Did you know there is a Code Geass sequel movie coming out next season? Lord knows when I will ever be able to watch the thing so covering it here feels silly. But given the name of this site...
Did you know there is a Code Geass sequel movie coming out next season? Lord knows when I will ever be able to watch the thing so covering it here feels silly. But given the name of this site and my history with the franchise, to not at least mention that would seem out of place. We will finally, once and for all, know who The Cart Driver actually is. I don’t think I’m ready emotionally.
But enough of that, welcome to The Cart Driver’s Season Preview, Fall 2018 Edition. There’s a lot here, and a lot of it looks like rubbish, so I’m here to help guide you through the trash to pick out those that might be worth checking out. Call me your garbage guide if you will.
Radiant
Do you dream of having your story turned into an anime? Well, it can happen! It does help if you are French mind you, given France has a very vibrant comic and graphic novel scene. That is where Radiant started out. Legend says that the quality of the artwork caught the eye of the artist for One Punch Man and he convinced some Japanese publishers to bring the series over to Japan. Now it’s being made into an anime! The actual material is a wee bit generic in the spiky-haired shounen protagonist genre, which tends to happen when western material tries to emulate anime. But it’s endearing, genuine, and the world itself is very imaginative in a way these fantasy shounen series often are with worlds like those in One Piece or 7 Deadly Sins. It makes a nice change of pace from the exact same damn fantasy RPG worlds that all these reincarnation isekai series inhabit, a topic we will return to multiple times over the course of this preview.
Release the Spyce
My entire reason for paying attention to this show is because it looks vaguely like Princess Principal with all these cute girls running around doing action movie stuff in a vaguely future steampunky type world. Princess Principal was a cool show that I enjoyed watching right up until the point it ended, whereupon I instantly forgot everything that happened in it because it was ultimately quite forgettable popcorn entertainment. It did have a balling opening song though. Because otherwise I wouldn’t be particularly interested in a new series by the author of Akame ga Kill. He did, however, write 15 Bishoujo Hyoryuki, a clever re-imagining of the classic Japanese novel Adrift in the Pacific except this time it is just one dude on an island where he fucks 15 ladies. It was certainly better than Akame ga Kill anyway.
SSSS.Gridman
Darling in the Franxx really seems to have soured many people on Trigger. A lot of hype, a lot of resources, into something that ultimately decided the solution to Japan’s aging population was neither more rights for women so they wouldn’t feel obliged to quit their career when they had a child, nor loosening of Japans extreme immigration laws, but teenage pregnancy. This is where I would like to point out that Staff Names Are More Important Than Studio Names. There’s a certain style to animation that tends to be similar within the same studio, but if you want to know if the story, directing etc. is any good, it’s the director and writer is where you look. So if you want another series like Gurren Lagann or Kill la Kill, wait until Hiroyuki Imaishi returns as director, which he is supposed to be doing with Promare. It will not be with Gridman. If you like super sentai robot stuff, then maybe Gridman will be good since it’s a collab with the creators behind Ultraman. It does have the director of one of the few Good Trigger Anime, aka Inferno Cop, so maybe this will be good Trigger.
Run with the Wind
I’ll admit before doing the season preview I was a little down on this season. But that was because it took a weirdly long time for this series to be announced. Which could mean there are production problems, but I’m choosing to be optimistic. Because this is Production IG with a bunch of the same staff who worked on Haikyuu making a new sports series, and that is very exciting to me. Particularly since its the animation staff, which is the part Haikyuu was so phenomenal in. It’s about a crew of teen boys in a running team, which is cool whatever, it’s not like the sport itself matters that much. I just want my emotional kids striving towards their dreams with teamwork and friendship. Also exciting: There’s a black dude on their team who isn’t some racist stereotype! The manga itself doesn’t seem to have been particularly popular and was only 6 volumes long. But hey, that means the story will actually end and I won’t have to sit here demanding more Haikyuu come on guys its been a year now where is my volleyball boys damnit.
Goblin Slayer
Goblin Slayer is a very popular and highly anticipated light novel that also has its fair share of detractors. So I went in being aware of its reputation, and came out on the other side firmly on the side of the detractors. It’s set in the same bloody RPG fantasy world all these light novels are set in, where adventurers go to guild halls to get quests to kill goblins. So a bunch of gormless dudes and cute girls with bouncy boobs go to kill some goblins but the goblins are stronger so they kill the dudes and rape the girls. Then kidnap the girls and take them as sex slaves and rape them some more like they are Goblin Boko Haram. Until Goblin Slayer himself shows up and kills them. Rinse and repeat.
I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Goblin Slayer since I read it. War has a lot of systematic rape in it. You don’t hear about it much because you learn most of your history in school, or on TV channels that must be family friendly. Killing and death is one thing, but rape tends to stay out of the remit of school texts. As I got older and read more about history, the amount of systematic rape that occurs left me feeling depressed and unclean at humanity. I understand why it is not taught in schools, even if it’s a bit weird how we’re ok with talking about death and torture but not rape, but perhaps we should do something to let people know that this happens. Heck, fantasy series since forever have dealt with real world issues by presenting them in a different fantasy format as allegories. Goblins as the foot soldiers of war who commit these atrocities and Goblin Slayer himself being the person we want to be after hearing about these acts. I can see a world in which that works, even in a colourful yet gritty fantasy light novel.
The problem with Goblin Slayer is it’s salacious, taking joy in eyeing the graphic rape being done. The staff seem quite accomplished all things considered. The script-writer here also wrote the script for the Made in Abyss anime, which too had problematic source material but made huge improvements with the anime to minimize those elements without losing the core of what made the series great. So theoretically the same could happen with Goblin Slayer. But then the trailer shows a girl with helium tits bouncing like a pair of balloons when they crawl over a windowsill and I lost faith in that happening. I know this is a lot of words on a series I ultimately don’t want to watch, but since it is already inevitably going to be the talk of the season, I wanted to get my piece out there before it gets drowned out by the myriad of hot takes that is set to arrive.
Double Decker! Doug & Kirill
This is technically connected to Tiger and Bunny in some way. The first episode has already aired and having watched it, I could not tell you how its connected since it has none of the same characters, same superhero world, same city. Or maybe it is the same city? Tiger and Bunny was a long time ago. Either way, you definitely don’t have to know Tiger and Bunny to watch it. What I can say is it is definitely cut from the same cloth. It’s colourful, wacky with larger than life characters in a very future-USA inspired world. Double Decker is quite a bit stupider than Tiger and Bunny, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Tiger and Bunny was at its weakest when it got all grimdark so something lighter and sillier could be preferable. It might be a little too stupid though. Also shout out to Sunrise and their love of bad Engrish names for the main character. Everyone else has relatively normal names. Travis Murphy, Maxine Silverstone, Doug Billingham. And then there’s our hero: Kirill Vrubel.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
I like to read the first chapters of manga being adapted before each new season just to give myself an idea of what to expect. Well, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is a light novel first (and also titled like an episode of Friends, The One Where Joey Turned Into A Slime and so on) but has been popular enough to get a manga. I quite liked that first chapter too. It’s yet another light novel about reincarnation into a fantasy world, but the first chapter was endearing. Watching our slime bloke try to make sense of the darkness he is in and talking with a tsundere elder dragon, it was all nice enough and didn’t fall into the usual traps of the genre…yet. That “yet” is a problem though. You would think we would get no more of those harems these shows inevitably descend into since the main character is a literal blue blob, but the promo material hints at otherwise. It’s the crew who made stuff like Infinite Stratos and Comet Lucifer so not a great sign there. Plus why do we always have to base our fantasy worlds out of popular video game generic fantasies? It’s not like there aren’t imaginative fantasy worlds in anime lately. Attack on Titan, Made in Abyss, even whatever the fuck the world of Land of the Lustrous is. Yet here we are talking about elder dragons. It’s a minor complaint, but it’s something that always bugs me about these shows.
Karakuri Circus
From the author of Ushio and Tora comes another horror-ish manga about circus monsters and stuff. It’s all the same staff and studio who worked on Ushio and Tora, although I’m not sure if that show was a particularly big hit. I guess the producers are just big fans of this author’s manga? Well, you guys do you I suppose. I’ll check out your freaky, sexy clown show.
The Girl in Twilight
If you’re going to launch your phone game with cute girls fighting monsters, might as well do so with an anime. It’s a proud tradition to make an anime as advertising for the real product. The classic example is Mobile Suit Gundam was made to sell toys. This is just the modern version of that. The next big mecha anime to make it big will probably be done to sell a tactics phone game. However until that happens we will have to get mecha musume instead of just straight mecha. The closest thing I can compare this to would be Symphogear, a series with a weirdly passionate fanbase. However this doesn’t look quite as earnestly stupid which gives Symphogear its charm. It looks competent with Kaijura-inspired soundtracks which shoves it more in the direction of something like Madoka or Yuna is a Hero.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai
I can see this one becoming popular. It’s another light novel adaptation that follows the vein of series like Love Com Snafu or, to go back further in time, Haruhi Suzumiya. The sarcastic teenage boy who has the world figured out meets women who too think they have the world figured out. It’s a genre that rubs me the wrong way, and it rubbed me the wrong way when I read the manga too. The main character reminded me of the kind of guy who would respond to people on Twitter with tweets that start with “well actually”. Director is decent, doing stuff like Chaika and Scrapped Princess. Neither of which are amazing series, but did a good job with what source material they had. Plus these kinds of series have a really good track record with anime fans and the bunny girl is cute so hey, I can see it taking off.
The Space Between the Sky and Sea
There are two reliable ways to have your idea made into an anime. The first is to have cute girls do an activity. The second is to have it as advertisement for a phone game. That is how we have this series about cute girls being space fishermen. Yup. Quite what fishing in space entails I couldn’t work out. The author of Sakura Wars is listed as the creator here, and that would have been very exciting to people roughly 20 years ago when people cared about Sakura Wars. Also has the director of Anime de Training, in which a bunch of idol anime girls performed workout routines for the camera. I actually watched an episode of that, in which a goth loli informed me I would soon be powerful enough to take on the demons of hell when I had finished these stretches she was performing, so basically what I’m saying was it was OK I guess.
Zombie Land Saga
Look at this briefly, this could be the most generic zombie story ever. It starts with a cute girl going to school and then suddenly zombies omg so scary. Then it starts to get quite camp with wild colours and Mamoru Miyana yelling Engrish into a microphone and then there’s lots of people shouting and screaming in ways that implies the whole series is in on the joke. Which isn’t necessarily that much more original, as camp zombie stories have been around almost as long as regular zombie stories have. But I won’t deny it has made me a touch more interested. Plus Mappa usually do good work and the director is the fellow who made that One Piece movie everybody likes. He did also make that Sailor Moon Crystal first season everyone hates though.
Iroduku Sekai no Ashita kara
The series is about a magical girl in a magical future land that all sounds very fun and interesting. Then she is sent back in time to go to Japanese High School and oh no it’s the same bloody series again. PA Works doing their usual PA Works thing where it’s a slightly maudlin, watercoloured, shiny-faced series about youth an’ shit. Some of the finest minds behind Glasslip is working on this so yay.
Skeleton Bookstore Employee Honda
It’s a flash animated comedy series about a skeleton called Honda who works at a bookstore. Somehow manages to be one of the anime I am looking forward to most.
Tsurune: Kazemai High School’s Archery Club
It’s Kyoto Animation make another afterschool club anime. This time its cute boys and archery. From every angle I look at this, it looks like more Free except with less hot naked dudes, which seems to me to be removing the biggest appeal of that show. But hey, I’m not KyoAni fan so don’t look at me.
Boarding School Juliet
This is one of those seinen high school romcom psuedo harem series that 14-year-old me would have been all over. In one of these fancy schools for posh kids that anime seems to have an endless supply of, two rival factions are fighting each other. Except our Potato-kun male lead likes the pretty blonde lady from the other faction. Oh no, it’s just like Romeo and Juliet, except if Juliet had a friend who was wore a cat-eared tiara and was clearly the Best Girl. Why the hell has nobody thought of a cat-eared tiara before? It’s perfect.
Hinomaru Sumo
When I first got into anime, I did wonder why there were no sumo anime. It seemed like the perfect fit for classic shounen sports manga material, and it’s the quintessential Japanese sport. Later I found out that sumo wrestling has a very uncool reputation amongst the kids in Japan, being considered something your old racist granddad is into. That and the corruption and match fixing in the sport turned people off the whole thing. Anyway, we now actually have a sumo anime with this one. It’s nothing special. It’s the shounen sports type I don’t usually like where we have some loud-mouthed “imma gonna be the best” type lead who shouts a lot.
Armor Shop For Ladies and Gentlemen
There was a short series a few years ago called Bikini Warriors in which took the idea that girls in fantasy games wear ridiculous bikini armour and then…err, just looked at their tits for a bit. Anyway, the idea that ridiculous revealing armour like this exists in fantasy games is a prominent concept that this series has decided to explore by taking the viewpoint of a shopkeeper who runs such a store. Look man, if we are going to be in a world in which bikini armour exists, you might as well buy it from the most reputable sources with the highest quality material.
Conception
I remember hearing about this game a few years ago when it was released and everyone was laughing over the concept. Basically it takes the idea from the Persona games of building relationships with people to have stronger fighting monsters and goes further. Now it’s a full on dating sim where you goal is to have “star babies” with the women in order to fight monsters. An amusing concept in theory but I also remember the reviews being pretty scathing of how bland and irritating the dating sim portion was. Like they came up with the idea, congratulated themselves, then put together the most tedious dating sim portion imaginable.
Jingai-san no Yome
Dude has to marry a big white blob that eats him. Don’t kink shame.
Bloom Into You
It’s a yuri manga about two girls in high school who might like each other but also might not idk don’t look at me, I’m not a good person to look for opinions on yuri manga.
Ulysses: Jeanne d’Arc and the Alchemist Knight
So it’s a historical re-imagining of the Joan of Arc story except with a lot more figure hugging clothing, super powers and boobs. It’s from the same author as The Ambition of Oda Nobuna, which was one of those Oda Nobunaga is a cute girl now series that were all the rage several years ago, so I suppose this follows in a similar vein. It’s pretty trashy looking all things considered, although I doubt anyone heading into this was looking for something super historically accurate.
Anima Yell!
Cute girls do cheerleading. That’s about all there is to it. It’s a 4-koma adaptation that comes from the same magazine that publishes K-ON and a billion other 4-koma series like it. The girls in question do seem to be very excited about cheerleading and it isn’t presented in a skeevy way that often comes with the territory so I’ll grant it that much.
As Miss Beelzebub Likes
You know all you kids want to fuck Bowser now? Well what if the Devil himself was actually a hot babe. And so is every other mythological creature of hell. Not like scary versions. They all drink tea and wear frilly dresses and scoff down cake while going oishiiiiiii~! You don’t want this either? Damnit I will never be hip and cool with the kids.
The One I Love is My Little Sister But She’s Not a Little Sister
I thought the imouto craze was over, and yet here we are. Something so clearly inspired my My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute. Dude’s sister is a writer of crappy siscon light novels. Hilarity ensues. Also they are trying to make the English title “My Sister, My Writer”, but I am far too amused by the Japanese title to not use it.
Uchi no Maid ga Uzasugiru!
A young girl’s mum dies so the dad hires a pedophile maid for her. Thank you Japan. I’m done. Onto the sequels.
Sequels
The big one is a new Sword Art Online! Hah, just kidding, I hope we have all learned to forget about Sword Art Online. The real big one is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, with part 5: Golden Wind. From reading the room in Jojo’s fandom, it appears part 5 is more liked by Japan with the west being more indifferent, while the west love part 6 but Japan somewhat indifferent (meanwhile everyone loves part 7, but we’re a long way off getting that). I feel sad about new Jojo’s because I just haven’t been able to get into the more recent ones. I loved the first season. Battle Tendency is one of my favourite anime of all time. But Stardust Crusaders I felt kinda bored by and I think I only watched like 7 episodes of part 4 before just sorta forgetting about it. I wish I could feel that love I felt for Battle Tendency all over again. Maybe Golden Wind will be it?
There’s a new Certain Magical Index after what feels like years, but I have a feeling its time has passed within fandom consciousness for the most part. Golden Kamuy returns, which I really should return to myself. I got turned off by the CG bear in the first episode but it sounds like it was actually quite good overall. Fairy Tail is back for those people who watch long running shounen series. Tokyo Ghoul is back too, although it seemed like people didn’t really like the first Ghoul Re that came out earlier this year. Gurazeni is back for the 5 people who watched it. Ace Attorney somehow got a second season despite one of the worst made anime of the decade. Also Senran Kagura for people who like to place their face in jelly and then laugh to themselves for 10 solid minutes.