Summer 2018: Was I Right?

 Now that the Summer 2018 season is finally over, it’s time to see how accurate I actually was in my slightly altered version of What To Watch.

For reminder’s sake, due to everything that’s been happening this season in terms of real life (and catching up on anime from other seasons!), I decided to not watch any seasonal anime for this season. So, instead of giving my own opinions, I’m going to be going through reviews and looking at scores and statistics in order to get an overview on the anime I selected in my What To Watch post and see how accurate I was in my predictions.

So, without further ado, let’s see how well I did, shall we?

High Score Girl – Comedy, Romance, School, Seinen
Although this has been a series that I don’t think many people have covered this season, High Score Girl has been on my plan to watch list for literally years, so I was hoping that this would be a good adaptation. At a time, I thought that that was never going to come to fruition, as it was rated sub-7 for a bit, but J.C.Staff certainly pulled it out of the bag. It perhaps had a bad start, but it really hasn’t done bad at all. It pulled itself up from a score just under 7 and it continued to rise until its finale where its managed to keep an avergae score of 7.2, which, honestly isn’t as bad as some others. Many have said its nostalgic for the viewer, what with all the references to the 1990s and the now retro video games, and it has good character development, two qualities which I was really looking forward to when I first heard about this show. The romance might not be any good, but that’s certainly something I can probably look past, personally, considering how long I’ve waited for this adaptation. Average Rating: 7 – Good

 

Island – Drama, Sci-Fi
Island seemed to have an interesting concept, but the more I heard about it, the more I was sort of uninterested. Still, it seems as if I’m in the minority as the amount of people watching Island did continue to rise each week…But the show got to Episode 10 and, well, that’s where the ratings dropped. People have complained about hours of gameplay being squashed into a twelve episode show and those who haven’t played the game have also complained about the story being uninteresting and rather generic. Yet people have also praised the show’s clarification of things from the original visual novel, as well as the addition of some original scenes. Issues with how the show copes with how serious it has to be has also been something that I’ve seen pointed out in various different reviews. Yet, despite this, a lot of people stayed with the show. After all, they were only minor issues anyway, in the grand scheme of things. For a lot of viewers, there was definitely some questionable content surrounding a certain relationship, but others also say that this was done quite tastefully. Having not seen it myself, I can’t really comment on it, so my advice would just to do a bit of research beforehand if you’re that dubious about the show. Island is quite the divisive show – opinion is almost 50:50, from the sources I’ve seen, on whether it’s good or bad.  Personally, I’d say it was only a show to try out if you’re truly interested in the synopsis, but I wouldn’t be expecting anything spectacular looking at the public opinion.  Average Rating: 6  – Fine

 

Cells At Work – Comedy, Shounen
This is probably the most talked about show of this season and I have seen nothing but praise for this show on forums, blogs and in discussions with friends. I certainly like the premise and I’ll probably check it out at some point, particularly as it’s been nearing the score of 8 ever since it premiered. Some have said it’s rather overrated, and this can arguably be seen in the statistics. As the show has continued, the rating of the show has declined, whilst the number of people who have dropped it increased. Perhaps they got bored of the niche (although I am failing to see why) or perhaps it’s down to some other issue that is unknown to me. As I’ve previously said, a lot of people have given nothing but praise to this show with some even saying that it has given them more knowledge about their body than their high school biology classes. Not only that, but real life medical staff have really being enjoying this, regardless of whether they’re fans of anime or not. The public opinion really can be rather split, huh? Average Rating: 7 – Good

Banana Fish – Action, Adventure, Drama, Shoujo
Banana Fish, for me, wasn’t perhaps my first choice. But, when I considered it at the start of the season, I was sold. (Or, I would have been, had I been watching seasonal anime!) Rightly so, by the look of things, because not only has Banana Fish been praised like mad within the blogsphere, it’s been praised elsewhere too! The rating has been fairly consistent throughout its entire run, and more and more people have began watching it as the show has progressed too, which is always a good sign! Of course, Banana Fish will also be continuing throughout the Fall season, but it’s first cour has certainly made an impression on not only Summer’s anime line-up, but also 2018’s anime line-up. People have described this show as action-packed, progressive, and, really, unique, especially considering that it’s a shoujo crime drama – something we don’t see all too often. Personally what I love about the show, despite not having seen it, is how it’s allowed people to go absolutely wild and analyse it. These analyses do prove to be interesting, as long as you don’t mind the occasional spoiler here and there! I’m glad to see that the show has kept up it’s hype and I, for one, will certainly be checking this one out as soon as I can! Average Rating: 7 – Good

Harakuna Receive – Ecchi, Slice-of-Life, Sports
If any show on this list has surprised me, it has to be this one. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting much from it in the first place, but what I am surprised at is how few in numbers its viewers are. Compared to every other show on this list so far, Harakuna Receive has the fewest amount of viewers, which surprises me really due to knowing how big of a community the anime sports community is, as well as those who like girls doing cute things… Does volleyball count as a cute thing? Regardless, I knew this show wouldn’t be anything special, especially when you look at shows like Banana Fish in comparison. Its rating did drop dramatically at around the ninth episode, which makes me wonder what actually happened to cause that, but it has just about managed to secure itself just under the 7 mark, which isn’t too shabby, but it could have definitely done better, even if a lot of the reviews I’ve seen really do praise it somewhat… Average Rating: 6  – Fine

Senjuushi – Military, Action
Dare I even say anything about this? I should have known this was a disaster from the get-go, when very few people (we’re talking literally about 5,000) even had this on their list. And then the weekly ratings came in and, well, it just kept getting worse and worse. It has already been dubbed as the worst anime ever made, according to MyAnimeList. I don’t think I can say anything more on this, apart from that it has been swiftly taken off of my plan-to-watch list. (Although, I may just give it a quick watch just to see how bad it really is…) Average Rating: 4 – Bad

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So, really, looking at the statistics, my choices for Summer 2018 weren’t all too bad! (Especially if we just forget about Senjuushi…) What are your opinions on these season’s anime? Are there any either on this list or otherwise that I should be potentially prioritisng? Let me know in the comment section below!

Until next time!

– Amelia xo