking forward to more anime camping in the future.

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Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu.

“If a shield hero was overpowered and had many friends” is what this anime can be described as. Simply put, the main character Kaede Honjou aka Maple doesn’t want to get hurt, so while playing a VRMMORPG she maxes out her defense stats. (While researching for this review, what I found coincidental is that Kaede Honjou’s seiyuu [voice actress] is Kaede Hondo, both almost share the same name.) Playing the game recommended by her friend Sally, she befriends new allies and eventually creates her own guild which participates in server-wide events. She may be a happy-go-lucky person, but mess with her and you get the fangs… and shield blocking your every attack. She is pretty much by definition an overpowered character in the game, to the point that the developers talk about nerfing her everytime she achieves something that would think would be unthinkable. Her being OP is pretty much the joke of the series that isn’t taken seriously, and that’s the appeal of the show. I personally liked to see what crazy abilities she would get next, and I’ve got to say she definitely has them, though she has been shown that she still has some weaknesses despite it all. A second season has already been announced, and I’ll continue to watch “How a single pure defense build character can destroy anyone if the game wasn’t balanced”.

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Kyokou Suiri

I first saw this show at its premiere at last year’s Crunchyroll Expo. It’s basically a dialogue-heavy detective action anime. The beginning of the show was alright, but as it went on it became a chore to keep listening to an anime that pretty much only showed people talking with not much going on besides that. I know that there was a purpose to all of this; I can see the potential in a series like this, but I guess this style of anime is not my cup of tea. If it continues I may not watch it, but it will probably depend on what other animes there are competing with it.

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Murenase! Seton Gakuen

Following a trend of animal based animes, this one is a pretty light-hearted one about different anime species going to school together, dealing mainly with the concept of interspecies relationships. Our main character is a human male named Jin who despises animals because of a traumatic past, and as such treats them all the same. Alongside other characters, they create a cooking club as a way to interact with one another and develop friendships. What is interesting is that the anime seems to incorporate real animal facts into the characters themselves, usually explained by Jin. It was a fun little anime to casually enjoy.

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Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita.

More like “Stubborn geeks too tsundere to admit they like one another”. This rom-com was a fun little watch all about intellectuals who take things too far to identify and quantify “love”. I enjoyed the characters and their quirks, though the story was pretty typical.

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Somali to Mori no Kamisama

Somali and the Forest Spirit is about a little human girl and a golem traveling together in a quest to locate other humans in a world that persecutes them to the brink of extinction. Upon finding Somali alone in the forest with chains attached to her, the Golem figures the best thing for her is to find more of her kind to care for her. Humans are hard to come by these days, so throughout the journey they seek stories and clues to their whereabouts, all while keeping her identity as a human a secret from people who want to harm her. Somali happily adopts the Golem as her father, and together they learn more about each other and the world they live in.

Naturally this anime has sad situations, like with many animes that feature father/daughter figures. I first saw this anime premiered at Crunchyroll Expo last year, as it looked and sounded interesting enough. I did tear up one time only, and that was at the climatic “end”. I say end in quotation marks as I can’t really see it as a true ending. First off I felt that things were ended the way they did as a way to wrap up the anime with a bow. Secondly the end does not address the main reason for the journey. Are they abandoning their plans to find humans because of Golem’s change in heart about his life? Will Shizuno and Yabashira stay with the duo knowing that they may not make it alone? I always thought that they traveled with them (the second time) as their travels coincided and also because they cared for their new friends, but didn’t plan to stay with them for the long haul. There are many questions that need to be answered, and so I hope that a continuation will explain these better, as well as conclude the story that feels like the end of a journey worth taking.

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Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T

The third season of Railgun and it couldn’t come sooner. It’s great too have something from the “A certain” series that doesn’t feel rushed or budgeted. (I’m looking at you Index 3 and Accelerator.) As you can figure the focus is now shifted to Misaka and Misaki , which is fresh since we’ve seen a lot of Touma and Accelerator in the last couple series. Things are starting to spark up as Misaka deals with the Daihasei Festival (Sports festival of sorts), as well as the secrets of Academy City that lurks throughout. Storywise, not too much has happened, not helped that a couple of the episodes was delayed due to the current world affairs, but at least every single episode has been enjoyable. The action and pacing of the story, without all the confusing religious terminology that plagues Index, makes this spinoff series the best of the three. We’re not even halfway in the season (thankfully this season is 25 episodes long), so I’m looking forward to more to come.

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