Seasonal Catch-Up Post! Winter 2021!

Seasonal Catch-Up Post! Winter 2021!

Welcome back! Here we have what I consider the top five anime of the Winter 2021 season. This was a hard one since there was a bunch of great anime this season. These five are not the only ones I watched by a long shot. I’ll briefly mention some of the others before we get to number one!

I am not quite sure why I said number one since these aren’t ranked. I think it’s an SEO thing. Who knows. On with the list!

Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken 2nd Season

Honestly, I did some shit-talking about Tensei in a previous post. I found it boring since the protagonist, Rimuru, is so damned overpowered. That said, I grew to like it more as it advanced and not only grew his character, but the other characters around him/her. I never know what gender to call Rimuru – they’re reincarnated from a male and they like being near oppai, but since they ate Shizue, they have a female body.

Gender aside, the show still maintains a lot of political stuff, literal world-building, and peace talks. All of this goes downhill when Tempest is attacked and without giving anything away, the battle is fucking insane.

They decided to mess with everyone’s hearts as well by splitting up the first and second cour of the anime, so you’re left with a massive cliffhanger. Though, if you’ve ever watched a television show before, you probably aren’t as on edge as the producers probably want you to be.

It’s streaming on Crunchyroll. It is the second season, so if you’ve not watched the first, you should probably do that before the second.

Yuru Camp△ Season 2

I know what you’re thinking – “Erin, are you only going to do second seasons here?” The answer is no, but these two second seasons are great – especially Yuru Camp△ so obviously I am going to talk about it.

In case you missed out on season one, Yuru Camp△ is a slice-of-life anime about a group of schoolgirls who like to go camping in the winter. Not much more to it than that. It’s Cute Girls Doing Cute Things only with tents and small gas stoves.

This season is kind of sad insofar as Rin spends most of her time by herself (I am not sure if that’s much different than the first season, though). That sadness is corrected by the show introducing us to Aoi’s little sister, Akari. The pair are a couple of little liars, but they’re too adorable to be mad at.

The show has another baller opening – not as great as Shiny Days but not much else is. Yuru Camp△’s streaming on Crunchyroll!

Tatoeba Last Dungeon Mae no Mura no Shounen ga Joban no Machi de Kurasu Youna Monogatari

Tatoeba, also known as Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town? is an amusing story about a boy named Lloyd Belladonna who lives in a village that’s just past the most dangerous dungeon in the world. Interestingly, this means that all of the people there are OP powerhouses! Lloyd is the weakest of the village, though, so he heads off to what I guess is the starter town and enrolls in the academy.

Hilarity ensues because while Lloyd might be the weakest one in his village, a weak OP powerhouse is still 2,000,000% stronger than anyone in the starter village. A lot of the fun of the show comes from the fact that Lloyd is an idiot and doesn’t realize exactly how powerful he is. He thinks monsters that are capable of mass homicide are simple insects (and squashes them as such). Every tough challenge put up to him is knocked aside because of his strength.

Thankfully that doesn’t stop him from getting his own harem! The loli grandma from the village seems to be into him (don’t at me…), a girl named Selen falls for him because she had a curse on her that nobody could cure and Lloyd cured it in 2 seconds, and a girl with a Terminator arm named Riho falls for him because you can’t have a harem with only two girls in it.

There’s also Phyllo, who wears jeans despite this being a medieval-era world? I forget her story, but she’s OP as well, but not as OP as Lloyd.

Trust me when I say it’s an amusing show, especially the interactions between loli-grandma and Marie, a witch taking care of Lloyd. You can catch the show on Crunchyroll.

Azur Lane: Bisoku Zenshin!

Azur Lane: Bisoku Zenshin! a/k/a Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! is a slice-of-life anime based on the four-panel manga (based on the mobile game) of the same name. It follows the antics of our favorite four starter ships as they engage in various activities around the port.

Slow Ahead doesn’t really need much description as the first paragraph summed things up pretty succinctly. Laffey, Javelin, Z23 (Nimi), and Ayanami play games, go to school and hang out with other ship girls. Unlike Azure Lane The Animation, there’s no battle or plot (the normal kind or the fanservice kind) in this show, but if you’re into AL and you like CGDCT as well as SoL anime, you’ll love this.

The episodes are only about 9 minutes long, so you can binge the whole season in a couple of hours. It’s totally worth it. Like most things, it’s streaming on Crunchyroll.

Honorable Mention

Honestly, for a couple of the above recommendations, I just chose shows at random. I liked so many shows from this season.

Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu – Great show with a lot of action. Some of the plot points are hard to keep track of unless you’re one of those people with a perfect memory.

Kaifuku Jutsushi no Yarinaoshi – Very controversial show. Also very, very lewd. A hero gets to repeat his life, only this time he knows what’s coming so he can take his revenge on those who treated him badly. It’s a good show, but it’s very heavy on sexual assault and nudity and you should absolutely not consider the protagonist a good guy.

Ore dake Haireru Kakushi Dungeon – A fun show where the hero of the story can talk to a great sage and can basically make up spells. That drains his power and the only way to regain it is by being horny.

Hataraku Saibou!! & Hataraku Saibou Black (TV) – The former is the second season of Cells at Work, and the latter is basically Cells at Work only inside the body of the unhealthiest man in Japan. Also, if you’re a man, Black will make you feel bad for masturbating and that’s all I will say about that.

Urasekai Picnic – TBH I don’t have a damned clue what this show is about, other than there’s a world you can go to through an elevator puzzle. It’s got crazy monsters in it and it causes our two protagonists to have some weird powers. Also, it’s yuri. It is a very good show, especially if you’re into paranormal mysteries!

Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?

Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? also known as I’m a Spider, So What? is an isekai, but probably one of the better ones I have watched in quite a while. In fact, I ended up buying all the LNs so that I could continue the story after the anime ended.

Long story short, there was an interdimensional explosion in a classroom in Japan that killed everyone in the room. Feeling bad about this, an administrator from the new world reincarnated all of the students and their teacher.

The anime can be a bit difficult to follow as there are several time jumps in the story. I think it’s safe to say this without it being a spoiler, but the story around our hero spider (mostly) takes place right after reincarnation whereas the story around the humans takes place 15 years later (as they are all 15).

The human story isn’t the most interesting part, even though it’s very important to the plot. The anime is the most fun when it follows our hero spider, fan named Kumoko. She’s hilarious and her Japanese voice actor does an amazing job capturing her personality. I haven’t seen the dub so I can’t speak to the English actor.

She’s portrayed on screen as what I lovingly referred to as a puppy spider, and she’s cute as fuck. Of course in real life, she’s not cute at all, but we don’t see her from the human’s perspective that often. Kumoko becomes hella powerful thanks in part to bonuses given to the reincarnations and simply being in a terrible dungeon. She spends her early life trying to survive both against the monsters and the humans before finally deciding to leave the dungeon.

It’s hard to talk more about Kumoko and the humans at this point without going into spoiler territory. The show is a must-watch in my opinion, and one of my favorite anime of the past few years. If you want to give it a watch, it’s streaming on Crunchyroll. I’d also recommend picking up the light novels as there’s a lot of the story cut from the anime for time.

Thanks for reading and see you on Monday!

ewink

Hi! I am a former, Emmy-winning, news photojournalist who is now working on my own business as a web developer. In case you didn't know, I love anime, anime girls, and talks on spacial relativity.

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