Still trying to figure out where to restart after real life intruded on the Summer season… But I guess it’s best to begin at a beginning, and that’s where we stand. Hit the jump, and let’s take a look at what’s coming up for Fall 2019!
First up, let’s talk about the sequels. As has been increasingly common the last year or two, there’s a LOT of sequels this season.
Bananya and the Curious Bunch: A sequel to 2016’s charming Bananya… I’m seriously looking forward to it. My wife liked it so much that I bought her a Bananya plushie for her birthday this year, and it’s displayed in a place of pride in the living room. One of the best parts is the deadpan narrator… He won an award for his work on the show, and deserved it because it made the show.
It’s a short, so you have a chance to catch up before the season begins – and you should take it.
Chihayafuru 3:
I’d say mild anticipation here. I enjoyed the first two seasons, but I don’t know that there’s going to be any breakout plot wise. On the other hand the trailer has quite a bit of Arata… Despite his physical absence, he was a huge driver of the plot in the previous seasons. Does he finally take part in the main action? (Manga readers: NO SPOILERS.)
Kono Oto Tomare! 2nd Season:
Given the problems with the first season, I don’t know quite why I’m looking forward to Kono‘s second. When it was on, it was on… But it was also off quite a bit and relied overmuch on cliffhangers. If I had to put it down to anything, it’s probably to see where they go with Chika’s story. The rest of that characters aren’t that interesting. (You can read my comments on the first season here.)
My Hero Academia 4 / Boku no Hero Academia 4:
Deku’s tale is, of course, front and center and worth watching here… But I have to admit, I’m also watching for Ochaka, Todoroki, and quite a few other side and minor characters. Whatever Academia’s flaws are in it’s main plot, it’s been very good at fleshing out the side stories.
Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld: And, here we have the elephant in the room. If you were following along as I watched the first half, you know I was frequently unhappy with it. I love the SAO franchise, but Alicization was a hard slog.
But, maybe, maybe, this second half is the part where it gets good.
Oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows that I’ll be watching in the faint hope that Asuna gets a) more screentime, and b) a chance to be a badass.
Wow! I usually limit myself to ten shows or so, and half that has already been taken up with sequels – and a goodly number of those I’m lukewarm about at best. Let’s dive into a few more shows before calling it a day.
Houkago Saikoro Club:
A school club anime about cute girls who play board games. As regular readers know, I’m into CGDCT and have a passing interest in school club shows, but there’s an additional factor here. I’m most interested in this because I have an IRL friend who is heavy into board games. He collects them, runs tournaments at local cons, etc… I think he’s going to watch it, and I’m interested in hearing what he has to say.
Well. Took a bit of a break at this point, and looking down the list there’s a lot I’m lukewarm about or curious about… I don’t know if it’s my mood, or the season, or what – but none rate more than a line or possibly two. Not sure that’s actually useful to anyone, so I’m just going to wrap it up.
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So, what are you looking forward to in the upcoming season? What have I missed that I should be looking forward to? Drop a comment, let’s chat!
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
Dang it, how did I forget that Bananya was airing? I’m so glad it is though.
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TBH, I’d forgotten too until an article popped up on ANN a few days ago.
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I’ve been looking forward to S4 since December. It’s been pure torture, but it’s almost here and I’ve never been so excited for anything. I’m especially looking forward to Kirishima’s arc, since he’s my favorite character and I hear he gets a bit of backstory.
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He’s an interesting one to be sure, and a good example of how BNHA’s secondary characters aren’t just cardboard cutouts. I’d like to see more Ashido myself…
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Do….you read the manga for BnHA? Just curious….also, im super stoked for season 4, (my fave arc, my fave villain is arriving!!!)
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I’ve read the first couple of arcs (checked out of our library), but other than that… no. I haven’t/don’t read the manga.
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First, I’ve decided not to watch BnHA4. The third season was a chore to get through for me. I admit to being still curious, but starting around the second half of the first season, how they treat heroism has started to bother me, and while my irritation remained fairly constant from then on, the good parts came with diminishing returns… Maybe, if what I hear interests me, I’ll pick it up later, but by default I’m done with it.
As long as they don’t change the formula, I’m totally with you on Bananya. I feel much the same about Chihayafuru, too. The only thing about the series I fully loved were the childhood episodes, but I do like the cast, and I always at the very least enjoyed watching the first season. I was a little less into the second season, but don’t remember why anymore. It’s going to be interesting to have both Chihayafuru and Kono Oto Tomare in one season, since they’re very similar in some ways. I hope I won’t get drama overload (since the two show’s approach to drama/comedy combo seems rather similar).
Also, there are two full CGI shows I’m excited for this season. Yes, me, who dislikes CGI. Hi Score Girl 2 should come as no surprise to people who remember how much I enjoyed the first season. The second show is Beastars. The trailer looks amazing. I saw an early trailer and found the concept (anthropomorphic carnivores have to live alongside herbivores [what do they eat?]) interesting, but thought too bad it’s CGI. The new trailer, though, looks much better. It’s studio Orange of Land of the Lustrous. If they’re not good at CGI nobody is.
There’s Haatage! Kemono Michi. A pro-wrestler gets isekaied and instead of hunting monsters, as he’s asked to, he decides to open a monster pet shop. From the author of Konosuba. I have to try this.
Then there’s another Isekai: Ascendence of a Bookworm. Bookworm gets reborn in a world with a high illiteracy rate, where books are fiendishly expensive, so she decides to make her own. That’s got to be one of my favourite isekai concepts ever. I hope the show measures up.
And finally, I’m not sure why, but I’m strangely attracted to Mairimashita Iruma kun. The plot sounds fairly generic – like a mix of Rosario X Vampire and Hayate no Gotoku – pretty much a shounen fighter comedy? Really not sure why this is on my list. Maybe it’s just that it looks colourful and fun. It also looks really cheap, though, so who knows. It does have Daisuke Ono in a role that reminds me of Severus Snape (watch the PV).
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Neither BNHA4 nor Hi Score Girl 2 surprises me. As my eye was running down the list, I saw Hi Score Girl 2 and knew you’d be all over it. (I suspect Wing will be too.)
That’s an interesting way to look at it… And I don’t entirely disagree. Chihayafuru‘s seems more organic though, Tomare often seems forced. (Predestined?)
re:Ascendence of a Bookworm Even in a season positively overloaded with isekai, that one looks interesting. More interesting is that it has a female lead… While it kinda plays to stereotypes, I might have to check that one out. Having been both a printer and a bookbinder, I’ll probably have to keep a lid on getting annoyed at details.
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Oh, Chihayafuru is definitely the better show, IMO. There’s no question for me there. I just see similarities.
And, yeah, it might be a bit annoying when they get details wrong with Bookworm. I’m definitely not looking for bookbinding lessons from an anime. That said, there’s always the outsider chance that the mangaka is bookbinding geek him/herself. I probably won’t be able to tell.
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I have to say I feel the same way. It just feels like a lot of anime is returning this season which is taking up the bulk of the watch list. Everything else looks pretty mediocre and there’s only a handful I want to try just to see what it’s like.
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We’ve been surprised by breakouts before… So, there’s always hope!
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That’s true! I have my eyes on a couple of things so hopefully they’ll be good!
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“But I have to admit, I’m also watching for Ochaka, Todoroki, and quite a few other side and minor characters. Whatever Academia’s flaws are in it’s main plot, it’s been very good at fleshing out the side stories.”
That’s my favorite part, too. Like how well Ochaka did against Bakugou.
They also have some solid villains.
“Oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows that I’ll be watching in the faint hope that Asuna gets a) more screentime, and b) a chance to be a badass.”
Fingers crossed!
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Still one of the most amazing bits of the entire series. If I ever make a “BNHA Top 5 Scenes”, that fight has a sold berth.
Yes, fingers crossed… and arms, and toes, and legs…
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Hey, welcome back!
This season doesn’t have too much that interests me, but it does have two “must-watch” shows, whenever I can watch them. Hi Score Girl 2 is absolutely one of those, albeit with Netflix purgatory rearing its ugly head. The other is Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, since I’ve been addicted to the mobile game ever since the English server launched two years ago and Babylonia’s one of the game’s best story arcs. I’m waiting to see how the broadcasting’s going to work for that, though, since the announcements have said CR would get it but also said Funimation would have an “exclusive” window for each new episode first. I don’t mind waiting a week for new episodes, but if we gotta wait a month or more for even the subbed episodes, that’s gonna suck.
And I didn’t know there was a “Cute Girls play board games” show coming out – I’m definitely going to have to check that one out.
So I’m also dealing with a troublesome situation at the moment. My laptop got hacked last week – luckily I was actually using it when it happened and immediately shut it down, so they didn’t have time to steal anything – but unfortunately the antivirus scan I did afterwards came up clean, so until I can figure out how they got in and lock it down, I have to keep it offline. That won’t be an issue for watching Crunchyroll, since I always use the app on my PS4 for that, but it does severely limit my non-CR streaming options. More annoyingly, the Aokana visual novel was just released in English on Steam today, and after I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on that for months, now I can’t buy it since I can’t download it to my laptop and my iPad (which is my other internet portal right now) doesn’t have the storage space for it.
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Ouch, that sucks about your laptop…. What were the signs of the backing?
That really sucks. I looked at the Aokana novel, and sadly it’s out of my price range. I put it on my wishlist, so, sometime years from now when it’s on a sale I can afford, I’ll pick it up.
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Pretty blatant, actually. I saw several command boxes flash up on the screen and disappear, and then my mouse pointer moved down to the corner on its own and opened my Windows menu. It looked just like when the IT department ports into one of our terminals at work, ‘cept whoever it was definitely wasn’t there to fix my computer. That’s as far as they got before I shut it down, though I still spent all last Sunday afternoon changing all my important passwords anyway, just to be safe.
Hope for your sake that we get a good Aokana sale sooner rather than later! Are you going to be able to see the new Rascal movie next week?
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Ouch. You can disable remote… But there might have been a hole they found their way in through. I really don’t know much about the topic.
Yes, we have tickets to the Rascal movie. We waited to see if it was going to come close… If I’d known our usual theater over in Seattle had gone to reserved seating, I wouldn’t have waited so long. Our favorite sushi place closed, which sucks. But a new ramen place has opened that we’re eager to try. (And there’s also a Daiso in the mall.)
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To be honest, I am looking forward more to sequel anime than the new titles. Though, that may change once the season start but as of now, i am really looking forward to watch the following:
Kono Oto Tomare! 2nd season
Boku no Hero Academia 4th season
Seven Deadly Sins 3rd season
Assassins Pride
Ahiru no Sora
Stars Align
Food Wars 4th season
Vinland Saga
Dr.STONE
Fire Force
Psycho-Pass 3rd season
Hopefully, some more shows not mention here could be able to catch my interest hehe.
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Nothing wrong with looking forward to sequels! So long as you have something to look forward to, that’s what counts.
And yeah, I always keep my ear cocked for folks buzzing about shows I’m not watching. And especially the commentors here have lead me to some great stuff over the years.
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