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The swimming boys are back! Free! kept its promise from season one ("See you next summer...") and returned for another season of swimming, slice of life and manservice. After the first season of five guys swimming competitively and their daily (mis)adventures turned out to be a huge success, it was no surprise that it would get a continuation. And now that the second season finished, how does it compete with its prequel?

Following the story of season one, Free!: Eternal Summer starts off with a new high school term. Makoto and Haruka are now third years, while Rei and Nagisa are now second years at Iwatobi. ... And how else would they start off a new year if not with swimming? They return to the swim club and begin with the search for new members - failing in the process, participating in a friendly competition against the team of Samezuka, dealing with their individual struggles, and much more. All that while they practice and try to improve their swimming even more to participate in the regionals - in hope of success this time.
Speaking of Samezuka, in the meantime Eternal Summer gives us an insight on the swimming team of Samezuka as well - with Rin as the new team captain and a couple of new members the Samazuka swimmers are up for a fresh start and ready for more challenges. A huge focus here is the addition of Sousuke - an old childhood friend of Rin's, who transfers from another school for certain reasons.

But swimming is of course not the entire focus of the show. Just like season one, Eternal Summer is filled with lots of slice of life moments, because as we are all aware, Free! is not all about sports. It is not trying to be, anyways. Unlike other sports-themed series, the focus on seemingly "plotless" scenes is a huge one, and Eternal Summer is continuing to deliver great slice of life moments that evoke all sorts of emotions. If Iwatobi's hopeless yet funny search for new members, the heartwarming Nagisa-centered episode or the stunning trip to Australia - in the slice of life aspect, Free! is undoubtedly convincing.
Another central theme of the second season is future. As Haruka, Makoto and Rin are in their last year of high school, it is an unavoidable question of what they will do after graduating. Definitely an interesting topic, and a good set-up for drama. Now, the drama - and the resolution - in Free! is often cheesy and overdramatic - and in the case of this season it is the case too, but still an improvement from season one. Especially episode nine shows how good drama in Free! can be - in this episode it was very well executed.
Story-wise, if you enjoyed season one for its story (or the lack of it in most parts) then you will like it in season two just as much. Lots of friendship, drama, slice of life, swimming is just as present here and just as enjoyable.

Character development is very much noticeable in season two. And this even though the cast has not changed much - the main group of five is still the same. The only important additions to the characters are Sousuke, whom I mentioned before, and Momotarou, Seijuurous younger brother, who joins the Samezuka swim team as well. And even though the change is small, the characters go through crucial developments, making them even more interesting than in season one.
Starting off with Haru, who already opened himself a little more compared to season one - while in latter he did not really take interest in swimming competitively ("I only swim free.") the final of season one showed its effect. Haru now likes swimming together with his friends, and competing against them. And over the course of Eternal Summer he goes through development too - his struggle with the question if he wants to swim professionally or not makes for some really good drama.
Rin's character is also a very interesting one in this season. From the angry and frustrated guy he was in season one he appears now as an easygoing character. It really shows how swimming with his old friends again returned him the joy of the sport. And as the new captain of the swimming team it shows even more.
Makoto, Nagisa and Rei do not get as much focus as Haruka and Rin, though go through some development too. Makoto decides how he wants to continue after high school and continues to support his friends with all his might. Nagisa gets an episode dedicated to him that gives us more insight in his character and is the usual moodmaker of the group. Rei continues to improve his swimming and strengthens his bonds with the group.

Just like season one, Free!: Eternal Summer stands out in the art aspect. The character designs look great as always and the animation is fluid. Especially the scenes where swimming is involved have spectacular animation. One other thing I noticed is how the background drawings are very detailed and beautiful too. It is especially noticeable in episode 12, which has a different setting from the other episodes. The scenery is stunning. Besides that, the series is as colorful as ever, fitting the mood of the show nicely. A thing I could criticize here is that some scenes were not as well animated as others, but this does not disturb the overall performance.

In terms of music, season two continues with the same old recipe for success. For the opening, we get a new catchy J-Rock song by the band OLDCODEX, that holds well up with season one's opening. The ending song is another fun song by the main cast of the show, accompanied by a hilarious ending animation. The background music continues to be nice, too.

Overall, Free!: Eternal Summer continues to be a fun series with great character development and nice music and art. Thus, I give it an overall rating of 9/10.

When you have an interesting setting and characters, great designs and good action, the obvious option would be using them to their fullest potential and crafting a great story involving these factors. But you could also do it like Studio Bones did with Captain Earth and do absolutely NOTHING with them. Seriously, I've rarely seen a series devolve from one with lots of potential into something that was a chore to watch episode by episode.

The story centers around Daichi Manatsu, a high school student who, through some coincidences and connections, ends up in a secret organization fighting extraterrestrial beings with mecha robots. Now, the whole ... "high school student fights unknown creature" setup might be one of the overused cliches in anime ever, but there are still series that manage to put it off well. That's what I also hoped for Captain Earth, but it was all in vain.
From the beginning on, the viewer is bombarded with one unknown term after another, expecting us to understand what the hell they are supposed to mean. All this while the plot starts off with a tiring episodic monster-of-the-week scheme. Those types of episodes are not always bad, but it is pointless if the plot still has not made any crucial progress, making it a chore to watch the same thing over and over.
About midway through, the series is finally back to the actual plot - not that it got much better though. To sum it up, you could fast-forward to the last few episodes (bar a few selected ones) and you would not have missed out on anything. And instead of good storytelling we get pointless fanservice here and there. And some more unexplained terms, because we obviously have not had enough already! And if plot points are resolved, then it's in a cliche and predictable way. Or there is no resolution at all - I mean, what happened to Teppei's father? The creators probably forgot about his existence, who knows. What about the little girl who was supposed to be something like a manifestation of Daichi's Livlaster? We never found out what was up with her.
Well to make it short, while the setup was already lame, what the producers made of it made it even duller. And this also brings down the characterization.

This brings me to the characters of Captain Earth. The four main characters are like the only ones who get some character development, so I'll just get to them. First we have Daichi, our protagonist - a character I found pretty intriguing in the beginning. With a connection to some other characters related in the battle against the aliens and a somewhat rebellious attitude he could have been a good character. Could have, if the story were any good. Instead, he turns into the stereotypical good guy character who can face any hurdle through the power of friendship.
The second male main character Teppei, suffers a similar fate of character change - from a character related to the Kill-T-Gangs his role in the story turns quite irrelevant. He ends up as just another mecha driver without much development.
Akari, the self-proclaimed "mahou shoujo", is a super-hacker who supports the team in the background by, well, hacking. There isn't really much else to her, aside that she is a poor love interest for Teppei. Seriously, would it have been so hard to develop the romance between those two a little?
Hana is the last of the main group, and also the love interest of Daichi. Well, their romance was a little more interesting than Teppei and Akari's, but Hana as character herself was - nothing special. Just like with Teppei, her supernatural powers are not explored well enough - she is more often used as a fanservice character.
Last I want to mention the enemies in this scenario, the Kill-T-Gangs - just as the main heroes, very underexplored. Most of them have a one-episode appeareance and then disappear or are used as more fanservice devices. The main pair - Moco and Amara - only differentiate from the group in that they get more screentime, act more evil and get more fanservice scenes (Moco, at least).

One thing that had Captain Earth going for it is the visuals - nothing special, really, but compared to the other aspects of the series a pleasure. The character designs are nice, the mechs look good and the action is on point.

The sounds of the series are nothing special, the openings and endings are alright and the soundtrack was alright too. Hana's song is probably the most outstanding aspect in the sounds section.

Sadly, the strongest points of the series (Art & Sound) do not carry a show alone.
Thus, Captain Earth overall does not really convince me and thus I give it a score of 3/10.

Nowadays, idol music groups are a firm part of otaku culture. So it doesn't really come off as a surprise that anime more and more includes idols as a theme as well - and it does it quite successful! Wake Up, Girls! is another anime that tries to hop on the moneymaking bandwagon of idol-focused series with a huge original project including a movie, a TV series and of course lots of music. So, how does Wake Up, Girls! (WUG from now on) compete with other popular idol anime series? Not too bad, I would say.

While the 50-minute prequel movie (which you definitely should watch ... before the series) focused on the auditions and the forming of the seven-member idol group Wake Up, Girls!, the TV series follows our idol group on the way to stardom. It's a basic plot, really - we watch them face various challenges, like difficult jobs and also struggles of individual members of the show. A key character in that case is Mayu Shimada, a former member of the extremely popular idol group I-1 Club, who is now a part of WUG and makes her a rival of I-1 Club.
Over the 12 episodes a story of their rise from a small local idol group to a firm part of the most popular groups of Japan is told, and as WUG is an original production, we luckily get treated with a pretty satisfying conclusion.
The way the story progresses is cliché in lots of ways - typical tropes get used, things like an injury before an important appeareance, tragic backstories and of course the power of friendship. Some of the clichés seem annoying, others you don't mind. While the whole progress of the story is cliché itself too, you still find yourself cheering for the girls somehow and hope for their best. The story may not be perfect - but for what it's trying to be, I think WUG does present it's story rather solidly.

The main characters are presented quite decently too. As we have 7 main characters in a 12-episode show, it is not easy to develop much, but for that it's doing pretty well. We get some insight at backstories and individual struggles of the girls some episodes in. At the beginning though, you might have a bit of trouble relating to the characters, or even differentiate between them (which is also due to the same-face-syndrome which is present in the series). But when we actually get to see the development, we more and more feel with the characters and also cheer for them at some point. The side characters are rather irrelevant to the story though. Matsuda and the president Junko are completely useless, only the songwriter Hayasaka and I-1 as rivals are somewhat important. But the side characters barely are focused on anyways, so it's not that bothersome.

I usually don't put that much focus on music, but since WUG is an idol show, music obviously plays a huge part. And I have to say, it delivers! As typical for idol groups, WUG is filled with J-Pop songs that are absolutely catchy and quite enjoyable. I think it influences the enjoyment too, as the good songs influence that you cheer for WUG more and more. For their first voice-acting and singing job, I think the voice actors do their job quite well.
On the art and animation - I loved the character designs (even despite the same-face-syndrome), and the sceneries were pretty too. The animation was rather average though - it was rather inconsistent and lots of quality issues were visible.

So, is Wake Up, Girls! a good idol anime? To summarize my thoughts - even though it is not good enough to be considered a "classic" in the music anime genre, for a one-time watch it is quite fun indeed, and the songs are enjoyable too. This results in my final score 7/10.

Hamatora was a show I was quite interested in prior to its airing. Looking at the key visuals, the characters looked interesting; and the preview video showed some cool superpowers with flashy and colorful animation. But you may think the synopsis doesn't really sound interesting - cool guys fighting with superpowers are an overused trope in anime, to the point where it gets cliché. But wait, Hamatora throws some detective elements into the mix! So, does that make Hamatora an interesting, outstanding watch that puts the superpower guy cliché into good use? Well, as you can see on my final score, I don't share that ... opinion. Frankly, Hamatora - The Animation turns out to be a really underwhelming show that ends up forgettable quickly after completing it.

Set in a city where a small group of people with superpowers - called Minimum Holders - exist, the story follows a detective agency called Hamatora, a detective group made of Minimum Holders. Each episode we follow Hamatora solving various mysteries, always caused by another human who posesses Minimum Holder powers. Art, a superintendent of the police, usually cooperates with them to solve the cases, while it turns out that there is a mastermind behind all these mysterious happenings.
The story of Hamatora really isn't bad - each episode we get faced with a new detective case for our little detective group, and we follow them solve the cases and doing some fighting with their cool Minimum Holder powers. Here and there, we see some hints of an actual plot, which then gets fulfilled during the final few episodes. It could have been developed so much better though.
The first half of Hamatora (with the episodic short cases) was okay in the aspect that it also presented the antagonist and gave a small development up to the final conflict. The problem here is though that the time was not used effectively. Character development was close to zero, and instead we were presented with some filler-like episodes. Like the beach episode, which was used after a quite dramatic development, which was just completely out of place. And don't even get me started on episode 5, honestly.
The last few episodes focus on the actual "plot" of the series, as already mentioned. It definitely is better than the first half, as the plot thickens and the episodes focus on the main conflict. Sadly we get fed up with an extremely disappointing conclusion, which leaves questions open and brings the story down. Additionally, at some point you aren't really interested in following the story anymore and lose interest more and more as the story progresses. This is mostly due to the extremely weak characters.

And this leads me to my next point - the characters, which make up the weakest part in this series. As I've said, with the exception of some backstory hints, there is no real development and we don't get to know much about them. Hell, if they weren't called names like "Birthday" and "Nice" I don't think I would be able to remember much of them. Nice has some backstory, and characters like Murasaki, Art and Three also have some hints on their past here and there. But the rest gets left in the dark.
Especially characters like Koneko, Hajime and Master could have easily been left out in their entity and the story could still progress the same, as they don't play any role in the main plot. At all. Maybe they play a bigger role in the manga or the upcoming video game - at least in the anime, they are completely useless.
Finally there is also our "bad guy" Moral, who makes quite an underwhelming enemy character. I felt his reasoning for being the bad guy was quite a disappointment - you would expect so much more.
Overall, since we barely get to know anything about the characters - thanks to the aforementioned use of filler-like episodes - so we are presented with characters that we can't relate to or connect with at all. I think this also plays a part why the enjoyment is so little - at some point you do not really care how the story progresses anymore since you can't really feel anything for the characters.

The art is one of the more positive aspects, the character design is good and as I've already mentioned, the fighting scenes in their full colorful glory were quite a please to look at. The animation was okay too most of the time, though there were some episodes with lots of quality issues present. The music was decent too, with nice opening and ending songs.

But of course, some art and music don't make an anime, which now leads me to my overall opinion - Hamatora could have been a good and fun show, as the flashy visuals and the superpowers surely pique one's interest, but was brought down by an average plot and unrelateable characters. All this together results in my final score 4/10.