Summer Season - Anime To Watch and Avoid

Shoot is an anime original sequel of a manga with the same name that ended back in the mid 90s. The series had an anime back in the 90s that ran for a little over a year from 1993 to 1994. After that the series was left without any animation, but the manga received spin off and sequels in the following years after it ended.  But now over a decade later we receive a new anime that is meant to serve as an anime original series in the 'Shoot' World that is centered around a different cast of characters. However, it does seem like characters from the original series do make an appearance but as they are much older it seems like they might be a mentor figures for the new cast.

So why do I suggest this series should be avoided? After all, Shoot is not a bad sports series, and it was a really popular football manga series during the 90s. So it had the appeal to attract a large audience back then. Well why I think this is not going to be great, it's not really anything to do with its story, since I do not expect this to be anything too bad and well not really good to begin with in that aspect. 

What will really drag this series back is the poor animation. The studio handling it is EMT Squared, which is not a bad studio but definitely not a top one when it comes to the level of animation. But of course, the unimpressive staff working on it makes me cautious of this series especially as sports series need to look good to be popular to cover for the simple story telling.  I might give it an episode but that PV looks really unimpressive, so I think it would be better to avoid this at least to begin with. 

RWBY might be a peculiar one to highlight, it's an animation by a studio called Rooster Teeth from the United States. They released RWBY episodes starting back in 2013 on Youtube and it found a lot of fans across the world. The animation was clearly inspired by anime but it was 3DCGI and because it was an indie project, the budget was quite limited so it did not look particularly good. Over time, the popularity did mean it had more budget and even a platform to publish it, even though it still is present in youtube. 

It also expanded from simply the animation to comics and even manga as it did manage to gather a small Japanese audience. So what is this series all about? It is a story that starts with students joining a magical academy, and in the midst of the people joining the academy, we have the main characters who are eventually put into a group and  they name themselves RWBY - the initials of the members. I have watched the first two seasons of the initial series and I found the characters reasonably likable even if they do tap into a lot of character stereotypes present in Japanese series. It does manage to be reasonably fun with the growing relationship between group members and how they slowly get involved in a much bigger issue.

So after explaining what RWBY is, the fact it's getting re animated by Shaft is for me a very interesting development. After all, the first few seasons of RWBY are a struggle to get into because of the sheer cheapness of it, so a remake in full great 2d animation is likely to expand its popularity in Japan but also around the world. The preview shows that there is reason to be excited for this and seeing the staff working on it, it's no surprise, they are experienced. So I do think this will be quite a good title to watch.

Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World is one of the isekai, I highlighted in one of my first videos as an isekai that people should be looking forward to. What I thought made this series promising was that it leans more on the ecchi side of isekai. What might seem controversial about the series is the complete acceptance of slavery by the main character but that is not uncommon in isekai. However, what adds to it is how he looks towards female slaves specifically because he has an interest in them as sex partners. Its probabhyly seems more controversial in the western world, but in Japan the publisher did drop Slave from the title in the light novel version. So its not slave harem, but a normal harem according to the title, though the contents of the novel were not altered in any significant sense.

Harem in Another World plays into the yiyin element  that I mentioned in my previous video, it is all about the main character fulfilling his desires in another world. The popularity of yiyin with audiences is shown by the amount of views of the web novel and sales of the manga and light novel. Harem in Another world knows and it plays for the yiyin element and it even enhances it with by highlighting how main character had a terrible life back in earth.  In this other another world he not  but has an unusual system for this kind of series that he allows him to craft a position for himself in the world. However, he does not desire to be a hero or anything of that kind but to simply make enough money to live well with his harem of female slaves.

The series will be animated by Passione, a studio that has recently delivered series that were rather well received like Mieruko-chan.  Looking at the staff in charge to the series, it is a alright and since this series is most importantly about the cute slaves and the ecchi, it has to make that look good and it seems the staff is experienced in doing just that. So its promising title and the PV adds to my confidence that this will likely deliver for the audience that it is trying to appeal to. 

Black Summoner, The Berserker Rise to Greatness is an isekai that is reasonably popular from the publisher Overlap. Its story follows Kelvin that finds himself in another world without any memory and like many isekai it borrows the setting from Japanese RPG and keeps the leveling system as well. 

What Black summoner offers story wise is not too different from Isekai of the past. However, in this specific season does it offer more than other isekai like it? Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life, a title that has some similarities, looking at least at its preview video to have better animation even and since that series is so much more popular that was not too surprising. 

It is not just the presence of Tensei Kenja in the season that will bring down this series. Afterwards, isekai fans could easily watch the two if they want, but I think this series from the preview video does not look too good, and I think the element of yiyin that isekai offers is presented in other isekai in a better form. If you want harem, go for Harem in Another World and so on. But I don't mean to bring down this series but I just think isekai fans probably should look at the other isekai in the season first. 

Yurei Deco is  Science Saru's latest animation work. They have become a studio associated with a lot of interesting projects. Yurei Deco is one of these projects, and it's one of their latest original projects but whilst before most of their original projects were films, this one is a television series. 

The series seems to follow a pair of girls that live in a place called Tom Sawyer Island. Tom Sawyer Island is a digitally controlled place and the pair become entangled with a group of incredibly peculiar ghost detectives. In this group they learn of a mysterious figure that they attempt to seek out and through that they end up stumbling into the secret behind the place they live. The synopsis and some of the PV leads us to some pieces that, joined together, highlight a somewhat bright comedic, sci-fi series with dystopian elements. 

The fact this is an original project means there is limited information about how the story develops. So we have to turn to the staff  to have an idea of how things will develop. Directing the series is Tomohisa Shimoyama, a newbie director that has under Maasaki Yusa previously directed White Shiro, a short animated series aimed at younger audiences. This is his first real director role but he seems like a promising talent for the studio. Handling the story is Dai Sato and Maasaki Yusa but it seems Dai Sato is the one doing the series composition and he has a stellar track record. Overall, this has a great deal of good things going for it. I feel it is likely going to be one of the best received series amongst critical audiences because of its theming.