Part 2 of our guide is a bit less grim if only because it contains less actively offensive content than Part 1. Cells at Work! looks like a fun, creative comedy and Planet With gives us an excuse to bring up cult favorite manga The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer. Other that? Meh. Please tell us we’re wrong and something here is worth looking forward to, and we’ll be back for Part 3 soon.

Cells at Work!

Hataraku Saibou

Manga Adaptation by David Production Air Date: 7/8/2018

Director: Kenichi Suzuki Series Composition: Yuuko Kakihara

​This is pretty much exactly what it looks like: anthropomorphized cells in the human body fighting off bacteria invasions and trying to do their job. I guess that sounds kind of fun? They way they’ve interpreted the cells as having real life human jobs is pretty neat and I like the nice and clean and art style. I’m not sure if there’s going to be much meat here to make it truly great, but I’ll take anything that looks watchable at this point.

The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar

Hyakuren no Haou to Seiyaku no Valkryia

 

Light Novel Adaptation by EMT Squared Air Date: 7/8/2018

Director: Kousuke Kobayashi Series Composition: Natsuko Takahashi

​Compared to How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord or the returning Overlord, this particular isekai show doesn’t seem all that offensive. That said, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is still light novel power fantasy trash. The hook this time is our lame protagonist has been transported to a Norse themed world, where he uses his knowledge of Norse mythology to gain an upper hand. Yes, that also includes picking up a harem of anime babes. So yeah, this looks bad please don’t watch it.

Play and Let Play

Asobi Asobase

Manga Adaptation by Lerche Air Date: 7/8/2018

Director: Seiji Kishi Series Composition: Yuuko Kakihara

​An absurd, over the top comedy about girls playing traditional, non-electronic games? Sure, sign me up. That’s what I was thinking reading the premise and seeing the lovely watercolor promo art for this show. Then I saw the trailer… it does not look good. I understand they are going for a certain level of ugly with the girls making some quality anime reaction faces, but otherwise it’s one of the worst animated promotional videos I’ve ever seen for an anime. On top of that, whichever girl was talking the most had a voice that felt like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. It will be sad if the content of the show is funny but it gets torpedoed by bad production values. I’ll give it a shot but they will really need to step things up to make this watchable.

Planet With

Anime Original by J.C. Staff Air Date: 7/8/2018

Director: Youhei Suzuki Series Composition: Satoshi Mizukami

​Under any other circumstances, Planet With would appear to be a generic kids’ action show with goofy look robots that we might not even bother covering. Frankly, the trailer is poorly animated and doesn’t look interesting to me at all. The only reason we are giving Planet With the time of day is because it’s an original project by Satoshi Mizukami, creator of GLORIO favorites The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer and Spirit Circle. This particular author has a habit of taking a seemingly boring premise and injecting it with enough heart and soul to make the payoff worth it in the end. At the very least I’d recommend checking out his manga, and despite the rough looking start here’s hoping that same magic can translate to the screen.

Aguu: Genius Dolls

Aguu: Tensai Ningyou

Manga Adaptation by Studio DEEN Air Date: 7/9/2018

Director: Bob Shirohata Series Composition: Yuiko Katou

​The plot of this actually sounds kind of interesting: Ai and her friend Machi are dancers, but Machi is far more talented. Ai discovers Machi has an “Aguu” which is the source of her talent but I think it’s also bad and they end up fighting each other? I feel like there’s some kind of Black Swan thing going on here which itself was just a rip off of Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue so… I guess anime has come full circle? I’m hoping this is more of a legitimate psychological horror thriller thing than just being dark and edgy for the sake of being dark and edgy, but we just don’t know until we see it

Dropkick On My Devil

Jashin-chan Dropkick

Manga Adaptation by Nomad Air Date: 7/10/2018

Director: Hikaru Sato Series Composition: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu

​This is a comedy about a chuunibyou girl who accidentally summons a lamia demon from hell and they constantly try to kill each other. HILARIOUS! I actually do think that sounds pretty funny as I tend to like comedies where the cast is horrible and they all hate each other. I also appreciate the choice to make a deadly serious trailer and throw everyone off the scent of what the series actually is. That said, Iro did cover this way back in the Random Manga Theatre days and I can’t say I’m encouraged by the bland source material. Comedies can certainly benefit from getting a full visual anime treatment so maybe that will help make things funnier, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Phantom in the Twilight

Anime Original by LIDEN FILMS Air Date: 7/10/2018

Director: Kunihiro Mori Series Composition: Shunsaku Yano

​It’s understandable if you mistake this for an otome game adaptation. It’s functionally the same, with the plot revolving around an ordinary girl discovering a mysterious café full of hot guys that may or man not be from a shadow world or something. Between that and the trailer that probably tells you everything you need to know. I’m just personally amused that it is produced by Happy Elements, the game company that created last season’s Last Period. Look at those folks, out here trying to be the next Cygames. I respect their hustle.

Holmes at Kyoto Teramachi Sanjo

Kyoto Teramachi Sanjo no Holmes

Novel Adaptation by Seven Air Date: 7/10/2018

Director: Noriyoshi Sasaki Series Composition: Yousuke Itou

​A cute girl meets a hot guy who runs an antique shop and they go around town solving low stakes mysteries? The premise and look of the show vaguely reminds me of Hyouka and that is mostly a good thing. Hyouka wasn’t good because of the mysteries though, it was good because of the characters and their relationships. In fact, I’d go to say it was good in spite of the mystery angle, as the mysteries themselves were often so boring and inconsequential that it was hard to care. I get the sense this show may run into a similar problem, but we don’t know enough yet to say for sure.

Angolmois

Angolmois: Genkou Kassenki

Manga Adaptation by NAZ Air Date: 7/11/2018

Director: Takayuki Kuriyama Series Composition: Shogo Yasukawa

​My initial impression of this series (an anime take on the first Mongol invasion of Japan) had me thinking this might be a GLORIOUS NIPPON nationalistic propaganda thing that this particular moment of history tends to be used for. But as I’ve seen more info come out as well as a new trailer a few days ago, it seems they may be taking more of a personal angle and that is much more appealing. There’s a wide variety of interesting looking characters and some decent looking action that could make this pretty good. Of course Angolmois could also just end up as a generic samurai action series, but even that would be better than what I was originally thinking.