I approached the first volume of The Seven Deadly Sins with a curiosity. I’d been interested in the series since Crunchyroll added it to their manga service when it first launched, but due to the huge collection of other titles on offer I ended up setting series aside. However, now I’ve picked up the first volume of the series in print and have gone through it to review!
Back in 2012 a new hit was aired during the Spring season and while I didn’t watch the show as it aired, I went back to it and fell in love with it very quickly. The series in question is Kids on the Slope, a simple story directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and based on a hit manga series. I’ve just rewatched the show for the first time with a close friend of mine and after seeing it again I figured I’d give this hit a review!
Kids on the Slope tells the story of Kaoru Nishimi, who transfers into a new high school during the summer of his first year. While there he encounters the school’s wildest student, Sentaro Kawabuchi. Due to a twist of fate the two quickly become friends and bond through playing music together, but with Kaoru having moved around a lot due to his dad’s job just how close is he prepared to let Sentaro?
With most anime in the summer season four or five episodes in, so I’ve decided to put my thoughts together quickly on the shows I’m watching currently and how they’re doing. This season overall is a more enjoyable season than the last and I’ve found myself watching the following shows:
I’m also watching Fairy Tail and Captain Earth, but neither of which really count in this section… especially considering I’ve quietly fallen behind with Captain Earth.
UQ Holder! is a relatively new series from Ken Akamatsu. The series is set within the same universe and 70 years after as his previous work, Negima! Magister Negi Magi, but readers can jump into UQ Holder! right away with no trouble if they haven’t read the work that comes before. With that said we’ve jumped into the first volume of the manga to take a look at what it has to offer.
In the past few year’s we’ve had a bit of a boom in titles that are set around gamers being transported to a video game world or trapped within a video game (See Sword Art Online as the best recent example), but No Game, No Life takes this to a different level in an attempt to stand out from the crowd.
The story sets out by introducing us to brother and sister Sora and Shiro, who make up an ultimate team known as ‘Blank’. The two can complete any video game that crosses their path with amazing scores and are known as the best gamer in Japan, if not the world. One day a chess challenge is posed to them via email and upon completion the two are transported to a brand new world known as Disboard. In this world everything is decided by games, something which the two take great joy in partaking in.
When Wakanim announced they were going to stream Shinichiro Watanabe’s Terror in Resonance I was excited to say the least. I’m a moderate fan of Cowboy Bebop and Space Dandy but I utterly adored Kids on the Slope and have gained confidence in Watanabe’s anime as he goes on. So, a series which brings together Watanabe at his finest and Cowboy Bebop and Kids on the Slope composer back together can only be a good thing, right? Right.
Last season saw Studio BONES take to the stage with two brand new shows, one of which was the somewhat amazing Space Dandy, while the other was an adaptation of the Noragami manga. To put it lightly the show was an underdog, with so many top quality shows to compete against in the winter season Noragami had it pretty rough. It didn’t sound like the most amazing show, and even with the BONES name behind it, many opted to ignore it in favour of better or longer running shows. However, Noragami ended up being quite a strong title in its own right.
Recently Crunchyroll updated their manga offerings with three brand new titles. One of the titles in question is Koe no Katachi which Crunchyroll translate as A Silent Voice. The series is on-going and Crunchyroll have added the first 29 chapters of the series with further chapters to be added as they’re released in Japan from the 8th of April. I sped through the current chapters and fell in love with the story very quickly, so I decided to throw a review together.
It’s hard to talk about anime this season without mentioning one of Studio BONES offerings, Space Dandy. With Shinichiro Watanbe behind it and BONES with their sights firmly set on giving the series a worldwide release as it airs, the show has certainly been a note of interest in the industry.
It’s no secret to anyone who knows anything about the anime business that Sunrise are a huge name when it comes to Mecha series and their latest offering, Valvrave the Liberator, was another big hit for the studio. With a distinct Code Geass feel to the relationship between our two lead characters, and a more than intriguing story and feel to the series, Valvrave was the type of series we’d been waiting to see since Code Geass ended.