I always love week 4 in a seasonal rotation. We’re really starting to get into the meat of the shows, I’ve dropped what I’m going to drop by this point, and things are generally going at a pretty solid pace. Well, that’s true for many shows, but given the slew of series that we have here, most of them just kicked pretty hard into overdrive this week. That, and we see the return of two favorites from last season that got delayed, so I really don’t know how any week could possibly be better than this one. Let’s do it!
As I scroll down my Twitter feed during any given season, I’m always curious to see what the current “discourse” is about any given show. Usually, this results in me reading a lot of points about shows that don’t necessarily agree with, but I can empathize with the reasoning in some way or another.
This season, that show is Rent-A-Girlfriend. While the majority of people that I’ve discussed the show with are in love with the show, mostly for its scream-inducing moments and absurd rom-com elements, others aren’t necessarily into how Kazuya acts during the anime. While I feel that without Kazuya being like this, the show’s conflicts and discussions about different relationship dynamics wouldn’t be able to be had, I still respect the opinions of others not being able to stomach that behavior for 24 minutes each week.
Okay, so it’s time for some good news, bad news. The bad news is that, due to obvious circumstances, the Summer 2020 season of anime is a bit shorter on shows than it would normally be. The good news is that there is still a ton of great stuff to watch, despite the delays in production, etc.
We do get to talk about a bit of a mixed bag of shows for the season: we mercifully get all of the laughably bad horny shows out of the way first, we all take a collective trip to the suffering zone, sponsored by Re:Zero and OreGairu, and we bask in the glory of beautiful shows like The God of High School and hilariously dumb shows like The Misfit of Demon King Academy. Don’t do yourself the disservice of skipping out on this season – hop on in, get some recommendations, and enjoy the season!
Hey, welcome back to our weekly check-in! It’s hard to believe that we’re already about a quarter of the way through the Summer 2020 season, but here we are. We’ve got a lot of good plot and character development from a number of shows this week, a beach episode, and the first round of drops for the season, so this one’s a little packed. Hop on in!
Nothing is more surprising than when an anime throws a curveball at you within the first few episodes of a show.
It’s not uncommon within shows to do this when they begin to ramp up its story into something larger than life or want to increase the scale of their plotline to emphasize their thematic point. Occasionally though, this does happen early on in the show as we see with this week’s’ episode of Deca-Dence, proving the reason that the “three-episode rule” mantra of many people’s seasonal habits exists for shows such as these.
Welcome back to the weekly check-in series! Now that we’ve got most of the premieres out of the way, the focus of these posts is going to be on what I think is still worth keeping up with, what’s lagging behind, what’s new (whether a series actually premiered later than others, or if I just started on it), and all that jazz.
All things considered, this was a pretty packed second week for most of the shows represented here, so hop on in!
The first week of the Summer 2020 anime season has now fully concluded, and despite the lack in number of shows that the season has to offer us, there’s still plenty of great shows to partake in for our viewing pleasure. Since the season has such a small, awesome selection of shows, I figure this was a good chance to spice up the Seasonal Showcase posts by doing something a little different than the previous seasons.
This time, I will be trying a different approach to the posts in selecting an individual show that I find interesting and focusing on that instead of lumping them all together in one post midway through the season. Think of this more as a weekly selective focus on a particular show than a general overview, although I also recommend checking out General Tofu’s new weekly seasonal check-in posts if you want that sort of content instead!
Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the seasonal anime adventure we’re about to set out upon!
Hey gang, Tofu here! This season, I’m debuting weekly check-in posts for the blog. Every Saturday, I’ll post an update on what I’m watching, what’s good, bad, and other on an episode-by-episode basis, and all that jazz. In this post, I’m just going to give you a look at what I ended up watching this week, so it’s a lot of info all out here at once. The following weeks may be a little different in format – we’ll just have to find out!
This season has led me to two major realizations within the space of seasonal anime and how we perceive it, as viewers and fans of anime.
1) With a lot of shows delayed until this crisis is over, I was initially disappointed by the lack of my “main” shows such as Re:Zero and OreGairu S3 and wasn’t sure how I was going to fill the “anime void” left in my heart. However, I think this also has been ground-breaking and intriguing in its own way. Having an anime season happen that has negated a lot of the “hype” surrounding series such as these has left a lot of space for lesser-known series to make their own name based on their own merits, and likely more people have given them a chance because of this.
2) It’s not necessarily the name or popularity of shows that make them desirable as shows; it’s because of the animation quality and emotion delivered with each released episode. It’s so powerful that these shows can stand on their own, without needing any of the advertising frills or gimmicks to really sell the shows for them; they don’t need any of that. This may seem rather basic, but it can be hard to realize when giant anime companies constantly try to force their own interests into your social media, inbox, or in-person merchandise.
While I don’t think my picks of the season necessarily have all the relations to either category, I think these are things we should be considering when watching seasonal anime. Thinking about “why” we watch anime to begin can be interesting at times, and I think that these shows below capture what I think is “interesting” within anime. I hope that you can find the same sort of shows for yourself within this season as well!
The Winter 2020 season ended on quite a lot of strong notes! There were a lot of contenders for what we would talk about on this wrap-up cast, but for the sake of not having this take three hours, we had to narrow it down to some of the season’s best of the best. It’s not like we were doing much else during a global pandemic, but hey.
Although there have been a lot of delays due to obvious reasons, the Spring 2020 anime season is still coming out strong. We encounter a few minor confusions about what shows are what, but it’s all part of the trademark Backloggers charm, tee hee! Not to toot our own horn, but we’ve got some good stuff this episode: we get to explore the absolute trainwreck that is Tamayomi, we find out that Matt thought Wave, Listen to Me! and Sing “Yesterday” for Me were the same show, and, somewhat inevitably, we find out mid-recording that some shows we recommended to each other had been delayed.
Oh, and we talk about some absolute bangers from this season that haven’t been delayed (yet), like Kakushigoto and Tower of God. In short, it’s exactly the kind of anime content we need right now as the world continues to burn to the ground.
The Backloggers 