Star Crossed Anime Blog

With BEM released we come to the end of the First Impression period and the real beginning of this Summer Season. With 2 new writers on board I am happy to say that the 1st Impression had gone smoother and much faster than ever before. To make it even more exciting, we have 2 good news for you readers. First, this season Star Crossed Anime will cover a total of 12 shows, which if my memory serves right is the highest since psgels left the site. After many behind-the-scene black-market deals and fist fights and Mexican standoffs to make sure we can cover shows we wanted, this is our Summer 2019 blogging schedule:

Mario: Kanata no Astra – Cop Craft – Carole & Tuesday (carry-over)

Lenlo: Vinland Saga – Dr. STONE – Kimetsu no Yaiba (carry-over)

Wooper: Mix: Meisei Story (carry-over)

Amun: Fire Force – DanMachi 2 

Armitage: O Maidens in Your Savage Season – Given

Helghast: Lord El-Melloi II-sei no Jikenbo: “Rail Zeppelin” Grace note

Second, it’s the new bloods’ idea to give First-Episode Awards where the staff vote for their favorites and worst (Credits entirely to Amun for the concept, layout and those lovely icons) so you readers can have a better grasp on the seasonal reception so far. Let us know if you like the idea and which category you would like us to include in the future. I’ll stop writing now and just let the awards speak for themselves.

To those whom it may concern this is a declaration of my retirement from the Star Crossed Anime Blog and this is a needlessly dramatic sentence. However when I consider my five years on this site blogging shows I feel that some dramatic gravitas is warranted. Now this post will likely be very long so I suspect that most will skim it at best or declare TLDR before moving on but I really feel like giving at least one last post to explain how I got here, why I kept doing this and why I am stopping. After Psgels abandoned the site without a word I felt it would be wrong to repeat that even if my leaving will be met with little lamentation. So bear with me as I take you back to the days of yore when the animated TV adaption of Fate/Unlimited Bladeworks was about to air.

I stumbled upon Psgels really out of nowhere after my old hangout of cartoon-world forums went dead and for some reason or another just stuck around talking to people on the shoutbox and commenting on posts. You may be surprised to hear that back then there was a rather thriving community on the site and we all basically knew each other. It was nice and gave me a place to talk about my interests when the place I am from people don’t even know what anime is, let alone talk about it. Then came the time psgels decided to make this site a multi-author blog and indeed it did seem to be his means of distancing himself from the site. He picked out a number of people from our Shoutbox community to carry on the site in his stead and let me say that I was not actually one of them. As a matter of fact I was put forward by someone else for the sole purpose of covering the new Fate show and nothing else. Seeing as I was the person with the most knowledge about the franchise and was interested in trying to cover it, I decided to offer to do so. With that Psgels reluctantly gave me access to post to the site. Yes, reluctantly. You see dear readers, psgels did not actually like me and don’t take that to mean that I hold it against him. I gave him plenty of reasons to dislike me, potentially even hate me. Nonetheless he gave me access to the site, though made sure to contact me through a proxy email and not his real email address which caused massive headaches down the line.
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I must say, though the spring season is usually a heavyweight in both quantity and quality for anime offerings, spring 2019 surprisingly has a condensed amount of shows airing. This might be the fewest First Impressions posts we’ve done in a while. I’m optimistic about the season, however. There’s a clear cut between the 7 shows we’ve chosen to  blog (well, 6 shows and 1 carry-over) and the rest. That’s another way of saying that I’m happy with our schedule this season. Without further ado, here’s Star-Crossed Anime’s coverage for spring 2019:

Mario: Sarazanmai, Carole & Tuesday, Fruits Basket

Lenlo: Kimetsu no Yaiba, One Punch Man 2, Dororo (carry-over)

Wooper: Mix: Meisei Story

This is where I would finish with a witty remark, but since I’ve just been reborn as a dancing kappa through someone’s butt, let’s just end it right here before I burst out singing.

Like a cold you can’t get rid of, the new season has come and all the premieres have been aired. Overall, this Winter season looks to be an exciting one. It’s certainly the fewest shows in terms of quantity for quite a while, and shows that supposed to be stand out are doing a pretty good job. Mob Psycho 100 2 delivers one of the best episode in a while, Boogiepop tanks but the rest is what we could’ve predicted. This season also marks many shows cut-corner by animating entirely in CG, and the results are pretty clunky. I hope this trend won’t become dominant in the future.

Below is our schedule for 2019 Winter season:

Aidan: Yakusoku no Neverland

Mario: Boogiepop Phantom (2019), Kemurikusa, Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai

Lenlo: Dororo, Mob Psycho 100 II, Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru (carry-over), Paranoia Agent (Throwback Thursday)

Wooper: Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai

Hooray for Wooper who will be back on board with us for the season. Extra hooray for Lenlo for working extra next season (I hope you survive, lad). And let’s hope for this 2019 year to be a better anime year than the last one.

KANPAI!!!

While there are some shows still lagging behind, we’ve pretty much had the general sip of what this new season has to offer. While personally I don’t have a clear favorite (my top shows only have 70% potential, the lowest since I’ve taken this job), there are many shows that genuinely surprise me. Who would’ve thought an anime with “Bunny Girl senpai” in the title can be this solid, or shows like Zombieland Saga and SSSS Gridman that defy their own tropes in every turn? On the negative side, I can regard this season as the season of bad-taste rape-attempts. From yaoi show about a romance between two sexy boys poisoned by attempted rape; goblins sexual assault to loli abuse, incest romance and a boy who travels to another world to make love with 12 different girls. This season has it all. Welcome to another season of Star Crossed Anime.

Here’s our schedule for the 2018 Fall Season:

Aidan: Goblin Slayer, Zombieland Saga, Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl-senpai no Yume wo Minai

Mario: Thunderbolt Fantasy 2, Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara, SSSS Gridman

Lenlo: BANANA FISH (carry-over), Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru, Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san (short), Planetes (Throwback Thursday)

Let’s enjoy this last season of the year together, my friends.

With this seemingly never-ending stream of new shows finally comes to an end, it’s time again for the announcement of our seasonal coverage. While I agree with the sentiments that this season is lackluster in general, especially compared to the previous season with only one true hit Banana Fish, there are many under-the-radar, sleeper hits from wide range across many genres. This season might turn out to be more exciting than I thought it would be.

Here’s our schedule for the 2018 Summer Season:

Aidan: Grand Blue, Planet With, Satsuriku no Tenshi

Mario: Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro, Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight, Hanebado!

Lenlo: Steins;Gate 0 (carry-over), BANANA FISH

Once again, Lenlo handles another critical hit of the season. Aidan covers two shows where the main characters suffer amnesia (God bless him!) and I go back to my usual territory, cute high-school girls shows, albeit this time they’re a bit unusual: cute girls doing sport (that’s a first for me), cute girls on their way to school and cute girls fighting in a surreal stage play.

Let’s all enjoy this Summer season of anime, hopefully with a glass of beer and NOT with naked muscular men. That’d be depressing!

The Spring First Impression period has finally come to an end, which personally I regard it as a mixed bag.  This season has one of the most crowded titles in terms of quantity, having around 50 plus airing anime of all kinds and we previewed about 34 new shows . This huge amount doesn’t necessarily translate into better quality, however. We have handful of solid shows, a sea of mediocre and trashy shows and little to no middle ground. I gave 0% potential more than any previous seasons (do I become too harsh on anime or was anime a mistake?). In addition, as most of you already knew, we’re trying something new this season by gathering together and making the first (and hopefully not the only) podcast since the five of us, current writers, came into this site.

Anyways, without further ado, here’s our schedule for the 2018 Spring Season:

Aidan: Legend of Galactic Heroes – Die Neue These, Full Metal Panic Invisible Story, Wotakoi, Darling in the FranXX (carry-over)

Mario: Golden Kamuy, Hisone to Misotan, Hinamatsuri
Lenlo: Steins;Gate 0, Megalo Box

I’m also here to bring you one sad news. From this season onwards, Wooper will step down as a site writer. This is a great loss for us (and you’ll be missed, Wooper), but expect him to be around the chatbox as well as (hopefully) helping us out with the first impression.

With this, let’s the 2018 Spring Season truly begins.