September 22, 2024
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Top 10 Upcoming Anime for Summer 2023 Season

SugiG017 mins

While Spring 2023 Anime season is still ongoing I think it’s good to reflect and see what’s coming out next on the horizon. So I decided to do my individual Top 10 picks for the upcoming summer 2023 Season. There are a lot of sequels coming out in Summer and I try to focus on new shows, but I will be putting some of these shows on the list regardless because long-running franchises tend to be what people are generally interested in (as am I). As a final side note, trailers tend to look very good often not promising, but the end result usually tends to fall short so it’s hard to judge this stuff especially if you are not familiar with the source material wherever that be manga or light novels.

Now this is a list of my Top 10 choices, but I don’t want to put super high emphasis on the individual rankings between them, I leave that after the season is over, and ill do my breakdown of shows that were good and bad.

#10) Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2

Now imagine that it was back in 2021 march when we saw the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen so we are talking about around ~26 months of a break between the seasons. Yes, we got the Jujutsu Kaisen ZERO Movie which I did by the way review on YouTube. However, it’s still quite a long wait – I think there has been plenty of shows that went too long of a break, and basically, the hype died altogether because of it – good reminder being Blue Exorcist.

The trailer shows us it’s going to focus a bit on one of our villains and Goto and their time as students so it’s gonna feature some flashback stuff, which I’m all for – then again I’m not sure if should I recommend people watching the movie before or… Well.. all things considered, this is gonna be a popular title for summer.

#9) Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Separation

I remember keep telling people years ago that eventually bleach was gonna come back and that prediction indeed turned out to be true. People were very nostalgic about the first Cour of this arc, which I would say was a decent and higher level than the original anime, but I wouldn’t go aping as hard as some of the fanboys are. On a fundamental level is this a above-average shonen? Yes! Is it a masterpiece? Not exactly. It’s still gonna be fun and enjoyable to watch and see a proper conclusion to such a long-running franchise.

I also wouldn’t mind if Tite would actually get around publishing more Burn the Witch, but I guess he’s just super burned out from the brutal schedules that the mangaka undergo under these publishers.

#8) Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Historically Japanese people haven’t been super into Zombie stuff that’s always been an American niche in my opinion, but you have things like Highschool of the Dead (Which I need to finish and review at some point) and more recent titles like Sankarea. Zombies aren’t exactly “creatures” that have very deep lore like let’s say, Vampires, which have seen multiple different style movies and shows anywhere from – What we do in the Shadows, Underworld, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Dark Shadows and Reginald the Vampire. All of the aforementioned titles are different from each other in terms of genre and tone, this is due to the fact that drinking blood introduces a moral dilemma that can be written in multiple ways.

Now zombies aren’t that complex, so usually it’s just horror or comedy, which this Anime seems to integrate both. Based on the trailer and synopsis there seems to be some social commentary about Japanese work culture, which is something that most weebs are aware of – that being said I don’t recall that many titles tackling that, so I am all for that. Oh yeah, there is also a live-action version in the making by Netflix.

#7) Dark Gathering

Ironically every time I start any horror series I always end up dropping them, that’s because it’s never been the genre that I find appealing less so in live-action, but I kinda like it when its blended with other genres. Now aesthetically Dark Gathering seems pretty cool and I’m digging the visual design of it – I’m not sure how gore this will end up being and that will probably affect whatever I’m going to be sticking around for the whole season.

#6) Helck

To be fair this is a total wildcard pick and I might even expect I’m gonna be wrong about this being any good. All things considered, I do yearn for masculine protagonists in the limelight again, too many beta male shrimps have taken center stage since the early 2000s and I think Toriko was a good change of pace, but it had some other issues going for it. This is likely going to be a short 12-episode series by the looks of it.

#5) The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today

I Am a sucker for anthropomorphic stuff, not that fucking furry shit – but just human-looking animals and ones that talk. This does feel ultimately a very silly anime, but sometimes you want something comfy and relaxing to watch that doesn’t require a super high attention span. It’s based on a Web manga that was later serialized in Shonen Sirius – I have to say that I do find it refreshing that innovation is kinda happening on the Web side of things these days and the market has to adapt to them like One Punch Man.

#4) AI No Ideshi

AI has been a hot topic in the ~10 months or so with things like Midjourney (which we use) and also things like ChatGPT, personally I’ve been concerned about what Post-AI Internet is going to be looking like from a content perspective, how to detect AI among other things. At least one thing is for sure – Regulation is coming. The premise of this anime is very interesting focusing on a society in which 10% of the society is AI-based humanoids and the main character Dr. Sudo Hikaru is doing undercover medical operations on humanoids.

Now there has been a couple of other AI-based anime in the past, but they have been very futuristic and not necessarily operating from a more modern sense of coexistence with human-based technology. I think this feels a lot more relevant to the stage that we are in right now, there is a lot of cool stuff in AI and ultimately I believe it’s a mindset question.

#3) Undead Girl Murder Farce

Another wildcard entry to the list is a story about a vampire’s wife whose murdered and a detective known as a cage user is called to solve this crime (Yeah, watch the trailer to get a better idea). This takes place in the Meiji period apparently, which is a breath of fresh air, given that most historical stuff usually takes place in the Sengoku period, at some point I feel like there was one show each season focusing on the warring states. Different eras allow fundamentally a different vibe to shows, sometimes they are used really well, and sometimes not.

#2) Kengan Ashura Season 2

One of the most frustrating elements of the anime community is 2D incels who keep whining about every 3D Anime that pops out in the market, granted there are a lot of Japanese studios that are kinda behind on this tech or just not using the same approaches as some high-quality entities from Europe & America, but that doesn’t mean every studio that’s using 3D in Japan are bad, Toei, for example, does very fine quality shit.

I Did enjoy Kengan Ashura when it came out and I’m very much looking forward to the next season, I like to think there were things that the series was better at doing than Baki or that’s how I at least recall it from the top of my head – I mean both are really good at this martial arts niche, so I’m all down for both.

#1) Sand Land

It’s nice to see that some of the other works of Akira Toriyama are getting some attention – this is the only movie I picked on this list and it’s probably gonna take a while until the western release of this movie is gonna be around sadly, but surely there will be some cam recordings available in the deep web. Now I do not think Toriyama is a god-tier mangaka or anything, but after seeing DBS Superhero I was quite impressed and have reignited some of that nostalgia.

There are some others that could see daylight like Kajika and Neko Majin, but they might be too minor manga to garner popularity.

Well, that’s my Top 10, you can leave your own down below and tell us why are excited for XYZ for this season. Overall it’s very sequel-orientated and not so many new shows popping out, making a lot of people resort to catching up or starting the existing franchises.