Spring 2018 Week 4

Spring 2018 Week 4

Overview

It’s now been three weeks since I did my first review of the anime I was watching during the Spring 2018 season and I figured I should do weekly follow-ups about the new episodes.

This time around, we have the same five anime from week 1, as well as a bonus sixth anime I picked up after writing that. After the first week, I made my prediction that Megalo Box was going to be the best series of the season, and while it will probably still end up rated the best by the masses, my vote has changed.

After adding Hinamatsuri to my currently watching list, I decided that it was better than Megalo Box. Sure, Megalo Box is still a great anime and deserves to be watched, but Hinamatsuri is the anime I look forward to more than anything else this season.

As with the week 1 review, I will not be going over series which are either continuing year-round (Boruto) or started last season and are now in their second cour (Darling in the Franxx and Record of Grancrest War). Only seasons which began in Spring 2018 count.

 Love To-LIE-Angle

We’ll start things off with the worst series I’m watching this season, Love To-LIE-Angle. Episode 4 was about needing to use the restroom when you are currently unable to; in this case, the toilet in the house was being repaired.

I don’t really know why the writer thought that this was a good plot. I can only guess that since it’s a short it can’t have any real plot and that’s why something like this was written, but it really didn’t help the series.

While the plot may be bad, the art isn’t so I still have this series rated as a 4/10. I don’t see it going any higher than that over the course of the season.

My Hero Academia Season 3

As predicted, My Hero Academia Season 3 is holding up well compared to the previous two seasons. This episode in particular was the best episode of the third season so far and may even be the best episode in the series so far.

While hero classes A and B are out in the mountains for a Summer training camp, they are attacked by a group that is part of the League of Villains. There’s a good fight involving Deku and I can’t wait to see more of the fight animation this season.

Although this episode was really good, I still have this season of MHA rated at a 7/10 until it proves it can consistently be the quality of the episode from this week, in which case I would bump it up to an 8.

Megalo Box

As I previously mentioned, Megalo Box is one of the standout series of the season. While it may not have the action scenes of MHA, it makes up for that with character.

By this, I don’t necessarily mean the characters themselves, but rather the character of the story and style. I think I mentioned this during the week 1 review, but it reminds me a lot of Cowboy Bebop, but I think I like it even more.

This week our protagonist, Joe, became known as “Gearless Joe” due to fighting without any Megalo gear after his was destroyed. It seems as though he’ll be going through the rest of the season without using any Megalo gear which just adds to his underdog story.

I currently have Megalo Box rated as an 8/10, but I’m thinking that once the series is finished and I have a chance to look back on it, it may drop to a 7.

Joe from the anime Megalo Box
Joe

Gun Gale Online

Gun Gale Online is the surprisingly good anime of the season. While I’m not much of a fan of Sword Art Online, the removal of Kirito as the protagonist did wonders for this spin-off.

In this week’s episode, Llenn and M continue to fight through the battle royal competition known as Squad Jam (I had to look up the name of that one). At the start of the episode there are only three teams left, will Team L/M be able to win the competition?

This episode also left off on a huge cliffhanger which is both a blessing and a curse as all cliffhangers are.

GGO is currently rated as a 6/10, but we’ll see where it goes in the future.

Comic Girls

The final anime which was featured in my week 1 review is Comic Girls. Honestly, I really want this show to be good, but I still can’t tell if it will ever get to that point. It’s not bad, but it just doesn’t stand out enough.

With the exception of the short, Love To-LIE-Angle, this is the series which I look forward to watching the least each week. That said, episode 4 was a step in the right direction for the show.

This week we got an entertaining episode that centered around Ruki and her adult-oriented manga. I’m hoping we get an episode like this for each of the other characters because, for now, they’re little more than tropes.

Comic Girls has been a solid 6/10 since week 1 and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

Hinamatsuri

Finally, the anime we’ve all been waiting for, Hinamatsuri. Unfortunately, I wasn’t watching this series at the time that I wrote my week 1 review and hadn’t done a weekly update since, but I can finally tell you about this anime.

Hinamatsuri is a comedy about a Yakuza (Japanese version of the Mafia) Lieutenant and a young girl with psychic abilities from another dimension. The contrast between the impossible situations found in this series and the dry humor it uses are what make the show.

In the most recent episode, Hina gets disowned and kicked out of the apartment by Nitta for breaking another one of his prized vases. The second half of the episode is about Anzu, a homeless girl from the same dimension as Hina, and Hitomi, Hina’s middle school classmate who works as a bartender.

While these characters are good in their own right, Hina and Nitta are really the characters who make the show and so the second half simply wasn’t as good as the first.

Hinamatsuri is an 8/10 for me right now, and I think that’s probably where it’s going to stay if the series continues on in the same direction.

Hina and Nitta making a pinky-promise from the anime Hinamatsuri
Hina and Nitta

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