Every band nerd’s dream anime has finally been born in the form of Sound! Euphonium. This series follows a handful of young high schoolers as they’re introduced to big-band concert playing and their passion for music flowers. Sound is a coming-of-age story sure to be nostalgic for anyone with an instrumental background, while the fantastic scores might inspire the less musically inclined to give it a whirl.
Etotama is the insane and wickedly cute acid trip you never knew you wanted to be on until it was over. From the very beginning, this anime grabs you by the hand and leads you down the rabbit hole of its self-deprecating imagination.
Kuroko’s Basketball is an enjoyable oddity — a flawed and plodding work that manages to draw upon well-tread sports formulas to deliver a funny, chaotic series of bromances built upon the sport. As the series fires into its third season, it brings protagonists Kuroko and Kagami closer to their final showdown.
My Love Story has already firmly planted a flag claiming its territory among a market saturated with droll slice of life teen romances. It’s far from perfect in almost every facet you can judge, yet it somehow manages to pull together into an impressively endearing tale just in time to stoke a little spring fever.
Wish Upon the Pleiades might not have been on everyone’s radar this season, but the prospect of a well-drawn “magical girl” series promising astronomy geekery has generated solid interest over the course of the first few episodes.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Ask any twenty-something male living on Mountain Dew and playing MMOs deep into the night and the answer is resoundingly unanimous.
If you’ve been missing the murderous, power-hungry overlords that vampires were before Twilight came along, Seraph of the End will be a pleasant throwback to the era of bloodthirsty badasses. While it’s far from perfect, Seraph has guts — some of them are splattered on the floors and walls, but it has them.
Triage X follows a time-tested formula for success, combining all the things fourteen year-old boys love: assassins, guns, motorcycles, swords, and boobs that look like they deserve individual silos deep underground at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex lest they accidentally start a thermonuclear war.
The Heroic Legend of Arslan draws on almost thirty years of writing, granting it a vast world and vibrantly developed plot. Titling the series a “heroic legend” is not an understatement. Arslan is every bit an epic saga in its themes and scope, proving itself unafraid to tackle difficult questions on scales ranging from personal beliefs to the governance of entire societies.
Battlefront presents a unique story from the earliest panels and does its best to develop a rich world. The series features a city teeming with a mix of humans and interdimensional monsters and successfully makes it feel normal. Despite a looming fate-of-the-world trope, the anime might prove to be an effective combination of strong characters and unique environments.
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