In high school I did hurdles and the high jump for track and field, so a series about a parkour/relay race team seems up my alley.
Why I Watched It: This seems like a slower season compared to most and I’ve never watched a sports anime before so I figured I’d try one. Where to find stream: Crunchyroll Prince of Stride: Alternative
While it’s nice seeing some of the designs animated for a game I had dropped well over a hundred hours on when I was just out of college, it’s just not what I’m looking for. And if that’s not enough, the fountain in the center of their school looks like Sonic the Hedgehog. The characters go to Seiga Academy! Say it out loud. I suspect that the in-universe PSO2 will end up being more than just a game and conflict will spill over from the online to the offline, but it doesn’t quite come together, especially since this is a real world game that exists in our world.
It wants the game world to be its own entity with its own set of stakes, but at the same time it wants a plot that runs through the offline world and the people who play the game. What I Thought: Not as horrible as I thought it would be, but PSO2 seems to be be suffering from trying to do two different things at once. Rather than taking place inside the world of the game, it follows teenagers who play the game. Unfortunately the word is that it’s terrible, so this is strictly a curiosity viewing. The sequel never made it to English speaking shores, but its anime adaptation has. Why I Watched It: I only checked it out because I dropped a lot of hours into the original Phantasy Star Online, which was an Diablo-style RPG. Where to find stream: Funimation and Hulu Phantasy Star Online 2: The Animation I like Manato (the priest and party leader), and being the most competent person in the group he probably should have taken a different role so they could actually earn some money, but then maybe if he hadn’t the rest of the party wouldn’t be alive. I was turned off by the odd 2-3 minutes spent debating the bust size of one of the female characters, but if that’s a one off I can move past it. The POV party collectively fills roles common in fantasy and gaming fiction, but they’re comically terrible at it (as might be expected of random people from our world) unable to handle the weakest monsters in the forest. They’re escorted to a town where they’re told they can make a living as volunteer soldiers since the real army is too busy to focus on local dangers. Somehow, a group of about a dozen people from our world wake up in a tower with no memories of their prior lives, but sometimes words and concepts spill out and they have no idea what they mean or how they know them. What I Thought: It’s not clear whether they’re actually in a game, but as a portal fantasy it works fine too. The twist in this one is that the participants seem to be unaware that they’re in a game, or even what a game is.
This is not the only one this season, but the only one I’m watching. Why I Watched It: Can there be too many series about people trapped in a medieval European fantasy RPG world? Apparently not. Where to find stream: Crunchyroll Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash My biggest concern is that the manga is still running, but it’s ending soon and the anime production team is promising that the anime itself will have an ending as well, so it won’t finish unresolved. Verdict: I’ll be watching! I was disappointed Satoru’s mom got fridged so early because as far as anime moms go, she’s awesome, but we’ll presumably be getting more of the past her now that Satoru’s gone back in time. Satoru’s mom is a very canny woman and figures out the events of 18 years ago didn’t actually end, and presumably the real party responsible is the one who then murders her to keep her quiet, leaving Satoru to take the rap, except that Satoru’s ability then yanks him back in time to stop the real reason for her murder. The statute of limitations just ran out because, guess what, it’s been 18 years.
What I Thought: Wow! There’s a lot crammed into that opening episode, covering not only Satoru’s unique ability (which usually only takes him a few minutes back, not 18 years), but also a serial kidnapping/murder case that was not actually solved even though the books had been closed with a culprit found guilty. Why I Watched It: The original Japanese title Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (lit: The Town Where Only I Don’t Exist) is evocative and the premise is that the twenty-nine year old protagonist has a limited ability to go back in time to fix events that will prevent people from dying, but when he’s framed for his mother’s murder his jump back takes him all the way to 18 years ago, one month before a classmate of his goes missing. The winter season has arrived, and there are no holdovers from fall for me to watch, so my schedule is completely free! As usual, I’ll pick two or three series to watch, though a fourth might make its way in if it comes highly recommended.