This year’s anime schedule is absolutely amazing and has given us pretty much hit after hit, here’s what I highly recommend this year thus far to start with for those just getting into this year’s anime schedule. Warning some of these series have finished, some are currently still underway, so there may be 1-2 spoilers in some of these for those who aren’t able to watch them yet.
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka [Finished]
This series is 12 episodes long but is another piece of the puzzle of the Magical Girl genre that we know and love, focusing on the survivors of the group who fought the Disas, the Magical Five and their daily lives after war time, but their powers still exist and are called back into service when things start to go awry and attacks of a magical nature begin to occur throughout the greater region of Tokyo and all over Japan.
This series deals with a lot of PTSD related things, where it’s bloody gore can overshadow the story, it is not for the faint of heart at all, so I highly do not recommend this for younger viewers. It is advised to at least be 14+ when watching this due to some of the graphic nature of this series, including some of the dark themes included in this one. The one redeeming quality of this series is the star power behind it’s English Dub, Trina Nishimura stars as the title Character Asuka, while Caitlin Glass, Tia Ballard and even Christopher R. Sabat aka Goku himself is in this series.
This series is one for those of the Magical Girl genre with a deep and dark story, it’s essentially Sailor Moon meets any decent Horror genre anime.. One you should check out for sure when you get a chance at 12 episodes you’ll be able to finish this in 2 days tops. It can be seen on Crunchyroll and Funimation respectively.
Fairy Gone [Ongoing]
Currently this is one of the series I have found myself in love with, Fairy Gone is a mixture of a magic/military drama where soldiers known as Fairy Soldiers are given Organs from the various Fairies to allow them to summon various beasts in battle. As these soldier types were used in the War of Unification in the fictional land of Eastald. After this war was over however the remaining soldiers formed a organization called Dorothea to combat the illegal Fairy use and crime in the region.
This series focuses on 3 characters for the most part, Marlya Noel who is played in the dub by Jill Harris and the Subbed version she is played by Kana Ichinose who you may remember as Ichigo from Darling in the Franxx earlier last year. Free Underbar: voiced by one of the legendary male voice actors, Ian Sinclair in the Dub and Tomoaki Maeno who has over 100 animes under his belt thus far and is one of Japan’s finest voice actors to date. Finally we have Veronica Thorn, a old friend of Marlya and is voiced by Emily Neves in the Dub and Ayaka Fukuhara who recently played Grea in Manaria Friends.
This series is still on going however and is scheduled for a full 24 episodes run. It is currently past Episode 6 and is available for viewing on Funimation and Crunchyroll respectively. When it finishes it’s run I will give a more detailed review of this series, as I have begun to really enjoy this, so far finding it is one of my top ten animes of the year thus far.
Carole and Tuesday [Ongoing]
Where do I even start with this one. This right here might be my Anime of the Year, not gonna lie, even though we are not a quarter way through the series. This series focuses on Carole a very good Pianist who jumps from job to job in Mars’s most famous city, Alba City, which she wants to be a aspiring musician and Tuesday Simmons, a famous politician’s daughter and runaway to Alba City. She along with Carole are on a journey to become famous musicians in a mostly automated day and age.
Carole who is played by Miyuri Shimabukuro who is relatively new on the scene and has just a few popular series to her name and Tuesday who is played by Kana Ichinose, yes she is in Fairy Gone, which I discussed earlier, plays the other half of the delightful pairing. These girls struggle to find themselves in the future music world but draw on inspiration from classic legends such as Janis Joplin, The Doors and many real life musicians for it’s episode titles and musical inspirations. So far Carole and Tuesday has aired 5 of it’s 24 episodes scheduled and can be watched on Netflix respectively.
Senryuu Girl [Ongoing]
Another gem anime this year is a short 10 minute episode series called Senryuu Girl,. It is very original in it’s design as the main character of the series doesn’t necessary speak via normal means, but speaks throughout the use of the 5-7-5 method known as Haiku, this leads to interesting vocal choices and such, The series is well designed considering it comes from Kodansha’s Weekly Serial Magazine which spawned it’s Manga which is currently 8 volumes long thus far.
This series stars Nakano Yukishiro a teenage girl who speaks not with her mouth, but through the use of Senryu aka a form of Haiku, which she comes with some very unique answers. In this series she is played by Kana Hanazawa who we remember as Ichika from the Quintessential Quintuplets. Nakano is often seen by the side of her best friend, Eiji Busujima who looks and acts tough, but is a total softie around Nanako, they are both members of the Literature Club at their school, which adventures are centered around them.
During the 10 minute episodes each episode focuses more on a specific day of Nanako’s life, ranging from good to silly, so it is very adorable as they wanted to bring this series to life, I would recommend the Manga it is spawned from and the Anime as well at the same time, currently this series has aired 6 of it’s scheduled episodes, with the 7th one coming next week, this series can be watched via Crunchyroll and airs every Friday.
These are only a few of many recommendations I have for this year, there has been a lot of great animes broadcast this year and I expect the 2nd half of 2019 to continue giving us quality animation to watch, until next time dear reader this is Vergil signing off.