It's looking pretty bad. I'll be damn straight, it looks pretty bad. Last season (Spring 2016) was brilliant; I came into the season not expecting much, and I was pleasantly surprised with some of the shows that came up. I hadn't looked up much information as to which studio was doing what show, and most of the major studios dealt out some great shows. So, to make up for my mistake last season, I researched what shows the major studios were cooking up.
This is pretty much where I lost hope. For starters, A-1 is releasing a boy's idol group anime, which I guess goes pretty well with Sunrise's Love Live reboot (which no one wanted). IMS is making a sequel to a mecha series which got horrible reception, and TMS was releasing a rugby (nope, not football) show, a re-yetanothertimetravel show, and a slice of life comedy (this one actually seems to focus on character and relationship development, so I will be keeping an eye on this). They are also making another (yes, four shows) time-travel-ish anime called Orange which has a pretty interesting synopsis, Hana Kanazawa as the main character's voice actor, and great original material from what I heard. Despite this, I was disappointed by an uninteresting season opener and jerky and unnatural animation. Ufotable is releasing an action fantasy, Tales of Zesteria. However, despite my respect for this studio that made the glorious Fate/Zero, their latest entrees of Fate/UBW and God Eater were both disgraced by an empty and bland plot. This has me skeptical that this will also follow suit, especially since it's based off of a video game.
On the other hand, that isn't to say that there aren't shows worth watching out for. Madhouse is releasing a seemingly-harem fantasy action series; however, I still have some hope for this as the animation looks nice and Madhouse has a talent of making shows in bland and overused genres that manage to liven things up with great production quality, a prime example being Overlord which was initially thought to be another virtual world anime prior to release. J.C. staff is releasing the second season of Shokugeki no Soma, which I'm sure fans who watched the first season are extremely hyped about. Bones is releasing Mob Psycho 100, which has original content created by the author of last year's hit, One Punch Man. However, note that this is Bones and not Madhouse, and while Bones is a great studio of their own, the PV of Mob Psycho has me worried that they will try too hard to follow the footsteps of One Punch Man.
That pretty much wraps up the Summer anime season of 2016. As always, there will probably be some unforeseen show that is worth following, and I will post updates if some do come up. The chart that I use to get basic information will be linked below. Be sure to check back for updates and changes on my opinion!
This is pretty much where I lost hope. For starters, A-1 is releasing a boy's idol group anime, which I guess goes pretty well with Sunrise's Love Live reboot (which no one wanted). IMS is making a sequel to a mecha series which got horrible reception, and TMS was releasing a rugby (nope, not football) show, a re-yetanothertimetravel show, and a slice of life comedy (this one actually seems to focus on character and relationship development, so I will be keeping an eye on this). They are also making another (yes, four shows) time-travel-ish anime called Orange which has a pretty interesting synopsis, Hana Kanazawa as the main character's voice actor, and great original material from what I heard. Despite this, I was disappointed by an uninteresting season opener and jerky and unnatural animation. Ufotable is releasing an action fantasy, Tales of Zesteria. However, despite my respect for this studio that made the glorious Fate/Zero, their latest entrees of Fate/UBW and God Eater were both disgraced by an empty and bland plot. This has me skeptical that this will also follow suit, especially since it's based off of a video game.
