Jel’s a bit busy, and because he hates you almost as much as he loves me, he put me in charge of handling the rest of our preview guide for the upcoming fall system. That means twice as much unfiltered vitriol and more unwarranted music references than you can shake a stick at, but you’ll be glad to hear that even to me, this line-up doesn’t look to be complete rubbish. We have some high-concept fantasy blockbusters in Garo and Rage of Bahamut, a couple of shounen juggernauts in the making, and the glorious return of the best kids’ show that doesn’t involve Tony Stark partying all over the world. There were some noticeable omissions in last week’s preview, so keep in mind that some of these shows will start airing before the ones that appeared in the previous part. Anyway, without further ado, let’s get this party started.
GARO: Mark of the Flame
GARO: Honou no Kokuin
| Tokusatsu adaptation by MAPPA Air Date: 10/4 |
In 2005, Kamen Rider alumnus Keita Amemiya came to the shocking conclusion that if there is one thing teenage nerds like more than dudes in colourful costumes punching things until they explode, it’s gotta be copious amounts of ‘dark’ and ‘mature’. And thus, Garo was born, the tokusatsu franchise for people who don’t like to get up at seven in the morning, providing 4 seasons of perfectly entertaining high-octane action centred around the Makai order and their attractive compatriots. Fans of the franchise will know what to expect from this high-fantasy prequel — acrobatic combat, flashy special effects, lots of edgy badasses in snazzy leather and hilariously inappropriate nudity around every corner — but newcomers should be able to settle into the franchise’s decidedly simply mythology with relative ease. Attack on Titan and Kamen Rider OOO scribe Yasuko Kobayashi is the competent captain in charge of crossing this camptastic galleon over into the world of anime, so if Fate/Stay Night alone does not satiate your hunger for high-concept fantasy, Mark of the Flame‘s the show for you. |
The Seven Deadly Sins
Nanatsu no Taizai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne6iVZlw-CA
| Manga adaptation by A-1 Pictures Air Date: 10/5 |
With Naruto crawling to its inevitable end and Bleach dead and buried underneath its own bullcrap, Kodansha is rallying its proverbial troops to take Jump’s crown as the king of shounen. With some suspiciously Akira Toriyama-esque artwork, The Seven Deadly Sins might as well be the killer franchise they’re looking for. Set in a mystical fantasy world under the tyrannical reign of the ex-King’s former Holy Knights, the popular manga tells the tale of a princess who seeks out the titular Sins, the seven most brutal warriors of the former kingdom, in order to reclaim her throne. A quick look at the manga promises quirky characters, infantile sexual harassment jokes and lots and lots of fighting; it’s a shounen manga, in other words. Director Tensai Okamura (of Darker than Black fame) and composer Hiroyuki Sawano should at least be able to lift The Seven Deadly Sins above the subpar standards of the genre, and these things tend to be pretty entertaining before they’re inevitably milked dry, so if you can’t control that urge to loudly announce your attacks, prepare to jump aboard. |
World Trigger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE43j_bIELs
| Manga adaptation by Toei Animation Air Date: 10/5 |
Toei Animation and Shueisha go together like bread and butter, and World Trigger will be their next attempt to breed another venerable cash cow to add to their ever expanding stable. This might prove to be quite the challenge, though, as underneath World Trigger‘s veil of pretentious capitalized jargon (Visitors! Triggers! Border!) lies the painfully generic tale of a bunch of tweens fighting back an alien invasion with some help of an invader turned face. Luckily, original author Daisuke Ashihara’s simplistic, Ghibli-esque art style remains mostly intact, making World Trigger stand out amongst the many, many supernatural battle anime this season will have to offer. Though with all the amount of footage currently available looking like it was animated at six frames per second, only time will tell if Toei’ll be giving this the love they drained out of Sailor Moon Crystal. |
Gugure! Kokkuri
Gugure! Kokkuri-san
| Manga adaptation by TMS Entertainment Air Date: 10/6 |
It wouldn’t be a new anime season without a ‘comedy’ that looks about as funny as a minstrel show for terminal cancer patients. Gurgle Potpurri seems to be this season’s volunteer. Whatever of the manga I could find is rife with the bizarre, descriptive routine humour characteristic of bottom-tier anime comedies, with main character Kohime and the titular Kokkuri, a lesser spirit who ends up haunting her out of worry for her unhealthy habits, rapid-firing observations of their respective idiosyncrasies at each other. It gets stale quicker than guacamole in the sunlight, yet with the director of the mildly enjoyable Wagnaria!! in charge, it might actually not turn out to be a huge disaster. Or maybe… Best. Show. Ever. |
Rage of Bahamut: Genesis
Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis
| Game adaptation by MAPPA Air Date: 10/6 |
Rage of Bahamut is a mobile game about a dude with a big red afro who rides his horse on rooftops and fights giant robot knights by summoning dragons. Okay, no, actually it’s just a card collecting game à la Magic the Gathering, but if this is the story they come up with for such a blatant cash-in promo video, I can’t help but be interested. Developer Cygames seems to have generously funded MAPPA (Kids on the Slope, Terror in Resonance) with enough assets to make this adaptation look like a blockbuster the likes only Type-Moon can afford, and with the cards in the game featuring not only heroes of legend, but gods and demons as well, Fate/Stay Night might actually have to worry about being beaten at its own game. I mean, does Shiro have a talking goose voiced by Yosuke from Persona 4? I don’t think so! |
Inou Battle Within Everyday Life
Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de, Inou Battle in the Usually Daze
| Light novel adaptation by Trigger Air Date: 10/6 |
Long light novel titles that summarize the story are so 2012. Nowadays, all the cool light novels are named after the type of story they are. Though, by doing so, Inou-Battle reveals the shocking fact that it is the exact same show as any other light novel about Milque McToast and his army of pink-haired PreCure rejects with one personality trait each. Well, at least it is self-aware enough to mix up its heart-pounding romantic comedy shenanigans with some token supernatural action, but the impossibly awkward juxtaposition between the show’s two aspects honestly isn’t winning it any points. Yes, it’s produced by Trigger, but you’d have to have krill for brains to be fooled into thinking this will have any of the charm and passion of Kill la Kill. I don’t exactly blame the company for realizing they can’t make every dream come true on goodwill and Kickstarter alone, though show director and studio co-founder Masahiko Otsuka might actually attempt not to phone this in. Judging from the project’s nonexistent presence on Trigger’s homepage, I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though. |
Yona of the Dawn
Akatsuki no Yona
| Manga adaptation by Studio Pierrot Air Date: 10/7 |
Yona is the princess of the vaguely Korean-looking kingdom of Kouka and judging from the trailer alone, she easily leaves any other female character of the season behind in terms of sheer potential. The demure, sheltered girl initially pines after a man like apparently every single specimen of her gender, but when her beau drives his sword through her father’s stomach and claims the throne, Yona decides to take up arms and get her kingdom back. It’s a traditional ‘meek-girl-becomes-prime-badass’ story, but anime could uses a boatload more of these, and if Yona of the Dawn can keep its extensive cast of pretty boys out of its heroine’s comfort zone, it might actually turn out to be not half bad. If anything, it’ll at least be the best depiction of Korea we’ll ever get out of Japan. |
Trinity Seven: The Seven Magicians
Trinity Seven: 7-nin no Mahoutsukai
| Manga adaptation by Seven Arcs Air Date: 10/7 |
Painfully plain dude surrounded by various over-designed girls? Vague technobabble terminology for perfectly mundane things? Could this be a light novel? … No, actually. After all, why describe softcore porn when you can just show it? A self-proclaimed ‘romantic comedy but sometime serious magical school story’, Trinity Seven tells the story of some guy who seeks out seven beautiful witches in order to resurrect his ‘cousin’ Hijiri. Still interested? A quick Google search leads to not a single image that won’t get me arrested, and a TvTropes browse reveals that this show prominently features such enthralling ideas as the main character having the ability to strip girls’ clothes off, magic orgasms and a main heroine who despises perverts. All aboard that hype train, eh? |
Gundam Build Fighters Try
Mobile Suit Gunpla 2.22: You Can (Not) Afford All These Gunpla
| Anime original by Sunrise Air Date: 10/8 |
The toy commercial with (and/or despised by) the most pompous fanbase returns for another round of hot-blooded model building and battling. Both Gee and Iro greatly enjoyed this spin-off of the seminal mecha franchise, and with a new cast of characters and robots to collect, this sequel seems more than just a cheap cash-in. Except for director Kenji Nagazaki, most of the staff will return to tell the story of three new kids set out to seize the Gunpla Battle World Cup seven years after last series’ heroes did. There’s little to indicate that Try won’t end up as big of a hit as 2013’s Gundam Build Fighters was, and if it is, let’s just say that this probably won’t be the last we see from this series. After all, there are a lot of Gunpla Bandai wants to sell you. |
A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd
Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai, Large Library’s Shepherd
Air Date: 10/8 |
There will inevitably be some passionate fans popping up in the comments to tell me that the eroge being adapted by the guys best known for Quazer of Stigmata is ‘actually really good’ and gave them ‘all the feels’, but I’m honestly not buying it. Everything about Daitoshokan looks like it ran straight off the assembly line, from the generic character designs to the synthpop theme song and the vaguely mystical magic-realism premise the likes of which only dating sims can have. I fully expect the humour and inevitable drama to be along the very same lines because honestly… When has an eroge adaptation ever been good? |
Keen-eyed readers will have noticed that this is still not all the shows we’ll need to (not) be paying attention to next season, so tune in in a few days for part 3, with Parasyte, Mushi-shi, Psycho-Pass and a bunch of other shows no one cares about.
The Glorio Blog 
Trinity Seven
reading this since ch.10.
stoked forthis. can’t wait for those Arata/Sora and Arata/headmaster moments.
I’m surprised you guys didn’t recap other seasons of Garo on this site
Zigg and I watched a few episodes of The One Who Shines In The Darkness, but we never covered it and we sort of lost track of it. We should probably give that franchise another go.
Makai no Hana, despite a few dips here and there, was extremely good, and that’s as someone who hadn’t seen the two seasons that preceded it (Makai no Hana is technically the fourth season, but the third takes place afterwards).
Of the stuff on this list, I suppose I want to try out the Seven Deadly Sins. it doesn’t seem bad. I’m really looking forward to the new Gundam Build Fighters, or “Angelic Layer: Gundam” as I call it. I didn’t realize I was pompous, though.
Nah, Build Fighters isn’t pompous, it’s Gundam fans who are.
GBF Try is easily my most anticipated mecha anime of the year. Probably moreso than G-Reco. It’s a distillation of what I want out of my giant robot anime.
Pretty sure the only title I’ll be trying out from the above list is Akatsuki no Yona, but I am quite looking forward to that. As you say, while it may not be the most creative of premises, anime could certainly do with more shows featuring strong-minded young women with strong character development. The trailer feels a but like the Korean-inspired version of Saiunkoku Monogatari (which to me is a good thing), but we’ll see.
Basically why I’m pretty interested as well. It is not an original premise, but for anime standards, it’s a revolution.