Anime Roundup - Winter 2022

I actually watched a ton of anime this season— it was one of the most packed TV anime seasons we’ve had in years— and I thought that rather than inevitably only talking about one or two, I would do kind of a seasonal roundup of the series I watched in their entirety.

Pop Team Epic

Just the best. The strongest. The self-proclaimed “shit” show is consistently the funniest, most unexpected shit you’ll watch all year. A collaborative triumph. To talk about any one of the bits would be a sin; watch it yourself.

Chainsaw Man

There’s a big schism among Chainsaw Man fans about whether or not the anime does the manga justice, and I definitely get it. They’re very different things; they’re different media.

The Chainsaw Man anime is a very clean, polished, cinematic production. It is the kind of production that most fans dream of getting for their favorite titles; Chainsaw Man fans could not ask for better than what they’re getting. 1

But the anime does not aim to reproduce Chainsaw Man panel-for-panel, like for example the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure anime does.

In rounding off and polishing the character art for animation, the anime’s art loses some of Fujimoto’s crunchy grit. In needing to animate battle scenes that are typically very quick and stark, punctuated by shocking stills, the anime loses some of the manga’s impact.

But I don’t think the Chainsaw Man anime is an inferior version of the original manga; rather, I think it’s a unique take that embraces the differences of the TV medium from the original comics. It’s been great to see surreal arcs like the hotel storyline animated, to hear Denji and Power’s idiot banter. In a few places, like Himeno’s drunken proposition, the TV series even adds some texture and background to events from the manga.

It’s worth noting that original author Tatsuki Fujimoto is a huge film buff who is working with the studio on the anime adaptation while he continues to work on the Chainsaw Man manga. While he’s not the director (that’s Ryu Nakayama), I think someone who loves film would want to see the filmed adaptation of their work try and embrace the medium, rather than directly imitate every panel and pen stroke of a comic.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

The new Gundam series takes on all the series’ usual themes— bad parenting, space politics, tragic battles between sad super-powered teens in robots— and reassembles them in a way that pleases old fans and, more importantly, has been wildly popular with people who never would have looked at a Gundam in their lives.

The clever approach was to frontload all the space politics and tragic lore into an online-only “prologue” episode, then launch directly into a standard anime high-school setting in the TV series. Have a girl propose to another girl in the first episode, and well, you’ve guaranteed all eyes on your series.

Behind the scenes, the series slowly eases new fans into the factional space war and teenage tragic angst that fans know is essential to Gundam. The mood is persistent dread as every viewer, even those not versed in the genre, understand that terrible things are going to happen to these sweet kids.

Speaking of, Suletta’s a stand-out heroine: matter-of-course about annihilating everyone in robot battles, it’s in every other facet of teenage life that she’s clueless and terrified. I’m really looking forward to her growth, and to the clearly-shady circumstances which bring her to the current moment. And as a robot guy, Aerial is a sick robot design.

People have looked at Ichiro Okouchi’s credits and noted that he wrote the novelization of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and while that is relevant— the first episode is beat-for-beat the same— I want to note that this is “Shock Anime Okouchi.” Code Geass, Guilty Crown, friggin’ Valvrave. Series with constant, brutal twists that prioritize shocking the audience, often for its own sake.

I think that if you really want to predict where Witch is headed— particularly in the light of its finale and the dark speculation about the nature of the lead Gundam— you might want to look to those credits first and foremost. Anything we could speculate right now probably doesn’t compare to what’s coming.

Bocchi The Rock

This season’s big “girls do a thing” anime earned its popularity with a powerfully relatable introvert protagonist and an extremely high level of quality and polish. The weekly experimental animations when Bocchi freaks out make the show worth watching by itself.

The thing I always tell people about Bocchi is the scene where she first gets invited to the club. She’s frozen with anxiety at the door of the building and circles in front of it for hours. To some of you that might sound crazy, but I know that for some others of us, it sounds like something we’ve actually done. Bocchi is relatable because her flaws— not just her social anxiety, but its contrast with her selfish rockstar dreams of fame and swooning girls— are so recognizably human.

The other thing I like to point out about this series is the detail given to the performances, these key moments in the girls’ fledgling rock career. It’s really hard to pull off a credible musical performance in animation. Not only do the animators of Bocchi do that, they pull off varying degrees of success. Nearly as impressive as the girls’ final triumphant set is the song that they totally bomb.

Go back to that scene and really watch it, listen closely. You can hear that they’re off tune, feel that they’re off beat. The crowd is bored. Not coincidentally, this is a nightmare situation for a socially anxious person. The viewer might even cringe a little. That Bocchi pulls it together is a given for a show like this, but the level of detail the animators give us makes it feel so much more real.

Also, the drunk bassist is just delightful. She is the surprise of the season. Love her. Wish her all the happiness.

Do It Yourself

This one was definitely overlooked. A typical “girls do a thing” premise is elevated by strong animation and direction, its sense of presence and of place. This is important, because this is a story about finding a home.

All these characters— the tsundere neighbor, the lonely exchange student, the girl who sneaks in like Spider-Man from the school next door— are in need of a place to be, and DIY makes this common metaphor literal. It’s actually about building a damn house.

So there’s a focus on the girls learning a craft and then on animating the work in minute, loving detail, from pounding a nail through wood to the correct way to handle a power saw. It was a pleasure to chill out with this show every week.

That being said, I was pretty uncomfortable with the bath scenes— equally loving detail is given to some way-too-young characters—  and the creepy Roomba character, who’s mostly concerned with his master taking a bath so he can watch.

I watched a lot this season

I’m not sure why, but I was in an TV-watching mood in the past six months. This puts aside the almost 50 episodes of Donbrothers I watched, all of Lycoris Recoil and Jojo Stone Ocean, the ancient Go Nagai puppet show Star Fleet on Blu-Ray. A large chunk of the uneven and generally disappointing Dancouga. I skipped the current season of Spy x Family; I’ll probably go back around to it some time. The Bastard!! anime, recently renewed by Netflix, remains on my list. I am still watching Kamen Rider Geats, now that its twist has dropped.

Other seasons I’ll watch nothing. Enjoy what you feel like, when you feel like enjoying it. Don’t be obligated to TV or video games or whatever. You really will get around to it. Or you won’t. It’s okay.

I bought Final Fantasy XII in 2002 and I still haven’t played it. It’s okay.