It’s the end of the winter season and although it’s a season that felt dominated by some incredible sequels and quickly overshadowed by the upcoming season – for me at least – it still ended up having some very good anime. In the next few weeks, we’ll look back on a season full of surprises. Join me next week as we talk about the ever cheerful You and I are polar opposites and the week after that for the deep confrontational story that is Journal with Witch. But first, let’s take a much quicker look at some of the other shows you might have missed out on this season.  I am going to exclude most sequels, but I will take a moment to talk about the final season of Fire Force as I have some thoughts on that show. Let’s get to it.

Fire Force

Besides having one of the best ending songs in the anime industry right now – and that’s a tough competition these days – the final season of Fire Force tries its very best to go out with a bang and give us something to remember. I’ve not talked about Fire Force much on this blog now that I think about it. As a massive fan of Ohkubo’s other work – Soul Eater – this newer manga has always felt like it was falling short compared to its more creative older brother. Following Kusakabe Shinra, a young man with fire powers in a world where those are somewhat common and the main cause of death has become spontaneous combustion, we see his growth in the eight fire force division. Throughout the seasons we spend time figuring out what exactly is going on with the world and is causing this phenomenon of spontaneous combustion. Meanwhile the white-clad cultists are trying to bring about the end of the world.
In this final season, what the story ends up focusing on is the world-rending great cataclysm which allows for the story and the animation to get funky and creative. A clashing mix of styles is used to denote different periods in the story’s time and the creativity of the human mind is pushed to its boundaries in this season. The world is what we make of it, and combined human consciousness is now responsible for what the world looks like. I like the concepts presented in this final season a lot, it feels like classic Ohkubo insanity that straddles the line of being nonsense or genius storytelling. But where Soul Eater leans towards the genius for me, a lot of Fire Force unfortunately leans more towards the nonsense. Despite all this, the reason I wanted to include this sequel where I’m skipping the others, is that I think you should still watch it even considering its flaws. It’s a creative idea done justice by studio David Production and you might come away from it thinking it wasn’t very good, but I doubt you’ll come away from it thinking it wasn’t creative and different. And I dare you to listen to the ending and not feel incredible afterwards.

Fate/strange Fake

Welcome to the American city of Snowfield where the next holy grail is about to start. How do we know this? Well, there’s been a little bit of a set-up. This time around, the idea was to only summon six servants, making it so the grail war wouldn’t officially start. Unfortunately the grail itself had other ideas and now we’ve somehow ended up with fourteen masters and fourteen servants. As usual we have an unorthodox mixture of crazy people and their crazier servants battling it out in the streets as only one pair can win and claim the holy grail for themselves. This season focuses on a woman named Sajyou Ayaka and her servant Lionheart of the Saber class. The duo must fight their way through the holy grail as conspiracy looms everywhere for this grander than ever grail war. This entire war has been set up by a man named Faldeus who seems to be working for the US government. He’s a real piece of work and shaping up to be a big antagonist in this and future seasons. We have your classic spread of good and evil characters with a lot of morally grey folks caught up in the middle. The original story was written by Ryohgo Narita – of Durarara and Baccano fame – so you know it’s written by someone who is excellent at writing a large but cohesive feeling cast of strange characters, as that is what he’s historically done best. With a sequel already confirmed, this show is a must watch for anyone who misses the old days of Fate/Zero and wants to relive that feeling of being completely lost on what’s going on but still enjoying every second of it.

In the clear moonlit dusk

Takiguchi Yoi looks more masculine than your average high school girl, earning herself the title of “prince”. She’s not the only one, as one of the upperclassmen is also given this title, for looking handsome and apparently being from a rich family. After a chance meeting, Yoi and Ichimura-senpai start hesitantly going out with each other. This romance focuses on the distance between these characters and their different histories when it comes to dating which eventually leads to their relationship blossoming. I had a lot of fun with the first half of this show, but where it started to really nosedive for me was the very forced love triangle it put into the story in the second half. It was clear from the beginning where it would end and it just made for two or three very frustrating episodes towards the end that made me want to punch some of the characters through the monitor. Despite this complaint, I would still say I enjoyed most of my time spent with this show and if you’re looking for a more muted romance that feels very, very shojo – and that is saying something, coming from me – then give this one a go. It was a bit too much for me at times, but if that’s your thing, then definitely give this one a watch.

Sentenced to be a hero

When the world is under attack from a strange demon blight that devours everyone and everything in its path, the worst punishment a criminal can expect isn’t to be sentenced to death. It’s to be sentenced to death only to be brought back to forcefully have to fight against this demon blight. Xylo Forbartz is one of the unlucky people being sentenced to become a hero and he’s desperate to avoid dying and reviving, since it’ll strip away your memory over time. In the midst of this chaos, he comes across a box with a goddess in it. Goddesses allow their knights access to crazy powers and in return wish to be praised. Teoritta – the goddess in the box – immediately takes a liking to Xylo, and not long after do we learn that she isn’t the first one to do so. Xylo’s crime was letting the previous goddess die. Although from the snippets we see, she burned out on her own accord during a dire fight, it seems like Xylo still got falsely blamed for the whole endeavor.
With this set-up for a story, we start diving into this crazy world where some people even want to coexist with the demon blights. We meet an eclectic cast of criminals – some proper pieces of work, others more falsely condemned – and although heroes are mostly looked down upon, the actions of Xylo and his comrades slowly earn them some respect from the knights and people they fight alongside and protect. Of course there seems to be a much deeper conspiracy lurking behind the shadows and as much as I ended up enjoying this show, it really irks me that it ended on such a big cliffhanger. In an industry where sequels aren’t always a given and even if they are, it might take a while, that feels bad. Luckily, a sequel is already in production and I honestly cannot wait.

The holy grail of Eris

Out of all the shows I watched this season, it was this political intrigue story that surprised me the most. Ten years after the execution of Scarlett Castiel – one of the coldest political schemers in the kingdom – we meet Constance Grail, a young woman from an honorable family in a world full of betrayal and wickedness. Young Connie is being tricked and berated by a fellow noblewoman, and is about to lose all of her standing. In a desperate plea to get some help in this dire moment, she calls out to someone, anyone, and the ghost of a vengeful woman answers. With Scarlett’s wits and skills, the young girl masterfully takes down her enemies and immediately gains several new ones in the process. Now that she’s managed to get out of this mess, things aren’t going to get any better as she quickly finds herself caught up in a massive political plot that keeps getting more and more convoluted as she’s trying to help Scarlett get revenge on the people that wronged her. That is her payment for Scarlett’s help in this. What I really appreciate about this series is that although Connie doesn’t tell every soul she meets about Scarlett, she does share the knowledge with some characters, allowing them to act much more rationally. I was worried this would become a show where the secret would play a big role, and I was pleasantly surprised when that didn’t end up being the case. We meet many nobles throughout this story and the two women become close friends towards the end of the show. With the entire story finishing up in a single season, this is a fun one to watch and I would highly recommend it if your interest was even slightly piqued by this description.

The Darwin incident

Let’s finish this up with a weird one. And yes, they are turning our anime woke. The Darwin Incident tells the story of Charlie the Humanzee. Charlie was born in a lab to a human father and a chimpanzee mother. Due to his unique existence in the world, it has been a difficult road to get him any rights, as by law he is not considered a human and most of the laws only apply to humans after all. Charlie himself seems to be the least bothered by all of this, just trying to live his life. The story starts with Charlie attending college while a terrorist organization called the ALA is trying to recruit him to their nasty schemes. The first couple of episodes focus a lot on the idea of being vegan and how it’s bad to eat meat while on the other hand some think it’s bad to be vegan as their family owns a steakhouse. It’s a pretty in-your-face way of talking about this topic and it is quite frankly the opposite of subtle, but it is fun to see everyone up in arms about it while Charlie does not really care. As the season continues, the story starts to go off the rails more and more with school shootings, terrorist bombings and even some fights wearing night goggles in the middle of a forest. It’s a pretty bizarre story all things considered and although I don’t think it really works well as actual social commentary, if you just take it as a weird story I found it very enjoyable. The villain is comically evil, Charlie’s friend Lucy is overly caring and definitely much more invested in Charlie’s rights than the man himself and the cliffhanger at the end of season 1 completely caught me by surprise. There’s definitely some criticism to be leveled at this show, but it never gets boring.
And that includes the opening theme. The absolute banger by Official Hige Dandeism has been on loop on my Spotify account for the last couple months and I’m still not bored of it. Even if you think this anime isn’t for you, I would recommend at least listening to the opening theme Make me wonder. Beware of flashing lights though.

And with that, we’ve reached the end of this season’s quick reviews. There are a few more shows I’ll talk about in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for those, but this should give you some time to catch up before the next season starts. Now I’ll go back to rewatching Ace of Diamond before I start the new season of that. Thanks for reading!