Anime Premier Roundup - Summer 2022
Summer's here, the heat's unbearable, and multiple governments are failing before our very eyes. But what's that, you ask? The anime? Well, the anime's actually not so bad!
I've seen some general grumbling that this season feels slower than the last, but while it's true that there aren't as many big-name crowd pleasers as in spring 2022, the best shows of this season might be on track to outclass it. I'm of the opinion that a season's only as good as its top shelf, and in that respect, we're doing just fine.
I had plenty of thoughts about the premiers I checked out, which I've listed below for your reading pleasure. I also want to give a quick mention to Made In Abyss, an often great show with disturbing tendencies that have made me reluctant to catch up on its currently airing second season. But as for the rest, let's get to it!
Tier 1: Must-Watches
Finally—after months, our first great theme show of the year has arrived. Yurei Deco takes place on a too-good-to-be-true future island where virtual and augmented realities are inseparable from daily life, meaning social media clout defines everything from schooling to currency. The show wastes no time digging into the ethical problems that such a future would pose, yet delivers it with a bouncy neon aesthetic that looks like Astro Boy filtered through a synthwave collage. The show is absolutely dense with information and not very forthcoming with its worldbuilding, meaning it's not the type of thing that everyone will like, but it's basically me-food—after all, I wrote a couple thousand words on the first episode alone. Only time will tell if it sticks the landing, but if it keeps it up, this could very well end up being the show of the year.
Right on the heels of what might be 2022's smartest show, here's one that's dumber than a sack of hammers. Lycoris Recoil is centered around a secret police force of teenage girls who are trained to protect Japan from the shadows, and if that summary is setting off your ACAB alarms, I can't blame you. But in practice, Lycoris Recoil is less a reactionary political statement and more along the lines of what would happen if you fed John Wick and the K-On! girls into a DALL-E search—which is to say, breezy slice-of-life trappings intercut with brutal gunplay. Lycoris also happens to be one of the slickest productions of the year, bringing generous character animation and impressive storyboards to visceral action scenes, low-key moments, and intentionally funny bits. This is the type of show that could go off the rails any minute, but three episodes in, the sight of moe girls mercing trained soldiers hasn't stopped being entertaining. This may just be the show I look forward to most each week.
If one thing unites my favorites this season, it's great aesthetics, and Call of the Night might just have the boldest of them all. Directed by incredibly talented Monogatari mainstay Tomoyuki Itamura, the titular night of this show is awash in vibrant purples and deep blues that are punctuated by jarring yellows and reds, all of which meld together into an irresistible, candy-coated color palate. Jury's still a bit out on the story, which gets a little god dang horny and veers close to wish-fulfillment territory, but the rapport between disaffected teen lead Ko and gremlin vampire Nazuna feels natural, entertaining, and—crucially—clearly unhealthy for both of them. Even beyond their problematic age difference, these two are enabling some of the worst parts of each other, and it's interesting to see the show acknowledge that while simultaneously playing it as a real romance. But beyond that, every part of the production, from character designs to background work to voice acting, has impressed me on some level, and I'm just plain interested to see where it goes from here.
Tier 2: Potential for Greatness
Shine Post certainly has an arresting start, with an inspiring pro-idol concert jarringly cutting to our actual protagonists, months later, playing a show to about five attendees. That contrast between big stars and big dreams is all over this first episode, which follows underdog idol unit TINGS as its members are given the herculean task to fill a 2,000-seat venue in three months. Although Shine Post is very much playing in conventional idol-show territory (our heroines have a realistic friendship and clear insecurities, but they also fit into gimmicky anime archetypes), there's an authenticity to its narrative, centering the day-to-day challenges and anxieties of a struggling music group over the "aw-shucks" veneration of school idols in Love Live! and other peers. Yet that relative realism never gets dour thanks to the show's solid humor, authentic performance animation, and a couple inspired narrative beats—namely, the way TINGS's reluctant manager sees certain people outlined in a faint glow. The reveal of what that glow means is weird in the moment, but it's a unique hook that sells the show's potential for character growth and narrative progress. Even with the inconsistent writing, I really enjoyed this first episode, and Shine Post may just be the idol show to beat this season.
Love Live! Superstar!! 2nd Season
Yes, one of my favorite shows of last year is currently playing second fiddle to an up-and-comer, and yes, that in itself would make a pretty good idol show narrative. But Love Live! is as close to a safe bet as you can get for anime, so regardless of which one rises to the top, Superstar!! is bound to be a good time. This season picks up where the first left off—rookie group Liella! (I can't with these names) wants to take home the gold in this year's Love Live competition, and Keke has a ticking time-bomb secret that only her rival Sumire knows—yet it also spends considerable time paving the way for four inevitable new members, starting with easily overwhelmed out-of-towner Kinako. My biggest gripe is that these new characters feel unnecessary from a narrative standpoint—the first season's best moments centered leading lady Kanon's performance anxiety and the other girls' struggles to find their own places, so it's a bummer that they're being shoved aside to make room for clichés like "Inventor Girl" and "Instagram Influencer." And beyond that, it's not clear even from an in-universe perspective what new members will add to the group. Is the solution really to add more people, not to focus on improvement? Why do we always need nine idols—what is this, Slipknot?
Still, none of it's dire, and Kinako's presence at least leads to a few nice character moments. Kinako is intimidated by Liella!'s collective talent due to insecurities about her own technical ability (and potentially her weight—we'll see how the show plays that), and Kanon gets a nice passing-the-torch moment later on. And if nothing else, it's Love Live!, so there's plenty of great gags and a solid performance near the end. For all the ways this feels like Love Live! regressing to its default mode, the franchise is rarely anything but polished and confident, so I'm sure I'll be staying in idol hell a while longer.
Shadows House rounds off my middle section due to a somewhat rough premier, but I have little doubt that it'll right itself in due time. Its first season was also a slow burner, and with this first episode spending most of its time on table setting, there wasn't room for the things I found most compelling in the first go-round. The potential's all there, though—in the wake of the first season's debut competition, our protagonists have moved up to a new part of the house, which means new rules, new characters, and new worldbuilding. The show's already gesturing at how those threads might feed into its central sociopolitical (dare I say anti-capitalist?) narrative, like in how the new house rules keep a leash on shadows by requiring them to constantly perform self-improvement, or in learning that one specific shadow painfully emits 60 percent of the house's needed magic soot. Shadows House may not be quite there yet, but its first season earned enough of my trust that I'm fine with the second taking its time.
Tier 3: Ehhhh
Teppen—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Laughing 'til You Cry
If nothing else, Teppen—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! may just win the award for best opening (and most punctuation) of the season. Both that OP and the preview hooked me with their distinctive character designs, excellent animation, and promise of good gags... and then the actual episode happened. Basically, Teppen is a manzai comedy about girls who only do manzai routines, which means that character 1 will do a vaguely funny thing, followed by characters 2 and 3 saying how weird that thing just was. It's the "Well that just happened" of anime, except with a bunch of untranslatable puns and cultural references.
What this amounts to in Teppen's first episode is that the characters (15 in total, one for each exclamation point) spend literally all of their time riffing with each other. That means there's no real dialogue and no real characters—they all talk in the same manzai affectations, so there's little difference to their personalities outside of their blunt-force surface characteristics, like "the rich girl" and "the alien girl." The joke density is high enough that a few good gags still snuck in (shoutout to the English translator for "I'm into body building, not body gilding"), but I found myself getting antsy during the first half's gauntlet of character introductions, and then bored during the second half's pseudo-mystery. There's perhaps a good show somewhere in Teppen, but I just don't speak its language.
I've always wanted to like the original RWBY. I dig the character designs, I find the fight scenes fairly impressive for an amateur production, and there's something very earnest about the way Rooster Teeth tries to emulate their inspirations. But now that RWBY has its own for-real anime series, Ice Queendom, I'm reminded of all the reasons that RWBY kind of stinks.
This triple-length premier (which I made it one-third of the way through before giving up; I'm not a saint) gracelessly blasts through all of the original first season's plot beats, which serves to highlight just how bad those beats were to begin with. Ruby monologues her own backstory to her mother's grave, Weiss fights a monster so her cartoonishly evil dad will let her go to school, Blake randomly leaves her organization moments after she's introduced... these were all rote and uninspired in the original, and they only feel more like YA pastiche here. Not that any of this is a surprise—series composer Tow Ubukata couldn't write his way out of a paper bag, and him being on scripts basically ensured this thing would be dead on arrival.
To make matters worse, the visuals somehow evoke the original's aesthetic incompetence despite this being a full-fledged production from a veteran team. There's some good action cuts and neat scene transitions scattered around, but to be blunt, Studio Shaft's house style is just not a good fit for the material—their sterile, stagelike framing works like gangbusters for Monogatari and Madoka Magica, but for a fantasy world like RWBY's that should feel alive, the flat watercolor backgrounds and underpopulated scenes make it feel lifeless.
It's sad—part of me still wants to like RWBY, and I believe that there's a kernel of something fun to the franchise. But by now, this particular stove has burned me enough times that I'm starting to think I should stop resting my hand on it.
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer
This is, by all measures, a very unfortunate adaptation of a very good manga. Just read the original—you'll get the same number of still frames.
And done!
All in all, this is a pretty respectable season—a few standouts, a few more that could wind up enjoyable, and plenty of other productions that will be forgotten by the year's end. Hopefully this points you to something you like, and feel free to leave a comment here if there's anything I missed. Happy watching!
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