The Metropolis Mind

Hello, it's me again! First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who has visited my blog during these past few days. I've been getting pretty huge traffic especially on my last two posts specifically my post about Kuromukuro, my "Top Summer 2016 Anime Openings" and my "Winter Watchlist"! These 3 posts just skyrocketed to the top spots of my Popular Posts in just a matter of 2 - 3 days! I never really expected to receive such amount of traffic for just a short duration! Thank you times a million!

Anyways, as you probably have known, the first month of Fall season is wrapping up and I still haven't posted my overall recommendations from summer last season! Unfortunately, I couldn't finish watching all of the shows in time but I firmly do have an idea on which shows do I truly recommend from that season, so I'm here to give you all of what I like right now.

We will be dividing this post into two categories, the lighthearted shows and the more plot-driven shows. It is in order to organize the content since I have watched a good mixture of those types of shows.


Let us start with the light-hearted ones shall we.

First on the list is.

"Saiki Kusuo has a wide array of superpowers at his command, including telepathy and telekinesis. This might sound awesome, but, in Kusuo's experience, superpowers are not all they're cracked up to be. He tries to live a normal life, despite his annoying abilities."

"Kouhei Inuzuka is a teacher who has been caring for his little daughter on his own since his wife's death. He's no good at cooking, so he and his daughter Tsumugi have been eating packaged meals from the convenience store. A series of events lead him one evening to a restaurant run by the mother of one of his students, Kotori. Her mother isn't there, but Kotori does her best to feed them both. It turns out Kotori is often alone since her parents are divorced and her mother is frequently not around. The three of them begin to meet and cook tasty food together."

"Disheartened with judo, college student Haruki Bando was invited by his childhood friend Kazuma Hashimoto to create "BREAKERS", an unprecedented boys' cheerleading team. Those that came to join all were very characteristic in nature: argumentative Mizoguchi, voracious Ton, frivolous Kansai boys Gen and Ichiro, and Sho who has cheerleading experience."

Ashiya has spent the first seven days of high school stuck in the infirmary because of a youkai attaching itself to him. He ends up asking the owner of a small tea room called the "Mononokean" for help. This is a tale involving the very morose owner of Mononokean guiding the youkai that happened to wander into this world go to the next world.

The main character Suzukaze Aoba graduates from high school and joins a game company. The person who made the game that Aoba loved as a grade-schooler just happens to be Aoba's senior at the company. The story follows girls who work and aspire at the Eaglejump company.

Now that we're done with the lighthearted ones, let's start with the more plot-driven shows that sprouted last season.

Starting off with the obvious, we have...

One day, Naho Takamiya receives a letter written to herself from ten years in the future. As Naho reads on, the letter recites the exact events of the day, including the transfer of a new student into her class named Kakeru Naruse. The Naho from ten years later repeatedly states that she has many regrets, and she wants to fix these by making sure the Naho from the past can make the right decisions—especially regarding Kakeru. What's more shocking is that she discovers that ten years later, Kakeru will no longer be with them. Future Naho asks her to watch over him closely.

The world is thrown into chaos when the Katjvarna empire takes arms against the Republic of Kioka. Our hero, Ikuta, detests war but ultimately has no choice but to become a High Grade Military Officer to defend his land. No one could have ever imagined that this lazy womanizer would eventually become the hero everyone needed.

During Prohibition, the law held no power and the mafia ruled the town. The story takes place in Lawless, a town thriving on black market sales of illicitly brewed liquor. Avilio returns to Lawless after some time away, following the murder of his family in a mafia dispute there.

Now, there are two shows that I truly loved that started airing in spring but actually went on through summer 2016 so I still technically consider those a part of the summer lineup so here they are.

Take note, they are still part of the "plot-driven" shows so the numbering shall continue on from 3.

During the construction of the Kurobe Dam, an ancient artifact was discovered, and so the United Nations Kurobe Research Institute was established. Intellectuals from all over the world gathered to study the object, and the children of those researchers attend Mt. Tate International Senior High School, including the institute head's daughter, Yukina Shirahane. In the summer of 2016, a lone samurai once again awakens.

When Subaru Natsuki leaves the convenience store, the last thing he expects is to be wrenched from his everyday life and dropped into a fantasy world. Things aren't looking good for the bewildered teenager, however: not long after his arrival, he is attacked by some thugs; armed with only a bag of groceries and a now useless cell phone, he is quickly beaten to a pulp. Fortunately, a mysterious beauty named Satella, in hot pursuit after the one who stole her insignia, happens upon Subaru and saves him. In order to thank the honest and kindhearted girl, Subaru offers to help in her search, and later that night, he even finds the whereabouts of that which she seeks. But unbeknownst to them, a much darker force stalks the pair from the shadows, and just minutes after locating the insignia, Subaru and Satella are brutally murdered. However, Subaru immediately reawakens to a familiar scene—confronted by the same group of thugs, meeting Satella all over again—the enigma deepens as history inexplicably repeats itself.

Kageyama Shigeo (a.k.a. "Mob") is a 8th grader with psychic abilities. He could bend spoons and lift objects with his mind from a young age, but he slowly began to withhold from using his abilities in public due to the negative attention he kept receiving. Now, the only thing he wants is to become friends with a girl in his class, Tsubomi. With his psychic "mentor" (who has no psychic powers), he continues his daily life, attempting to realize his purpose in life.

 

Dismissed as a hopeless loser by those around him, 27-year-old Arata Kaizaki bounces around from one job to another after quitting his first company. His unremarkable existence takes a sharp turn when he meets Ryou Yoake, a member of the ReLife Research Institute, who offers Arata the opportunity to change his life for the better with the help of a mysterious pill. Taking it without a second thought, Arata awakens the next day to find that his appearance has reverted to that of a 17-year-old. Arata soon learns that he is now the subject of a unique experiment and must attend high school as a transfer student for one year. Though he initially believes it will be a cinch due to his superior life experience, Arata is proven horribly wrong on his first day: he flunks all his tests, is completely out of shape, and can't keep up with the new school policies that have cropped up in the last 10 years. Furthermore, Ryou has been assigned to observe him, bringing Arata endless annoyance. ReLIFE follows Arata's struggle to adjust to his hectic new lifestyle and avoid repeating his past mistakes, all while slowly discovering more about his fellow classmates.

Sakaguchi is a high school boy and also a "fudanshi" who loves boys-love stories. He hangs out with his friends, a fujoshi named Rumi, his gay friend Yuujirou, fellow fudanshi Daigo, and his "normal" friend Nakamura.

Thank you so much for reading this post and I'll see you guys next time!!

Sadly, mecha animes are noticeably covered by other more famous genres such as action, adventure and fantasy and thus, gets buried deep into an endless pile of good stories from the said genres. I know that this genre sprouted some pretty epic stories such as Code Geass, Evangelion, Gurren Lagann and a few shows from the hugely popular Gundam franchise but seasonal mecha animes nowadays, frankly, seem to not always match up to the level of the good ones.

Kuromukuro, a mecha anime that started airing at spring 2016, is one of those mecha shows that I find to be really underappreciated.



Background:

Kuromukuro marks as it's animation studio's, P.A Works, fifteenth anniversary production and thus high expectations are set since it is a pretty special anime for the animation studio and at the same time, because of the studio's big name in the animation industry. P.A Works are known for their famous productions such as Angel Beats, Charlotte and Another.

Kuromukuro is a show that I found when I was scrolling for other stuff to watch back then when it was spring. I already had a few shows on my watchlist from spring 2016 back then so it was really hard to add another few more shows in my bag. When I saw Kuromukuro, I read it's synopsis and it was so short that I didn't have an idea on what it's going to be about. From what I can remember, the initial "synopsis" (technically it isn't a synopsis though) was this one-liner: "A 15th anniversary production of P.A Works". So of course, I didn't know what it was about therefore I lost track of that anime for a few months until summer 2016 started.

When summer 2016 rolled in, I scanned MyAnimeList for some summer shows to watch and after I scrolled down a bit deeper, I saw Kuromukuro again. And so I was like "Wow this show is actually continuing 'till summer for 20+ episodes." And that's when I decided to start adding that show to my watchlist.

A few months prior to me getting started on the show, I once saw a comment from a random dude which said that 'Kuromukuro is a pretty underrated show!' so I guess that's also one of the factors to why I felt like giving this show a shot.

Back then, Kuromukuro is pretty low in MyAnimeList's charts. I think it had a score of 7.00 something so it's ranking as a whole was pretty much on the 3000+ mark, and that is SUPER low.

Another short note. When I started this show, it already had 20+ episodes released so that means I was able to binge-watch a few episodes here and there.


Thoughts/Opinions:

Let's get started with the discussion shall we! Kuromukuro episode one was actually just fine! Frankly, it wasn't that mind blowing as a first episode. One good thing about it though was that it was still able to keep things interesting - mostly through it's fight scenes. The fight scene in the start gave me a feeling that this show is going to be abit deep in terms of it's storyline. Then we were greeted by the characters - the main heroine who gave us a really bad impression of her as a pretty dumb character who wrote "Mars" on her future career plans form. Though that last statement I said can be quite a nostalgic moment to remember as you go on through the series.


Then we were greeted by another character who actually is a bit more interesting than the main character.

Sophie Noelle

The art style was pretty beautiful by the way. All of the characters looks so beautiful and well designed as well as the background sceneries.

This is some beautiful scenery bruh. Oh I can see 4 shooting stars...

We were then added a bit more of what the story is going to be about afterwards. Then a bit of a trouble starts and that's when the first episode started to shine. The fight scenes were all eye catchy. Take note, I really don't watch that much mecha anime so the fight scenes really kept me on my toes.


Then there is this really funny character who enters the scene. I remembered how much I smiled and giggled  on how his lines were mostly too, I don't know what that term is... blunt? I don't know but one things for sure is that he really added up to the interesting aspect of this show.

Then of course, who would knew that a naked man will appear amidst of all the chaos. And then this guy finally adds a bit more spice to this first episode with his words the moment he saw the... well, you probably guessed it, the main heroine!


And that wraps up the first impression review! (HAHAs).

But anyways, after I watched this first episode, the 2nd one was already available so it was easy to just continue on watching.

If you have watched tons of mecha anime shows prior to viewing this show AND if you have watched the first episode on the date of it's actual airing, chances are, sadly, you probably would have had a higher chance of dropping this show at that point. It was an interesting impression to me but the main heroine would probably put you off in a bad taste thinking: "Man, this is going to be another one of those shows with a useless heroine".

The thing is, I still continued on with the show and boy it was so worth it! All of the episodes were keeping me on my toes the whole time. This show was a good mixture of both dark and mysterious (as so that the plot would progress) together with some elements of lightheartedness (to help you get a chance to take in a big plot revelation or something).

And yes, another one thing I REALLY loved from this show is... the main heroine!

The main heroine proved itself to actually be not "useless" as the show went on and that is such a sight to see.


Don't forget the side characters as well! Though some of them can be quite a pain in the butt, all of them was able to contribute to how the story went on and about. I was actually surprised at one of those side characters because there is one whom I hated so much! He wasn't at all, by any means, useful to the show and all he did was wazz me off.

Some side characters!

But that opinion changed when he said one of his lines which you can hear in the last few episodes of the show (of course I won't be telling which episode it is). Though the change wasn't that much, it still was able to make me look at him more differently and thought of how much of what he said was a bit inspiring.

The OST of this show was able to help keep things not boring. The 2 openings and 2 ending themes this show had was so beautiful as well. My favorites being the first opening and the 2nd ending theme.

One of my highlights from Kuromukuro is how some of the scenes were directed in the 2nd half of this show, especially on the last few episodes. When some of them properly applied the theme songs in some scenes, they maximized the amount of hype and feels this show had.


The ending was also quite satisfying, I felt so proud of everyone and I couldn't resist tearing up at the sight of this show ending.

A.K.A I NEED A SECOND SEASON NOW.

Overall, I do RECOMMEND this show to you my dear readers. Don't let that first episode put you off because it didn't fail me when I continued it. It was a solid series indeed. My suggestion? Binge-watch this show to keep things interesting.

The cast

 That's all for now! Thank you for reading this and I'll see you again on my next post!

Now here are my favorite opening and ending theme songs from this show!


Authors Note:

1. This is considered BOTH a summer 2016 highlights post and an anime recommendation post. I couldn't really write a few more since I'm so behind fall 2016 anime.

2. This show is TECHNICALLY a spring 2016 show since this first aired on spring but it went on throughout summer as well so I do, somehow, also consider this a summer show.

3. Most pictures were grabbed from Kuromukuro's official website, that's why a lot of them looks so HD.