April Anime Review – What Did We Do to Deserve So Much Win? (And a 4-Year Spring Retrospective)

[Part 1 of my plan to totally cover a season for once. This post isn’t going to say much in spite of being so many words, but I’ve taken a liking to these little things that keep my thoughts on the shows intact across the season. I guess I’m learning the appeal of episodic blogging.]

Screenshots from random current shows that I haven't gotten to use.

Spring 2007 was my first season watching anime fresh from its release, and over the years I’ve continued to think of it as the best major season I’ve been around for.

A Channel – A Big Splash For Studio Gokumi! (OR, What Happens When the Staff of Saki Watches K-On)

A Channel had a superb first episode with a lot of potential to be my favorite show of the season. Amazingly, it plays the field of Kyoto Animation shows and comes out ahead of the season’s Kyoani series, Nichijou (albeit Nichijou is hardly one of Kyoani’s major productions).

A Channel is the second of the only two things Studio Gokumi has made, the first being last year’s Koe de Oshigoto—one of the funniest OVAs I’ve ever seen—and so far their catalog is all high quality. A lot of what I saw in A Channel episode one was the studio announcing “here’s who we are, here’s what we can do,” and they did so with a lot of confidence.