Filthy Casual for Life

The winter season of anime has drawn to close and it was, in my humble opinion, a terrific season. There were a few shows I started and didn’t continue, but for the most part, I stuck with all the ones I chose. There were three that really stuck out to me this season.

Number Three: A Sign of Affection

I am a sucker for a good romantic anime. A Sign of Affection definitely hit all the right marks. Yuki is deaf and speaks through sign language. While on a train, a man tries to speak to her. Panicked, she did not know what to do since she couldn’t communicate back. A tall, handsome man helps her out by answering the other man’s questions. When Itsoumi tries to communicate with Yuki, she gestures to her ear monitors. He instantly understands and communicates with her by having her read his lips. As he leaves the train, he pats her head. She finds out that he is in her best friend’s club at university, and she begins to seek him out. She is slowly falling in love with the man who loves to travel. Unbeknownst to her, Itsoumi is growing fond of her, too. Their interactions are sweet. Yuki is obviously inexperienced in love, but dives in head first. Itsoumi originally has no intentions of entering a relationship, but his heart slowly opens to Yuki. This love tale is not completely drama-free. Itsoumi has an old high school friend that has been in love with him for years. Despite ignoring and denying her advances, she still pines for him. Yuki isn’t drama-free, either. Her old childhood friend is in love with her, but does all in his power to be mean to Yuki. Yuki is pure-hearted and cute as a button. Itsuomi is well-traveled and poised to open her life to a whole other world.

Number Two: Shangri-La Frontier

We follow ultimate trash gamer, Rakurou, who goes by the gamer tag, Sunraku. He seeks out the world’s crappiest, trashiest games and relishes in the glory when he beats them. Because of his love of trash games that are littered with bad physics, sucky story lines, and glitches that make the game laughable or down-right impossible to play, he has developed the skills necessary to think out of the box. He is introduced to the world’s top-tier game, Shangri-La Frontier. Deciding to take a break from trash games, Sunraku gives it a go and remembers how great a god-tier game could be. I absolutely love this show. There is so much to love about it. Sunraku is filled with confidence as he moves through the world of Shangri-La Frontier. That confidence gets him far, but not always in the easiest of ways. Along the way, he picks up a cute sidekick named Emul. He forms an alliance with two unlikely characters. He is introduced to unique scenarios that have him cursed and rewarded. There is also a love story of a schoolmate looking to catch Rakurou’s eye in the real world, and in-game. The show is hilarious and I highly recommend it.

Number One: Solo Leveling

My first choice should surprise no one. I anticipated each week’s show. In this show, we follow the literal evolution of Jinwoo, our main protagonist. Jinwoo is a low-ranked hunter that enters mysterious dungeons that randomly open all around the world. He is kind hearted and doing dangerous hunter work to save his mother. Unfortunately for Jinwoo, he is so weak, he almost dies in every dungeon. His journey starts like any other day, with a low-level dungeon. His party quickly realizes that it is not an ordinary dungeon. In fact, it has a dungeon within a dungeon. Opting to move on, they run into a terrifying scenario. A scenario in which our protagonist seemingly sacrifices himself and dies. Yet, he doesn’t. Now, he is equipped with “the system” that gives him quests to grow stronger. We watch as Jinwoo slowly loses the person he was for the person he is destined to be. Each week’s episode was better than the last.

What were your top three of the season?