Upcoming Anime Season: Fall 2020

[Ryllharu]

I'm not watching a single series this season.

To some degree the "quality" this season is due to the coronavirus derailing some productions, others it's just bad timing resulting in a threadbare season. I think a lot of it is that more and more anime series are based off dreadful mobile games. Anime has always been promotion material for its source material. Original anime has always been few and far between.

Manga based series are effectively already storyboarded and usually produce the best result. Light novel adaptations are at least plotted out, but they're often significantly diminished by taking 1st person perspective stories and making them 3rd person narratives. With the mobile titles, they're trying to stretch threadbare premises into 4 hours of animated content...which tells you how bad those games are.

Winter season is picking up a large number of series that were delayed for whatever reason. It's a lot of sequels, isekais, and LN adaptations, but at least there's something there.

[MFauli]

I'm not watching a single series this season.

To some degree the "quality" this season is due to the coronavirus derailing some productions, others it's just bad timing resulting in a threadbare season. I think a lot of it is that more and more anime series are based off dreadful mobile games. Anime has always been promotion material for its source material. Original anime has always been few and far between.

Manga based series are effectively already storyboarded and usually produce the best result. Light novel adaptations are at least plotted out, but they're often significantly diminished by taking 1st person perspective stories and making them 3rd person narratives. With the mobile titles, they're trying to stretch threadbare premises into 4 hours of animated content...which tells you how bad those games are.

Winter season is picking up a large number of series that were delayed for whatever reason. It's a lot of sequels, isekais, and LN adaptations, but at least there's something there.

Honestly, I'd say light novel adaptations are when things started going downhill. Light novels always have been on fanfiction level and that's okay for what they are. But, as you say, they're not suitable for full-on anime adaptations, simply because they're hardly ever fleshed out universes, instead focusing on the main hero and his gimmick. Even SAO, the most popular light novel adaptation, is very much guilty of this.

The bad thing: Apparently too many people are ok with that level of quality. I mentioned it before, but take a fantasy anime like Record of Lodoss War. That is a story that can go toe to toe with the Lord of the Rings, each are fantasy masterpieces in their own medium. Now take any of the fantasy anime in recent years, most of them from the isekai subgenre, and nobody in their right mind would claim that these are equal to actually good fantasy literature. It's like there's a set number of elements to pick from when these authors write their stories, then add that certain one gimmick to the story, and that's it, that's the story. And its shallowness is tangible. It even became a meme.

Anime have become so bad that even when people nowadas call something a "good anime", it's actually rather bad, mediocre at best, when compare to great anime from the past. Did I enjoy Slime-isekai? Or Honzuki? Sure. But I enjoyed them while fully aware that they're also nothing of high quality. Better than other anime, but not great per se. The cheapness is always striking, be it in terms of animation quality or plot depth. I remember really liking Hai to Gen no Grimgar or what it was called, the concept of a more realistic fantasy-world was appealing. But then it started having severe pacing issues AND the anime just ended after 1 cour and never returned. Just wtf.

And just btw, fantasy isn't the only genre suffering, it's every genre. I see some people praising Tonikaku Kawaii this season, but WTF is this shit?! Two children marry and have some nonsensical relationship, plus she's secretly a vampire or something. Bad animation, too. Have people really reached the point where this is being considered good? We used to enjoy anime like Hanasaku Iroha, ffs!

If I had to to summarize the issue, it's that anime have become TOO formulaic and too reliant and cutesy moe-shit. There no longer are serious, well-written stories that are inspiring and offensive in their daringness.Shounen peaked with HXH, nowawadays people praise shit like Boku no Hero Academia, a shounen that even after, what, 4 seasons doesn't have anything that could be called a "world", because it just keeps jumping from fight to fight (or filler event). Barely anything of consequence ever happens. It's the most vapid version of "shounen" anime one could imagine.We had Death Note and Monster, stories that had everyone excitedly guessing and discussion what might happen next. Nowadays nobody cares, because anime have become so nonsensical and random that discussions are worthless. Why talk about Jujutsu Kaisen when the main character, who's never seen demons before, doesn't react one bit to those monsters and instead instantly starts fighting them?! And don't get me started on scifi-anime. There was a time when scifi-anime existed in such numbers that you could ignore good ones for better ones. Nowadays even scifi-anime are infected by moe and cheapness, see that "we's a couple teenagers stranded in space and have to go back" anime from a few seasons ago. It was enjoyable relatively to other anime, but still not good per se.

I know, I know, now I'll get to hear all the usual arguments. "You're getting older", "you're no longer interested in anime as much", "that's nostalgia", and so on. But I don't believe that. I love anime as much as I did 10-20 years ago. The only difference is that anime are getting worse and worse. And I think it's fair and important to call that out.

[shinta|hikari]

@Ryllharu - Jujutsu Kaisen is a good shounen for this season, if you want to give that a try.

[Ryllharu]

@shinta: Thanks, but those types of series don't interest me anymore. I've tried many the last few years and drop them after just never getting engaged in them.

@MFauli
Tonikaku Kawaii is actually very good, the problem as Kraco pointed out elsewhere, is it is exactly like the manga, which I already read and enjoy. It's by far the most utterly-PG erotic manga out there. It's loaded with clever gags, and far more approachable than Hayate the Combat Butler's endless references. There's still several references per chapter, but the central gag of each chapter doesn't rely on them.

Concerning light novels...you're wrong, and they've been around forever. Slayers is a LN that started in 1989. Crest of the Stars? Light Novel. Spice and Wolf? Light novel. Full Metal Panic? Light novel that hasn't aged well. Fate/Zero? Light Novel. Perfect Blue? Light novels. KonoSuba? Light Novel. Youjo Senki? Light Novel. Lodoss War is in fact, not even an original novel, it's republished "replays" of a similar tabletop RPG that's basically D&D, compiled by the DM.

What I said is that LN adaptations are often diminished by trying to force a 1st person POV novel into a 3rd person limited POV. I didn't say they're bad. That's the mobile game titles. "RPG System Fictions" are almost always terrible as well.

LNs that have been diminished by their anime switching perspectives? Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai. Noticeably worse without Kodaka's constant narration. Haruhi. Youjo Senki (per others, I don't read it). Zero no Tsukaima (it was much better).

Anime may be getting more formulaic, because they know what sells. Idol groups! Game tie-ins where whales already spend too much money! Jump series!

But manga, web comics, and Korean and Chinese webtoons have only been getting better and better and better.

[MFauli]

But manga, web comics, and Korean and Chinese webtoons have only been getting better and better and better.

PLS tell me about those "only getting better"-manga. Considering my taste, pls (serious story, but not dry. Likeable characters, no teenagers saving the world. story full of consequences, fighting leads to death, death/violence isn't portrayed as "cool". Fantasty or not, doesn't matter, although I prefer grounded settings witht specific fantasy elements (like Parasyte, Ajin or Gantz)). Anything like that?

[KrayZ33]

To some degree the "quality" this season is due to the coronavirus derailing some productions, others it's just bad timing resulting in a threadbare season. I think a lot of it is that more and more anime series are based off dreadful mobile games. Anime has always been promotion material for its source material. Original anime has always been few and far between.

wouldn't blame mobile games, they have usually better stories than most animes.
Hell...Fate is basically a Gacha Game themed Light Novel.

I currently play Genshin Impact and the story, fluff, world building is more enjoyable than what I get to see in most anime.

I mean.. when I see stuff like this:



I wouldn't mind seeing a full anime movie or some OVAs honestly from these Mobile Games

Just compare that fight to the latest one in Danmachi for example... and I'm not talking about animation here.

The problem is that most shows are just low effort productions. That is all. The source material is often not as bad as the shows that come out of it and it's pretty much always a huge disappointment, but thankfully, not always. If they are used for promoting the source material (I know they are, and you are right)I just can't understand why they are so bad at promoting it.

I don't want to "fan" over Honkai (didn't even play it btw.) but when was the last time an anime trailer hyped you/anyone up and was presenting music, action, sounds, voices like this? It's like... maybe one out of 40 shows does that properly


Or just take this clip as another example:
this is a very generic anime situation (at least for everyone who has watched a lot)
But when was the last time it actually felt impactful?


Yes... production value is a thing... but when you can't do it because you don't have it (neither time, nor ressources), why even bother. That's just going to turn out as a low effort production. That's why these stories feel even worse than they actually are. That's why it looks stupid when a character does a certain thing, or when he doesn't. It's actually hard to even understand a character's motive because it's just so poorly done.

[Ryllharu]

wouldn't blame mobile games, they have usually better stories than most animes.
Hell...Fate is basically a Gacha Game themed Light Novel.

I currently play Genshin Impact and the story, fluff, world building is more enjoyable than what I get to see in most anime.

I don't want to "fan" over Honkai (didn't even play it btw.) but when was the last time an anime trailer hyped you/anyone up and was presenting music, action, sounds, voices like this? It's like... maybe one out of 40 shows does that properly

Yes... production value is a thing... but when you can't do it because you don't have it (neither time, nor ressources), why even bother. That's just going to turn out as a low effort production. That's why these stories feel even worse than they actually are. That's why it looks stupid when a character does a certain thing, or when he doesn't. It's actually hard to even understand a character's motive because it's just so poorly done.

Points made and conceded.

But I wouldn't compare miHoYo and Type Moon mobile games to most. Both have their own little multiverses already, and they're clearly leagues above even the other big ones like Girls are Guns!, a thousand Battleship girl ones, and all the card ones. Are there good ones out there? Yes. Do they get good adaptations? No.

But there's a sea of utter garbage every year. It's not just because of low production values.

[MFauli]

Seeing your game examples, some of the last truly exciting anime happen to be cgi-anime, both by the same studio:

Houseki no Kuni and BEASTARS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZF4...=OtakuTrailers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgo9...83%8D%E3%83%AB

And I agree: If you don't have the budget for certain production values, don't adapt certain manga. Which is ridiculous because there's so many good stories that shouldn't require THAT much of a budget. Why can't someone adapt Onani Master Kurosawa? Random school setting, but super entertaining story.

And even if some anime would require some budget, there's still some great stories that deserve being adapted. My number 1 wish: Gantz. From the beginning, to the very end of the manga. So much good stuff. Also Claymore. And despite the latest Berserk adaptation being a meme-level joke, imagine how hype a GOOD, non-cgi, faithful adaptation would be, one that doesn't cut anything from the source manga.

But instead we get all those forgettable shows. it's sad

[shinta|hikari]

Economics. Sad but true.

[Buffalobiian]

I was going to say that Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans was great and somewhat recent - then I was reminded that it's actually a 2015 series.