New Summer Anime Review Part 2

Isekai Shokudou

_{'Youshoku no Nekoya' is your average shopping district cafeteria, open for fifty years it has satisfied the various salarymen from nearby offices There is, however, one secret to "Nekoya", the cafeteria is closed to the public every Saturday in order to make way for special guests. When a bell rings, customers from different places of birth and races appear who ask for mysterious and delicious dishes. For the people of this certain world, it’s their one-and-only special cafeteria.}

Isekai Shokudou can be summarized in two words: comfy and wholesome. Having watched 3 episodes you start to notice the formula here, we get introduced to a new fantasy character, learn of their struggles, they discover the cafe and are amazed by how delicious the food is. This is fantasy slice of life at its finest and I know I’m more than happy to watch the same thing happen again and again while it runs. It’s the kind of show you should grab a warm cup of tea and a blanket to cuddle up with when you watch, and it’s guaranteed to leave a smile on your face.

Nana Maru San Batsu (7O3X)

_{As soon as he entered high school, the first year student Koshiyama Shiki was invited to the mysterious Quiz Study Group led by his senior. What will Shiki run into when being dragged along by his classmate Mari into the dazzling world of competitive quizzes?!}

If I’ve learned anything since I started watching anime it’s that any topic can be made interesting and 7O3X shows us quiz bowl is no exception. It’s the classic sports anime formula applied to a different setting, the protagonist Shiki is an otherwise regular student whose talents happen to line up perfectly with this newly discovered activity, and he quickly becomes swept up in a desire to pursue competitive quiz bowl. Full disclosure, I’d already read the manga before this started airing so I was already a fan going in, but I still believe it’s a solid adaptation and with the knowledge of the events to come I know it’s going to stay strong until the end.

Dive!!

_{The series revolves around the Mizuki Diving Club (MDC), which is on the verge of closing down after having financial troubles. The club's new coach persuades the club's parent company to stay open on one condition: that the club sends one of its members to next year's Olympics as part of Japan's team.}

Think back on everything I said in the last review but replace ‘quiz bowl’ with ‘diving’. I haven’t read the source material so I can’t be as certain it will stay strong, but there’s a very interesting side plot to the diving with the strange relationship between the main character, his girlfriend and his jealous brother. The animation here isn’t anything to write home about but it has one of the better soundtracks this season. This feels like a weaker recommendation than the previous shows but is overall still very watchable.

Konbini Kareshi

_{Six students are each getting on with their lives, and all of them will visit the nearby convenience store after school. Each goes there for different reasons: to eat ice cream after club activities, to get the latest issue of this week's game magazine, to purchase ingredients, to meet friends, or to stock up on their favorite food. The convenience store becomes the place they can relax and make small memories.}

Konbini Kareshi is really just a slice of life story with some romantic elements to it. This isn’t a particularly dramatic or exciting show and its characters are all various generic stereotypes whose personalities can probably guess by looking at their designs. In a season with better slice of life shows and probably better romance shows this doesn’t have much to offer aside from its realistic setting. While it’s hard to find much to praise about this show it’s also hard to find anything to really criticise it for, so if a slower, down to earth, character driven slice of life/romance show sounds like your kind of thing then consider it, but don’t feel obliged to check it out.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits

_{Year 20xx, an action heroine warring states period. The action heroine trend had started with a small festival, creating a "local heroine fighter" themed after the local area. The action charmed the audience and led to the project gaining huge popularity. A local heroine boom took off, many municipalities began producing stage shows for the hometown heroines, and a rivalry developed between them. The heroine shows vying for popularity began to appear on a nationally popular ranking program broadcast nationwide. The action heroines aspire to earn the love of everyone.}

Did that description confuse you? The show doesn’t do much to alleviate that. It’s very hard to pin down Cheer Fruits, it feels like some sort of cross between Love Live! and Tiger & Bunny without any of the things that made either show interesting. Ultimately, Cheer Fruits’ setting of sentai stage heroes and town mascots ends up feeling a little too based in some of Japan’s less approachable cultural eccentricities to appreciate. If you like shows that venture off the beaten path you might find something here, but it’s hard to confidently recommend this for anyone.

Made in Abyss

_{The "Abyss" is the last unexplored place in the world. Strange and wonderful creatures roam within, and it is full of precious relics that present humans can't recreate. Those that dare to explore the depths are known as "Cave Raiders." An orphan girl named Riko lives on the rim. Her dream is to become a Cave Raider like her mother and solve the mysteries of the cave system. One day, Riko starts exploring the caves and discovers a robot who resembles a human boy.}

I’m going to come out and say it now, Made in Abyss is probably the best thing airing this season. With by far and away the most interesting setting, best animation, and best soundtrack, it would be an absolute shame if you passed this show over because of it’s almost chibi looking character designs like I nearly did. This show is beautiful to look at, the backgrounds are rich and detailed like they’re pulled straight from a book. On top of everything else, the show manages to convey an incredible sense of foreboding. Its characters have no pause at the idea of training orphans to scavenge from the abyss to pay their keep, or at the slums, where a seemingly large number of people reside to illegally scavenge for survival. An abyss, by the way, that literally curses it’s explorers, causing them a range of ailments from heavy nausea to literal death depending on how deep they travel before their return. It’s hard to put this in clearer terms, this is /the/ show you should check out this season.

Hey everyone, StormingJ here with the second part of my summer first impressions. Just like the last time I’ve made a number of changes to my format, I realize that my previous reviews assumed that most readers were familiar with the shows I was discussing and didn’t take any steps to ensure that was the case. This time I’ve opted to include MAL links and summaries from AniChart to at least give an introduction to each show. I’m also hoping that by changing the naming format I’ve better clarified what I’m doing, the last article received notably fewer views and no comments compared to my spring roundup so I’ll see if this differs or not.

The introductory post is still in the works but will likely come out after I’ve finished all of my first impression posts (we’re halfway done now). As for the next post, I’ll be covering 18if, Jikan no Shihaisha, Shoukoku no Altair, Ballroom e Youkosu, Princess Principal, and Centaur no Nayami. With any luck, I’ll get it out on Friday, and follow up with the final post next Tuesday. To cap off this series, I’ll end with a 'new shows to watch this season' post the following Friday so look forward to that!

As always, let me know what you think in the comments! I’d love to hear your opinions on any of the shows I’ve discussed or if my opinions caused you to check any of them out.