pudgetronIt’s been a long road through the somewhat desolate wasteland that is the mid-season lull in everything, but we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. With the Summer 2013 Anime Season just a couple of weeks away, here’s a shortlist of what I will be looking forward to this season. As two of the entries have rendered me catatonic due to awesome overload, I’ll start slow with a couple of shows that I will be keeping an eye on for no other reason than the reputation of their creators, partially because there isn’t much other information about them.
To begin with, we have Servant X Service, a new slice of life comedy from the creator of WORKING!!, Karino Takatsu, about public servants. WORKING!! was one of my favourite anime of 2010, and I have high expectations of the new show, as it’s an extremely similar concept, except with office workers instead of restaurant employees. Sometimes it’s good to stick to what you know, and I have a feeling that this is one of those times.
Airing from July 4
Next up we have Free!, the new feel-good(probably) anime from Kyoto Animation. I’m not sure how much I’ve mentioned I pretty much adore everything they do, but I do, and they’re even going in an exciting new direction with this show! Listen to this; instead of the usual adorable girls being the center of attention, they’ve changed it to a group of super sexy guys who are members of the school swim team! I’m so excited for this new direction they’re taking that I may need to re-examine some personal stuff, but the main point is I’m really fucking excited!
Airing from July 3
I have made it no secret that I love the Monogatari Series (Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, etc.) by NisiOisin. That makes it all the more exciting that, while doing the research for this article, I found out that Studio SHAFT is planning on animating all the novels that the show is based on, starting this summer. The source novels have been separated into three “seasons” and we will be getting the second of those this summer. The first was basically the stuff that’s already been animated(Bake, Nise, Neko (Kuro), and Kizu), where the second will be animated in two parts, one this summer and the next in some other season.
Maybe it’s because it caught me by a bit by surprise, or maybe it’s just that big of a deal, but I can hardly wait for this one. I love the art style, the characters, the storytelling… I love everything about the series, period. I suppose you might want a synopsis, huh? Well, the gist of the story is as such: Koyomi Araragi, recovering from a bout of being a vampire over the summer, finds and helps people(inevitably girls) with problems of supernatural origin. And it’s brilliant.
Airing July 6
Silver Spoon is the newest brainchild from Hiromu Arakawa, creator of Fullmetal Alchemist. Despite it being by the same author, Silver Spoon is a far throw, thematically, from FMA. Yugo Hachiken has a problem; he has no idea what he wants to do for a career, and people won’t stop asking him about it. In an effort to escape from the interrogations, he comes up with a plan, and it starts with going to a rural agricultural school in Hokkaido. Being an agricultural school, the textbooks for the “real” subjects such as math and English are only a fraction of the size that they would be at another institution; the agriculture related textbooks are doorstops, but that’s just memorization, right? Hachiken plans to rocket to the front of the class of country bumpkins and farmers with ease, and have a relatively simple and lazy high school education. What doesn’t seem to dawn on him is that it’s an agricultural school, so the main focus is on, well, agriculture, and Hachiken is from Sapporo and knows little to nothing about farming.
I have adored this manga from the first issue. It’s the story of a kid thrown into a completely unfamiliar situation(of his choosing, I might add, don’t feel too bad for him), having to adapt to it, and growing as a person along the way. I might even enjoy this even more than FMA. One of the biggest draws, for me at least, is that Arakawa grew up on a dairy farm in Hokkaido, so she knows how these kinds of places work, and that definitely comes through in the writing. I cannot recommend this series enough, and I will be waiting with bated breath for this anime to start airing.
Airing July 11
As a final note, this list is in no way exhaustive, and I encourage you to check out anything that might interest you, and even some things that might not. I don’t think there has been a season without a surprise hit for me yet. The upcoming shows can be found here.
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