![]() ![]() ![]() Rurouni Kenshin had an anime of course – 2 seasons by Gallup, one by Deen. I loved RuroKen, and it had as much to do with making me an animanga fan as any series ever has. I read the manga either from the library or off the shelves while sipping coffee at Borders. I rented it on VHS from Japan Video in Japantown, San Francisco. Apart from stuff like Star Blazers ( Space Battleship Yamato) and Speed Racer which I liked as a kid but didn’t even know were called “anime”, there’s not much I was a fan of before Rurouni Kenshin. Which for me is pretty darn close to the very beginning. Well, let’s start at the beginning, I guess. Rurouni Kenshin 2023 – Lidenfilms: ( PV) Of all the series I’ve previewed at LiA over the years, this one may be the most complicated. As usual, the poll is in the sidebar – please go vote! That said, unless I’m missing it I don’t see a single new sports series on the schedule (and summer typically gets a baseball show at least), which makes me sad. I don’t see anything else really spiking – maybe a few more straight (not romantic) comedies than the usual percentage, but mostly what I’d call a pretty typical modern mix. As far as genre goes, it still looks to me like CGDCT has declined somewhat in volume – it certainly remains right there behind isekai, but we’re not seeing quite the numbers we did a couple of years ago. That’s a growing segment of the manga market – which makes perfect sense – and one that’s delivering its fair share of really good adaptations. In fact, the source I’m seeing a lot more than usual here is “web manga” – and that’s obviously part of a burgeoning trend. ![]() Not too many originals, and nothing among them that leaps out as a prime candidate. There are 14 LN adaptations, the majority of which have some isekai element (though it does seem as if we’re seeing at least more effort to twist the formula). There are a lot of sequels of very popular shows, relatively few (well, almost none) of which interest me. What I see, then, when I try and look at this coming season objectively is something pretty typical of the day. It’s not fair and historically not relevant. Taking all that into consideration, one challenge here is to not assess Summer based on this standard this spring is setting. I’m previewing 15 17 this time, which is below my usual one-third hit rate (a metric that’s becoming less reliable) but not at the bottom end of the scale. Of course of those 52 spring shows 22 made my preview, a historically high percentage. I think it’s fair to say that production capacity is going to remain critically strained, and that we’ll see the usual by-products of that more and more frequently. In fact this spring also had 52 by my count. That’s a lot (summer ‘22 had 44) – more like a spring or fall number in recent history. This summer has 52 54 series at this writing though, including ONAs (which you have to do in the current landscape). It also helps spring and fall that they usually have more two-cour series (which simultaneously hurts summer and winter, of course). Summer seems to be a season when anime typically goes with a lot of low-risk fare – which in 2023 means LN adaptations of the isekai vein more than anything. Just why is summer (along with winter) generally one of a year’s lesser seasons? Most obviously it’s simple numbers – spring and fall generally have more series to begin with, and that improves the chances of getting some good ones. Summer is rarely one of a year’s stronger seasons to begin with, and this spring in particular has to be taken as a kind of manga-driven aberration rather than the start of a trend, unless the industry (hopefully) shows us otherwise. Spring has turned out to be a really good season, as expected, but it was never realistic to think that momentum could carry over in a substantial way. To an extent, I think Summer 2023 represents a return to normalcy for anime. ![]()
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