The winter anime season has officially stated, and so as my first impressions series. On Monday I reviewed three series – Pop Team Epic, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card and Ito Junji Collection. You can read my thoughts over here. Now I’m back with some more thoughts! Next Monday I’ll be posting a third and final part of this series and also be announcing which anime I’ll be keeping up with. You can check out the full list of winter anime series at Anichart. Just a quick rundown of my voting scales:

0-2: Wow that’s part of my life I’ll never get back

2-3: Reasonable, would need to watch the next one or two episodes to see if it’s worth continuing

4-5: That was absolutely fantastic! Give me the next episode now!

Kokkoku

Kokkoku introduces us to the most boring family imaginable, and then spins it 180. For Juri it’s just another day job hunting while her NEET father and brother play video games and her grandfather drinks the day away. But when she encourages her brother to go pick her nephew up at daycare and they get kidnapped – well everything changes. Their grandfather shows Juri and her father a hidden family secret where they can stop time. But it turns out other people have similar abilities and all hell breaks loose. So far it seems to have an interesting plot and good animation, the pacing is quite slow and the next episode will really decide if I keep on with this series 3/5

Sanrio Danshi

I gotta admit, I went into this anime with awfully low expectations and came out of it in love. The slice-of-life series follows a group of high school boys who all love Sanrio characters (like Hello Kitty and My Melody). The characters are all super cute, and at the moment there doesn’t seem like much of a story rather than a typical look-at-these-boys-enjoying-life, which is always heart-warming. I really love how this anime is challenging gender norms and saying that no matter who gender you identify as you can love and enjoy whatever you like! Really looking forward to the next episode 4/5

Basilisk: Ouka Ninpouchou

This series is either the prequel or sequel to the original Basilisk, I thought it was the sequel but saw some debates online so now I’m just confused. Anywho, so Basilisk (the pre-sequel thingo) takes us back to the two ninja clans which are frenemies now. We’ve also got two kids which look like they’re related to the Romeo and Juliet from the previous series, and the village is trying to get them together. Which is pretty much when I stopped paying attention. So no matter how good this series is, I draw the line at incest. The animation looks alright, but there’s these weird freeze frame moments, and there are so many names to remember. Overall a 2.5/5

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That’s it for another set of winter season anime! On Monday I’ll have my final few and also let you know what series I’ll be keeping up with. Unfortunately at the moment only Sanrio Danshi has really stood out as a great series.