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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2020 First Impressions – Master List

Hi, all. I decided to do something a little bit different this time around. Because I’ve been combining several first impressions into each post, I thought it might be a good idea to post a master list of links to the locations of each specific series for individuals who are looking for a certain review. I’m also taking this opportunity to rank series by their first episodes in three categories – series I’m enthusiastic about, series that I might check out if I have time, and series I’m not interested in. I’ll also include some follow-up thoughts on each of those.

Just as a reminder, unless stated otherwise, these are based only on the first episodes I watched for the First Impressions reviews of the material. There are many cases where I may not have thought the first episode was that great, but might watch some more of the series anyway because something or another intrigued me about it. The various episodes are not otherwise ranked within the categories.

Categories
First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2020 First Impressions – Shorts: Room Camp, Natsunagu, and Breakers

Well, the outside world has been a bit of a dumpster fire lately, but at least there’s still anime to watch! In all seriousness, I’m not really someone who sees anime as “escapist” entertainment; for me, it’s something I actively engage with and not just so I can “turn my brain off” or feel good (though no hate to anyone who consumes their anime for those reasons). But sometimes things happen in real life that make you want to just step back for a little while and indulge in something that’s expected and predictable, and no matter what anime series I’m watching, the familiar cadence of the exaggerated Japanese language style and colorful characters are comfort food for me.

One thing to note about this post is that neither Breakers or Natsunagu are available on any official streaming platform in the US, so I went about obtaining them the “old-fashioned” way. If that bothers you, those reviews are the second and third ones in this post so they are easy to skip.