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Flying witch was my choice for the slice of life of the season.
There's usually no guarantee for a currently airing show to be good, but with slice of life you at least get consistency.
But I feel like flying witch was something better than just a normal SoL show.

The story of Flying witch is really simple, it just follows around a soon to become witch in a world where magic exists.
There is some overarching parts to it, new characters get occasionally introduced and aren't forgotten about for example.

Mostly the show is just the daily life of a witch, but it occasionally breaks into scenic shots ... and keeps everything fresh with a few jokes.
Even the magic in the show is played very casually, like it wasn't a big deal.
This all makes for a pretty funny, atmospheric and relaxing episodes.
Of course anyone who absolutely demands lots of story in their anime will most likely get bored by it.

At this point you can already tell that I'm going to recommend it but I still haven't described what makes it so different from other SoL anime.

For one almost none of this series takes place in a school, which allows for much more varied scenery.
The comedy is never played in an over the top fashion in an otherwise down to earth show.
The character designs aren't made with only cuteness and character appeal in mind, making the characters seem more real.
The magic in the show allows the characters to do more than just things that are mundane, even if it's nothing special to them.
It also allows for some subtle world building.
I could fit none of the characters into a clear cut archetype, which made them more interesting to watch.
All of that adds up to a very well executed show.

I haven't said anything about the overall visuals yet, but JC staff did a pretty good job.
Flying witch had on of the catchiest opening songs this season, and the background tracks fit were as relaxing as the show itself.

So yes, I would recommend checking out flying witch to anyone who likes SoL.
The only problem is that even though I watched all of it, it isn't really my type of a show.

Kiznaiver is the newest addition to studio Trigger's list of anime originals.
It was directed by Hiroshi Kobayashi, who has worked with trigger before but has mostly been doing the actual animation instead of directing it.
Trigger's usual director Hiroyki Imaishi was busy with space patrol luluco while Kiznaiver was airing.
But that's enough about the production, what is it actually about?

And it's really a commentary on people's personal connections.
What would happen if people would be able to directly experience others pain, and so on.

Before I go into spoiler territory I'll talk about the Presentation of the show for a bit.
As I mentioed above Imaishi wasn't directing this, ... and as such the animation is considerably less crazy than Trigger's usual style.
The character designs seem to compensate for the lack of craziness however, as they are all pretty out there and don't follow any usual formulas.
Kiznaiver is pretty fun to look at, the its character designs work great in motion and the clear CGI backgrounds work fairly well as a contrast.
The music for the series was made by Booming Satellites who have worked with trigger before.
The opening and ending themes fit the show just fine and the backgroundtracks are fairly muted and consist mostly of electronic music.
Trigger did go out of their way to make this series very colorful and that still gives it a fairly unique look.

Now with that out of the way let's talk characters and story.
I was wondering how Mari Okada's writing style would come to play in this series, because from the first three episodes
I wouldn't have been able to guess her involvement in the series.
But later on as there are almost two love triangles present at once as well as lots of drama in general it starts to get clear.
Drama is a big part of kiznaiver and as such I think it's worth it to check if it's well done, and saying anything about Kiznaiver's drama is a bit difficult.
On one hand the extreme amount of drama in Kiznaiver is easily justified in series by having the cast tied to each other through pain.
But on the other the fact that none of them consciously chose to take part with the experiment lessens the emotional impact a lot.
Essentially it's in-series justified forced drama and your enjoyment of Kiznaiver will greatly depend on your opinion of this.
I thought that it was a fine way to include a large amount of drama in your anime with an added cool experiment, but it also made me feel more distant to the drama and thus it was pretty unrelatable.
And yes it does play out a lot like a high school drama.

But beyond just a device for drama there is an actual story to the Kiznaiver experiement itself, which I won't spoil here even though it isn't super important.

Talking about the characters involved they aren't super detailed.
The only ones that get a proper backstory are the MC and Sonozaki, the person who conducts and supervises the experiment.
Though this might make it sound like the rest of the characters are bland, that isn't the case at all.
All of the main cast are fairly eccentric teenagers and quite fun people to watch, even if they aren't that detailed.
The relatability of the characters will pretty much depend on your personality.
All of them have a part in the story except for maybe the masochist who seems to have been thrown in just to show how some people do indeed enjoy pain,
but he didn't really have another purpose and doesn't really take part in the drama, which might make him relatable to some.

I don't think Kiznaiver is in any way revolutionary or even super clever, but it was a fun watch none the less.
If you like high school dramas or drama in general but feel like they're all the same Kiznaiver is pretty much just a slightly new take on it.
It might take a while to get truly going but once it does I think most people would enjoy it.

Quickly said Harmony is a pretty boring movie about a person traveling around the world, being infodumped by every character she meets while trying to solve a case she's working on.
There's lots of philosophical themes in the movie, many of which go nowhere and aren't really explored beyond talking about them.
It's great material if you're an over thinker and actual like sitting on your ass for two hours while boring characters read textbooks to you.
Note that the rest of the review can contain spoilers.

-Presentation (Visuals & Sound).
I was actually kind of surprised at how they seamlessly connect the CGI and the hand drawn characters at ... some points.
It was good to see some CGI that didn't just appear awkward.
Of course the CGI still sticks out at points, but at other times I found myself questioning if the character in front of me was hand drawn or a model.
It can look a bit cheap the way they just spin the camera around the characters when nothing other visually interesting is happening on screen, but when it want's to look good it looks really good.

I heard that EGOIST is the theme song performer, which makes sense because there is only one memorable song in the entire movie, the others would fit into any generic Science fiction story, or any generic action scene.
I didn't actually notice that much music in the Movie.

-Story & Characters.
Harmony is a movie that tries way too hard too seem deep and meaningful by essentially quoting philosophy textbooks and telling some of the story through flashbacks and heavy internal monologues.

Every character in the movie exist either to infodump the MC and the viewer or to be infodumped to by other characters, which immediately after they either disappear from the movie and aren't brought back again or die.
The story itself is nothing new, a "utopian future", in which everyone is in strict control of the government, this seems to be a rising trend in current settings.
And you're supposed to question if it is right to control people if they're happy and such.
The plot is almost exclusively told through dull infodumps in dialogue scenes, flashbacks and internal monologues.

There is a little attempted symbolism but it's mostly so blatant that I question why its even there.
Despite the constant infodumping and terminology, very little actually happens on screen in this movie, and everything is resolved quite hastily at the very end.
The movie tried very hard to be deep, but was scared that if they didn't tell the viewer absolutely everything they might not understand the movie.
If you have seen a movie in forever you already know all the possible "twists" it could throw your way already.

There were no interesting characters in the entire movie, the closest we get to that is our main character's friend Miach, appears throughout the movie in flashbacks, her character is that she is 15, very edgy and has a lesbian relationship with Tuan, the main character.

Speaking of Tuan, she has very little personality and mostly works as the eyes, or rather the ears for the viewer.
The most interesting thing about her character is that she's kind of good at fighting with guns.
She almost seems to be stuck in some kind of a video game dialogue tree, where if a character presents a plot point or an unconnected philosophical theme she can only say
"tell me more" "tell me more".

Every single other character exists to either infodump or die.
Forget character development, even establishing basic quirks was too much for this movie.
And I wouldn't complain so much about the characters if the story was halfway decent, or even interestingly told, but it's not.

-Final thoughts.
I don't hate the movie despite the way this review might sound like, it was just extremely boring and told almost only though exposition.
Especially the characters were dull.
The visuals were actually pretty good and there's one song that I actually liked, but that isn't even close to redeeming this movie.
I can't really even recommend Harmony as a popcorn flick, it has far too few action scenes for that.
You honestly miss nothing by skipping this one.

Update: Post-review thoughts.
After making this review I noticed it was directed by Michael Arias, a non-Japanese person working in the anime industry.
This made me interested the other movie he directed, Tekkon Kinkreet which is a much better movie and I would recommend it over this one.
I do like this Arias as a director, but he was clearly held back by the source material here.

Speaking of the source material, something I forgot to mention is that some things in this movie can actually be explained by just saying "because it looks cool".
Why is everything pink?
Why is there a random sunflower farm in the middle of the desert?
why do people dress weirdly in the future?
It's not a bad thing to include cool stuff in your movie of course, but here it also doesn't really add to the themes or the story either.

So I thought it might be fun to review this one.
There's lots of people claiming this show to be a masterpiece, and while I disagree on that notion, I still think it was a very good show.
Even if it didn't really impress me that much until the final episode.
Actual review starts here: minor spoilers might be included.

--Presentation (Visuals & Sound).
Katanagatari has a very unique style to it, However I wouldn't go out of my way to call it too far from most peoples comfort zone.
The character designs are different mostly from other anime regarding the eyes and body proportions and the backgrounds are hand painted/drawn.
Not ... too unconventional, and it looks quite nice.

Regarding the music in the show, I liked all the openings and ending songs, and the background music mostly fit as well with the exception of the few hip hop/rap songs they used, which I was not a fan of, even though they did usually fit the theme.
The animation is fluid, the backgrounds are nice and the music was mostly very good.
I have no real complaints here.

--Story.
With the word story being in the title you would expect this to be the highlight of the show, but no I thought it left room for improvement (but still was above average).
Basically a dude and a girl get together and set foe a quest to find all 12 deviant blades, while another faction that wants the blades is also on a hunt for them.
The goal is simple, avoid getting killed and collect blades.

I do have some complaints about the story.
For one, the entire plot is basically a glorified fetch quest, like when an NPC in a video game tells you to go collect X amount of bear asses or something.
And the reasoning behind the whole quest wasn't much better than what mos video games offer either.
The other part I thought could be improved was the romance, in episode one it just kind of happens and then they hint at development, while not really doing anything and about episode ten they hold hands.
The actual development was so slow I thought they were way past that point at the time.
Having more of a focus on the relationship of the two main characters would have added a lot more emotional impact for the final episode.

The whole story is episodic, as expected and while that's not a bad thing it does tend to make the show a bit predictable.
The story is also told mostly through dialogue and that could turn some viewers off.
I myself am not a fan of this type of storytelling, but they managed to pull it off pretty well.

--Characters.
There's basically three types of characters in this show, the main duo, the people who wield the deviant blades and the ninja faction.
The ninja faction is fairly quirky but pretty pointless regarding the story, as they are mostly an annoyance to the main cast and don't affect the plot for the most part.

The blade wielding masters are a bit more interesting, they all have their own reason for fighting and risking their lives.
And while they usually only get a single episode of development, they are about as interesting as
the main cast.

And now about Shichika and Togame.
Shichika is a person who is also considered a blade an Togame is a strategician.
For the largest part of the show their relationship boils down to the guy who fights and the girl who thinks, but towards the end of the series there's at lest a little bit of further development.
I kind of dislike how they both got a good backstory, but the implications of those were pretty much ignored.
The characters were still definitely a big part of this show's appeal.

--summary.
The way Katanagatari keeps itself interesting is with jokes, rapid introduction of new characters, the unique art style and some fight scenes.
Surprisingly it never felt like it had to stretch itself too thin, despite the simplistic plot.
The execution matters, and Katanagari was nicely done.
I could say that this is a show worth checking out for pretty much anyone.
While I didn't see it as a masterpiece it was still fun all the way through.

--A quick overview
I might be a bit late for this review but here goes anyway.
Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda is an original movie made by the same team that brought us
most of Toradora and Anohana, Mari Okada and Nagai Tatsuyuki.
While Mari's work can be a bit hit or miss this one is clearly more of a hit.
The story follows a pretty simple path that is heavily foreshadowed, and you have probably seen
this type of a story done before like I have, so while the flow of the story won't surprise you
the execution more than likely will.

-Presentation (visuals & sound)
There isn't much to complain about the visuals, it ... does suffer from a bit of CGI syndrome,
a condition where the characters can occasionally stick out of the very detailed CGI background.
But since the CGI is only used for backgrounds it's definitely not that off putting.
Sound vise I could notice that when they do use actual songs when they say they do.
I also appreciate that they knew when to shut the hell up during dramatic scenes and not just play sad violin an piano over them.

-Characters and plot
I already mentioned that the flow of the plot probably won't surprise you, nor will it make you reconsider what you think can be done with animation, but the execution is spot on regardless.
The main character is a very talkative girl until she opens her mouth a bit too much and gets traumatized, after which she finds a new way of expressing herself through singing with the help of her friends.
Simplistic enough and very well done.
Mari seems to be very good at putting her own spin on common tropes and story lines.
But outside of that I do have a few minor nitpicks:
1. There's a guy whose arm is broken, and they never really do much with this, or actually resolve the whole thing, like did he go back to playing baseball?
this makes me think he had a much more detailed arc related to him but it got cut for whatever reason.
2. There's a scene where a guy tells a girl that he would like to take her to the love hotel,
she takes this seriously like it would be a possible outcome, but later in the movie we see that the hotel probably hasn't been in use for years. This seemed like a minor continuity error.
3. I'm not sure if this is even a bad thing, but when they insert the name of the movie in the final song they perform I giggled a bit.
I won't say much about the characters as this is a pretty character focused movie, so they could be considered spoilers and as such I will only mention that I like that none of the characters were generic date-sim archetypes.

-Overall
This was a surprisingly good movie, and while I've only seen it once as of writing this I already want to see it again.
The visuals were nice, they know how to use music and silence, I like the message, I like the execution, and the characters were good too.
This is my favorite anime from 2016 so far, and I recommend everyone to at least give it a quick try.
The only thing I could imagine coming in the way of saying this anime is good is that it's not the "cool" type of anime to like, if anyone asks you what you liked the most this year, you would likely want to give some cool action adventure anime as an answer.
Regardless I this is the most memorable anime I've watched this year.

Dimension W, definitely the best thing Studio 3Hz has made so far.
Dimension W is a very episodic road trip-ish anime about a dude who is essentially a
bounty hunter and a robot girl who gets stuck with him.
Pretty standard setup for an action show with some fancy visuals.
It's not without its flaws but if that sounded interesting to you it might be worth a watch.

--Full review: minor spoilers ahead

-Presentation(visuals & sound)
Dimension W has some well used CGI, though sometimes it can still stand out a bit too much.
... The backgrounds are well made, the CGI never felt choppy, and I like the character designs.
I've heard from some people that this is their favorite OP of the season, but it just sounded like pretty generic electro to me.
Same thing with the ED, not saying they're bad but I've heard better.
Overall the animation is just very fluid, colorful and nice to look at.

-Story
Dimension W is very arch based and starts with what I would call a very bad first episode, it's essentially just a setup for the next episode.
If you plan on giving Dimension W a go, then make sure you watch two episodes before deciding if you're going to complete it.
The second episode is much stronger, and introduces one of the recurring characters, Loser (yes they actually call him that).
There's one more episode that just felt like mostly boring info dumping, but that doesn't come until later on.
And even with the info dumping by the characters this is how I understand the coils: wibbly wobbly timey wimey, realities inside of coils.

Based on the premise I thought this show would comment on fossil fuel usage, but I didn't really hear much of that at all, for the better or worse.
For the sake of explanation I'm going to mention that the coils can essentially provide infinite energy, meaning they can do pretty much anything.
The author clearly had fun with this, maybe a bit too much since sometimes it feels like whatever happens the author basically pulled out of his ass.
Not that it matters too much since it's excused and explained and the story isn't super important here.

One more gripe I have with the story is how the characters backstories are explained almost entirely in flashbacks, come on can't you figure out something more creative?
Otherwise the story is interesting enough.
The ending is conclusive enough, definitely not just a read the manga ending.

-Characters
Probably the best or the second best thing about the show, depending on how much you appreciate the animation.
For once we don't have a completely bland main character, Mabuchi Kyouma is a person who dresses in traditional clothes and hates coils.
Minor note that I don't particularly like the fact that Kyoma does his fighting with throwing knives, it tends to make for poor battle choreography.
Though the choreography is still better than average.
He has a fairly extensive backstory that I won't spoil.
Yurizaki Mira is Kyoma's robot partner who is extremely strong and can detect coils.
Their dynamic was quite fun to watch, and mira is also given an okay backstory.
Other than that due to the Nature of the show there aren't that many interesting recurring characters aside from Loser
But what is there is pretty good.

-Overall
It might sound a bit harsh to only give Dimension W a 6/10 but there are many shows just like it, and outside of the premise
dimension W doesn't have much to distinguish itself with.
And on top of that it wasn't really my type of a show to begin with.
The narrative can feel a bit choppy at times.
Characters didn't get much development because the show was busy just establishing them in 12 episodes.
The visuals aren't without a few hiccups and the music used wasn't really my thing either.
I could still recommend Dimension W to someone who likes futuristic action shows.

Well here's a show that I think got a bit of a bad wrap for no real reason.
But I do have some reasons for why people wouldn't like it so much.
Firstly Saekano came before this show, and the novelty of it had already worn off for many people.
Secondly people set their expectations too high for something that never really tried to be anything special to begin with.

--Actual review: minor spoiler warning.

-Presentation(visuals & sound)
To me nothing looked visually out of place, which isn't weird considering this isn't a very action heavy show requiring lots of animation.
Sound vise I like the OP and ED, I actually think ... they were some of the better ones of the season, I like just how bombastic the singing was.
But even then none of the background tracks stood out to me.

-Story
I basically picked this show to just watch something that would be easy to get into without having to think about it much.
and good that I did because this is certainly not a masterpiece of a plot, nor is it necessarily bad, just very average.
My biggest problem with it is how the characters would occasionally get mad at each other for no real reason.
That kind of stuff basically happens whenever a writer has to work with a very limited time left in the series or the movie they're working with, so they rush it a bit.
At least the characters realize how stupid the thing is in a pretty short amount of time.
Another thing that could be considered a nitpick is how the characters seem like they've never heard of the internet and still try to get their game to the manufacturer by disc for added drama.
There were some "romantic" scenes that didn't really go anywhere at the end, not that I
expected them to.
On a few occasions this show makes a comment about the VN industry, but not often.
Compared to Saekano Shoujo-tachi focuses more on actual creative parts of making a game, it doesn't have as much humor.
Overall this show doesn't really fail with its plot because it keeps its goals fairly grounded.

-Characters
This show has very archetypal characters, and it knows it.
For example every character has a name related to one of the things that defines their archetypes, for example Kuroda's name refers to her black hair.
Also I bet all the voice actors were told to do the most typical voice for the archetype they were playing, even if it's over the top.
But not every character is completely archetypal, Buntarou actually contradicts quite a few things that make a generic harem MC, he isn't an unsociable nerd who gets uncomfortable around girls, instead he Writes plays, actually likes being helpful and is quite confident of himself.
Kuroda also subverts a typical thing for her archetype, Instead of constantly having an icy personality she is the first person to approach Buntarou about the game project.
The characters are still left mostly unexplored, though it has some decent character interaction.

-Overall
Definitely not what I would consider a terrible anime, you can't judge it by premise alone.
But it's nothing amazing either, there aren't any deep characters or unconventional and interesting plots with tons of twists, and the animation while certainly decent doesn't have any moments to show off.
The best thing about this show was probably the songs.
Rarely do I see a show that was so unsurprising to me.
If I was asked to recommend either Saekano or shoujo-tachi I would tell you to just go with whichever sounds like more fun.
I would recommend this to people who already watched Saekano and want something similar and people who just want to fill time with something easy going that some story to go with it.

Well, now that Erased reviews are a dime a dozen, might as well add my two cents.
--Quick version:
The first thing to consider when reviewing Erased is what exactly is it good at?
The mystery?
No. The formula is taken straight from Scooby Doo, some people predicted the killer before the halfway point of the series.
And no, the red herrings don't make it any less predictable after they've been used multiple times already.
Well is it a good thriller then?
No. The predictability kills any thrills this show would've had.
Maybe it's a decent drama then?
Kinda...sorta...when they don't use pointless victimization by one-dimensional characters to make you feel bad for ... the cast, now that's some lazy writing.
Also the time travel is BS.
Nothing too great to watch.

--Full review: spoilers incoming.

-Presentation (visuals & sound)
Definitely the strongest part of the show.
Asian Kung-fu generation does a great job with the opening and the ending is almost as good.
The director clearly knows what he's doing with how he presents things, The film bars especially were a great addition.
I like how they present Satorus Internal dialogue and how he actually speaks differently at times.
Nothing looks out of place and I have nothing to complain about here.

-Story
And here's the weakest part of the show.
From the first episode it's clear that the story could be better, the first mistake was to make the MC, Satoru run from the police for no reason.
They actually explained the whole thing in the manga, and that shows that the whole thing is a pretty rushed adaptation.
The time travel makes no real sense, it works when it's convenient, it doesn't take butterfly effect into consideration and it always seems to transport Satoru to a safe location for no reason.
Also there doesn't seem to be any limitation to the time travel abilities, which is yet another reason why this show is just not very thrilling.
Something that also got stuck in my mind is how forced the drama can feel, this show has characters whose only job in the story is to victimize others.Lazy writing.
The killer's motives are also just...pointless...basically he does it because he likes it...I'm starting to think Scooby Doo actually had better writing.
Also the children in this anime actually seem smarter than most of the adults.
As I said before Having a mystery most people will be able to solve before the characters makes the mystery almost pointless from that point on.
The ending felt a bit comical and corny to me, but aside from that no real problems there.
I also have a couple of nitpicks about the show:
-Satoru doesn't know how seat belts work(you know what i mean).
-Some people have claimed that having a 20-something year old guy in his 10 year old body almost dating another 10 year old is creepy,
it didn't seem like that to me, aside from one scene where Hinazuki is taking a shower with Satoru's mom. That actually seemed a bit weird, why is that even there?

-Characters
Finally something I even have a few positive things to say about.
Satoru's mom is made to be a very compassionate person, maybe even overly so, but i can't complain because there's a real lack of decent parents in anime.
Most of the characters don't have that much personality behind them, but at least they're not cardboard cut outs.
Satoru himself is a very cynical MC, those have been very popular lately, he develops pretty much like you would expect.
So at least halfway decent main cast, but as I said before Some characters are just obviously evil and have no redeeming qualities.
The killer is also a completely uninteresting character.
Satoru's friends at least got a personality quirk or two.
And the pizza girl whoever she was felt like a pretty pointless character.

-Summary
The best thing I could compare this anime to is Mirai nikki, That one is also completely filled with plot holes and has a cool premise that doesn't really work out.
It's not a good watch if you want a mystery, it's not good as a thriller and it only kinda works as a drama.
At the very least it's presented nicely so it's easy to consume.
Unless you absolutely need to watch a Time travel Drama and can't just watch Steins;Gate again there's nothing here for you.
It's not like this is the worst thing ever but it was still a big waste of potential.
PS. can we all just collectively agree to never hype shit up again?

I might as well join the influx of people reviewing Konosuba immediately after it finishes airing.

Konosuba took me by surprise, I was not expecting an actually funny show from something that reads: Studio deen, light novel, and has a premise that sounds exactly like generic otaku empowerment fantasy. Turns out it's basically a parody of the "stuck in a video game" genre.

-Presentation (sound & visuals)
There's nothing for me to really complain about, this show has some obvious CG in it which still didn't really look out of place to me. As for music, I found the OP and ED pretty catchy, the rest of the ... soundtrack was mostly forgettable though.

-Characters
Everyone from the villains to the main cast is a complete derp, and that's a big part of what makes this show so funny.
While the cast does have nice interaction and some funny quirks, I would've liked to see some more actual character development.
Every character would at first glance fit some archetype, but it quickly becomes apparent
there's a bit more going on.

-Story
Konosuba is a very episodic anime which will likely never actually have an actual ending.
The series starts off strong, constantly bringing new jokes to the table and builds up the rest of the story. As the sory progresses it starts to be carried by the new characters introduced every episode, after which I felt like I had seen basically everything that the show has to offer, but towards the end it got better for me.
And speaking of the end, I'm not sure if episode 9 could be considered filler because it's basically a fan service episode and mostly pointless otherwise.
Also second season announced (woo!).

-Conclusion
Konosuba is so far the best anime I have watched this season, though Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu might replace it once I actually start watching it.
Shows like SAO and Danmachi make Konosuba more relevant, but it could stand by itself even if those shows never aired.
You might have problems liking this show, if the humor is just not your type, if you really dislike
fan service or you just don't like episodic anime that much.
Otherwise I would say it's a worthwhile watch.