2013 Summer Anime Season Preview Picks

Much like winter, summer is normally a weak season with a bunch of uninteresting anime to offer. This year looks different however, since there are a lot of shows here that I’m looking forward to. I’m here again to pick my five shows I’m looking forward to this summer season:

Uchouten Kazoku

What do get when you combine the creators of Canaan (P.A.Works), the original light novel creator of works including Tatami Galaxy (Tomihiko Morimi) and the mangaka of Sayanora Zetsubou Sensei (Kouji Kumeta)? You get my most anticipated anime of next season, Uchouten Kazoku.

It wasn’t the PV that got me excited about this at first but the poster. Not only do I feel this might offer something different from the other anime airing next season but this show looks to be very fun with a huge amount of colourful animation.

The PV looks impressive as well. I already love Kumeta’s wacky character designs and the show could have a lot of charm, I very much look forward to this.

Monogatari Series: Second Season

While I would love to put this as my most anticipated, I feel that studio SHAFT has a lot to prove with Monogatari S2. Although I really like Bakemonogatari, I felt that Nisemonogatari was a bit disappointing – but if you disregard that concern, this still should offer an interesting watch if you have watched both of them.

I have no worry though that SHAFT and director Shinbo will put a lot of effort into the visuals. It’s always considered to be one of the strong points of the Monogatari series and it will be interesting to see what every episode will offer.

While I have my concerns with SHAFT considering Sasami-san was hugely disappointing in the winter, I still hope this will be great. I can only hope.

Silver Spoon

Much like my thoughts on Uchouten Kazoku, I feel that Silver Spoon has a strong synopsis and it was also created by the mangaka of Fullmetal Alchemist. It could be one of the stand out shows of the season.

Reading the staff has me a bit concerned. I’m not a fan of A-1 Pictures’ work this year at the moment and there have been some criticism of the director Tomohiko Itou – who also worked on Sword Art Online – but the staff is strong enough to work on adapting this award winning manga.

Only time will tell, hopefully this will further add to some of the best noitaminA anime out there.

It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular

This has an interesting story behind it. The manga gained popularity thanks to the controversial imageboard site 4chan and since then, the ongoing manga is now getting an anime adaptation.

I’m looking forward to watching this now, with the PV even more so. If there is an issue, it’s with studio Silver Link and their record of poor comedy anime in my opinion.

Still, it’s one of the shows this season that I will watch weekly. I expect it to be streamed at least on a site like Crunchyroll.

Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation

The wild card is back. Last time I picked Hataraku Maou-sama and it turned out to be one of the season’s best, so I thought I’d do it again this summer.

The Hyperdimension Neptunia games aren’t that good, I’ve heard, and the show is littered with cute moe girls. There are a lot of signs that write the show off already as being either average or awful, so why am I putting this as a wildcard?

I point to studio David Productions. In recent years they have managed to give us some fun anime series like Level E and Inu x Boku SS and they continue to make really enjoyable anime shows. I’ve not been disappointed by them – well, not yet.

It all depends on how they are going to adapt this game full of girls that represent game consoles. If it turns out to be terrible, I’ll just import a Nintendo Virtual Boy and play that for a whole month as punishment.