Now that we had a healthy four weeks to explore the season, I’m wondering which Spring anime would you consider being the biggest winner and loser overall so far? – Anonymous

Prattle: I would say the biggest winner at this point would be One Punch Man 2nd Season. It’s well established by now, but as soon as the first trailer came out it was fighting with its back up against the ropes, carrying a ton of stress to perform to lofty expectations, and getting smacked by heavy criticism over every frame from waves of viewers and large influencers in the community. Fast forward four episodes into the Spring and cooler heads have started to prevail.  

Audiences have been realizing that its visual construction isn’t even half the grenade that it was made out to be back in March, and a bunch of people have grown more accustom to J.C. Staff’s presentation on a whole. More importantly, OPM 2’s hard intangibles; The way it delivers comedy, builds and releases tension, and sculpts a course for its narrative to cleanly run through, has been rewarding – reminding viewers that this work is still One Punch Man fundamentally in every other context even if it isn’t as visually rich. It’s admirable how far this series has come along socially given where it started. Definitely a big win.

As for the biggest loser, I would say Fairy Gone takes that one. For those who might not remember, Fairy Gone was one of the more highly anticipated works across a variety of critics’ Spring preview content and community watchlists in the preseason. Having Kenichi Suzuki and the original writer of Grimgar on it was a big draw, and P.A. Works has enough gravity to drag in eyeballs on its own. Toss in an intriguing concept plus a favorable style and the series was set to take off early April. Unfortunately, when it actually did air, it did little to help itself and tons to discredit its quality – primarily with really slushy textual choices and a brand of telling that was parched. Its stock is still in free fall even as I write this.

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Hi! I’ve really been having a good time with Isekai Quartet lately but noticed a lot of the community is pretty lukewarm on it. I saw your tier list where you have it placed in the category with the “fair” shows. Can you explain a bit why? I feel this show is very underrated at the moment – Anonymous

Prattle: For the record, I think the collective group of Spring’s shorts are underrated to a degree all in all, and that’s quietly one of this season’s better attributes, but that’s a story for a different day. As far as Isekai Quartet is specifically concerned, I think a big weakness to it is its form and decision making. The work just doesn’t have enough time as a short to really leverage its roster to the potential that it appears to have on paper.

Furthermore, each episode seems to leave a lot of food on the table consisting of interactions and scenarios that could have been pleasing, prioritizing a basket of plot beats that just simply aren’t that interesting or valuable from a comedic stance. It’s certainly not a bad product, but its limits are transparent enough to give it its placement. 

 

 

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